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Red Letter Media |OT| of Movies, Murderers, and Pizza Rolls

Cheerilee

Member
Wait...Ben Hur's a religious movie? I thought it was just podracing with wheels.

The story of Ben Hur runs parallel to the story of Jesus. It's "Oh, that Jesus stuff is happening over there? This is what was happening at the same time, a couple houses over." Ben Hur occasionally bumps into Jesus (parodied by that Simpsons episode where Mr Burns wrote himself into a movie giving a drink of water to Ben Hur. Mr Burns thinks he's literally Jesus).

The chariot scene was the climax to a four hour epic (and George Lucas ripped it off because he thinks Darth Vader is literally Jesus).
 
I made a gif that will have many uses:
uYwVsAJ.gif


News: Ben Hur is a terrible flop
jay-popcorn.gif

News: No Man's Sky sucks
jay-popcorn.gif

News: highly anticipated game sucks/delayed/canceled
jay-popcorn.gif
 
A Ben-Hur remake is like two steps away from the Citizen Kane remake on the arrogance scale. Bet we'll get Lawrance of Arabia and Gone With The Wind by the end of the decade. And I'm not even going to bother Googling if those are happening or not until they get a trailer.
 

jett

D-Member
A Ben-Hur remake is like two steps away from the Citizen Kane remake on the arrogance scale. Bet we'll get Lawrance of Arabia and Gone With The Wind by the end of the decade. And I'm not even going to bother Googling if those are happening or not until they get a trailer.

We're already getting a Lawrence of Arabia TV show on HBO. For reasons.
 

BigAT

Member
A Ben-Hur remake is like two steps away from the Citizen Kane remake on the arrogance scale. Bet we'll get Lawrance of Arabia and Gone With The Wind by the end of the decade. And I'm not even going to bother Googling if those are happening or not until they get a trailer.

Ishtar is the spirtual remake of Lawrence of Arabia.
 
We're already getting a Lawrence of Arabia TV show on HBO. For reasons.

To be fair if you adapt the tv show from the autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom you can probably get enough content to make a lawrence of arabia tv show work and be compelling in it's own unique way.
 
Remember the shot for shot Psycho remake whose only addition was Vince Vaughn fapping?

I'm not saying the Psycho movie is good, but I think it is somewhat defensible since it was coming from Van Sant and he seemed to be trying something by doing a shot for shot remake. It always felt like a (bad) art experiment to me rather than a cash grab or franchising garbage that happens more and more today.

And, I mentioned this in another thread, but people were up in arms about a possible Casablanca remake, when many don't know that there was a written sequel, a TV show starring Scatman Crothers (the guy from The Shining), and a reboot/sequel that's been talked about for at least twenty years.

So, nothing is sacred and nothing should be surprising.

To be fair if you adapt the tv show from the autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom you can probably get enough content to make a lawrence of arabia tv show work and be compelling in it's own unique way.

Ironically, what you're saying is what movie producers say all the time when it comes to remakes of things based on other material: "We wanted to retell the story but stick closer to the source material". And, it's usually just marketing spin.
 
The real question is when will we get a remake of Space Cop

Ironically, what you're saying is what movie producers say all the time when it comes to remakes of things based on other material: "We wanted to retell the story but stick closer to the source material". And, it's usually just marketing spin.

I get that and admit most of the time it is pr/marketing spin but if you have to remake/reboot/sequel/prequel classic stuff I'd rather an attempt to do something like that over just "here is that old movie but made with all the wonders of modern cgi and people you (may) know". We're all so jaded because for every The Force Awakens, Fury Road, or Pete's Dragon (apparently I haven't seen it) we get 10 Ben Hurs which are universally agreed to be terrible.
 

Xux

Member
I made a gif that will have many uses:
uYwVsAJ.gif


News: Ben Hur is a terrible flop
jay-popcorn.gif

News: No Man's Sky sucks
jay-popcorn.gif

News: highly anticipated game sucks/delayed/canceled
jay-popcorn.gif
I like how surprised he is at the bowl bouncing.
 

Archaix

Drunky McMurder
Magic rain heals everything, and then a literal riding off into the sunset!


Spoiler for the Heston movie:

That was the ending of the 50s version too. They saw Christ crucified and the rain cured Judah's mother and sister of leprosy, then he put down his sword. Or were you talking about that one?
 
