Photocopy Quality

I recently watched Let Me In, the American remake of the Swedish vampire film, Let The Right One In. I watched it with some hesitation as the original Swedish movie was outstanding and American remakes of foreign films have a sketchy track record at best.

As far as film quality goes, I was pleasantly surprised. Let Me In is quite a good movie, which isn't that surprising since it's almost exactly the same as the original. The only differences i could remember was that the American version had more graphic killings and made Abby(Eli) much more monstrous. I would also complain that some of the originals subtlety was removed such as a scene (minor spoilers) was changed from a suicide in the original to an accidental death in the American version.

That's small potatoes in the big picture though. If Let The Right One In was a 9.5 then Let Me In is an 8.5. The real issue is why was the movie made at all? Aside from it being in English, it's essentially the same movie. Is that change really enough of a reason to remake an entire movie? I realize that Americans have far less reason to see subtitles movies as Hollywood churns out enough films to keep moviegoers satisfied. From what I understand subtitling and dubbed movies are far more common in Europe where they have a greater diversity of languages and less movies being made.

Maybe we should adapt the same idea of dubbing here. Rather than waste the great performances of the Swedish actors, why not just hire Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, etc. to do a really good voice over for the Swedish version and release that in theaters? The movie only made $12 million in its theater run, it seems reasonable that a dubbed version of that could've made just as much without all the cost of actually making the movie, which was around $20 million.

Hollywood is set to deluge the public with a flood of sequels and remakes this year because they know that those films will make money. If they got a little more creative with movies and dubbed an outstanding foreign film for the public rather than blow $20 million on a completely unneeded remake they would have more financial flexibility to make more creative movies instead of just making surefire moneymaking sequels of dubious quality. This would be devastating to the Michael Bays of the world but might be better for the rest of us.