I see the talented German director Oliver Hirschbiegel, who gave us the excellent Hitler tearjerker Downfall (actually one of the scariest movies I've ever seen), was sadly coopted by Hollywood to do a completely unnecessary remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a film that has already had one remake by Philip Kaufman (I liked it). I have yet to see the original, by Don Siegel, which is probably the best. Apparently, this being Hollywood, and even though Mr. Hirschbiegel retains director credit (and to judge from the reviews, rather unwisely) three other directors were brought in "to amp up the action", including the monstrously overrated Wachowski Bros, from the Matrix, and one of their collaborators, from V is for Vendetta.
I feel sorry and angry at the poor German film director for following the money, thinking that he could retain in Hollywood the illustrious success and the independence of mind of his first film. Perhaps he thought that he could turn the great parable of the body snatchers into another tour de force of claustrophobia and mass deception. Sounds like a very interesting premise, provided you let him do it his way.
Why hire the guy if you are going to turn whatever he does into crap? It's like you hire Ozu, but what you actually want is Johnnie To. Why waste so much money, time and effort? Why pretend you want something artistic? Why waste everybody's time jerking off to pretension when all you want is farts, because the audiences, according to you, love farts and nothing but? It would save everybody involved a lot of misery just to fart it out as planned.
3. And if it turns out that it is not the big fart you imagined, have the decency to own it. It may not make you so much money, but it may actually be good.
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