I couldn’t agree more with this:

Dear Hollywood: Please, please, please do not remake Forbidden Planet. The original is fine; we don’t need another one.

But you know someone will. And leading up to its release, its director and stars will prattle on and on about how it’s a “darker”, “edgier” re-imagining of the movie — deftly insulting the original without noting the irony that they thought it was worth re-making in the first place.

Tim Burton has made a career doing darker remakes. The funny thing is, they turn out over time to be more cheesy than dark (Batman), or they fail at being darker (Willy Wonka, where the original was a hell of a lot bleaker than the remake, which just came off as quirky in a poseur/adolescent kind of way) or the just plain suck like Lady Edwina’s vengeful vacuum cleaner (Planet of the Apes).

The sad thing is that Forbidden Planet is exactly the kind of movie Hollywood hacks love to sink their teeth into. It’s widely known and generally respected despite a degree of 50′s corniness, and of course it was itself a (very) loose adaptation of The Tempest, so the producers of the remake will inevitably belch forth talking points about it being “truer to the original Shakespeare”.

On the other hand, somebody should remake The Black Hole. Um, but leave Tim Burton out of it.

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