Posted by
Emmett of the Unblinking Eye on Saturday, September 02, 2006 9:45:07 AM
Since Hollywood has flat run out of new ideas (or at lest new ideas that can get financing), it's left with remakes. Some films can, and even should, get remade, because new technology can make them better. Take Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of "
King Kong", a spectacular movie that didn't necessarily improve on or replace
the original, but was an impressive work on its own. Or like "
Sabrina", which
wasn't.
But while you can remake dramas, comedies, and some horror, you can't remake a film with a twist at the end. It just doesn't work. Can you imagine a remake of "The Sixth Sense"? And can you imagine doing so when you
post a still of the final, penultimate scene that gives away the whole movie on IMDB? (And if you look, and you might, look closely at the top).
Which brings us to "
The Wicker Man". In its
The Wicker Man, "The Wicker Man" was a reserved, classic, creepy British horror movie,
Edward Woodward plays a small town cop -- a virgin --who goes to isolated Summersisle, run by the usually malevolent
Christopher Lee, to investigate the disappearance of a small girl. In the new "
The Wicker Man",
Nicholas Cage does the same thing -- just stupider. After being knocked for a loop by his inability to save a young girl and her mother from a fiery crash, he receives a strange letter from his former fiance asking him to come to the island to locate her missing child. When he arrives at this isolated island with no telephone, no cell service, and minimal contact with the outside world, he meets the less-than-cooperative inhabitants, a large group of dominant women lead by Sister Summersisle (
Ellen Burstyn) and their retinue of silent, slavish men (and why women so dominant would want to keep around men so uniformly dirty, old and ugly is beyond me). Believe me, the only person who can't figure out what's going to happen (if not exactly how) in the whole theater (there were
two of us present at a noon show yesterday) is Cage.
But the worst part is a small scene that happens in the beginning. Now, I am a firm believer that a filmmaker (in this case the producer is Cage, what a shock!) can create any kind of world he or she wants. After all, it
is only a movie. But it is imperative that once you set up that world that you follow the rules for that world you create. For example, if everyone can fly, they must continue to be able to fly. About 10 minutes into the "The Wicker Man", after Cage receives the letter, he tries to locate Summersisle. Now at that point we don't know that the cult inhabiting Summersisle has no contact with the outside world; rejects all visitors; keeps to themselves; receives supplies by air every few days, but does not allow the pilot on the island; has no gasoline or electric powered vehicles, proceeding only by bike, foot and horse; has no telephones; uses, for the most part, candles for lighting, although a few -- a very few -- homes have electricity; and that they are essentially living in a 19th century world. So how does Cage find where they are?
He goes to their Website.
Now when you first see this, it's no big deal. But as you learn more about Summersisle, the utter stupidity of this moment keeps growing in your mind, until it pretty much blots out the remainder of the movie and all that happens. Which, now that I think of it, is a pretty good thing.
"The Wicker Man" is a mess. Avoid it at all costs.