The Evolution of an Audience

[bcholmes]

I'm not terribly fond of most Hollywood remakes. There's talk of remaking Casablanca, and I'm certain that it'll be one big screw up. I'd be hugely surprised if they can improve upon the original.

But I do find it interesting what gets changed between a film and its remake. Hitchcock's Psycho and Gus Van Sant's Psycho are almost perfect shot-for-shot matches, right down to the continuity errors. On the other hand, the differences between The Big Clock and No Way Out are pretty big. And I'm sure that the fact that Gary Cooper's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was remade with Adam Sandler makes the little baby Jesus weep.

So, recently, I've watched both the original 1965 Flight of the Phoenix (with James Stewart) and its 2004 remake (with Dennis Quaid).

Frank Towns: Why give people false hope?
Liddle: Come on man.Most folks spend their whole lives holding on to hopes and dreams that are never going to come true but they hold on to them. Why are you going to give up on them now when you need them most?
Frank Towns: You are assuming I'm one of those people who has hopes and dreams.
Liddle: I find it hard to believe that a man who learns to fly never had a dream.
Frank Towns: Look, how can I let those people build that plane when I don't believe it will work? And, every day they waste trying to build it brings them one day closer to dying.
Liddle: I think a man only needs one thing in life. He just needs someone to love. If you can't give him that, then give him something to hope for. And if you can't give him that, just give him something to do.

Mostly I think I like the remake. I think that it manages to fill up some of the dry parts of the original. But there were some interesting choices in the remake:

1. First, and most obvious: the cast of the 2004 version is multi-racial, and includes a woman as one of the crash survivors. I'm a big fan of the classic Hollywood era, but it is stunning to notice just how absent non-whites are from those films. This is especially obvious with the camel-riding desert folk. In the original, they were dangerous because they were camel-riding desert folk. In the remake, we're given more reasons to think that they're dangerous.
2. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes for the crash to happen. We see the oil crew interacting before they board the plane, some initial on-the-runway banter, and then the flight and crash. The original had them already in the air, and the crash happened very early on. I'm often fascinated by the 30-minute set-up rule in Hollywood film: that we always get 30 minutes to meet the characters before the first big event that propels the story. It seems to be much more firmly entrenched now, than even in the classic Hollywood era. In the 1965 Phoenix reveals the most of the backstory after the crash, whereas the 2004 version explains it all before the crash.

   There's a theory of film that says that the traditional Hollywood structure (30 minute introduction, initial small climax to get the story going, then build up to main climax, followed by trivially short denouement) reproduces the male sexual-response cycle. And that, as a result, Hollywood film will always be much more a "male thing". It's interesting that this structure seems to be even more formulaic now than in the classic period.

3. The crash scene in the 2004 version is much more dramatic, thanks to computer graphics.
4. In the 1965 version, there's a character -- army officer Captain Harris -- who insists on trying to head out into the desert to find civilization. The pilot Frank Towns (James Stewart) tells him all of the problems with walking through the desert -- hard to keep on target, lose more water than you can carry, natural tendency to walk in circles. In the remake, Harris is replaced with a completely different character who suggests walking through the desert to civilization, and Frank Towns (Dennis Quaid) doesn't provide the warnings. Instead, a middle-eastern character gives essentially the same spiel. In a sense, it almost seems as though each character gets one and only one specialty. Towns is the pilot. Someone else must be the expert about deserts. Can't go mixing and matching.
5. In the original, two characters actually do go off into the desert (and everyone can see that it's a fool's errand), and the mentally-fatigued Cobb (Ernest Borgnine) goes off after them a bit later. Towns goes into the desert to bring Cobb back, but by the time Towns finds him, Cobb has died. In the remake, only one character (Liddle) goes off into the desert. Towns goes after him and Towns finds Liddle alive. This is a major turning point in the 2004 movie, as Liddle urges Towns to go along with the plan to build a new airplane to give people something to do, if nothing else.
6. There are a lot of differences in the character of Dorfmann, (who's called Elliot in the remake), and I'm most disappointed in the changes to this character, although I think the conflict between Elliot/Towns is better developed than the conflict between Dorfmann/Towns.
   • In the original, Dorfmann is German (and I think we're supposed to dislike him immediately based on his German-ness -- was the war still too recent in 1965?) He's shown to be incredibly arrogant, and cold. There's a great scene in the 1965 version where Dorfman explains that if the build a new plane, it will have no passenger area, and the passengers will have to ride on the wings. Frank Towns retorts: we've got a wounded man, how's he going to hold on through the whole flight? Dorfmann says that it'll take twelve days to finish building the plane and that the doctor thinks that the injured man will probably die in five or six days, so it isn't a problem. And Frank just stares at him.
   • The biggest problem with the Dorfmann character are the times when he goes from cold and calculating to angry. The transitions aren't well-done in the original, and the scenes ring hollow.
   • In the remake, Elliot is physically very similar to Dorfmann (blond hair, and similar glasses), but smaller in build. He is, in many ways, coded as "nerdy". He's shown, in many scenes, to be a bit of an oddball. The scene in which he reveals his plan is fairly odd. People have gotten into a row about water, a fight breaks out over one of the water containers. The container breaks and people start racing to prevent the water from disappearing into the sand. And suddenly, there's Elliot saying, "I have a plan". People just stare at him because he seems not to understand how important it is that they save the water.
   • The process by which Dorfmann's/Elliot's credibility is established is a bit different. In the 1956 version, Dorfmann announces that they can build a new plane. He's shot down by Towns, and later, Towns' buddy Lew is talking to Dorfmann:

