Hollywood remakes motion pictures for essentially one reason — their money-making potential. Some remakes perform quite well financially, but most fail to meet their expectations. Often helping to heighten those expectations is the stature of the original movie. The more fans a film has, all the more reason there is not to revisit it years later. Although the list grows shorter every year, most of our best-loved movies have generally been left untouched. Rather, it's remakes of mediocre, obscure or even bad pictures that more frequently lead moviegoers to ask, "Why in the world did they go there?" Actually, filmmakers' reasons for doing so are sound. Titles in the horror genre, for instance, are routinely revisited since there are only so many ways to scare people, as well as for their franchise possibilities. If Hollywood were willing to widen its horizons and peruse other genres for remakes, it could easily identify several movies from the past that, while intriguing at the time, haven't stood the test of time, or were good but could've been better. In addition, there are many classic motion pictures that have through no fault of their own become dated and could benefit from an update. So, as a recommendation, here are five films, crossing decades and genres, that studios might want to take a look at instead of dumping many millions of dollars into the latest sure thing.
Modern science fiction can be seen as the true mythology of our age. Barely a genre a century ago, it has flourished and diversified to embody our hopes and fears as a technological civilization. At its best, true science fiction can symbolize the perils and promises wrought by our technological adolescence. What follows is a list of 10 essential science fiction works, some well-worn classics with a few undiscovered gems thrown in. This list is by no means all inclusive of the thousands of fine science fiction tales out there, and is only representative of definitive works of hard science fiction that make a pivotal statement, sparked a sub-genre, and/or bothered to get the science right along the way.
