In my eyes, the issue with movie remakes is that Hollywood is taking GOOD films to remake. The film was already good and doesn't need to be remade. That's WHY it's good. No one thinks remaking a BAD film will be profitable...despite the fact that films like John Carpenter's The Thing was a great remake of a bad 50's film

Games are primarily defined by their use of interactivity, and the technology that we use to simulate interactivity is constantly, rapidly advancing. Every time gaming technology improves and the potential for interactivity in games expands, it becomes increasingly easier to fully realize the vision behind the creation. It therefor makes sense to revisit old efforts in an interactive medium and update it with objectively more precise methods of capturing the essence of the creator's vision. The technology of filmmaking, however, has remained meaningfully unchanged for the better part of 100 years. We've been using the same tool set with only superficial changes in outcome for decades, and so remakes of already effective films are typically less about updating something in a meaningful way and more about reinterpreting something with the same tools it was originally made with. Shooting in 8K would not meaningfully change Chinatown. CGI would not meaningfully change Nosferatu. Modern gaming tech, however, stands to meaningfully change FF7. Whether or not you think it requires change (or that the user's actual experience of the original product was greatly defined by its old limitations) is a different discussion.That absence of a potential for meaningful change is why film remakes usually just come off as redundant and are not well received by people who already loved the original work.

2:45 My favourite take (from Woolie) on this whole issue, by far. There are movies from the silent-era of movie making that tell great stories, with wonderful character arcs, where no one even SPEAKS. The fact is, if you remake an already great movie, you can't improve the content that made it great.

Pat's point regarding actors is an interesting one, since in most games there weren't even VA most of the time. But try imagining DMC without Reuben as Dante or Dan as Vergil? Games are getting to the point where the actors matter, since they are becoming an integral point in the portrayal of the characters, something that wasn't true 20 years ago.

Basically don’t remake Lion King when the original holds up super well, do remake Rising Zan: The Samurai Gunman and fix those controls.

You could argue that films from the past used limitations to their advantage and make the experience better. Also, you could argue that a lot of film/lighting styles were way more nuanced because of the lack of computer effects. The lighting in something like Casablanca was actually genius and gave subtle clues to characters' traits and mood. I doubt things like that would be remade properly.

Pat's Crazy Talk making him overlook that people spazz out all the time when voice actors get replaced in video games, but he's right, there's a cushion there 'cause the models can still be designed to contain certain iconic features.

Man I wish the practical effects version of the Thing Prequel was released... ( ._.) Also Sparkster is so goddamn cool! >w

Jurassic Park is STILL to this very day one of the best uses of both practical and cg and it holds up amazingly well.

Games are still way more of an evolving medium compared to film. Sure you've got advances like CGI and 3D, but comparatively the leaps between generations of video games feel a lot more substantial. Also you can just make way more objective improvements to a game remake (shitty controls, difficulty, graphics, etc...) compared to a film.

I was waiting for Pat to mention Tank Controls when he talked about cameras

I liked the Evil Dead remake. It actually did it's stuff pretty well.

Films=Watching and hearing Games=Watching, hearing, interacting, more replay value

It depends on the game. MGS5 was hurt badly by excluding David Hayter in a lot of fans' eyes, even if the new VA was debatably better. Why? Because David Hayter is the voice of the Metal Gear franchise. He's the one we grew up with. I still played MGS5, and was super annoyed at how little actual voice acting there was in it because the hollywood VA was expensive.

The biggest thing that makes movies remakes almost destined to fail, which they mentioned in the video, is actor names. Nobody knows who voiced Leon in the original RE2 off the top of their head, hell half the time games back then didn't even have VAs. But as with movies, Robert Downey IS Tony Stark, Robin Williams IS the Genie, Mark Hamill IS Luke Skywalker. Imagine someone trying to remake a Carey Grant movie WITHOUT Carey Grant. Actors can literally make or break a film, whereas with games, all that matters is how much you can improve objective things like graphics and controls.

They ignored how movie remakes sometimes change the actual script of the movie and make story changes that can ruin the entire film. Asides from acting, cinematography, etc, a good movie usually has a good script. Games can be good due to mechanics, level design, graphics... usually the story is not what people praise the most in the classical games.

