The weekend box office has been a pleasing one I have to say. The Expendables 2 butchered its meager competition to remain number one at the box office (Fixie bikes? They thought a movie about fixie bikes could go toe to toe with the Expendables 2?), and with meager competition ahead, is on track to more than recoup its budget, especially overseas. Dark Knight Rises became the year’s second billion dollar blockbuster, though it will not get close to The Avenger’s still growing treasure horde. To top it all off, the Total Recall remake was finally pulled from theaters, having bombed at the box office losing close to a hundred million dollars, making it one of the biggest flops of the year so far – which when you remember includes both John Carter and Battleship, should say something.

Some people would claim that there is no such thing as an original idea anymore. I tend to disagree, though I’ll admit, looking at Hollywood, it is easy to see why some people think that. In the last few years, it would seem that Hollywood has gone into overdrive when it comes to prequels, sequels, adaptations and remakes, with record numbers of all four coming out in recent years. This has been a topic of much consternation among filmgoers and movie buffs, and many people point to this trend of everything that is wrong with Hollywood today.

I am actually not one of those people. While somewhat questionable, I certainly understand Hollywood’s logic behind this trend – since 2000, almost every one of the top grossing films is a sequel, prequel, adaptation or remake, with only three original concepts among the top 25: Avatar, Finding Nemo and Inception, and in the case of Avatar, originality is very questionable. Hollywood is only following the money, and I can’t blame them for that – the movie industry, is after all, an industry.

What I do blame them for is the fact that so many of them are absolutely terrible, and nowhere is that truer than with remakes. Unlike sequels, prequels and adaptations, the remake itself boils down to a hellish combination of both greed and laziness, and the result of so many of them are utterly horrifying to watch, including the aforementioned Total Recall, Amazing Spiderman, and both of this years’ Snow White movies all coming out this year alone. Worse, the trend shows no signs of slowing, with planned remakes of The Crow, Akira, Highlander, and the third swing at Batman all in the books with countless others for the near future. No doubt few, if any will be good. At the very least, let’s hope none enter the company of infamous movies like the ones I have listed below, as I dredge through what I feel are the Top Ten Worst Remakes.

Before I begin, I feel a few things are worth mentioning about this list. The first is that I had two qualifiers when choosing the movies put here. The first is that the movie had to be an official remake, not a re-imagining, re-adaptation or even a rip-off – so while Avatar was both dreadful and essentially a sci-fi adaptation of Dances with Wolves, its only a shameless rip-off, not a remake. The second, is like always, that I have to have seen the movie in question, in this case, both versions of the movie – so while I’ve heard that the remakes of Pink Panther or Arthur are dreadful, I’ve only seen one or neither version of the film. The other thing I want to mention is I split each ranking in half, one half taking about the original, the other about the remake. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the Top Ten Worst Remakes of All Time!

10) Godzilla

The 1954 original, made by Japan’s Toho studios, follows a giant radioactive lizard monster as it reaps a path of destruction across Tokyo. Even in the glut of movies about radioactive monsters of the 1950s, Godzilla tore a path through all opposition in the process of becoming the most popular movie monster of all-time, and has been at the heart of the world’s largest movie franchise, currently spanning twenty-eight movies, James Bond being the nearest competitor at twenty-three. On top of that, Godzilla has become a global cultural landmark, one of Japan’s most famous icons, is at the heart of a pop culture trend that has inspired countless imitators, and while the quality of the following twenty-seven films depends on who you ask, the original is rightly hailed as a classic.

Needless to say, Hollywood tried to get their grubby little hands some of the pie, in the form of a 1998 remake of the original film, made by professional dream killer Roland Emmerich. Starting by changing Godzilla’s stomping ground from Tokyo to New York, the movie further ruined the King of the Monsters by turning him into a hermaphroditic iguana rendered by CGI so bad it made the guy-in-rubber-suit approach look high-tech. Not content to stop here, the film further downgrades itself with horrendous performances from a cast lead by Matthew Broderick, a plot and script so stupid it defies comprehension, and scenes that stolen from better films ranging from The Thing to Jurassic Park. The one competent part of the film was the special effects, which even for its time were mid-range. Though a moderate box office success, the movie was brutalized by both critics and Godzilla fans. Toho Studios, the creators of the original Godzilla movies, were so disgusted by the movie they not only refused to speak to Hollywood for over a decade, and made a point of having Godzilla brutally dismember a thinly-veiled version of the remake’s monster in Godzilla Final War.

