Stop with the Remakes

Rating: 5/10 (19 February 2005)

It is so incredibly annoying that Hollywood finds it necessary to constantly remake its own work because it is a rule with few exceptions that the original is a better movie, in fact remakes are usually terrible.
In the case of Pearl Harbor it is even worse as the movie is a remake of not one, not even two, but three other movies with bits of several others thrown in as well. To start with Love stories with the backdrop of war are a Hollywood staple and somewhat of a cliché. A guy falling in love with his best friends girl when the friend 'dies' is also a movie cliché. The first movie they have 'remade' is From Here to Eternity, one of the best films of the war-romance genre and this love story is nowhere near as well made or acted as its more famous predecessor. The second film they tried to remake was Tora, Tora, Tora an excellent movie about the planning and execution of the attack. The third film is Thirty Seconds over Tokyo about the Doolittle raids, which features everything from two friends, to one of the friends dying in China and the other returning home to his pregnant wife. Not only is it a pitiful attempt at remake three excellent films but some of the scenes, especially the FDR scenes are totally pointless(Don't get me wrong I like Jon Voight but he was poorly used in this movie).
Some of the special effects are neat but that is about it, why can't Hollywood do more original stuff.