Bruce had a cameo in the remake

Practical effects>CGI anytime. Especially Horror Movies.

Metroid Zero Mission is another example of a great game remake. Or even Mega Man Powered Up, from a purely mechanical standpoint and all the new content it adds. I just think it'd be better to remake bad games into something good, but obviously, that comes with its own hurdles to get people interested in the first place.

I'm very curious to see how this Dino Crisis remake will be.

Now that RE voice acting on my mind, this is how I feel about each iteration of Leon in main-line games. RE2: Ginger B-Movie Non-sense Don't Care RE4: Brunette Dante RE6: Blonde Chris Redfield? RE2 Remake: Blonde Country Dude?

Thanks for reading and answering my question guys.

Also consider analogue vs digital media. Any film made pre-2000s you can grab the original camera negative, rescan it in 4K, balance the colours and clean up the sound and you have it looking and sounding the best its ever been. Cant do that as easily with games. Remaking films due to improved technology hasn't been justified since remaking silent films with sound tech. You have to have a new, different take, which is why all the best ones are reimagining the original.

Woolie, the original House of Cards is still VERY good, and is still valid for at least one very particular reason: It has an ACTUAL ending because it didn't have Kevin Spacey in it while his scandal was ongoing. The rest of the argument is solid, just wanted to point this out.

this is excellent, good discussion.. a great question.. I am going to put this to my m8s.. see what they say..

Film is a relatively new medium compared to creative media in general. But it's still ANCIENT in comparison to video games. We're still having new conversations about what games can say with their mechanics, which is a conversation UNIQUE TO GAMES. Most of the movies with shitty remakes were movies made with upward of 50 years of cinematography to learn from and create context. Modern game remakes are the equivalent of remaking that short film where a steam train drives at the screen; we can recreate that beat-for-beat, moment for moment, on higher quality film stock, with higher fidelity sound recordings, and lose nothing because the experience of seeing a train coming at you WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE FILM. That's where we're at with most video game remakes. The idea was solid, you don't have to change anything, you can just do it again, but better.

I think the core issue is that the heart and soul of these mediums is fundamentally different. For video games, their core essence is the interactivity; so long as it plays well and feels good, its shortcomings in visuals, story, music, etc. can be at least somewhat overlooked because the core of what makes the game worth playing - the _game_ part - is intact and enjoyable. For visual media however (movies _or_ television), their heart and soul exist in the acting and the story. What makes the originals worthwhile is the performances of the actors and the story being told - how it's written, how it's conveyed, how it's paced - which includes its visual effects, sounds, music, etc. because proper cinematography and scoring can drastically affect the tone and atmosphere of any given scene and convey plot in its own right when used creatively. When you change all the tertiary elements of a game, you don't stand to risk losing all that much (up to a point, of course), but failing to appreciably improve upon its core ideal - the interactive mechanics - will _kill_ it, no matter how HD it may be or how beautiful it may sound. When you change the core essence of a film - it's visual and auditory elements (which are also the _only_ elements it possesses) - you run the major risk of losing some ineffable quality that the old film had, from a certain character's acting, to an iconic musical score, to the creative and engrossing cinematography, to the story itself if the remake decides to change too much. And it's just overtly easier to improve upon the singular concept of a game's interactive design than it is to improve upon the many varied aspects of a film without losing a lot in the process. TL;DR In remaking a movie, there's a lot more that can go wrong than in remaking a game. The most important part of a game is one thing: interactivity; make that better and the game will, generally, be better. The most important parts of a movie, however, are many and varied, thus the chances of failing to improve it are as many and as varied.

There's rarely something new you can bring to a movie, but older games can always use a graphical or mechanical update. Also, they're updating the movies we already like 90% of the time, to ride the popularity train to the box office and back.

Well, for the most part, its technology vs art. When a game absolutely nails it, it can still be improved because the technology at the time wasn’t as good as it is now. When a film absolutely nails it, you can’t really do much because everything that made that movie great was an artistic decision and being that art is so subjective. The idea of something subjective being objectively great is so incredible that people know that altering it in anyway would most likely result in a worse product. Even limitations are seen as more technological for games and artistic for movies. Remakes are exciting for games because the previous game was limited in some way. Movie remakes are dreaded because when a great movie is great despite its limitations, those limitations only add to the movie’s greatness. So even remaking a movie with better technology can make it worse than the original.

