Why It's Awful: There really was a great movie waiting to come out inside of Chris Weitz's adaptation of Philip Pullman's Northern Lights, yet Weitz was ultimately manhandled by studio interference, leading to a homogenised, dull fantasy flick which heavily toned down the novel's anti-religious themes in order to appeal to a wider audience, and excised numerous crucial scenes in order to land a run-time under 2 hours. The Remake: This one's really simple. The filmmakers clearly had a fine handle on the technical aspects of the production, so just reinsert the controversial themes, and give it a suitable run-time of around 140-150 minutes to restore all the great character work. Taking a slight hit on the budget (which would undeniably put a dent in the visual effects) would certainly be worth it if a major Hollywood studio had the cojones to release a blockbuster movie bashing organised religion, but given how powerful religion is in the U.S., it's almost certainly never going to happen.