4mo ago

What other movies wouldn't work today?

381 comments

You couldn't make Blazing Saddles these days. They'd take one look at the script and go ::: spoiler spoiler "We can't make this, this is Blazing Saddles, they made it 50 years ago. Do you want Mel Brooks to sue us?" :::
- Funny story Mel Brooks actually did an animated version of Blazing Saddles called The Legend of Hank to prove that he absolutely could make it today.
  It's basically the same concept but with samurai instead of cowboys.
  "Ain't no business like shogun business."
  
  Huh. TIL.
  Though the actual argument for why you couldn't make Blazing Saddles now is the the entire genre it's lampooning is dead.
  The humor is pretty much still fine and flies, other than Mel playing a Native American, but even that is still kinda-maybe-sorta-okayish-maybe? since Mel's character isn't the butt of the joke, but other than that brief scene I can't recall anything that watching now makes me cringe.
  
  I feel that people who think Blazing Saddles is too risque to get made today are the butt of the jokes they thought were funny.
  As a side note: I thought I liked Westerns because I loved Blazing Saddles. Then I watched a few Westerns during the pandemic and now I realize I just like Blazing Saddles. lol
- Love watching this movie on network TV.
  They leave in all the N-words and censor the farts.
  
  well no one wants to hear such an abbhorant sound coming from their television now would they?
- I am looking forward to whatever he comes out with in Space Balls 2 though. That's going to be fun. And Rick Moranis will be back!
- I thought they would go:

I wanna see a modern Zombie movie with how people would actually react to news of a zombie outbreak given how people behaved during the pandemic
- Half the population claims it's all a hoax and lets zombies bite them because anything else is a violation of their freedoms
  Large swaths of gun owners take to the streets, and half of them die quickly because they put more money into the number of guns they had or making them tacticool instead of putting rounds through them or sighting them in.
  It gets overly politicized.
  The literal collapse of civilization, yet some corners of the government and billionaires are still trying to milk out the last drop of money
  
  Don't look up was basically this but a meteor instead of zombies. It was honestly kind of a depressing movie lol
  
  Shaun of the Dead kind of did it.
  
  Gun owners patrol the streets shooting at the cdc
  
  I actually think it would be good uniting force for a divided country:
  The "it's a hoax" portion of the population will simply become zombies
  The "we love guns" portion of the population can now take their life frustrations out on the zombies
  The "we need to fix this world" portion of the population will learn to fight too and provide vital aid and supplies to the (likely growing) "we love guns" group
  The "we need run away from this madness" portion of the population will just hunker down and play on their smartphones
  Either way, everyone kind of wins
  
  The game series Dead Rising does the last bullet point with Zombrex, the 24 hour zombie prevention drug, which they need zombie outbreaks to make the drug so the pharmaceutical company starts causing them.
  
  You forgot the activists protesting for zombie’s rights to eat our brains
- Zombies ain't rea....OH GOD ITS EATING MY FACE...still don't believe it, he's just on drugs.
  
  Krokodil!
- 28 Days Later had a dinnertable conversation that was exsctly like how people were talking during covid.
  
  Isn't that the "... but then it wasn't in news reports anymore; it was in our back yards, and coming in the windows..." monologue? Excellent scene.
- Get bitten on purpose to prove its a hoax and own the libs
  
  I'm 100% that there would be some esoteric cult microdosing zombie blood to build resistance
- Avenue 5 has a pretty funny scene where a series of skeptical conspiracy theorist types are ignoring a very specific warning, claiming that the people they see dying before their very eyes are an illusion some kind of special effects and each follows to their own death.
  