Another thing to mention is that movies are normally in good circulation and have only gone to cassette tapes, DVDs, and bluesy discs. If you wanna watch a movie from the nineties it should not be hard to buy a copy or rent it. Old videogames on the other hand can be harder to find and play depending on how their parent company treated it

I feel another thing to consider with film vs game remakes is the quantity released. It feels like game remakes are significantly less common than film remakes, and that game remakes are significantly smaller share of overall releases in a year (compared to movie remakes, where it seems that every other film released now is a remake of something else).

With Video game remakes, you're improving the game with quality of life features and gameplay evolution. With Film remakes you're just taking something that's perfectly fine and just attempting to redo it without understanding what made the original so good in the first place.

The controls for strafing and turning in the first tenchu game for ps1 aren't great or good (later fixed but I'm not sure in which game). Writing for the story of Sonic 06 could be better (long with just the game ingeneral), along side the characters like elise, maybe by having the characters express more companionship so that scene before the final boss has a better vibe to it? Idk just thinking. :\ Also the controls, way you progress through the game (outside of gameplay), and etc in th ps2 & Wii version of Sonic Unleashed had to be updated and fix in the xbox360 & ps3 versions. Also there's a remake being done of Dead Fantasy (which is a mix of DOA & FF characters braeling it out) originally made by monty oun being remade by a standalone animator. Now looking at it with the progress it has so far, it looks even more smooth with the attention to the each character's movement (especially when the speed is tuned down so you can actually track the 1v2 to 2v2 to 3v4 fights happening on the screen all at once). But there are fans saying how the original is better because of the jankish looking animations and that the remake is too slow.

14:59 You mean Rocket Knight the sequel game for PS3. Nobody's talked about that after a month.

15:00 oooohhhhh. Woolie you just hurt me deep inside.

I think it somewhat has to do with the availability of games (although recently eshop and online stores often have older games to buy) in the sense that games are more expendable than movies. What I mean is I can go and watch Nosferatu online or go buy a classic godzilaa film at target or wherever. But games stop getting sold more or less when the technology they are produced on becomes obsolete. Before things like the PS store or whatever, it was very difficult to get a copy of your somewhat obscure favorite ps1 game unless it had a remake. Most games are still unavailable now as they were back then, but the line between movies and game remake satisfaction is getting blured as online stores (and emulating) become better and hosting these older games

Does the Metal Gear have David Hayter in it? That’s the Bruce Campbell there, but it’s a metal gear one so it was already a movie.

I think that one of the main differences is that videogame remakes are really mostly "Remasters" and are almost 1-to-1 adaptations but with at least a few improvements. Meaning you still at the end have at the very least is what you started with and that doesn't trounce on the good memory of what was there before, andcan at least be something that can bring in a younger generation into appreciating the old thing. Movies in general don't have that. They tend to be complete re-imaginings from the ground up, and many times the new thing just falls flat if the old thing was good to begin with, ESPECIALLY if its being made and directed by a cast and company that don't actually respect or appreciate the old thing (which is usually the case when they decide to remake something to begin with).

I would love to see a remake of the Devil May Cry games... especially 2

attempting mechanical updates>attempting artistic updates

With movies its more about making money off a IP everyone knows like the Disney live action remakes were its basically a shot for shot remake expect either has poor acting or VFX added in and on the game side with like RE 1 and 2 they dont only what to make money but they want to improve there "shitty" game from the 80s. and they already had somewhat poor acting before the remake but it didn't destroy anyones experience when Barry said "you'd could have become a jill sandwich" or when Dante in Dmc 1 said "fill your dark soul with light" because the games didnt hang solely on the actor infront of you to make it a great or memorable game unlike movies do where the actor or actors can bring a movie down like Blade Trinity, The Thing remake ,Evil dead remake, and Ghostbusters remake

I feel like this conversation is missing the forest for the trees. The reason is because Games are a young medium and the games that get remade were from a point where gaming was still not sure how it needed to present or play. We didn't have a set of standards that match the ones we have nowadays. For context it would be more akin to creating Ironman 1 from a 30 second silent film from 80 years ago, whereas more modern remakes (Dark Souls remastered) get criticized because they are pointless much like how remaking a 10-15 year old movie does nothing to improve the inherent value beyond irrelevant cosmetics.

