In modern cinema, remakes seem to have become a staple of each year’s slate of releases. Reimagining an existing movie with a new cast and a few creative tweaks has become standard practice, and while some fans dislike the idea, remakes have proven to be hugely successful for the most part. Some movies might seem impossible to remake, but this has occasionally been attempted by making changes to the original story, to varying degrees of success. Where some remakes are hailed as creative reimaginings of a beloved movie, others are widely despised for their inability to recapture the magic of their predecessors, sometimes even going as far as to damage their respective legacies.
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Shot-for-shot remakes are relatively rare, as remaking a movie is often considered an opportunity for a filmmaker to put a slightly different spin on the narrative. This may have become an accepted practice, but it isn’t always popular, leading to some remakes that never should have existed, according to fans. Putting a whole new ending on a remake is a gamble, and in some cases, it completely changes the whole story for the worse.
5) Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
1986’s Little Shop of Horrors is one of the few horror movie remakes considered better than the original. An adaptation of the musical based on the 1960 movie of the same name, the 1986 version features Rick Moranis as Seymour, with Steve Martin, Jim Belushi, John Candy, Bill Murray, and Christopher Guest also appearing. The impressive comedic talent of the remake’s cast helped it stand out, as did its revised version of the original ending.
The original movie featured a much darker climax than the remake. In the 1960 version, Seymour is devoured by Audrey II, who withers and dies before revealing the protagonist’s fate. In the remake, Seymour survives, as does Audrey II, who is poised for world domination due to the greed of a businessman. The ending of the remake doesn’t necessarily ruin the movie, but it does alter the subtext of the movie in a way that some would consider less satisfactory than the original.
4) Speak No Evil (2024)
2024’s Speak No Evil is far from an awful horror remake, as it earned critical praise and financial success. Its plot, which follows a family who visit with another family they met on vacation, only to find themselves in a murderous trap, is essentially the same as that of the 2022 Danish-Dutch movie it is based on. However, its ending is considerably different than the original, and it actually hurts the film’s staying power.
In the original film, the protagonist family is killed by their host, and the cycle of deception and betrayal begins again. The remake saw its heroes triumph over the murderous villains, breaking the cycle of violence and rescuing a child from their captors. The darker, more unsettling ending of the original is actually far better, though, as it leaves things on a haunting and terrifying note rather than a hopeful one, which doesn’t really gel with the horror tone of the movie.
3) Animal Farm (1999)
Most great dystopian movies lean into sci-fi tropes to put their point across, but the original master of the genre, George Orwell, delivered a perfectly dystopian tale chronicling the supposed dangers of communism. His novel Animal Farm was first adapted into an animated movie in 1954, which faithfully retold the story. A 1999 remake made use of animatronic animals, telling Orwell’s story again with a few key changes.
The biggest change in the 1999 movie is the ending. Instead of being violently overthrown by his subjects, Napoleon is abandoned by the movie’s protagonists, who escape the farm. They return years later, discovering that Napoleon had died as a result of his regime, and set about building a hopeful future for the farm. The more hopeful note that the remake ends on is not really in line with Orwell’s original story or its intent, and it essentially ruins the entire movie.
2) The Vanishing (1993)
1993’s The Vanishing is an American remake of the 1988 French-Dutch movie of the same name, bringing in Kiefer Sutherland and Jeff Bridges to sell its tense thriller premise. Both movies concern a man who is haunted by the sudden and unresolved disappearance of his girlfriend during a road trip, and resolves to find her kidnapper, entering a dangerous game of cat and mouse in the process. However, the two movies have very different endings, and the remake’s effectively ruins the story.
The original movie sees the protagonist suffering the same gruesome fate as his girlfriend, awakening buried alive. The remake goes a step further and has the protagonist saved by his new girlfriend before killing his captor. The original’s ending added a dark and twisted subtext about the dangers of revisiting trauma, while the remake offered a more positive but unrealistic outcome that undermined much of the movie’s story.
1) Planet of the Apes (2001)
1968’s Planet of the Apes served up one of the best sci-fi movie twists of all time, revealing in its final moments that the titular planet had been a far-future Earth all along. The iconic twist is one of the most well-known in pop culture, and so the Tim Burton-helmed 2001 remake, also titled Planet of the Apes, had a difficult task. Either it would have to attempt to recreate the powerful moment, or otherwise change it altogether.
Burton opted for the latter, leading to one of the most notoriously ridiculous movie endings of all time. The remake saw the movie’s protagonist return to his own time, only to find himself on an alternate Earth whose history had been rewritten by apes. Looking on in horror with the trademark expression of confusion that only Mark Wahlberg can muster, the movie ends with a shot of the Lincoln Memorial, with an ape version of Lincoln instead of a human. The remake took one of the best twist endings ever and replaced it with one of the worst, showing how even minor tweaks can thoroughly ruin a movie.
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