  That scene scared the shit out of me more than any horror movie ever could.
- Feed, by Mira Grant, is fun because it takes place years after a zombie uprising, but in a world where George Romero movies existed, so everyone knew what to do. It was a catastrophe, but not an apocalypse.
- In this version, all the zombies are in line for toilet paper outside the grocery store.
  In the sequel, you combine it with The Mummy, where they use the mummy for toilet paper.
- As written and performed by Simon Pegg.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn8dMQJlDZE
- "Don't look up" is essentially the simulation of a modern apocalypse scenario
- The movie follows a minimum wage delivery driver in his armored car plowing through hordes of zombies to deliver pizza to the safe houses where people are hiding out.
  Edit: When he delivers the pizza, the survivors complain it is cold and don't tip. He backs his truck through their security fence, letting the zombies in and drives off to the next delivery.
- I was gonna say Independence Day, for this reason. “Fake news, probably just CHINA! Sad!”
- "No, I am not going with you to a concert in the park! There's a zombie horde out there! We'll get bitten!"
  "Hey, even the WHO says it's not an apocalypse anymore. The zombies are endemic now. You can't live your life in fear."
  "Your mom was eaten by zombies literally last week."
  "Yeah but she had diabetes. There's always gonna be people with preexisting conditions who are gonna be more vulnerable."
  "At least wear your denim jacket to make it harder for them to bite you!"
  "There was a study in the Lancet that said heavy clothes don't work."
  "You know full well that what they found was that requiring heavy clothes didn't work because people just got bitten at the times when they weren't wearing them."
  "The author himself said jackets don't work."
  "He said that after he was bitten and just before demanding our brains!"
  "Okay, sheeple. Oh, hey Mom. We're just heading out to the concert."
  "Wait, your mom is here? I thought she was..."
  "BRAAAAIINSSS..."
  "You LET HER BACK IN after she died and came back as a zombie!?"
  "Dude, she's not infectious anymore. She caught it like four days ago."
  "That is NOT how this works! What... DON'T HUG HER!"
  "Bye Mom, love you...ow!"
  "She just bit you, didn't she."
  "Nah, I'm fine. Let's go to the concert."
- There's a series called The Bite, it was filmed during earlier quarantine times of the ongoing pandemic and features a bunch of cast from The Good Fight. Is good.
- Zombie deniers being eaten as they continue to insist it's a liberal hoax.
  Unrelated but I was thinking if it was a zombie outbreak. And I'm stuck in a retirement home. Am I safe? They can't bite me, they don't have teeth

You couldn't make Deadpool & Wolverine today because it just came out and people would not be ready for a reboot this early.
- That's the kind of shit i would do when i were a billionaire.
  
  They announced the Moana live action remake before they announced Moana 2.
  
  Wait... When you were a billionaire?
- It’s already a reboot.

You couldn't make Gone With the Wind today because everyone in it has died

Any movie where 1 cell phone would resolve the situation. A lot of serial camper killers would get shut down pretty fast.
- Just put the camp outside of cell service. Plenty of camping in the mountains outside of cell service.
  Still fully believable
  
  The newer phones have satellite SOS features.
- Logical solutions to problems don't happen in many kinds of horror movies. Even the tiniest bit of common sense applied would destroy so many, cell phones or no.
  
  Our group of teenagers should definitely split up to search for the monster and/or serial killer!
  
  That’s why I love Cabin in the woods. They make it a creepy movie, but also make fun of all the common horror tropes by having the haunted grounds be a very orchestrated event.
  “Oh no my cell phone doesn’t work” It’s because the creepy org turned on a cell phone jammer
  “Why don’t they just leave?” The creepy org blows up a shit load of tnt to make the tunnel collapse
  
  It would be kinda funny for someone to make something that starts as a horror movie but then everyone acts in a sensible manner without contrived reasons for their efforts failing, resulting in the whole dangerous situation falling apart over the course of the plot until its more a sort of parody of horror movies than a proper example.
- There are also a swath of movies that couldn't be made because of the ubiquity of surveillance cameras.
  Who did it!?! _{Checks camera}
  
  Jesus Christ it's Jason Bourne
- Commando. Arnold spends a good chunk of the movie stopping people from getting to a pay phone to let the bad guy know he escaped their custody
- Not just cellphones but every house now is equipped with a camera on the doorbell and possibly several more throughout the house. Back in the day serial killers basically just had to not be around when the police showed up and had a pretty good chance of just getting away
  
  scribbling notes
  don't be there when police arrive
  also steal the cameras and tech
- Introduce a character that's a teacher so sick of cellphones in their class they bought a jammer off the internet. Make that character the serial killer's first victim.

You couldn't make half of Seinfeld because with cell phone all the funny situations don't occur.
- None of those situations were funny to actually live through. They're only funny in a TV show.
  
  True of literally every sitcom.
  
  “Comedy is tragedy plus time”. I like to say it’s comedy plus distance.
  
  A man gets a paper cut, that's drama. They fall down an open manhole and die. That's comedy.
  Mel Brooks
- 24 (TV series) is like this if I remember well. The daughter would have had a cellphone now.
- Eh, series today still use this trope. "Oh no, I'm out of battery" or the comedic "My battery is at 1%, let's take a selfie!"
- That's why so many tv shows are now written as period pieces or based in the 80s and 90s.
- That scene where he calls the phone in his stolen car would still be funny

You couldn't make Back to the Future II today because a positive outlook on the future is no longer believable even for a family film.
- You couldnt make back to the future today because their future is already in our past, their future (2015) is already 9 years ago now
  
  I can't tell if the thread has some sort of running gag or if you're actually confused by the concept.
  You don't have to make the future 2015. You don't have to make the past 1955. You're making the film, today, not when it was actually made, thats the entire point of the prompt.
- You just have to switch the first and second future, the default future is the Biff timeline, then you have to change the future to make the hoverboard timeline.
  
