The Long and Loathsome Future of Film
Mon 3:03 pm +00:00, 5 May 2025Source: https://mileswmathis.com/remake.pdf
This is part of a humor column and is rated PG for minor and pretty tame sexual content.
The history of film is very young, but already by 2000 Hollywood was completely out of new ideas,
and now every film is a remake, rehash, or reboot. Since the future of film is almost infinite, how will
they fill thousands of years of new films? Sort of makes you shudder, doesn’t it?
We must imagine the first thing they will do is cover every possible permutation of every previous hit,
to be sure that is fully tapped. We saw that recently with Snow White being played by a Walnut Brown
Jewish/Hispanic girl (or whatever she is), and before that with the Ghostbusters being played by
women. . . for no reason except that they are women. So we can sort of see what we probably have to
look forward to in the near future.
To start with, I am pretty sure we should expect a remake of Sound of Music, but with breakdancers
from the Hood instead of the Von Trapp singers. I honestly believe this has already been pitched: how
could it not be? Someone like Ariana Grande will be given a bowl cut and inserted into some alpine
nunnery in Austria, where she can tell the Mother Superior to stuff her soprano chirruping and please
hurry up and introduce her to a billionaire Tirolian Prince and his family of mixed-race brats, where she
can teach them to spin on their heads and twerk their troubles away. When the Nazis try to stop them,
they can pull out their flamethrowers a la Tarantino and fry the lot.
I also predict a remake soon of Rooster Cogburn, with Lucy Liu as John Wayne and Sean Hayes as
Katharine Hepburn. The Indian scout Breed can be played by Benedict Cumberbatch, with a British
gay lisp, of course. Rooster’s horse can be played by a shaved llama.
Then we need a remake of The Dirty Dozen, played by all gay or trans black women led by Whoopi
Goldberg. The Wehrmacht officers in the German chateau can be played by the current Broadway cast
of Cats.
Obviously we need a remake of John Wick called Joan Wick, a hit-chick who is maddened when the
son of a Senator eyeballs her doing spreadies at the gym. In a fit of righteous anger she takes out the
entire Congress one by one with no weapons except three lipstick tubes, a box of eyebrow pencils, and
a dozen emery boards.
In the opposite way, we need a remake of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with a tall hairy dude doing the
opposite of what Audrey Hepburn did there, which was . . . what? I have seen it but I can’t really say.
She teases men and runs away, being skinny and dotty and crawling in from fire escapes. She sings a
song that Andy Williams sang much better. So I guess our dude needs to be a tall bearded MGTOW,
waving his dick at pretty women but then refusing to perform when they follow him home. He can
sing an Adele song and really muck it up, but everyone will love him anyway just because he is so big
and hairy. I am thinking of maybe Jason Momoa.
In the same way, we need a remake of Barbershop, but with skinny blond white guys, maybe like the
opposing frat guys in Animal House.
Yeah, those guys, though I forgot one of them was Kevin Bacon! Did you remember that? Not me. I
remember the guy in blue and of course the hot babe, but not Bacon. Anyway, I think to be fair we
need a film about a group of those guys at the barbershop. You will say that would be boring as dry
toast and no one would want to see it. Ah, you mean like a female Ghostbusters? Yeah, make it
anyway. And be sure to spend at least $200 million, plus $100 million for promotion. Otherwise we
can’t be sure it was given a fair shake.
I love Bacon’s expression there, by the way, which somehow fits this paper to a T. It is exactly how I
feel most of the time now. I feel that way in the present moment, and you probably do, too. My
permanent emoji should be Kevin Bacon making that face. That is the best acting he ever did, bar
none.
Speaking of which, we really need a remake of Dirty Harry with a woman. Call it Dirty Harriet. We
need a brash, stone-faced, politically backwards woman who will bust the balls of everyone she meets
in the police force, ignoring all laws and regulations to bring in the criminals on a stretcher.
“Go ahead, punk, make my day!” Actually, that movie might work.
Now that AI is getting so popular, I think what we need is a Blade Runner with the roles reversed. We
need to go to some off-world planet where replicants are in charge, and they hire a super-cool replicant
to hunt down rogue humans who are causing trouble by being altogether too smug and superior. In one
scene we can watch a human baby burst from the chest of an innocent replicant, before scuttling off
into the shadows with his little scary bald head and his thumb in his mouth.
Star Wars calls for the same sort of obvious remake, where the droids are the central characters and the
humans are idiot sidekicks. . . you know, like at Google.
On this theme of reversals, Paul Thomas Anderson could make a movie that was actually good.
Another movie to look forward to is Psycho, but with a crazy woman. A stretch, I know, but hear me
out. You see this dude is traveling alone and stops at a rural motel way out in the middle of nowhere,
say Pomona, and when he checks in there is just this one gal in the office, listening to NPR. Cue sharp
violin music. Although there are no cars in the lot and she has been alone all day, she is wearing an
N95 facemask. Cue sharp violin music. She asks him if he wants a view of the parking lot in front or
of her house behind, which just happens to be made of gingerbread. Cue sharp violin music. He
chooses the latter to avoid the streetlights, but once he gets into his room he finds a book under the
pillow. It turns out to be her diary. Cue sharp violin music. In the bathroom he finds a tin of mascara
and some incompletely erased doodles on the mirror. Cue sharp violin music. Just before he goes to
sleep, he tries to lock the door, but finds the screws in the plate are stripped, making the lock useless.
Cue sharp violin music. But since he is the only one in the motel, he figures why worry and goes to
sleep. Cue sharp violin music. When he gets up he goes to check out and discovers the gal is still
there in the office with her N95 mask, reading the Atlantic. Cue sharp violin music. Roll credits.
But who would play the gal? It’s a toss-up: just about any actress in Hollywood could make it work.
