Before recorded history, movies were simply known as stories, and much like cold sores, they were spread orally. And while today’s youth spend their time memorizing the lines to Superbad, the youth of the ancient world would memorize the entire Iliad. But hey, in a world without free internet porn or Nintendo Wiis, what else was there to do?

Over the centuries, as the stories were passed from generation to generation, they would change. For example, the ancient world’s Steven Spielberg would make sure you cried at the end of The Odyssey, while the Middle Age’s Michael Bay would sex it up with copious amounts of explosions and sweaty Megan Fox cleavage.

Then some ancient smart dude invented writing and the world changed forever. Stories that were once told around camp fires were now written down, figuratively and literally set in stone. But this was before the RIAA and the MPAA turned copyrights into an easy way to soak teenagers for a few thousand quick bucks. No one owned the stories.  So authors like Shakespeare took tales that were already well known and retold them, re-made them if you will, in their own hand with their own voices.

This was a tradition that would continue for another few centuries. Charles Perrault, the Walt Disney of 17th century France, practically invented the fairy tale as we know it, laying the basic foundation for everything from Cinderella to Little Red Riding Hood. About a century later, the Brothers Grimm decided to that Cinderella was missing a few thousand gallons of blood and dismemberment for their German taste buds. So they took stories that had been established for generations and re-told them, or what is that other word? Oh yes, re-made them.

Seeing a pattern here? At no time did anyone say to themselves, “You know what? That story is so well done that it need not be added to, changed, or retold in any way.” Or as an internet fanboy might put it today, “Whu?! Those unoriginal hackz in Hollyweird are rooning my childhood with there crappy remakez!!” And no one ever, to my knowledge, accused Shakespeare of being “out of ideas,” except perhaps Christopher Marlow.

The irony is that stories, told and retold over countless centuries and campfires all over the globe, seem to suddenly become sacrosanct the moment they hit celluloid. Ironic because, out of all media, film is the most purely commercial form of storytelling around. It’s like saying that the Mona Lisa is nice and all, but once it becomes a velvet paint-by-numbers kit, only then is it truly untouchable.

This is especially true when you consider the fact that remakes and derivative works run rampant in just about every other medium in the universe. Singers and bands routinely cover songs from other artists, frequently making them better in the process. When you think of Blue Suede Shoes, do you think of Carl Perkins, who wrote and first recorded the song, or Elvis? This is also true of some movies that many remake naysayers probably do not realize are remakes. Like John Carpenter’s The Thing. Or the 1939 version of The Wizard Of Oz. Or the Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon. Or the Heston version of Ben Hur. So it is especially funny when the whiners bemoan a remake of The Thing, which is itself a remake.

It should also be noted that remakes constitute a single-digit percentage of films made. The bulk of the other films are, believe it or not, totally original concepts like All About Steve and Gamer. Meanwhile, the “unoriginal” sequel The Final Destination topped both at the box office.

It’s not that audiences prefer one over the over. By and large they simply don’t care if a film is based on an original concept or not. Ultimately, what matters is the movie itself. If it’s good, then who cares if it’s a remake? And if it’s bad, who cares if it’s a remake? The sad fact is that most movies are bad, remake or not. The batting average for remakes is no different than any other kind of movie. Personally, I’d rather watch the unoriginal The Thing over the totally original G-Force any time.

And telling good stories is what filmmaking is all about, even if it is a story that has been told before. That said, don’t ever remake Citizen Kane, dude, or I’ll write a strongly worded tweet about it!

Comment on this article by clicking here