From The A-Team to Nightmare on Elm Street, Hollywood seems fixated on
bringing 80’s films or characters back to the big screen in sequel
or reboot form. Sure, there are plenty of good to great titles and franchises
from the 1980’s worthy of an update. But the 1990’s gave us
twice as many options. Heading into 2011, we will now be 20 years away
from the beginning of the 90’s decade, so Killerreivews thought
it is time that we offered our suggestions for films released between
1990 and 1999 that can be updated for a whole new audience. Our list starts
here:
Home Alone (1990)
Sequel or Reboot: Reboot
Our idea: Home Alone was a monster success in 1990 and put Macaulay
Culkin’s name into the pop culture lexicon and the film on top of
the year’s box office receipts. The film was family friendly and
but we are suggesting an alternative – making the film a horror
film. Why not have some young teenager trapped in a house where two or
more serial killers or thugs are trying to bust in. Instead of using marbles
and toys as his defense against the intruders, have them fend off the
intruders with traps set up of knives and other devices that cause irreparable
bodily harm. Have the film play so that those that prey become the victims
in gruesome fashion. No splashing of aftershave on the face and having
a cute kid scream. In our version, the aftershave is acid.
Outbreak (1995)
Sequel or Reboot: Sequel
Our idea: The idea of a virus spreading rapidly throughout a city, town
or state is as scary and as relevant as ever. SARS and Swine Flu are two
examples since the release of 1995’s Outbreak where some of our
greater fears were realized on small scales. We suggest a sequel to Outbreak
as the original film is perfectly fine being left as is. You could get
Dustin Hoffman back as head of the CDC who tackles an outbreak of a disease
that kills infected persons in 48 hours, but then dissolves in the system
so that blood or any other body part, can’t be tested to isolate
the cause and to help with a cure.
Timecop (1994)
Sequel or Reboot: Sequel
Our idea: Ditch the Muscles from Brussels. JCVD ain’t needed in
2011. But we could continue the interesting story of a police oversight
of regulating time travel. Have the story work like The Butterfly Effect
where a cop keeps going back in time to try and prevent a crime only to
come back to the present to find that something even worse happened in
its place. As he continues to go back again and again he finds that each
time he stops his expected target, another takes his place. The ending
would consist of the cop eventually not being able to come back to the
present as the future changes so entirely that the technology for time
travel is never perfected.
Independence Day (1996)
Sequel or Reboot: Reboot
Our idea: Low budget invasion. Hear us out. The beginning of the film
can open with us seeing big spaceships invading our airspace. Then cut
to the White House where the President is immediately taken to an underground
safe house. The rest of the film would play out like Welle’s War
of the Worlds with the President and his aides on the phone listening
to carnage or getting descriptions of the chaos outside. But we don’t
get to see it. This format worked for the first half of Pontypool where
call-in’s to a radio show provided the most hair raising moments.
The end of the film would be the President and his aides leaving the underground
months later only to stand in front of a world where the aliens were gone,
but so were all the earth’s inhabitants as the cities continue to
burn.
Stigmata (1999)
Sequel or Reboot: Reboot
Our idea: Shoot in guerilla style. The original film was a stylized
mess. So use hand held cameras a la The Blair Witch Project and give us
a story about a Vatican Priest that travels to a mid-west town where a
female is experiencing symptoms synonymous to stigmata. The effects of
statues bleeding blood or sores appearing on ones body will be more effective
if given a ‘real feel’. But play both sides like a documentary
and have the audience question if the woman who is suffering is putting
it on as an act or if the results are real.
Falling Down (1993)
Sequel or Reboot: Reboot
Our idea: You can’t really sequelize the original Michael Douglas
masterpiece, so we suggest that we start enough and make it stronger and
grittier. The premise can stay – a mild mannered man has a bad day
which triggers him to snap and go on a rampage. But take the route of
Running Scared (2006) and don’t have a single character with a redeeming
quality. Have the Douglas type character be a mean ass son of a bitch
that kills women, children, anyone that gets in his way. And don’t
have the character working towards a sappy goal like meeting his child
on a pier. Have him on a suicide mission that leaves a wake of dead bodies.
Would love to see someone sweating at the counter of a McDonalds and opening
a can of whoop-ass when told that it’s too late to order breakfast.
Dick Tracy (1990)
Sequel or Reboot: Reboot
Our idea: Fuck the primary colors and the characters that look like
their faces were melting. Shoot the film in black and white and give it
the look and feel of Sin City. Have Mickey Rourke take the role of Dick
Tracy, a detective that is trying to solve a multiple homicide linked
to the mob. Get Tarantino to help with the narrative and allow Tracy to
mow down Shoulders, Flattop and Little Face in violent and above the law
fashion.
The Haunting ( 1999)
Sequel or Reboot: Reboot
Our idea: Take the large haunted house schtick to another level. First:
give the setting a real personality like the abandoned asylum in Session
9. But don’t make the house haunted. Have it so that the characters
use a Ouija Board to bring evil into the house. The evil will then possess
the characters – sometimes more than one at a time like in John
Carpenters The Thing. We don’t want the possessed characters to
look or act differently. That is, until they have a chance to kill someone
in their presence without the others knowing. It sets up almost like Clue
where it can always be someone different, with a new weapon in a strange
room.
The Fisher King (1991)
Sequel or Reboot: Complete overhaul!
Our idea: A radio DJ is in shambles after the death of his young daughter.
One night, he stumbles out of a bar and meets an insane homeless person
who he befriends. Later that evening, the homeless man hears the story
on how the daughter was raped and tortured by a serial killer and convinces
the DJ to go on a rampage with him where they will kill and torture random
people throughout a week period in hopes of coming to an understanding
as to what the serial killer must have felt while killing his daughter.
The DJ really gets into it after the first kill and just before he kills
any of their captured prey, he asks them questions to try and comprehend
how they are feeling. Alas, he gets bits and pieces of semi-valued information,
but never reaches the goal of full knowledge. In the end, he will turn
and kill his homeless criminal partner when he comes to grips with the
fact, that the power feeling of killing is an adrenaline rush he cannot
quench.