Perhaps most notable of all is that many critics look back to this film as the exact moment when the Emmerich/Bay school of style over substance filmmaking became a viable approach in Hollywood. In other words, this movie is responsible for travesties from Day After Tomorrow to Transformers 3 to Battleship – in the end that makes this movie more of a destructive menace than Godzilla ever was.

9) The Invasion

It’s actually surprising how one pulp novel from the 1950s, The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, which follows a town as its inhabitants are replaced by emotionless alien clones, has played host to not one movie adaptation, but four, each with a differing take on both the novel and the prior films. The 1954 original is a classic of science fiction, and has since become iconic, especially the ending with one of the characters warning humanity of the invasion. The 1978 remake on the other hand, became a classic in its own right by being far darker, unsettling and disturbing than the original, including a far darker ending, and many critics, myself included, feel it’s better than the original. Then we come to the 1993 remake, presented nothing new and was middle of the road at best, and has for the most part been forgotten.

Which brings us to the remake of the remake of the adaptation, 2007’s Invasion. Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegal, whose sole major film prior to this was Downfall, and planned this movie to be his Hollywood debut – instead, the movie was such a convoluted mess, the studio’s hired the Wachowski brothers to both clean up the mess and shoot new scenes, and they managed to make it even messier and their grafted scenes are very obvious (word of advice Hollywood – if you want someone to make a movie less convoluted, the Wachowski’s aren’t the ones to do it). Further crippling the film is the script, which cut out most of the sci-fi and horror elements in favor of exposition, melodrama, and conspiracy thriller standbys, and the result is a shockingly dull and strangely preposterous plot that manages to have both gaping plot holes and idiotic plot developments, especially a tacked on happy ending that might as well have come from a different movie. Toss in both a political message about the Iraq War handled with all the skill and subtlety of a TSA agent and a dreadful performance from Nicole Kidman even more catatonic than the film itself. The result is a pedantic, complete mess of a would-be psychological thriller so dull that you’ll be more worried about yourself falling asleep than the film’s lead – not surprisingly the movie tanked, and is a bargain bin mainstay to this very day.

8) The Women

The 1939 original follows a group of Manhattan socialites as they interact and go about their lives, gossiping and scheming all the way, with focus given to one woman who seeks to get her husband out of the grip of his predatory mistress. Notable for both its attention to detail and biting wit, it provided a biting satire of high society and cattiness. The entirely female cast is made up of some of the greatest actresses of the era, a veritable who’s-who of 1930s Hollywood, and beings the wit, class and talent to match. It remains one of the finest films ever produced by old Hollywood, and for its era, unmatched in terms of wit and humor concerning its weighty subject matter. It was remade into a dismal musical in the 1950s, but that is not the remake that ranks with the worst.

The 2008 remake on the other hand, has turned the classic about female misbehavior into a rejected episode of Sex in the City that plays on some of the biggest chick flick clichés you can think of, and don’t think for a minute that they’re subtle. Watch the trailer and make a list – you have the cold, childless career lady, the housewife who keeps getting pregnant, the saucy ethnic stereotype, they all live in New York and work in either fashion or the media, and so on and so forth. About the only novel change is they combined the sassy black friend and the sassy gay friend, getting two tokens for the price of one. To make matters worse, for a supposedly feminist film, it’s remarkably sexist – every woman in the film is completely dependent on an off-screen man, ranging from the career lady being at the mercy of her male boss, baby lady keeps having kids out of hopes of having a son, and the main character who is dependent on her father for a job and her millionaire husband for her maid and mansion. The one woman who does seem to have a grip on her life is the perfume girl who her husband is sleeping with, whom the main cast degrade as ‘the spritzer bitch’ – because in the eyes of the women in this movie, the unforgiveable part of the affair is that he slept with the help.

Worst of all, the remake turned the original satire of catty women in high society into a movie that glorifies it, best personified in the changed opening credits: the 1939 film opens by dissolving each of the star’s faces into the wild animal they most represent; the 2008 remake introduces us to the characters with a close-up on their shoes. Top it off with a director who’d never made anything more than a forgettable 90s sitcom and a painfully blasé cast that includes a Meg Ryan filled to bursting with botox, and in every way, from gender roles to tone and subject matter, it feels more dated and backward than the seventy-year old original. The result was a witless and lifeless mess that was absolutely brutalized by critics.

