Fantastic Remake

Roland Emmerich, the hit or miss director that has done such films as the original and excellent Stargate, the fun popcorn flick Independence Day, the embarrassingly awful Godzilla and the very lame The Day After Tomorrow will be helming a remake of the 1960’s Sci Fi movie Fantastic Voyage.

For those of you too young to remember it and who haven’t caught it on TV, Fantastic Voyage revolves around a diplomat who suffers an assassination attempt. To save him, a submarine is shrunken to microscopic size and injected into his bloodstream with a small crew. Not only is the crew racing the clock to save his life, but they also encounter unexpected resistance from the body’s natural defenses, which treat the micro-sub as an invading virus.

At the time it was an extremely cool movie with great special effects (this was around the same time as the original Star Trek) and an interesting story. Plus it starred Raquel Welch at the peak of her popularity.

I’ve really been trying to soften my views regarding remakes… but one of the problems I have with them is when they’re done poorly, or they veer so far from the original that they end up sharing almost nothing in common with the source material other than the title. With this one, sure, the effects aren’t up to snuff with the CGI wonders that they crank out today but you know what? They still stand up pretty well.

I really don’t think Fantastic Voyage needs to be remade, especially with a “fluff” director like Emmerich at the helm and writers Cormac and Marianne Wibberley, who’ve written such movie gems as Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and The Shaggy Dog. Sure, they wrote the nominally enjoyable National Treasure which starred Nicholas Cage, but they also wrote the upcoming sequel which looks like it’s going to be ridiculously over the top.

Source: Zap2It