     Lew: "What do you do?"
     Dorfmann: "I'm a designer."
     Lew: "A designer? Like furniture, and things like that?"
     Dorfmann: "No. I design airplanes."

     In the remake, Elliot announces his plan and Towns asks: "What do you know about airplanes?"
     Elliot: "I design airplanes. I'm an airplane designer."

     In the original, Dorfmann almost doesn't care what the others think of him. He's too cold and too egotistical for that.

   • The remake gives us a couple of scenes to start to doubt Elliot. The original didn't. When the surprise comes along, it's more of a surprise in the original. In the remake, we've had hints that the surprise was coming.
   • In the original, Towns and Lew are talking to Dorfmann, and Towns picks up a magazine made by Dorfmann's employer. It's full of model airplanes. Towns asks: "what about the big planes, though? Passenger planes?" And Dorfmann replies, "No, you misunderstand. We only make model airplanes. The principles are the same, however." Dorfmann doesn't see that this is important information. And doesn't even notice how much Towns and Lew are appalled to discover that they've just built an airplane designed by a model airplane designer. What's more, they hide this information from the rest of the group.
   • In the remake, when Towns discovers the catalog for Elliot's employers, Elliot stiffens. He knows that his secret is about to come out. He tries to play down the significance of the revelation that he only designs model airplanes.
   • In the end, I feel like the coding of Towns and Elliot is simpler -- dumber, even -- than in the original. It's almost as if the remake is saying, "weird people are untrustworthy, and untrustworthy people can be easily spotted because they're weird." Heroes are clearly heroes, etc.

7. There are other instances of an expectation of a dumber audience. For example, when one of the characters paints the name "Phoenix" on the newly-built plane, in the original, the painter starts to explain the myth of the Phoenix, but another character stops him, saying, basically, "C'mon, I know what the Phoenix is." In the remake, the character painting the name on the plane briefly describes the myth of the Phoenix. Another character elaborates on the myth, and other characters marvel at how educated he is to know this myth.
8. The new version also feels the need to "force a climax." It's not enough that everyone decides to risk their lives on the flight, they also have to be chased by angry desert people with guns.

So, anyway, while I think that the new version is faster-paced than the original, it really gives me the impression of assuming that I'm a lot dumber than the audience of the original 1956 version.

Comments

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Thoughts:

The 30 minute before something happens might be also related to a lot of audience seeming to have a really tough time with things happening out of order. "Backstory" isn't really a comfortable concept anymore. (Another friend was kvetching loudly recently that it was basically impossible to find the Narnia books boxed in the original order anymore. All the sets were starting with The Magician's Nephew instead of The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe.) This meshes well with the rest of your piece showing that filmmakers seem to expect dumber audiences than fifty years ago.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

It almost goes without saying that audiences are dumber than they were fifty years ago, because back then they were adults with nothing on television and today they're teenagers trying to get out of the house. I would also put forward the hypothesis that movies now have to be exciting at the start because the audience will leave and sneak into the next theater if they don't get hooked early.

Which makes the Chronicles of Narnia thing so curious, because The Magicians Nephew is a really awful place to begin the series. You're two-thirds of the way through the book before you even get to Narnia and you don't have any affinity for Aslan when you do.

[herbmcsidhe.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read the original novel? I haven't seen the film remake, and can't recall if I've seen the earlier version or not, but the book has stayed with me for years.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I haven't. What was Dorfmann like in the novel?

[kightp.livejournal.com]

And I'm sure that the fact that Gary Cooper's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was remade with Adam Sandler makes the little baby Jesus weep.

I know it made me want to weep.