7) Planet of the Apes

I’m honestly surprised how many people forget that the original Planet of the Apes was a franchise. This is especially maddening since all five movies are surprisingly good, and even form a coherent story arc that I’d say is drastically underrated. Of course, one major reason I think a lot of people don’t realize this is that the first film of the series is a classic in its own right, iconic for both Charlton Heston’s performance as marooned astronaut Charles Taylor, and for one of the most legendary twist endings of all-time. If the series itself is an underrated guilty pleasure, the movie itself is a cinematic milestone.

Given that, it’s actually surprising that a remake of the original film had been in the works since the early 1980s, having been names ranging from Oliver Stone, James Cameron, Michael Bay, and Peter Jackson briefly tied to the project before moving on because of various feuds with the producers. The movie finally moved from development hell into production once Tim Burton was tied to the project, but the problems only got worse from here. The initial production buget was halved from $200 million to $100 million, and due to studio insistence at keeping the July 2001 release date, resulted in everything about the production being rushed. Not surprisingly, the final product was terrible. Despite having a budget twenty times that of the original, many critics noted the film’s special effects often looked worse than the original, with the ape prosthetics and CGI both singled out. Making matters worse was that, despite having some talented actors on board, most spent the film in ape prosthetics muttering some of the worst dialog in recent memory. As for the actors playing he humors, it’s worth noting lead Mark Wahlberg was signed when he was the first actor who didn’t ask to see a script, and it shows – it largely killed Marky Mark’s reputation as an actor until The Departed. Toss in a convoluted story climaxing in one of the worst twist endings of all time, and it should make sense why Fox cancelled all plans for a franchise, choosing instead to reboot it again with 2011’s spectacular Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Another thing notable about the movie is that this may well have been the movie that snapped Tim Burton’s sanity – the quality of his movies has suffered since this movie and with the exception of Big Fish, every one of his movies has been the gothic-tinged remakes starring Helena Bonham Carter we’ve come to dread from him. Think about that – working on this movie caused Tim Burton to go ape. Watch it yourself and you might go bananas too.

6) The Karate Kid

Do I even need to explain the Karate Kid? The 1984 movie about a New Jersey kid moving to California and learning Karate from Mr. Miyagi so he can fight off bullies and get the girl has become so iconic, I’d bet almost anyone reading this has seen it at least five times. It’s one of the defining coming of age films, one of the best underdog movies, and many of its characters and scenes have since become as iconic as the movie itself. It’s also a movie of surprising depth for a coming of age drama – to give just one example, the inner turmoil of both villain John Kreese and Mr. Miyagi is reflected in their martial arts styles – Kreese, a member of the special forces and Vietnam Veteran, teaches a brutal style that sneers at mercy and restraint, while Miyagi, a Medal of Honor winner during WWII, whose wife and child died in an internment camp while he was in Europe, looks at martial arts as a way to find balance and inner peace as well as defense, and the loss of his family makes the growing father-son bond between him and Daniel all the more plausible in the movie – there is a reason Pat Morita got an Academy Award nomination for his performance. The theme song ‘You’re the Best’ by Joe Esposito has, along with the likes of ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and ‘Never Surrender’, become one of the best fight/montage songs of all time. The movie itself is one of the reasons why almost every city in the USA has a ‘karate’ dojo, and while the movie spawned a string of sequels of passable to terrible, the original remains and always will be a timeless classic and a cultural masterpiece.

Compare that to the 2010 remake, one of many attempts by Will Smith to buy his kids a career, producing the movie as a star vehicle for his son Jaden. Tailoring the entire film around a ten year old crippled the film to start with, seeing as you can’t have a coming of age film with a cast that hasn’t even left grade school yet. Many of the original plot elements, while kept, are also rendered either laughable or moot, especially both the bullies and the romance sub plot, giving the movie both ineffective villains and a bunch of really awkward/creepy scenes with Jaden Smith trying to woo a Chinese girl. It also doesn’t help Jaden Smith, the centerpiece of the movie, gives a performance that makes Jake Lloyd look like Harrison Ford. Jackie Chan gives a standard issue mentors performance that just screams ‘I needed a paycheck’, with none of the character development of Mr. Miyagi leaving Chan clearly in Morita’s shadow. Swapping California for China was needless, especially the large number of panoramic shots of the country used to fill screen time. Perhaps most crucially, despite being called Karate Kid, there is no Karate in the movie, with what little martial arts are in the movie being watered down Wing Chun kung-fu. Top it all off with a Justin Bieber single used as the fight song, and the deconstruction of the original is complete. The final product is a slow, boring film that never evolves from being just a sad attempt to make Jaden Smith a movie star, one that deconstructs a cinematic classic in the process.