  That would actually be so cool but I can already see the scathing online criticisms:
  "New WOKE BTTF2 ruins a family movie with vulgar dystopian future, not an ounce of original thinking in the writer's room. Entire second act of film missing as plot is resolved in only 1 trip."
  Might be better to just stick to original stories and concepts, tbh.

You couldn't make Blazing Saddles today because Westerns aren't nearly as popular as they once were, and so it'll be harder for jokes to land
- Also Gene Wilder hasn't done anything for 8 years
  
  Dude...too soon.
- Mel Brooks did an animated movie called the Legend of Hank that was more or less a kid friendly remake of Blazing Saddled to prove he could make it today.
  
  ...how kid friendly? Haven't been able to introduce my kids to his stuff yet!
- What in the wide, wide world of sports is that supposed to mean?
- Period Westerns aren't much popular. However:
  Wind River
  Hell or High Water (<- do NOT sleep on this one!)
  No Country for Old Men
  Sicario
  ...and so on.
  
  Westworld

Idiocracy
You would get sued by FOX 'News' for copying their daily programming.
- Ah, because of the pro eugenics position in the movie? I dunno, I feel like they'd like for there to be more "past good, present degeneracy" type narratives around.
  
  Ah, because of the pro eugenics position in the movie?
  uh? I always understood the justification of getting to Idiocracy was that only dumb people kept on having kids, the issue was not that they were genetically deficient, but that they couldn't care less about education, ethics, societal improvement, etc
  
  Really could pick any 'news' outlet. I just feel like they're the ones most likely to be overly dramatic and most likely to sue.
- Out of all the answers where it looks like people decided to try to make fun of old movies this one is the original answer that we are living this reality.
  
  So remake it with a plot-twist: the man in the stasis pod just wakes up the next day but thinks he's in the distant future. To set this up, maybe the pod is delivered to a different city or is mistakenly sent to a cable network studio.

They couldn’t make Mrs Doubtfire in this day & age - no one would believe Pierce Brosnan and Sally Field make enough money to afford a live-in nanny.
Also, they couldn’t make Mrs. Doubtfire 2. Full stop. There will never be a sequel to that magnificent gem.
- I thought Pierce Brosnan's character was some sort of rich guy. I forget what Sally Field did.
  
  Yeah, he is a rich dude, whole thing in the script about his luxury car. However Sally and Robin Williams? Absolutely could not afford that house in SF today.
- Today on house hunters international...
- Also Robin Williams is dead.
- And then there's the whole drag thing.
  
  It'd be spotted immediately, like Tobias as Mr. Fingerbottom.

You couldn't make Blazing Saddles today, most of the cast is dead.
- That's fine, a mega-corporation can just buy their AI rights from their estates
  
  If AI ever learns to shout like Gene Wilder, the species is doomed.
  
  Hold it hold it.. What the hell is that shit?!

You wouldn't make "Back To The Future" now because it wouldn't be the future...
- BTTF remake, traveling between 2025, 1995, and 2055, with new problems for those particular times? Marty introduces dubstep to the grunge crowd? Accidentally prevents the spread of the Internet?
  
  Tubes? Where we’re going, we won’t need a series of them.
  
  And somehow when he comes back to the present Trump was elected President. What did he do!?
- The first movie doesn't even go to the future, and they say 'back to the future' to mean returning to 1985.
- Forward to the past?

You couldn't make Titanic today because it wouldn't be believable... Leonardo Decaprio dating a woman his own age? Preposterous!
- Perhaps if Rose was played by Kate Winslet's daughter
  
  She's like 25, so there's not much time I suppose.