Spoiler for the Heston movie:

That was the ending of the 50s version too. They saw Christ crucified and the rain cured Judah's mother and sister of leprosy, then he put down his sword. Or were you talking about that one?

I think people also complain about this quote in the new version:

"I don't like Jews. They're coarse and rough and irritating and they get everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is gentile and goy."
 

jett

D-Member
Spoiler for the Heston movie:

That was the ending of the 50s version too. They saw Christ crucified and the rain cured Judah's mother and sister of leprosy, then he put down his sword. Or were you talking about that one?

In the new movie
Ben Hur and Messala apparently make up and become friends again at the end.
I've seen some people have a problem with the rain though, like known youtuber prick Jeremy Jahns. Dude couldn't stop talking about it in his review lol.
 

kevin1025

Banned
Spoiler for the Heston movie:

That was the ending of the 50s version too. They saw Christ crucified and the rain cured Judah's mother and sister of leprosy, then he put down his sword. Or were you talking about that one?

It feels more random and unearned in this version. The original it felt more cathartic after everything, in this one it's more "yep, that just happened."
 

komplanen

Member
If PreRec thinks No Man's Sky has pretty graphics then they themselves are potheads. I mean sure it looked neat two years ago in the trailers but in reality every stream I've watched it looks like a PS3 game at the best. Any "art style" it has suffocates under the constant popups and blurry NES-era textures.

But maybe it's just the streams, I dunno. For sure a stream even at highest quality has horrible artifacting compared to a proper game being played on the spot. Also I just don't like the kind of art style that looks like it was dunked into a vat of slightly off pastel colors. I mean don't get me wrong I do love that it has unique art style to it but I kinda feel the same as Rich when he asked "Why is the space yellow?" in one of their streams.
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
If PreRec thinks No Man's Sky has pretty graphics then they themselves are potheads. I mean sure it looked neat two years ago in the trailers but in reality every stream I've watched it looks like a PS3 game at the best. Any "art style" it has suffocates under the constant popups and blurry NES-era textures.

But maybe it's just the streams, I dunno. For sure a stream even at highest quality has horrible artifacting compared to a proper game being played on the spot. Also I just don't like the kind of art style that looks like it was dunked into a vat of slightly off pastel colors. I mean don't get me wrong I do love that it has unique art style to it but I kinda feel the same as Rich when he asked "Why is the space yellow?" in one of their streams.

i think their qualifier was that it looked pretty "sometimes"

and thats true. i think the game looks better than what you can see streaming.
 

Cheerilee

Member
Just as an FYI, the Ben Hur that you think is the original, was actually the 3rd version of that story on film.

That's technically true, but I think it misses the point of the "quit it with the remakes" argument.

Sam Raimi, for example, made Evil Dead back when he was a novice filmmaker, and it was creative and whatnot and showed that Raimi had a good grasp of the fundamentals. After he matured as a filmmaker and had access to the kind of money he never had starting out, he went back and took another swing at Evil Dead, and most people would probably consider that to be the definitive Evil Dead and would forget the original ever existed (outside of the true enthusiasts) if it weren't for Raimi confusingly calling his remake "Evil Dead 2".

That's the sort of remake nobody seems to have a problem with. Ben Hur (1959)'s creators thought they could do more than previous Ben Hur adaptations did, and they were right. They set the bar impossibly high, and nobody is going to be able to top it.

But Hollywood seems to be producing arrogant filmmakers, and once they reach some level of competency they think that since they have access to a tool that wasn't available before (CG), they must be able to do better than previous generations. They even have the advantage of being able to study the previous work and steal from it be inspired by it. But more often than not, all they seem to create is a wet fart.

It's like, in the future some arrogant hack is going to seriously believe they can beat James Cameron's Titanic, and people are going to point out how ridiculous it is to try and compare yourself to an original of that caliber, and somebody's going to defend it because technically Titanic wasn't an "original", there were other attempts before James Cameron, and if nobody tries to copy James Cameron, then where is the next James Cameron going to come from? Filmy McNotalent has just as much right to try and be the next James Cameron as anyone else does.

Basically, I think it's good to point out that smaller movies existed before the big legendary ones, for the purposes of appreciating those smaller movies, but it's bad to bring them up as justification for one of the current cancers that is killing modern Hollywood.
 
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