Rocket Knight for 360/Ps3 was not a remake. It was a low effort sequel/reboot. Bad, but nothing to do with this conversation. It'd be awesome if Konami sold the license to someone who would do it justice at some point.

I think a good example of how weird movie remakes can be comes from the Producers, both movies based a stage play written and directed by the same guy but made decades apart The 60’s version is shot more like the musical Meanwhile the 00’s has a more Hollywood esqe feel and fans of the musical fucking haaaate it (I love it but whatever)

Practical is always better no debate it holds up 100 times better

I don't think this holds up for both cases. I believe the ps4 version of FF7 with the quality of life cheats is a perfect rerelease of a game. The graphics, music, pre rendered backgrounds, etc are fine and I loved what they did with it. When you change the music and update the graphics and add voice actors to the game, it's the same as remaking robocop with a new actor. FF7 and robocop are pieces of their time, I wanna experience them like an 80s kid or a 90s kid did. I wanna be immersed back in history. I wanna appreciate the limitations and artistry.

Minor counterpoint to your examples, the Fable remake was worse because it changed the feel of the game with updated graphics. The gameplay was the same, its just that the stylistic choice made it not fun for me to play. Game remakes are not immune.

DmC was an Ug-boot.

"Nobody says that shit about games." Well there are exceptions. I mean being Metal Gear fans do you guys not recall the controversy over David Hayter not returning as Big Boss in MGSV? Even Hayter himself made passive aggressive remarks about it on Twitter like posting a screenshot of his writer credit in the 2009 Watchmen but with his name replaced by Keifer Sutherland. And as much as I love Hayter as Snake the cynical side of me can't help but feel like it's sorta tells you something about Hayter himself when the moment Kojima was fired he was ready and willing to immediately do Metal Gear voice work for Konami again for things like Super Bomberman R (in other words my cynical side tells me Hayter doesn't give a shit if fans are unhappy with Kojima not being involved with the series anymore so long as it means he gets a regular voice acting pay check from Konami again).

The Thing 'Remake' was not a remake, it was a prequel. But I guess technically counts.

Interestingly it was movies that changed cloud. Higher fidelity and new acting and decisions made to..update the vision...for a modern day audience... hmmmm...movies remakes ruined video games the same way they ruin themselves.

Updated movies change the way the original story is told, updated games tell the original story better.

also: old game systems die and when you get the new system you need the game to be remade for it so YOU CAN PLAY IT AGAIN *AT ALL* ...oh and, it's a lot easier to quantify improvements in programming and game mechanics than in art aesthetics but in movies, it's all art babeyyyyy!!!!

I liked Judge Dredd. Never saw the classic and never will need to.

i would argue that games are starting to reach that same point as movies though. a remake of lets say morrowind done today by the current day bethesda using bethesdas current standards would almost certainly pale in comparison, despite having certain mechanical improvements that make it more modern.

Video games are still evolving unbelievably fast compared to movies. Everybody wants to see their favorite childhood games with a brand new look, feel and optimization, even if it turns out to just be ok. But at this point in movies, everyone is tired of remakes because all they do is modernize classics without understanding what made them good in the first place.

Cartoon remakes like thunder cats...

To add, I think part of it has to do with when they remake a game, at least some of the original team (At the very least the people in charge) are involved, and they understand the original content; bringing a certain love into the production. When they remake a movie, it is a decision made by some suit looking for money, and original people are almost never involved, and even when they mechanically improve the film, they often lose the original context that was what made the original good. Also, to add to the game remakes are sometimes bad, Silent Hill HD.

Then you have Resident Evil 4

And then there is people arguing that Kiwami games are a disgrace an demand people play the original on PS2 but forgetting that Kiwami are the easiest way to experience those games nowadays and are mechanically/technically more polished compare to them, especially if they are introduced with 0.