Though a smash success at the box office, especially in China, it got lukewarm reviews from critics, and while the original got nominated for Academy Awards, the remake settled for Kids Choice Awards and Raspberries. I think I said it best when looking back at 2010 movies, I said the film has no karate, too many kids, and absolutely no fighting spirit. What bothers me the most about the remake is I fear that it may benefit from the same thing the Star Wars prequels have, ie, that an entire rising generation that grew up knowing this as The Karate Kid rather than the classic original. If they’re stupid enough to swap Ralph Macchio and Joe Esposito for Jaden Smith and Justin Bieber, I fear for the future.

5) Swept Away

This entry is most notable for being perhaps the sole movie on this list where the original isn’t classic or popular, but given just how bad it the remake is, it’s a perennial pick for any list of worst remakes, and for good reason.

The 1974 original is something of a cult classic, and for good reason. Though on the surface, it’s your typical stuck on an island/rich girl-poor man romance, it manages to both separate and elevate itself above the pack with its social and political commentary, as well as the fact both characters are scoundrels, and that their romance is never made to be more than lust, with the film ending with them going back to the way things were before. Is it a must-see or a classic? Probably not. Smarter than your usual chick flick? Undoubtedly.

At the very least, it is leaps and bounds better than the 2002 remake, though admittedly, that really doesn’t say much. In what should be a textbook case of why directors should be barred from working with their wives, the movie was made by Guy Ritchie as a star vehicle for then-wife Madonna, likely because no one else in Hollywood would still hire her. Guy Ritchie, famed for making smart, hyper violent action movies with memorable characters, is not surprisingly very out of his element here, in both directing the movie and writing the script, and both suffer for it. Madonna, who was a terrible actress to start with, gives a career low on par with a performance on par with middle school stage actor, from her dreadfully fake British accent to her shrill screeching of her dialog making her come across as ugly, snobbish and rotten, though that might just be Ritchie getting his revenge for her forcing him to make this. Of course, seeing as the movie is basically Madonna shagging an Italian on a beach somewhere for two hours, it makes the movie literally unwatchable.

In the end, the movie was, as you’d expect, a total shipwreck, both tanking at the box office and remaining to this day one of the worst reviewed films of all time. On the upside, it both killed Madonna’s acting career and left Guy Ritchie to go back to making action movies, so it has that in its favor.

4) The Wicker Man

The original 1973 film follows a Scottish police detective who goes to an isolated community in the Herbrides to investigate the case a missing child. A devout Christian, he is horrified to find out the island practices Celtic paganism, and the islanders refuse to co-operate with him as he is an outsider. Deducing the girl may soon be sacrificed to restore the failing crops, he rushes to save her in what is one of the most chilling and memorable climaxes ever filmed. The resulting tale is smart, scary and from start to finish keeps you interested. The acting is another surprising highpoint, especially Christopher Lee, whose performance as Lord Summerisle is a career highlight. As a whole, it remains a strong film today, and is hailed as both one of the most intellectual horror films ever made and one of the greatest creations of British cinema.

The 2006 remake on the other hand, is infamous for good reason. The religious contrast and conflict which was in many ways the core of the original has been largely taken out, replaced with nothing, making many of the plot points and motivations questionable. The infertile orchards and Celtic pagans are swapped for bees and toga-clad women, and whereas the original was rife with tension and terror, the remake is largely flaccid and dull in comparison, especially the climax. What truly dooms the film, while providing the only watchable part of the movie at the same time, is Nicholas Cage. He gives what may well be the worst performance of his career, one made up largely of aimless wandering, screaming his dialog, punching women, punching women while wearing a bear suit, and screaming comically as he gets killed by bees. Not surprisingly, the film bombed, and Cage’s career still has yet to recover.

About the one good thing to say about the movie is it’s one of the most unintentionally hilarious movies of the last twenty years – and when the only way your brain can justify this movie is by tacking up what was supposed to be a serious drama as a comedy ala Battlefield Earth or The Room, you should have an idea how awful this movie is.

