You’d be angry too if you were closed up in a small space with Nicholas Cage.
-Tom
Would never have worked, Cushing would have vaulted over the wicker man, grabbed a stake from nothing and just dispatched Lee.
Come on, this was a man bitten by a vampire and just shrugged it off with a branding and some holy water, do you really think a group of pagans that wear funny dresses would have even fazed him?
On a serious note though, Cushing would have been too hard to play the innocent dupe, and I don’t think he would have been at all believable.
By the way, Enduro Man, the choose your own adventure ending actually happened in a William Castle film called Mr. Sardonicus, viewers were asked to vote whether or not he survived. My grandfather voted for his death! Of course, it didn’t really matter what you voted for.
Despite my professed disinterest, it’s pretty much a done deal that I’ll end up watching this remake, too. Thanks a bunch.
Go for the legbreaking, stay for the burning.
It seems that whenever someone tries to democratize a story, the dependable result is dead heroes. Just ask Jason Todd! I’ve also read about experiments in interactive movies, where the audience could vote for an ending via pushbuttons on their armrests. Yep, the good guy always got it in the end.
I suppose it is the only chance we get to see it happen.
However, if it is Nicholas Cage, I think they probably weren’t harsh enough and the best interactive part of that would have been if the audience could take turns breaking his legs.
Casting Cushing as the lead would have made it a very different movie – I simply cannot imagine Peter Cushing disguising himself as a jester – but it could have worked.
‘Hard’ is a good word for Cushing. Instead of pitting pagans against Woodward’s yeomanlike Church of England civil servant, they would have gone up against a harshly Puritanical police commander.
Yeah, those goofy pagans would have had their work cut out for them.
-TomThis reminds me–but then again, nearly every mention of Nick Cage reminds me–that every Nick Cage role would be better if he simply reprised his role as H.I. from Raising Arizona. Plus, that way they could have broken his legs by having the Biker of the Apocalypse drive over them.
I love the original – Christopher Lee’s performance is so fantastic. And I like Labute’s movies…but I just couldn’t drag myself into seeing the remake in the theatre. I just couldn’t imagine anything good coming out of remaking that movie, especially with that cast, and change in focus, stripping out the sexuality and religious tension and replacing it with Labute’s fetish for evil women (getting punched in the face by a guy in a bear costume).
Cheers Eduardo!
I watched the original Wicker Man last night, on VHS, on a lil’ UHF-dial television.
My cousin suggested we watch it, saying it’s one of his favourite movies, and that he and his friends actually sing along with the movie. And in fact, if it wasn’t for the insane soundtrack, I would have hated it. I totally didn’t get that the copper and the bartender/landlord’s daughter had sex through the wall - I got that she was suppsed be to some sort of sex goddess, and that she was trying to tempt him, but I thought he help strong by not leaving the room.
The ending was fantastic though: The Wicker Man topples over, the camera pans away, and folky-upbeat “Corn Riggs” starts up.
I really want to see the remake now to see how different it is.
I don’t understand how films like this get made again. The original couldn’t have done big box office – I remember seeing it when it was first out at an art house theatre. Why remake a movie that isn’t really familiar to people and doesn’t qualify as a beloved film? Why not make something new? There must be thousands of good scripts floating around in Hollywood.
And then, if you insist on remaking something like Wicker Man, why pick a movie you don’t understand? If you’re going to miss the target completely, why not just get Sylvester Stallone to star in it and have him punch out the Wicker Man? Ancient boxer takes on ancient pagan cult – fight!
I also wanted to add that in WoW they have a Halloween celebration that includes burning a giant wicker man. Who needs movies when you have World of Warcraft! I think Christopher Lee plays WoW as a character named CountDooky.
You get the people who have never heard of the original, the people who have heard of it, but have no interest in pulling out a VCR or trying to track down a DVD copy, the people that have no interest in an old, British movie, and the people who saw it in 1978 or '79, and wouldn’t mind seeing a potentially good remake.
It’s win-win-win-win for the studios!
And then you kill any kind of buzz it might have had by casting Nicholas Cage in it. Brilliant!
Mark, as tromik noted, it’s just an attempt to get a head start with the marketing by releasing something with a familiar name. I’m sure there was some sort of cost analysis where someone in development figured, ‘We can do an arty horror film from an original script for X dollars and make Y dollars, or we can do an arty horror re-make of Wicker Man for A dollars and make B dollars’. If B > Y, The Wicker Man gets made!
By the way, if you watch the trailer, you can see they’re trying to market it as a conventional horror film. That was their hope to drag in hapless teens who wouldn’t know a Wicker Man from a Raggedy Man.
Also, RedTide, Nicholas Cage came attached to the Wicker Man remake. He was one of the producers, and according to the director’s commentary, Cage’s production company approached LaBute with the project. I don’t imagine LaBute could have said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it, but can we lost that Cage goofball and get a better lead actor?’
-Tom
Maybe he was quite pleased, ‘what, you mean I get to make the film, and horribly torture Nicholas Cage? Boys, I’m in.’
And just to echo everyone else, The Wicker Man has a good cult following but is famous for how difficult it is to to find any definitive cut or version. A remake eliminates that worry and gives people a chance to see it who wouldn’t get a chance to see the original.
Or would make the definitive cut that much more lucrative!
Actually you’re right. The guy was engaged, not married like Tom said, and he was saving himself for marriage. At the end they say one of the reasons he is the sacrifice is because he’s a virgin. So if he had given in to temptation and screwed the girl, he may have lived.
Mega-bump, yeah, but I just saw the remake. So awful. And so many female character actors who must hire through Bitches, Inc.