There should be a moratorium on remakes. They rarely work, and in some cases, they are just ill-conceived from step one. That's how I feel about this news: they're remaking Ben-Hur as a television mini-series. I'm not saying this because actor Charlton Heston has just died and this was his movie and, therefore, it should be sacrosanct. No, not at all. If someone has the urge to remake almost any other Heston film -- Soylent Green, Diamond Head, The Pigeon That Took Rome -- go for it. But leave Ben-Hur alone. You'd think the disastrous remake of The Ten Commandments on ABC last year would have been a lesson. I guess not.
Oh, well. The news here is that it's David Wyler, the son of director William Wyler, who is behind this remake. Willie Wyler directed the 1959 version with Charlton Heston in the title role. That film was a huge undertaking and a phenomenal success. It saved MGM studios which was on the verge of going under. The movie won 11 Academy Awards (it only lost in screenplay adaptation). Any mini-series will be hard pressed to meet that level of quality and execution. There was also a famous 1925 silent version.
According to Variety, David Wyler's $30 million production will be more faithful to the original Lew Wallace novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which was written in 1880. It's the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince who's betrayed by his Roman best friend and forced into slavery. He later saves the life of his captor and is rewarded with his freedom. He resumes his former life, but is bitter. In time, he is converted along with many others to the ways of new prophet, Jesus Christ. "We've got a joke that this is the family business," Wyler said as a news conference in Cannes. "In my mind this is dedicated to my dad and Chuck (Heston). We think it's a great way to keep his memory alive."
There's no word on which network will broadcast the mini-series. It will be filmed using international crews and instead of casting an actor like Heston as Judah, who was 34 when the film was made, the producer is talking about hiring an actor in his 20s. "It's been 50 years since my father's version, and we think we can bring something new and contemporary to it in the same way that Gladiator did for that genre," Wyler said.
Call me cynical, but Gladiator to me is code for CG effects. Well, that will make it a lot easier to film the chariot race. Easier, but not necessarily better. We'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you want to see William Wyler and Charlton Heston's version of Ben-Hur, it's on TCM this Friday night, April 11th 9 p.m. EST. Set your DVR and watch it in widescreen as it was meant to be shown on TV. The chariot race is classic.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-10-2008 @ 2:00PM
Malren said...
I hate TV executives, mediocre "creative" types who think remakes are actually making art and I think I might hate grapefruit, but that's not important right now.
I want everyone who wants to remake anything from this point forward to get painful rectal cancer that lasts for 30 years, and hardly ever hurts except when they are on the toilet, whereupon the pain is so intense that they shake and cry for two hours after doing their business.
EVERY DAY.
For 30 years. Then they die in a horrible car crash where they are trapped in the wreckage for three hours first. And a dog urinates on then every seven minutes.
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4-10-2008 @ 2:40PM
bc said...
Since, as you acknowledge, the famous version of Ben-Hur *was* a remake (and so was the 1956 "The Ten Commandments", by the way), I can't figure out what your argument is. No remakes after there's a version which achieves some specific level of regard? Movies are filmed plays. Plays are produced over and over with different casts, sometimes for centuries--there was a very popular stage version of Wallace's novel, in fact.
It's too bad some productions are not as good as others, and too bad when some genius thinks a currently popular personality with extremely limited talent is just what's needed to jazz up some new version. But I won't prejudge someone apparently sincerely trying, particularly if there is some different approach to the original source material--as you may know, some Hollywood versions, especially from the classic era, contain little from the original book or play except for the title and names of characters.
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4-10-2008 @ 6:16PM
Malren said...
Look, unless youa re being deliberately obtuse just to argue, you know as well as I do that sometimes people get it *right* with films. When that happens, LEAVE IT ALONE. It is not like a play, which is fleeting, designed to be live and to capture a moment in time. Films are set down for the life of moving pictures, designed to be frozen that way and watched repeatedly, over and over.
The next logical step in your argument is to remake the same TV shows over and over with the same plot, just change actors.
Let's put The X-Files back on the air with David Caruso as the lead. It's an awesome idea. Why re-watch the already-existing show when we can remake it to be horrible?
Why stop there? Why not re-write popular and/or classic books with new authors? Aren't we due for a new version of Moby Dick by Grisham's interns with his name on it? I'm sure we can get Dan Brown to re-write Catcher in the Rye.
ENOUGH REMAKES. Write something original, TV/Movie people. *ANYTHING*.
4-10-2008 @ 7:40PM
bc said...
Yes, and the reductio ad absurdem of your argument is that we no longer need to produce Shakespeare's plays, or even read them, because they've all been filmed multiple times with some excellent casts. The 1959 Ben-Hur was made principally to capitalize on the success of DeMille's remake of his own "Ten Commandments", adding widescreen, color, and sound which makes it more accessible to the illiterate than the silent black and white versions. Acting styles changed, as they have again in the subsequent half-century. Models and rear-projection replaced ships and extras in the other big set piece, the battle with the sea pirates. It's much longer yet drifted even further from its roots in Wallace's novel. So yes, if Gus van Sant wants to make a shot-for-shot remake of a Hitchcock film, except in color instead of black and white, I see no reason to watch it, but he's free to go ahead. If someone wants to go back to an old novel and see what can be done that may not have been in the previous stage and screen adaptations, I am fine with it. And enjoying Olivier's version of Hamlet doesn't make Zefirelli's or Branagh's, numerous BBC productions, or even the local high school's, out of place.
4-10-2008 @ 8:59PM
Malren said...
Wow. Someone wants to impress us with his degree program.
For someone who dislikes reductio ad absurdem in an argument, you sure did some yourself there, chief. Go back and re-read my first reply to you. See if you can figure out the straw man you built.
Remakes always suck in _today's_ Hollywood, and no amount of second year lit babbling will change that. Remaking Ben Hur is not only unambitious and derivative, it's downright stupid. A fat waste of money and time. I'd rather they simply spent a tenth of the budget re-marketing the Heston version and giving it a new theater run.
4-10-2008 @ 6:16PM
Oscar_Gordon said...
I read that Wyler intends to "keep more to the original novel" but will "tone down the religious aspects". Huh? The book is subtitled "A Tale of the Christ". How do they tone down the religious aspects and stay more faithful? Hollywood logic.
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4-11-2008 @ 3:07PM
Stone hunter said...
Just for your edification Hestion's Ben Hur And
Ten Commandments Are BOTH Remakes of silents made in the 20's some other remakes are King Kong
(twice) , Casino Royale (twice If you allow for the made for television Episode for The Climax seris back in the 50's) and how many versions of the Long Ranger,Tarzan the ape man, and Wizard Of Oz (And dont forget The wiz
& TINman) just because something has been remade dosn't mean it is going to be bad .
by the way Though I haven't seen I am Legend .
I HAVE seen both Hesten's Omega Man And Vincent Price's Last Man On Earth all three based on the same story . peter hirschman
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4-12-2008 @ 2:43PM
Malren said...
Yep. This is why I made a special effort to emphasize that in *TODAY'S* Hollywood, remakes almost always suck.
Except for Dawn of the Dead recently, can anyone name a remake from the last ten or 15 years that didn't suck the life out of the film it was remaking? And even Dawn has it's detractors - although I tend to think they're congenitally insane and the film is awesome squared. :)