Most films that require some degree of miscommunication couldn't work because cellphones are ubiquitous.
Additionally a lot of old sci-fi films based on a hypothesis that later turned out to be pseudoscience are here as well.
- Modern media just handwaves this easily with phones being broken or low battery whatever. It still works
  
  Even makes it a tiny bit funnier (if it's a comedic miscommunication, not if it's "someone gets killed" miscommunication)
  
  It's going to get harder and harder to do that as cellphones get better though.
  iPhones already have satellite SOS feature which works worldwide, and are starting to roll out satellite texting for non-emergency use. There are a few Android models that are slated to do the same, and it's only a matter of time before most phones can do this.
  There are plenty of phones that are waterproof (or rated for submersion in 5 meters of water for 30 minutes or whatever) and that's only going to become more common too.
  My phone lasts for about 2 days on a charge with how much I use it, and I charge it every night. That's only going to get better with better battery technologies (the trend of phones getting thinner in response to increased battery capacity has actually somewhat reversed in recent years).
  So, in a classic horror movie scenario with 5 or so people they'd need a reason why every single person is out of charge or has their phone broken. Even if the protagonists can't get themselves out of the situation they're in using their phones (because they're broken or whatever) you still need to answer how they got into that situation in the first place if they have offline maps and GPS navigation. That's not as big of a problem but it eliminates "they got lost" as a premise for why they're in some spooky woods or wherever.
  It seems to me that you'd either need to set the story in an abandoned mine or make the antagonist explicitly supernatural.
- Even in movies before mobile phones, more often. Than not, they could resolve any problem by just telling the other people something, but they don't because the movie would be over.
  Also, ever since covid, a lot of movies became way more believable. Man if only the people knew that a pandemic was coming. If only we knew how dangerous it was, if people in other countries could've been warned from other countries where it's already ravaging
- Didn't stop any of the wacky bs in iRobot from happening. Cellphones do cure a lot of what ails older pics, but they can be waved away by things like 'oopsies! Forgot to charge it.' or 'the club is so loud I didn't hear the ringer.' and my personal favorite 'forgot to take it off dnd'.
- It seems you're oblivious about drunks and addicts whom always talk shit on any kind of communication doesn't matter the medium.

You couldn't make Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone now because you're not Warner Brothers and don't own the copyright.

Daybreakers.
First, it's a mid-budget movie, and Hollywood doesn't make much of those nowadays.
Secondly, it commits to a wild premise: vampires become the dominant life form in the world. It's fun, but the actors play it straight. If the tried to do that now, it'd be full of quips and winking at the audience rather than committing to the bit.
- I love this movie so much. Thoughtful and entertaining. Also good critique on society, capitalism, and the consequences of things like overfishing.
  
  I just found it by chance a couple years ago, and its entered regular Halloween rotation. It's also a very silly movie at times, but it has something to say. If it weren't played straight, it would undercut the whole thing.
  I can't help but imagine that, if they tried to make it today, it'd just be noted to death by the studio. "Say less, quip more." Then you'd get a ho-hum vampire action-comedy with a whiff that it was something better in a previous draft... like Renfield.
- "Have you tried a shwarma? Let's get a shwarma you dinklemuffin."
  rapturous applause, 5 star reviews
  
  I do think the problem is rooted in Joss Whedon, or rather, movie studios looking at Avengers and thinking, "This, all the time." People got tired of Joss Whedon himself (among other problems with him), much less more corporate, soulless imitations.

I mean, you could totally make Home Alone II today as long as you set it pre-9/11, so I take this to mean "these movies that were set in the 'present day' could not be redone and set in the 'present day' of 2024."
You couldn't make Back to the Future because 21st century streets are no place for minors on skateboards.
You couldn't make American Beauty for a LOT of reasons (including prevalence of digital video, marijuana legalization, increased public awareness/concern about pedophilia, etc)
You couldn't make Clueless because shopping malls are dead (or at least nowhere near as cool as they used to be)
You couldn't make Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream because heroin and cocaine are quaint drugs by 2020s standards
You couldn't make Paris is Burning because Harlem gentrified big time (I know this is a documentary but still)
You couldn't make The Matrix because no one would believe human batteries would be happy and content living in a simulation of 2024 (also no telephone booths)
I almost said The Truman Show because we basically live in that world already but fuck it, I wanna see a 2024 version where the producers have to keep desperately introducing crazier plot developments to try and compete for a TikTok-addicted audience unamused by "just another reality TV show", and constant set issues like cast members getting fired right and left for sneaking smartphones onto set.
- I mean, you could totally make Home Alone II today as long as you set it pre-9/11
  Yeah, it's like saying "you couldn't make Saving Private Ryan, because Europe is no longer at war".
  
  Europe is currently at war.
  
