When the below synopsis arrived for the 2011 version of Conan The Barbarian, Sorry, Conan hit my in-box my heart sank.
That word is the worst one you can ever to see in a synopsis. That word is reimagine (re-imagine, reimagining or various similar terms). Most of the time this means that they have taken a classic film from the past and then ignored all the reasons why it was so good in the first place. Either setting it somewhere the original wasn’t, changing the “twist ending” to something dreadful.
A sub-set of this is not the “director’s cut” version of the film but the director re-working the film to make it, in his mind, closer to what his vision was at the time. The prime culprit for this has to be George Lucas and his tinkering with the original Star Wars trilogy. From making Han shoot second after Greebo tried but misses, to adding Jabba The Hutt. For someone like him please here this heartfelt plea from a fan. For the love of God stop it!
The colossal legend that is CONAN THE BARBARIAN is back this Summer. Having thrived and evolved for eight decades in the public imagination – in prose and graphics, on the big screen and small – Conan’s exploits in the Hyborian Age now come alive like never before. Shot in 3D, the reimagining of one man’s mythical battle for revenge is finally here in this Epic action-adventure film.
Occasionally a reimagining does actually work. I can’t think of one on film but on the small screen this is a different matter. With the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, or taking a classic 80s TV min-series and expanding to to a full series as they did with V. This, along side Battlestar Galactica worked as they didn’t try and keep it to the original but to take 21st century worries into it. Be that terrorism, a war without end, to a lesser extend cold war ideas of spying and sleeper agents.
