11 of the worst movie remakes

Hollywood loves their remakes, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why.

It gives studios a chance to either adapt a beloved movie with better technology or right the wrongs of a past movie and deliver something that wasn’t quite possible before.

Far too many times, though, remakes fall short and have us wondering what they were thinking. These are the worst movie remakes of all time.

Total Recall (2012)

I have no idea why they decided to remake Total Recall other than, well, you know, money.

The problem with the 2012 version of the film is that, unlike Dredd, sometimes you lean a little too much into the style of the current era. That’s the biggest problem with the movie compared to the original: it lacks the subtlety and dryness that made the Arnold Schwarzenegger version a classic.

The Lion King (2019)

The live-action Disney remakes have had a mixed reaction, and that’s putting it nicely.

Still, there’s a certain allure to seeing our favorite animated Disney films redone in live action. That’s not the case with The Lion King, though, since, well, there aren’t any humans in it. The “live action” here is just a more realistic CGI animation, which in turn leads to a more realistic-feeling movie. As a result, it loses a lot of the magic, heart, and charm of the original.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

The Day The Earth Stood Still | Outrun Gaming — Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Remember when I talked about there not being a need to remake classic movies? Here’s a good example.

1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still is an all-time classic whose message hit a little more at home in the early ’50s. Not only does it not have the same impact today, but retooling the message away from the Cold War and more toward climate change resulted in the movie feeling a little too preachy at times.

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A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)

In 2009, the Friday the 13th franchise rebooted in a film that adapted from various past entries in the iconic horror series. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it made nearly $100 million at the box office.

Off the back of that success, we saw a reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street just a year later. It, too, was a box office success, but that was in spite of the movie’s quality. Wes Craven’s original films are horror masterpieces, while the remake lacks the creativity of those Wes Craven films.

Fantastic Four (2015)

The Fantastic Four franchise is in good hands now, thanks to the success of its Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Fantastic Four: First Steps. It wasn’t always that way, though.

The iconic superhero team saw box office success in the early 2000s, but a 2010s remake wanted to make things darker and grittier. Instead, it nearly killed the box office allure of some of the most important superheroes in all of comics.

Point Break (2015)

There are two questions people seem to normally ask around the Point Break remake. The first is, “Wait, there’s a Point Break remake?” The second is, unsurprisingly, “why?”

The original holds up quite well today, and it’s not like this is a post-COVID decision to throw a remake of a cult classic on a random streaming service. They released this thing in theaters with a no-name cast and expected it to do well. Spoiler alert: it did not.

Ben-Hur (2016)

While Point Break is an iconic film, let’s be honest: it’s nowhere close to the level of Ben-Hur. Yet the acclaimed 1959 film starring Charlton Heston, widely regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made, was redone in 2016.

The goal, apparently, was to focus on delivering a new interpretation of the source material, the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Instead, they delivered an absolute dud that most people forgot was even a thing.

Planet of the Apes (2001)

Maybe we shouldn’t be remaking classic films starring Charlton Heston.

Tim Burton’s take on Planet of the Apes is everything you’d expect from a 2000s Tim Burton film, including a new twist on the original’s iconic ending. Spoiler: it didn’t work out for the future of the franchise. The Apes film series has done well by moving on from the Tim Burton story following the 2011 reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Red Dawn (2012)

The biggest thing the Red Dawn remake had going against it is the fact that it didn’t deliver the same impact as the 1984 original.

It turns out that your movie about an invasion from a domestic threat (in this case, North Korea) only works if you’re in the middle of a Cold War, as was the case with the Soviets in ’84. The action doesn’t hold up, either, so that can’t salvage this mess of a film.

Psycho (1998)

Psycho Remake | Outrun Gaming — Image Credit: Universal Pictures.

A shot-for-shot remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic? What could go wrong? Well, a lot, actually.

I’m not joking, either; Gus Van Sant’s 19998 version of Psycho is literally a shot-for-shot remake with Vince Vaughn, of all people, as Norman Bates. When asked why he’d do a shot-for-shot remake of the classic, Van Sant infamously said, “Why not? It’s a marketing scheme. Why does a studio ever remake a film? Because they have this little thing they’ve forgotten about that they could put in the marketplace and make money from.”