10 Recent Movie Remakes That You Already Forgot Existed

"Oh, yeah, I vaguely remember that coming out..."

Robocop Joel Kinnaman
MGM/Columbia Pictures

In Hollywood, remakes are as inevitable as the next Adam Sandler travesty; no matter how much you choose to rally against their existence, they're definitely coming and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop them.

Sometimes a remake will do the impossible and actually find a way to justify its existence, of course, thus enabling it to stand proudly aside the original film. More likely, though, the remake turns out so badly that it tarnishes the legacy of the classic and forces you to spend weeks in the aftermath telling everybody to stay away.

There is a third type of remake, however; the remake that manages to be so mediocre and lacking in personality that it just fades away into nothingness two weeks after it was initially tossed into theatres. It completely vanishes and nobody mentions that it was a thing ever again. Talking about the original film doesn't even prompt memories that a remake was even attempted... it's just gone.

Here are 10 examples of recent remakes that have been wiped from your memory...

10. Fame (2009)

Robocop Joel Kinnaman
MGM

The Original: Fame is a film whose title cannot be uttered without some idiot shouting "I'm gonna live forever!" in reference to the infamously irksome song that is probably the only thing that most people remember about it.

But Fame is sort of a naff classic, isn't it? A film that, for many adults now in their forties and working dull office jobs, defined that brief but incredibly important period of their lives when enrolling in a downtrodden New York drama school seemed like the best idea ever. 1980, what a time to be alive!

The Forgotten Remake: "They remade Fame?" you just said to yourself, wondering how you managed to miss such an important milestone in filmic history. Yes, they did, 29 years after the release of the original. Hollywood thought that it was time for High School Musical fans to get their own version, but the result was a mess - one that failed to capture the hardened edge of the original; bad acting, a terrible script, crap editing and annoying "tween" characters ensured a proper dud.

Why would you opt for this version when the original exists? And so Fame 2009 has been cast aside as a pale imitation; a pointless retread destined for bargain bins.

Contributor

Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.