8 Movies That Should Actually Be Remade

These days, most people probably know Flash Gordon as a running gag in the movie Ted, and for its insanely catchy theme song that was performed by Queen. However, the history of Flash Gordon is a long one, as it began as a comic strip in 1934, and was designed to compete with Buck Rogers.

Yet somehow we’ve never gotten a decent adaptation, with the only real attempts being the 1980 film and a failed TV series that aired in 2007. One reason we may never see Flash come to the big screen in a spectacular way, of course, is the miserable failure of movies like John Carter, but we would still love to see Flash Gordon make his way back to Hollywood. With the insane popularity of comic book movies, there’s never been a better time, either.

The Island of Dr. Moreau is at this point very sadly remembered mostly for being that movie in which Marlon Brando got extremely fat and plodded around in a muumuu with a strange little sidekick.

What most people probably don’t realize is that laughable film adaptation aside, it was based on a classic science fiction novel by HG Wells. The novel was about moral responsibility, pain, cruelty, and basically whether or not it is okay for man to try to play god. Obviously, not a single bit of that came through in the movie, and that’s why it desperately needs to be remade, and this time if someone could try to make it, you know, good? That’d be okay with us.

Back in 1996, which coincidentally is the same year that we got Brando’s Island of Dr. Moreau, an adaptation of the long-running comic strip The Phantom was released, starring Billy Zane and Kristy Swanson.

It was a goofy, mildly pleasant movie but wasn’t nearly successful enough to garner a sequel, which is a real shame because the Phantom is a terrific character. Basically, for the uninitiated, the Phantom isn’t just one guy, it’s an entire line of crimefighters who pass the responsibility on from father to son, swearing an oath to protect the world from evil.

He doesn’t have any powers, and instead is just strong, brilliant, and because there is always a Phantom over the years, decades, and centuries, he can use the myth that he’s an immortal, well, phantom to intimidate evildoers. And you’re telling us that wouldn’t make for an awesome series of movies?

In 1983, a film that would go on to become something of a cult classic called WarGames was released, starring Matthew Broderick as a young computer hacker who very nearly, and very unwittingly, starts World War III by accessing what he thinks is a game but is full access to America’s nuclear arsenal.

While we don’t have the Cold War to support a remake right now, it’s not like there isn’t the possibility of another World War. You could even update it and, rather than a random computer hacker who likes video games, make the central character a member of the hacker group Anonymous, trying to do good but unbeknownst to him is on the verge of starting a World War with China or North Korea.

Hell, something similar has happened in real life when a pair of hackers named Mathew Bevan and Richard Pryce hacked into an American Air Force Base looking for evidence of aliens, all the while very nearly starting a new war while the US scrambled to figure out who the hell was accessing their top-secret files.

Now here’s a movie that has, for years, been rumored to be in line for a remake but for whatever reason, it’s simply never happened. The good news is that HBO has been working with JJ Abrams to make a pilot for a WestworldTV series, but we’d still like to see it come to the big screen. So what is Westworld, you ask? It was a 1973 science fiction film starring Yul Brynner and written and directed by Michael Crichton. It takes place in an incredible amusement park and things go horribly wrong.

So yes, there’s a chance Crichton may have gone back to the well on that idea when writing Jurassic Park. Anyway, it’s about a theme park that features a medieval setting, a Roman setting, and an Old West setting complete with robotic cowboys walking the streets. Obviously bad things happen and the robots begin attacking guests. Put it this way: have you ever seen the episode of The Simpsons when they visit Itchy and Scratchy Land and the robots attack? That was a straight-up parody of West World.

3The Last Starfighter

Considering how much video games dominate popular culture these days, and with the tremendous technological advancements in the gaming industry, it just feels like the perfect time to make a movie about an expert gamer who gets recruited to fight in a massive battle, with the game of choice has been a simulation all along.

Oh, what’s that? They already made that movie in 1984 and it was called The Last Starfighter? Well, with gaming culture bigger than ever, it’s the absolute perfect time to remake that film, don’t you think? Considering we’ve moved on from arcade games like Centipede and have games like, you know, Halo that is far more realistic, and combine that with the fact that we have motion capture games it seems so much more feasible for a young gamer to serve a role in an interstellar battle.

At least that’s what we’re going with as we say, yeah, let’s get this remake off the ground. Get on it, Hollywood.

2Logan`s Run

Another movie that’s been long rumored for a remake is the science fiction classic, Logan’s Run. Remaking the movie has been a pet project for director Bryan Singer for years, but it’s just never managed to get much traction.

It tells the story of a dystopian future in which, once people reach the age of 30, they are killed. A guy named Logan and a few others basically decide hey, screw that, man, and try to get the people in charge to change their methods.

Naturally, it doesn’t really work, but that’s alright because there’s a catastrophic computer failure that basically leaves the city in ruins and everyone is free to roam the countryside and live past 30. Um, yay? Anyway, there’s still hope for a remake, as the writer of BioShockis currently penning a script.

1Fahrenheit 451

Yet another movie that has long been rumored to be remade, yet has never actually gotten much past the “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have another go at making this all-time classic book into a big-budget movie?”

Fahrenheit 451 is a book by Ray Bradbury, and it tells of a horrible future in which books have been outlawed, with firemen being tasked with burning any books they find, with anyone caught reading punished. It was a scathing look at the direction Bradbury feared America was headed at the height of McCarthyism and has become one of the all-time classic science fiction novels.

It was turned into a movie in 1966, and back around 2010, Mel Gibson was working on developing a remake. Then in 2018, Ramin Bahrani had developed Fahrenheit 451 remake. Obviously, nothing has come of that.