The recent revelation that Chris Columbus will be producing a US-based, English-language remake of Troll Hunter was met with everything from mild irritation to outright derision. A typical report of the news included 1) a statement that the original is great/awesome 2) a question of whether this really needed a remake 3) a comment that Hollywood was craven and unoriginal and, for a select few pieces, 4) swear words. My own take was fairly neutral (much like my reaction to Andre Ovredal‘s film), which prompted at least half an email asking me why I was giving this one a pass after years of making up clever insults at the expense of anyone attempting a remake. After some soul-searching, it was clear that I had either made peace with the recent glut of remakes or been beaten into submission by it. Either way, I’m tired of complaining about remakes, and here’s why.

Hollywood is a lot like a four year old in that it can be very prone to something my grandmother called “monkey see, monkey do.” What that means, essentially, is that any behavior you see exhibited, you’re likely to then mindlessly mimic. It also implies that you’re as stupid as a monkey. Or at least that’s how I used to take it. When Avatar made more money than the gross national product of some of our greatest nations by coming out in 3D and jacking up ticket prices, suddenly every film that was hitting theaters started coming out in 3D and jacking up ticket prices. It only makes sense, then, that since the Harry Potter franchise was able to double dip ticket sales by turning the last book in the series into two movies, that future book to film franchises would soon be doing the same. And they have been; we’ve got Peter Jackson turning The Hobbit into two films, we’ve got whoever makes the Twilight movies turning whatever the last Twilight movie is called into two films. And now, we’ve got word that the last book in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy “Mockingjay” will be turned into two films. Or, at least, those three books will somehow be stretched out into four movies. When the trend started with Harry Potter I got what was happening. “Deathly Hollows” was a big book with a lot of story, and it made sense that the process of adapting it would be easier [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

News for you Kevin Carr: The market for getting fat to win an Oscar is saturated. Time to shut the flab up.

Throughout the history of cinema, actors, writers and directors have brought us very different views of what it’s like to be in high school. But how accurate is the portrayal of high school in movies? What if high school really was how Hollywood made it out to be?