Hassun

After a couple of years (in recent history) flirting with asian influences (The Matrix, Kill Bill, The last Samurai,...) and some very successful asian films like Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon it seems that the big wave is upon us and will stay here until it's milked for all its worth.

Scary movies seem to get the most attention, The Ring (Ringu) and The Grudge (Ju-On) being good examples.

The reason? Most Americans are a little tired of the lame special effects ridden horror spectacle movies about indestructible killers chasing teenagers.
This also has a flipside: As soon as the audience gets used to the asian style of scaring you (minimalistic imagery, tapping into primal and modern fears, long silent parts etc.)

Remakes Following The Grudge (2004) and Shall We Dance (2004) are:
The Ring II (2005) -Ringu II-,
Dark Water (2005) -Dark Water-,
The Departed *by M. Scorsese* (2005) -Internal Affairs-,
Chaos (2005) -Koasu-,
Antarctica (2006) -Antarctica-,
My Sassy Girl (2006) -My Sassy Girl-,
Il Mare (2006) -Sioware-,

But it gets even better (well, worse actually):
The Eye (2006?) -The Eye-,
A Tale Of Two Sisters (2006?) -A Tale Of Two Sisters-,
OldBoy (2006?) -OldBoy-,
The Mission (2006?) -The Mission-,
My Wife Is A Gangster (2006?) -My Wife Is A Gangster-,
Hi, Dharma (2006?) -Hi, Dharma-,

And last but not least:
The Seven Samurai (2006?) -The Seven Samurai-,
(And not like 'A fistful of dollars' or 'Last Man Standing')

Strategies are as follows:
We buy the rights to the films and make a more western version of it.
We buy the rights and the creator of the film to do it for us with different (western) actors.

A little info on how the most recent wave came into existence:
1) Ringu movie rights bought by DreamWorks (from new big name in Hollywood) Roy Lee)
price: $1.000.000
2) Copy Ringu and make The Ring
price: $35.000.000
3) The Ring was an unexpected success and made $220.000.000+

It didn't take long for the industry to go on a shopping spree in Asia...

(Source: Magazines & the www)

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Legend

haha wow, those are some numbers there

but hey, I have to say that the older Asian movies are probably better story wise, but not effects of course because of what they get to work with

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Hassun

Yeah that's one thing the big Hollywood films have: Production values.
Most of the Asian horror flicks look like they were made using a camcorder...

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Delerium

I'm not complaining. I love many aspects of Asian Cinema, I wish they'd only import more movies from other countries as well and distribute them to more cities. I'm in full support of this new wave of foreign films and adaptations entering Hollywood. I hope its never milked for all its worth because honestly the U.S. isnt the only country that can make really good movies, I'm glad we're finally starting to see that now.

narrator

Coming from someone who lives in Hollywood....let me tell ya that there is SO much damn talk about remakes of Asian films around town like it's a brand new franchise or something. The industry here has just gotten so lazy and is now purely interested in milking trends...i mean of course its been this way as long as i can remember but things are really just getting out of hand now.

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ffgirl23

This wave of remakes can be seen a both good and bad. As far as the good, well, when people hear that a movie is being made, and that original was made in Asia, then people become interested in seeing the original, and then their interests grow and they want to see other movies that haven't been remade. I know that's how I became interested in Asian horror. I saw the Ring, and then I wanted to see more.
The bad part of all these remakes is that they become "Hollywood". In other words, what made the original movies so frightening is removed in favor of special effects and jump-out-at-you scare tactics. It's like the movies are dumbed down, because American audiences can't handle a scary movie that relies on the plot to make it so scary.
Plus, what is considered scary in Japan and other Asian cultures differes a lot from what is considered scary here.
It's really a double-edged swoard (did I spell that right? My brain's flaking out on me). I like that Asian movies are becoming more popular, but not at the expense that they are changed so much.

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And I remember now, at the top of my lungs in my arms, she dies, she dies.

Controlling you through a chip in your butt since 2004

cowboy rin

when you remake an old movie you got to be current with the times. If you remake an 60's movie, you can't leave phrases and references that only apply to the 60's, no one can relate to that. Production value is a big part. The asian director has this idea of how he wants the movie. Now with millions of dollars, he can do it however he wants with no short cuts. And really, how scared are you going to get when you've to sit there reading subtitles in a scary movie.

Hassun

Another thing Americans are so afraid of:
Subtitles.
Coming form a non English/French/Chinese/Korean/Japanese speaking country I'm am pretty used to subtitles. Films can still be very scary with them.
And on top of that, most asian horror flicks don't feature alot of dialogue in the suspensful parts.
They know when to keep their mouths shut.

The problem is that Hollywood just uses it's massive rescources to buy good asian actors/directors and then use them in the most retarded or bad ways (Jackie Chan and Jet Li come to mind).

The asian directors may get that huge budget, but they'll also get all the limitations of Hollywood pictures they didn't have before.

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