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Why does the US do remakes?

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Penthesilea:
***SPOILER (kind of) for The Vanishing in this post***

I often wondered about this, too. But in the end, the taste of Americans is perhaps really different from the European ones.

As much as I like many American movies, I can't remember one single American remake I would prefer to the European original. For example:

- L'Emmerdeur French movie from 1973 with Lino Ventura and Jaques Brel -great, hilarious.
  It's US remake Buddy, Buddy with Lemmon/Matthau - lukewarm

- Three Men and a Baby - liked it, but the French original is much more charming.

- Spoorloos (Dutch thriller from 1988) and it's remake The Vanishing (1993). Both directed by George Sluizer. OMG, very bad example of a remake. This one is totally muddled and ruined  in the US version. They changed the ending!
Imagine Ang Lee doing a BBM remake in Taiwan (or wherever); and when Junior visits Ennis at the end of the movie, Jack would sit in the passenger's seat of her car. Boo, all was a big fakery. Unimaginable.

- British TV series Cracker: I loved, loved, loved the British version and Robbie Coltrane's Fitz. He is a man with rough edges and has his flaws. But in the US version, his character is much more smoothed. I saw only one and a half episode from the US version. Couldn't stand it.

So when I prefer the European version, why shouldn't the Americans prefer the American version? And if they do, the remaking has its reasons/justification.

BTW: please don't ask me why the Germans (and Spanish) dub movies. I'm sure the Skandinavians think we're nuts for it.
Well, I sure have an explanation for it: the majority of the audience is simply lazy and not used to subtitles. Maybe it's the same with the American practise of doing special US versions of movies.

Mikaela:

--- Quote ---please don't ask me why the Germans (and Spanish) dub movies. I'm sure the Skandinavians think we're nuts for it.
Well, I sure have an explanation for it: the majority of the audience is simply lazy and not used to subtitles. Maybe it's the same with the American practise of doing special US versions of movies.
--- End quote ---

I think you're on to something; - that both dubbing and re-makes come from movie- and TV-companies wanting to create comfort in the form of familiarity for their audiences. To remove barriers in the form of "strange" foreign cultural traits or ditto customs or foreign languages; - barriers that might make the audiences concentrate too much on the stuff they're unaccustomed to - or might make them averse to even watching.

I've always (rather pragmatically) figured that Germany, Spain and France dub everything because their viewer base is sufficiently large to make it worthwhile economically to create that familiar language comfort zone - while the small Scandinavian countries probably started using subtitling from the get-go because the cost of dubbing would be too large as compared to the limited number of viewers. (In fact, cartoons and the most popular animated features that draw a large and mostly very young audience are in fact dubbed in Norway as well; - since some of the audience can't read). I'm very glad that we do get the original films with subtitles here, because I surely think dubbing takes away from a film. Losing the original voices takes away so much! Though I've watched some dubbed-to-German American TV shows and films on RTL and PRO7 and I must say the dubbing was very good.

Subtitling is not ideal either, because it's so difficult to not read them, even when you understand the original language. And those subtitles do pull attention away from the actual scenes.

-------

Out of curiousity, and from the vantage point of being neither American nor British I can easily see why "Queer as folk" got remade, I think...... I've only seen the UK version and I somehow can't imagine US general audiences managing to cope blithely with that degree of explicitness at all. Maybe that's just me confusing the US general audience with the AMPAS.  ::)  Was the US version watered down in that regard, or just as explicit?

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: Mikaela on December 13, 2006, 06:35:30 pm ---Out of curiousity, and from the vantage point of being neither American nor British I can easily see why "Queer as folk" got remade, I think...... I've only seen the UK version and I somehow can't imagine US general audiences managing to cope blithely with that degree of explicitness at all. Maybe that's just me confusing the US general audience with the AMPAS.  ::)  Was the US version watered down in that regard, or just as explicit?

--- End quote ---

I can't comment on the explicitness since, as I've said, I've never watched the show. But I neglected to add earlier I've been sort of surprised that the name of the show "made it through immigration," since "Queer as folk" strikes me as a particularly British expression (what the heck does it mean, anyway?  ;D ). Anyway, it's not a form of expression that you typically hear in Pennsylvania.

David In Indy:
Kelda and Melissa...

Please don't give up on us Americans, okay?? British programs are being watched more and more over here in the US thanks to stations such as PBS and BBC America. As you know, British comedy is very different from American comedy. Many Americans just don't "get it" at first. Many British sitcoms are now becoming very popular here in the US, and Americans are beginning to appreciate British comedy and humor (humour).

I don't know why we take wonderful British shows such as "Queer as Folk", "Men Behaving Badly", "Steptoe and Son" (just to name a few) and totally destroy them. It's an awful damn shame. "Queer as Folk" might be an exception. I didn't really care for it, but obviously many other people do. "Men Behaving Badly", a brilliant British comedy was remade for US audiences back in the 1990's and the story took place in Indianapolis. It was terrible and didn't even last one full season before getting axed.

Of course we do the same thing with game shows. "The Weakest Link" aired in Britain YEARS before Americans ever heard of it. Many of these reality shows we love here in the US originated in Britain.

As far as the movies, I have NO idea why the US does all these remakes. Again, it's a damn shame most of the time. I think I agree with David. Often times I think they have simply run out of ideas.  ::)

David In Indy:

--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 13, 2006, 07:57:16 pm ---I can't comment on the explicitness since, as I've said, I've never watched the show. But I neglected to add earlier I've been sort of surprised that the name of the show "made it through immigration," since "Queer as folk" strikes me as a particularly British expression (what the heck does it mean, anyway?   ;D ). Anyway, it's not a form of expression that you typically hear in Pennsylvania.

--- End quote ---

Maybe here in the US they meant to call it "Queer Ass Folk" and they left off one "s".

Do you think?

The homophobes would have loved it, that's for sure.

Well, maybe not. That show confuses me.  ???

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