Tuesday
30Jun2009
Director Discusses His 'Let the Right One In' Remake
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 2:13AM
I'll breeze through my official party line on remakes, in case you're new here. If you know your way around, you've heard this before. Remakes are fine. There's nothing new about them and if they're handled correctly, they can be worth the effort. The same litmus can be used for wholly original films, by the way. I'd hate to think that we'll never see another version of A Tale of Two Cities or Animal Farm simply because people don't like remakes.
"There's definitely people who have a real bull's-eye on the film, and I can understand because of people's' love of the [original] film that there's this cynicism that I'll come in and trash it, when in fact I have nothing but respect for the film. I'm so drawn to it for personal and not mercenary reasons, my feeling about it is if I didn't feel a personal connection and feel it could be its own film, I wouldn't be doing it. I hope people give us a chance."I will give it a chance, as much as I loved the atmosphere and the inventiveness of Tomas Alfredson's film. It might be terrible and paper-thin and a complete betrayal of those things that made the first film so memorable, but a great story is a great story, whether it's Moliere or Stephen King. I'd rather Reeves follow up Cloverfield with source material I already know succeeds (even if only about a million people saw it in theaters around the world) than putting out some schlocky, quick turnaround sci-fi flick because a studio has an opening weekend it's dying to pounce on. The bar for this version shouldn't be that it has to improve upon the first. Good luck, if that is the goal. Instead, you're putting a more familiar brand of movie making with a dynamite story rich in character and tonality to try to capture an American audience, and if it encourages people to rent or buy the original, so much the better.
Reader Comments (5)
The only flaw of the original movie, as you point out, was the lack of public appeal.
Personally, I didn't like Cloverfield at all. But a lot of people saw it and liked it.
The only danger I can see is that the characters of Cloverfield were so annoyingly shallow and I don't think they were intended to be. You simply couldn't do this story with shallow characters.
The likely outcome of the remake should be a film that is less good but more successful than the original. Accordingly, this little vampire story will have catered to critics and the movie-going public alike.
I'm curious to see how this will turn out. I enjoyed the movie, but my girlfriend wasn't fond of it (perhaps something lost in the translation). Hopefully a movie with no subtitles and more American culture/lifestyle references will win over domestic audiences and critics alike.
i loved, loved, loved this film... sure, it left out some areas of the book (which i read), still, the acting was great, the storyline intense, and well... i loved it.
on the other hand, 'cloverfield' was a mess... not only with some basic continuity, but, with the film itself... especially that ending.
i guess the good thing is, i'm back in colorado, if they actually film there, i may pick up some work.
"Let me in" is NOT the English translation of the novel. It's the American publisher's old dumped down translation of it (and it has changed now), with the hilarious assumtion that americans can't read more than 3 words in 1 sentence.
"Let the right one in" is the very accurate English "translation", since the Swedish original title "Låt den rätte komma in" actually is a translation from the Morrissey song "Let the right one slip in".
In other words, "Let the right one in" is even more accurate than the Swedish original title.
"Let the Right One In" is a masterpiece. Chances are that the remake will be horrid. See "The Vanishing", a French film, then see the American remake. Cloverfield was so so with some scenes that were very well done, but to remake this wonderful gem of a film is going to be tough and pointless. Why repaint the Mona Lisa. This being said, I'll probably spend my money and see it out of curiosity alone.