Why Americanized, English-Language Remakes Bring So Much Baggage
By Adesola Thomas | March 2, 2021 | 12:10pm
Titanic, an Indian
Groundhog Day. Yup, there is a version of Bill Murray’s classic 1993 comedy
Groundhog Day set in Italy, a country in which Groundhog Day is not even a holiday. Unfortunately it is not 90 minutes of Fellini smoking cigarettes and listening to Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” on repeat.
America also has a habit of adapting films from other countries.
The Magnificent Seven from Akira Kurosawa’s
Seven Samurai;
The Departed from Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s
Infernal Affairs. While the creatives behind these aforementioned films attempt to honor the originals while still making them their own, it is always important to question the motivation behind adapting international films, especially from non-white countries, for an American audience. Before the digital age, there was a better case to be made that remakes like these were ins