At even the best of times, movie remakes are a pretty awkward enterprise; you're always going to end up annoying someone, whether it's a purist who dismisses all remakes as pure evil, or more reasonable viewers who will actually make the effort to see a remake and assess it on its individual merits (before probably trashing it nevertheless). It's one of the most difficult types of movies to get right, because the presumption from the outset is one of patent unoriginality; only a few directors have managed to break with convention and deliver a diverse experience centered on the same idea that didn't feel completely lazy (The Thing, Dawn of the Dead etc). Indeed, most directors opt to make direct remakes of classic properties because by sticking to the original schematic but simply adapting it to modern technological advancements, they can rinse a whole other generation of viewers for their hard-earned cash, often while they remain unaware that the original even existed. Here are 10 shocking remakes made by directors who didn't understand the original...
10. Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton)
Planet of the Apes is a classic science fiction masterpiece that's renowned for its steely Chuck Heston performance, its amusing ape make-up, and its epic plot twist, in which it turns out that the apes have taken over Earth, having destroyed the Statue of Liberty in spectacular style. Tim Burton was a strange choice for remaking Planet of the Apes; though he's an aesthete through and through, he has a very particular style that isn't very well suited to the look of the original film (short of just doing a full-on gothic remake). Burton made it clear that he didn't want to do a straight remake, though appeared to completely lose sight of the original's brilliance in trying so desperately to surprise viewers. If the terrible casting of Mark Wahlberg in the lead role felt like a lame fill-in for Heston, it was the film's risible ending, which had Wahlberg return to Earth to find that society's mainstays - cops, firefighters and so on - are now apes, which truly left a sour taste in the mouth. Though the twist ending of the original isn't the be-all or end-all, it is one of the reasons that the film has endured so well. Burton instead opted for a weird rug-pull that didn't shock audiences in the way he expected, but just pissed them off.