3) The Stepford Wives

Based on an Ira Levin novel, the original 1975 Stepford Wives was a sci-fi chiller with heavy elements of both horror and satire. Following a feminist named Johanna Eberhart, who after moving to the town of Stepford with her husband and children, is disgusted by the fact that the wives of the town are all stereotypical housewives, taking pleasure from cooking and cleaning and seemingly possessing no desire but making their husbands happy. Her disgust turns into fear as she finds out each of them used to be feminists themselves, and stumbles upon the reason why: the local Stanford Men’s Association has been replacing their wives with docile robot clones. Sadly, she finds that out when she discovers her own replacement, and the final shots of the movie are of Johanna at the grocers in a sundress, docile and robotic like all the rest. From start to finish it was suspenseful and chilling, and in ways most films don’t even think of – for example, save for the climax, the entire movie takes place during bright sunny days, yet it enhances the eeriness of the film. Toss in the smartly handled satire that skewers feminism and chauvinism at the same time, as well as taking shots at the idealized 1950s, and the result is an underappreciated classic.

This brings us to the 2004 remake, directed by Frank Oz. Infamous in its time for both its production problems and on-set fighting between nearly all parties involved, the drama behind the scenes would prove far livelier than anything in the movie itself. The core of the film’s issues come from the simple fact that it never really decides on the tone the movie was aiming for, whether it be satire or comedy, and the result just plays out like a really boring farce. Any attempts at suspense fail, usually because they gave away much of the plot toward the start of he film – you find out the women are robots fairly early on, as opposed to it being the big end reveal for the original. In addition, the twist ending, which has the women turn out not be robots, but only controlled by microchips, and has Johanna turn them off once the men of the town think she’s been assimilated, forcing both a happy ending with the men being forced into servitude as revenge. On top of both being executed in the worst way possible and further damaging the movie’s attempts at suspense, it tears what’s left of the plot to pieces by introducing enormous plot holes, such as how a microchip makes a woman immune to fire, give off electrical sparks, or dispense money from thier mouth – and that’s not even touching on how Johanna resisted the microchip, or why the men assumed she had one if she didn’t. Despite a truly star studded cast, including the second appearance of both Matthew Broderick and Nicole Kidman on this list, nearly the entire cast goes through the movie like they’ve been lobotomized, and all involved give a career worst. About the one positive to be had are the visual effects, and even that backfires – to give just one example, in the original, the women were very plain looking, while here, they are A-list celebrities covered in expensive dresses and glorifying the sort of fashion obsessed divas the original satirized. The end product of this train wreck was a remake that traded soul, scares and satire for shiny, shallow effects and pretty faces – in other words, the remake made a Stepford Wife out of The Stepford Wives.

That irony was not lost on moviegoers or critics. Whereas the original struck a cultural nerve and is appreciated even today, the remake was brutalized by critics, lost tens of millions at the box office, and all parties involved in the film regret their very participation, let alone the final product.

2) Psycho

Once again, we have a movie that the original needs no introduction. One of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous creations, 1960’s Psychoand the tale of Norman Bates and his mother, along with its many famous twists along the way, has become so iconic from imagery alone, I bet a number of you who haven’t seen it can recite the movie just by guessing based off references. In addition to starting the slasher subgenre, the film gave cinema one of its most famous villains and one of its most famous scores – to say nothing of changing how people look at hotel showers forever.

Which brings us to Gus van Sant 1998’s remake, which aside from colorization and the addition of a number of needless dream sequences, is actually a shot-for-shot remake of the original. You might be asking yourself how a short for short remake can be that bad – it’s needless for sure, but what could have changed between 1960 and 1998? For starters, a competent director who understands the arts of suspense and filmmaking – the 1960 film is still a thriller that will keep you at the edge of your seat, while the remake is flaccid and lifeless in comparison. Just as lifeless is the cast, who almost universally put next to no effort into their performances – just compare the shower scenes between the two movies – whereas Janet Leigh’s scream has become iconic for abject terror, Anne Heche in the remake seems to be more bored or inconvienienced by being murdered than scared – the only terrifying thing in the movie is Vince Vaughn in drag. That boredom is in the end what dooms this film – it’s painfully dull. The end product is the poster child for one of the worst sorts of remakes – the pointless remake so bad it insults the source material.

And what is the worst remake of all time?

1) The Day the Earth Stood Still

If you haven’t seen the 1951 original, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. This one movie, about an alien diplomat Klaatu and his robot Gort coming to Earth to deliver a warning to all mankind, is not only the movie that gave birth to science fiction as a film genre, but remains one of, if not the greatest sci-fi film ever made. There is so much about the movie that has become iconic, from the score to the dialog to one of the best political allegories ever made in cinema, that this movie is not just a classic, but an undisputed masterpiece.