Talk about your space madness.
Peter Hyams' measured 1981 sci-fi classic Outland, an adaptation of Fred Zinneman's immortal 1952 western High Noon that saw Sean Connery stepping into the outsize boots of Gary Cooper, is going under the knife for a reboot at the hands of Shoot 'Em Up director Michael Davis.
“We're staying true to the thematic heart of Outland while expanding the space frontier concept," Davis told Variety. Warner Bros. and Hollywood Gang Productions, which produced Zack Snyder's 300, will tag-team the remake, while Chad St. John, whose sci-fi spec script The Days Before was picked up by Warner last year, will handle the writing.
But is this trip really necessary?
We're probably past the point of wondering why, given all the stunning technology at its disposal, Hollywood can't seem to unplug itself from the past and focus on a future we perhaps haven't seen yet. Especially this year, when movies like Moon and District 9 have upped the ante on sci-fi cinema.
Even those films lack wholesale originality: Moon director Duncan Jones told Wired.com that his film was a direct homage to Outland (trailer embedded above), Silent Running and Alien. Meanwhile, Wired.com readers noted that Neill Blomkamp's apartheid allegory District 9 is basically Alien Nation in South Africa. But at least these films were merely inspired by those that came before it, rather than being purposeful revisions.
And then there are the thematic problems. High Noon's protagonist Will Kane married a pacifist, and was pushed unwillingly into combat. Similarly, Outland's marshal William T. O'Niel investigates illegal trading of the fictional drug "polydichloric euthimal" for most of the film, and doesn't really spring into action until he has to go on the defensive during the film's finale.
In Shoot 'Em Up — true to the film's title — Mr. Smith (played by a wasted Clive Owen) does doing his best Chow Yun-Fat impression from the opening credits. But Shoot 'Em Up was to John Woo's Hard-Boiled like Outland was to Star Wars. So does Hyams' thinker really need more bullets?
You tell us. Do you think sci-fi remake fever has killed the patient? Or are you cool with ceaseless iterations of the same cultural texts while others, including the so-called unfilmable ones, are laughably left behind like Kirk Cameron? Let us know in the comments section below.
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