For some time now I have been following with amusement the confusion that Hollywood is going through with their movies and titles. We have not even begun to see the tip of the colossal wave of re-makes or whatever they may end up selling a re-hashed movie as. I get the fact that they simply want to make money and thus don't need another reason (such as a good idea) to tackle an old movie anew. But I wonder how long people will still go see that kind of s...t? Let me stay on track here though and not go off on a rant...
I finally saw the trailer for the Fright Night re-make that is now coming out. I had heard of this project and mentioned it before in a post with the remark of how awful I thought the idea was to produce this. The original was a great 80's vamp flick that was humorous and frightening at the same time. It played at the old 60's Dracula and Van Helsing movies making fun of them at times while using that to introduce the new not-so-cheesy vampire in the form of a handsome young man who when angry transforms into a grotesque monster.
The new movie seems from the trailer to take itself far to seriously. In the original movie Fright Night was the title of an old vampire show that is being canceled and thus a play on that cheesy type of flick... I couldn't see the Van Helsing-esque character in trailer for the new one at all and no vampire tv show. That makes me wonder, what is then the meaning of Fright Night for the new movie? I suspect none. At least none other than to try to lure fans of the original to see this one only on the base of them having the same title.
This is the conflict that Hollywood is having with titles these days. They just don't make any sense anymore.
Another example. The Fast and the Furious. They made a sequel called 2 Fast 2 Furious (so far so good).Then came The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (Ok...), then Fast & Furious (yep...similar to the first...but not the same...without the THE and with & instead of AND THE...). There I stop following the logic. Now I just saw the first movie and can't speak for the story in these sequels but from the plot summary it looks like the Fast & Furious is pretty much the same like the first one. Oh, and now there is a new one - Fast Five.
I have a hard time to know what movie is what unless I really have followed it from the start. I can't know judging by the title alone. And what happened to a simple ...2...3...4?
When they re-made the movie Piranha they added the ever-so-popular 3D to the title, making it Piranha 3D. Now they are working on a sequel to that and guess what they decided to call it - Piranha 3DD. Yep, time to get funky.
3D seems to give the chance to re-hash every single title that doesn't have it in there already. Hurray. When the movie How to train your Dragon came out they put 3D so big on the poster that I literally first thought it was a movie called 3D. It became funnier when I started seeing them disclaim REAL 3D. What is then un-real 3D?
Soon they will be releasing the prequel to The Thing. That happens to be one of my favorite horror movies of all times made by John Carpender in '82. They first planned a sequel, then a two part tv movie for the sci-fi channel and now lastly it's a prequel...but a re-imagining...huh? How does that work? And even if it's a prequel they decided to simply go with the same title The Thing.
Yes, Hollywood has abandoned making sense.
As Horror movies have demonstrated a lot of new trends and funkyness in their titles I list a few ones that I really enjoyed:
Pride Prejudice and Zombies
Twittering from the Circus of the Dead (it took the son of Stephen King to come up with this one)
Strippers vs Werewolves
Dracula 3D (yes they're going for it)
Orcs! (guess what it was originally going to be called --- Orcs! Orcs! Orcs! I'm not kidding)
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