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You couldn’t make Blazing Saddles these days. They’d take one look at the script and go
spoiler
“We can’t make this, this is Blazing Saddles, they made it 40 years ago. Do you want Mel Brooks to sue us?”
I thought they would go:
spoiler
I mean, you could totally make Home Alone II today as long as you set it pre-9/11, so I take this to mean “these movies that were set in the ‘present day’ could not be redone and set in the ‘present day’ of 2024.”
You couldn’t make Back to the Future because 21st century streets are no place for minors on skateboards.
You couldn’t make American Beauty for a LOT of reasons (including prevalence of digital video, marijuana legalization, increased public awareness/concern about pedophilia, etc)
You couldn’t make Clueless because shopping malls are dead (or at least nowhere near as cool as they used to be)
You couldn’t make Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream because heroin and cocaine are quaint drugs by 2020s standards
You couldn’t make Paris in Burning because Harlem gentrified big time
You couldn’t make The Matrix because no one would believe human batteries would be happy and content living in a simulation of 2024 (also no telephone booths)
I almost said The Truman Show because we basically live in that world already but fuck it, I wanna see a 2024 version where the producers have to keep desperately introducing crazier plot developments to try and compete for a TikTok-addicted audience unamused by “just another reality TV show”, and constant set issues like cast members getting fired right and left for sneaking smartphones onto set.
You couldn’t make Back to the Future because 21st century streets are no place for minors on skateboards.
Delete this misinformation.
I wish we lived in a world where I could
You couldn’t make Clueless because shopping malls are dead (or at least nowhere near as cool as they used to be)
Not in smaller towns, but big malls in bigger cities are still thriving.
True, but it’s less of a universal experience than in the 90s, and thus would be significantly less relatable to a growing population of teens, many of whom have few or no accessible third spaces left. My understanding is it’s mostly upscale malls and shops that are still thriving; most other standard mall retail has moved online.
You couldn’t make The Matrix because no one would believe human batteries would be happy and content living in a simulation of 2024 (also no telephone booths)
Rewatch the movie. Smith says, slightly paraphrasing, “We tried to make the Matrix a paradise, where none would suffer, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. Many wouldn’t accept the programming, entire crops were lost.”
So they simulated life as it was, complete with shitty apartments and asshole bosses.
He also talks about how they chose 1999 very intentionally for the simulation, as it was the peak of human civilization before the era of the machine. But nowadays instead feels like we’re already entering the era of the machine: we spend most of our time on devices and are surrounded by surveillance and now AI is entering the mix. Plus the 2020s also has featured a variety of other dystopian features like pandemic, inflation, extreme inequity, growing monopolies, the rise of fascism, and a very real chance of WWIII from multiple directions among them.
You have to remember 1999 was in fact an exceptionally peaceful and optimistic time in western society (at least in the US, which is where the film focuses on), but the year still had its “everyday woes,” making it the setting with a perfect balance between an ideal life and a crappy one. 2024 is way too far in the crappy direction.
You couldn’t make Taxi Driver today, because Travis would have already died by suicide in a school shooting before reaching adulthood and getting a job. Plus watching Travis’s nihilism growing not out narcissistic disgust with the seedy underbelly of New York, but out of love for the seedy underbelly of 4chan, wouldn’t really have the same kick to it.
Also it would be Uber Driver, which sounds dumb for a movie name.
You couldn’t make half of Seinfeld because with cell phone all the funny situations don’t occur.
That’s why so many tv shows are now written as period pieces or based in the 80s and 90s.
Eh, series today still use this trope. “Oh no, I’m out of battery” or the comedic “My battery is at 1%, let’s take a selfie!”
None of those situations were funny to actually live through. They’re only funny in a TV show.
True of literally every sitcom.
A man gets a paper cut, that’s drama. They fall down an open manhole and die. That’s comedy.
- Mel Brooks
The Weather Man… Cobra Verde… Even though the latter could have hardly ever been called mainstream.
Could you imagine someone trying to make Hackers work in the modern day?
What exactly wouldn’t work with it? Heck, even the maguffin is a magic black box that lets you unencrypt everything, including bank transfer data.
I can’t think of much that won’t work.
Edit: just realized I was thinking sneakers, not hackers…
Isn’t that what Gurl with the Dragon Tattoo was?
never saw that one.
“RISC architecture is going to change everything”
Really any movie that involves legacy telephones.
- Phone Booth: The whole movie
- Scream: “The call is coming from inside the house”
- The Matrix: “Pick up the phone!”
- Etc, etc.
The Matrix could still sort of work as a period piece, since they explicitly said that the simulation being set in the late 90s was an intentional choice by the machines.
That’s a good point. It is a simulation as others mentioned. I was thinking more from the aspect that it’s completely unrelatable to gen-z and alpha as they’ve never used a traditional phone. It’s like an 8-track player for millennials.
Gen Z’s are well aware of traditional phones. Smartphones were not really that ubiquitous (up until 2010(ish)), and by that time Gen Alphas were already born.
The Matrix would still work because it’s supposed to be a reconstruction of the world of the 1990s from the future.
Any Will Smith movie.
Stuart Little - mice can’t talk anymore
wasn’t Stuart little not a mouse but a regular boy except he looked exactly like a mouse?
Milo and Oatis - because you can’t murder animals for movies anymore.
Roar- Hollywood is just to soft these days
I heard that the Milo and Otis allegations were an urban myth, but when I went to verify this I found that the actual truth is unknown (and possibly forever unknowable)
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/animals-abused-milo-and-otis/
You couldn’t make the super Mario live action movie in 2024, because Bob Hoskins is dead
John Leguizamo’s still alive! Luigi’s Mansion live action movie franchise, here we come!
I was kinda bummed that he didn’t play Luigi in the animated movie. I love Charlie but it should have been Leguizamo
You cannot make the Minecraft movie nowadays… you simply cannot, Warner Bros.
I remember how much people were insisting a Lego movie would surely suck
The Lego Movie was done correctly. The Minecraft movie looks to be a dumpster fire of horrible, rushed CGI.
The actual CGI looked fine, its just the art style and general vibe that was bad IMO
you could tell from watching the trailer that its probably going to be a ton of cringey stuff mostly aimed at 8 year olds
You couldn’t make Citizen Kane because flashbacks and other innovative filming techniques are now the norm.
Idiocracy
You would get sued by FOX ‘News’ for copying their daily programming.
You couldn’t make Titanic today because it wouldn’t be believable… Leonardo Decaprio dating a woman his own age? Preposterous!