What it fundamentally boils down to is that film remakes are inherently cynical cash grabs, more often than not they're lazy and predatory, banking on irony , brand recognition, and fanservice instead of competently reworking the material (you ever notice the directors they hire are c-list at best, and the writers are usually even worse?). With games you almost always see some type of involvement of people from the original dev team, or at least genuine fans of the original property who want to provide a respectful or relevant interpretation. I mean, there ARE bad vidja remakes (do the Silent Hill remasters count?) but you can almost always track it back down to passion and whether or not the people involved are doing so solely out of fiscal reward.

Here's a quick comparison using CGI. Lion King: Beautiful hand-drawn art making every single character, even every single common animal look distinct as hell Lion King Remake: A National Geographic film because the animals just look like real animals and it looks boring because of it. Meanwhile, as brought up here... PS1 Resident Evil/Metal Gear cutscenes versus *literally everything the moment those franchises left that generation because they actually have fucking faces now.*

I want a remake of dmc 1 and 2

For game remakes especially really old ones, I think developers should not just update the game graphically but add new stuff in too like new characters and routes.

I really strongly disagree with Mike’s whole argument regarding fights in Star Wars and films in general, he seems to only be able to appreciate movies on a narrative/thematic level rather than a visual one

The fighting is actually super important because in episode 4 you'd think that Vader and Ben were old bags instead of super powerful jedi

Most movie remakes are pointless, cynical, nostalgia baiting cash grabs. It's Hollywood trying to get you to pay for a story you've already heard before but potentially worse. The original movies usually got made because they were somebody's artistic vision with love and care put into them. The remakes get made because some asshole saw dollar signs and that's all they care about. Game remakes can at least be mechanical improvements. Which is the most important aspect of playing a video game.

Tom Clancy's Splinter cell got bad after it was remade not using Michael Ironside as Sam FIsher.

Disney remakes that’s all I’m gonna say

In most cases people just flat out don't value old games as much they do old movies, a lot of people won't go back to play classic games unless there released with HD textures and dynamic lighting that clashes with the original art style, most remakes are posed as replacements rather than new games spawned from the ideas of that original game

Clicked so fast I got first view and first comment

As much as I love the Spyro remake...its camera settings are fucking dumb.

This is why the Final Fantasy 7 remake bothers me I guess. I wanna experience the story of Final Fantasy 7, but fuck me if I wanna play that archaic boring piece of shit

There's plenty of movie remakes better than the original, as are there games significantly worse than the original. The Thing, Airplane!, Little Shop of Horrors, Ocean's Eleven, all are remakes of movies and are significantly better than the original. Meanwhile, does anyone remember that Turtles in time remake by Ubisoft? Or that godawful Secret of Mana remake?

i like re2make as much as Metroid Zero Mission... in other words- i kinda hate it.

"I don't care about this remake because it doesn't have _insert actor from the original here_." I honestly don't understand this mindset. I understand liking the actor, but someone else can also put on a good performance, especially if the tone of the remake is shifted, like the Evil Dead remake.

Lets look at two video game remakes/remasters: The Silent Hill HD Collection, and Dark Souls Remastered. Both experienced massive fan backlash, for completely different reasons. SHHD changed too much(voice acting, sound design, completing botching the visual style)DSR changed too little(reintroducing bugs that had been addressed already in a fucking 7 year old fan mod, lackluster graphical upgrades, zero improvements made to the two worst areas in the game.)Both of the games are deeply flawed, the difference is in execution, SHHD is a massive disservice to the original Silent Hill series tone. DSR is a massive disservice to the suckers who shilled out 40 bucks for a glorified port of a 2011 game in 2018. There is a balancing act to strike when remaking/remastering, you need to put in enough effort to reasonably justify going back to an existing property and releasing it again, you need to do better than Disney's habit of shoddily and insultingly remaking films so they can hold on to their copyrights the greedy fucking hacks they are. Whether its a game or a movie, it comes down to: what are you bringing to the table that's better than the original? Because if the answer to that question is nothing as in the case of DSR, or changes that make the experience objectively poorer as in the case of SHHD, you have no business attempting such a project.