Of course Amadeus has been begging for a remake. We could call it Mediocrity!, since it wouldn’t be
about that solo genius brat Mozart hogging the spotlight, it would be a heartwarming DEI promotion of
the hundreds of unsung composers of Vienna in the late 1800s who never got played at court, just
because their music was so crappy. That’s no reason! Were they not humans, with the usual number of
mouths and ears and babies to feed! Of course they were, the poor darlings. We learned in the 20th
century that art was not about talent or beauty or any of that old elitist meritocratic garbage, it is about
equal access and equal time. It is about everyone being an artist and being given a show at the
Metropolitan, no matter what they produce. . . as long as they know the director. Besides, who is to say
what music or art is good? It’s all subjective, which is reason enough to get rid of all the good stuff.
Apocalypse Now definitely needs a retelling, since it’s all straight white guys (or playing straight,
anyway). Bleah! Walk with me. I see Rosie O’Donnell in the Brando role, which gets us started. It
shows us the way here. She is mad at the US brass for getting involved in this stupid war, but having
been promoted straight from private to colonel, for obvious reasons, she can’t just go home to Ireland.
So instead she holes up in the Cambodian forest with her galpals, including Madonna in the Hopper
role, and Sandra Bernhardt as Sam Bottoms, Rupert Everett as Martin Sheen, and Lizzo as Robert
Duvall. Actually, come to think of it, that won’t be any more ridiculous than the original movie, so
nevermind. Doesn’t need a remake.
But Jaws is definitely due for a retelling from the point of view of the sharks. Those guys have gotten
a bad rap for too long. This movie will be funded by PETA, and will start with a long introductory
scene where we find sharks are really cuddly gregarious family fish, who only eat to live like anyone
else. In real life they like nothing better than a good belly rub from a nice human, and make
surprisingly good pets. If they occasionally bite a surfer’s leg, it is only because they don’t see too well.
Besides, those surfers churn up the water dancing around in the sand: who can tell a leg from a
mackerel in those conditions! Then enter the shark fishermen, trophy hunting of course. From
underwater we hear the growl of their motors a mile off as they arrive in their giant trawlers spewing
oil and blood, the men onboard smoking noxious cigars and cussing a blue streak. Cut to our shark
hero Cuddles, who is looking desperately for his teen-aged daughter when he is caught with a nasty
trick and pulled onboard with an awful hook, so who would be on the side of the humans here? Even
worse, when he is lying on deck, Cuddles sees his daughter lying next to him, already dead. At this
point the audience is screaming for revenge, a la Liam Neeson in Taken. And they are not disappointed,
as Cuddles flips out and turns the whole boat to gore. He then uses the boat to ram other boats,
jumping from one to the other until the entire harbor is awash in death. Finally he crashes into shore,
masticating the entire city of San Diego.
This next one is so obvious you will ask yourself how I am the first to suggest it. A remake of
Deliverance. Picture this: Margot Robbie, Olivia Wilde, and Mariama Diallo decide to go on a canoe
ride and bow hunt in the Georgia wilderness, but unfortunately they forget to pack anything but bikinis
and negligees. While chasing after a wild boar in their bare feet, they run into a group of hillbilly
chicks played by Alison Brie, Alexandra Daddario, and Ana de Armas wearing regulation hillybilly
chick clothing I guess, like Daisy Duke or Ellie Mae Clampett. That wild boar was their pet, so they
are pouting mad, suggesting Indian leg wrestling matches to settle it. Later, lots of women fall out of
canoes and get soaking wet. And yes, at some point someone squeals like a pig, but you will have to
write that scene yourself. This paper is rated PG.
I think we all agree that Thelma and Louise needs to be rewritten for dudes. We will call it Delmer
and Louis. Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels may need to get back together for this one. Like Deliverance,
it starts out with our heroes heading out for their fishing cabin in the woods of Arkansas. Makes a bit
more sense than Thelma and Louise, right, since those chicks wouldn’t have gone fishing. But Delmer
and Louis would. Delmer is getting away from his disrespectful wife and Louis is a waiter in a diner,
dating a flygirl. Anyway, Delmer and Louis stop at a roadhouse bar, where a drunken lady bigger than
Delmer grabs his package and insists he service her right there on the stool, so Louis blows her away
and they drive off. Of course no one calls the cops or sees their license plate. Despite no one trying to
stop them or follow them, they decide to go to Mexico just to be sure, since of course Mexico has no
extradition treaties with the US. Despite just being grossly groped and watching a senseless murder by
his pal Louis, Delmer is still horny and hooks up 48 hours later with some late-teen runaway, but she is
fresh so of course he does. She turns out to be an armed robber who steals all their cassette tapes and
backissues of National Geographic, almost murdering them for sport, but they laugh it off since she
was fresh. Couldn’t be helped. Delmer ain’t too bright, so he never figures out that he is completely
innocent no matter what, but Louis is his friend so friends to the end! To stay under the radar on their
way to Mexico, the duo robs a series of convenience stores without even covering their faces. They
never think of switching cars, either, or getting on a bus or cutting their hair or growing beards or
changing clothes. Instead, they decide the best thing to do is remove the license plates and tail lights,
and never obey the speed limit signs. The owner of the fishing cabin gives their pictures to the FBI
when they don’t show up, because . . . well, why wouldn’t he, not showing up when you have a
reservation at a cabin is just rude, and the FBI immediately assumes that the same two people who
didn’t show up at a fishing cabin must be the people who killed that lady. Makes sense. We learn
Louis also had something bad happen to him in the past, not sure what, but something bad enough to
justify the duo blowing up a candy store when a lady winks at him. Of course by that time it has
escalated beyond repair, due to being turned into the FBI for not showing up at that cabin, so there is
nothing for our heroes to do but drive off a cliff.