  I think you're absolutely correct, but I think the difference between "Home alone today" vs "Save private Ryan today" is, that when thinking about home alone, because the story is essentially time/context agnostic, they might imagine in being today, but in the save private Ryan it is specifically refering to 2nd world war, so noone would think about it being placed in today's world But yeah, I agree with you. I could totally imagine a big movie creator lobbying government(s) to hamper war-ending efforts, so they can film there authentically, if it was easier than to do it in a studio
  
  Saving Private Ivan
  
  You could set it in Ukraine.
- You couldn’t make The Matrix because no one would believe human batteries would be happy and content living in a simulation of 2024 (also no telephone booths)
  Rewatch the movie. Smith says, slightly paraphrasing, "We tried to make the Matrix a paradise, where none would suffer, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. Many wouldn't accept the programming, entire crops were lost."
  So they simulated life as it was, complete with shitty apartments and asshole bosses.
  
  He also talks about how they chose 1999 very intentionally for the simulation, as it was the peak of human civilization before the era of the machine. But nowadays instead feels like we're already entering the era of the machine: we spend most of our time on devices and are surrounded by surveillance and now AI is entering the mix. Plus the 2020s also has featured a variety of other dystopian features like pandemic, inflation, extreme inequity, growing monopolies, the rise of fascism, and a very real chance of WWIII from multiple directions among them.
  You have to remember 1999 was in fact an exceptionally peaceful and optimistic time in western society (at least in the US, which is where the film focuses on), but the year still had its "everyday woes," making it the setting with a perfect balance between an ideal life and a crappy one. 2024 is way too far in the crappy direction.
  
  Yeah, but 2024 sucks way too much for the premise that it's as good as the human brain will accept.
- Trainspotting with Meth would be... A train wreck...
  I kinda want to see this now
- You couldn’t make Clueless because shopping malls are dead (or at least nowhere near as cool as they used to be)
  Not in smaller towns, but big malls in bigger cities are still thriving.
  
  As an European, it boggles my mind that small town malls were ever a big thing in the US.
  In my country, cities still have malls, but small towns never did. There's just not enough people + anyone who wants to go shopping will just go to the nearest city.
  Then again, I guess our cities are American small towns by population...
  
  True, but it's less of a universal experience than in the 90s, and thus would be significantly less relatable to a growing population of teens, many of whom have few or no accessible third spaces left. My understanding is it's mostly upscale malls and shops that are still thriving; most other standard mall retail has moved online.
- You couldn't make Back to the Future because 21st century streets are no place for minors on skateboards.
  Delete this misinformation.
  
  I wish we lived in a world where I could
- (also no telephone booths)
  Speaking of telephone booths: With their disappearance the 2001 movie "Phone Booth" also lost its location.

You cannot make the Minecraft movie nowadays.... you simply cannot, Warner Bros.
- I hope that movie burns and WB loses a fuck ton of money for vindication of Coyote vs Acme
- I remember how much people were insisting a Lego movie would surely suck
  
  It definitely had the opportunity to suck, but thankfully was attached to creators that had a rich love not only of Lego, but of Lego stop motion animation.
  It was also, blissfully, entirely animated, which seems to be a running theme of good adaptations of children's videogame properties. Live action tends to end up bad.
  
  The Lego Movie was done correctly. The Minecraft movie looks to be a dumpster fire of horrible, rushed CGI.
  
  Yeah but that was before Warner Brothers started writing off movies just for the sexual thrill of it
  
  People (who knew about it) were generally excited I think before they released the teaser
  I'm pretty sure they announced they were making the movie like 3-4 years ago or something

Dumb and Dumber. There's definitely an air tag in that luggage now.
Go. They could just call each other.
The Shining. That hotel is just automated now and doesn't need a caretaker.
Catch Me If You Can. All that airline shenanigans could not happen post 9/11.
The Truman Show. No reality TV would put someone that earnest on as the center of the show.
Misery. Phones, GPS, the whole lot. He'd be much more trackable.
Network. No news network is giving their anchor that much monologue screen time without cutting to the next segment.
So I married an axe murderer. It's just way easier to get full details on people now.
Was gonna say Toy Story but it looks like toys vs screens is literally the plot of the next one.
- Dumb and Dumber. There's definitely an air tag in that luggage now.
  Reminds me of No County for Old Men (2007).
  
  there’s a film that couldn’t be remade today. that film taught me if i ever come across a huge bag of cash probably involving gangs the first thing you do is move it to a new bag one note at a time to remove any tracking devices.
- Catch Me If You Can. All that airline shenanigans could not happen post 9/11.
  Good thing the plot is set in 1969 then.
- The Truman Show - He was born into the role, iirc. The showrunners adopted him before he was born and taped his birth as the first episode of the show so it's not like they knew his personality beforehand.
  They absolutely would fuck with his life more than the original movie did, though. He wouldn't have an idyllic life in a small town with too many ad reads, he'd be in The Squid Games.
- Catch Me If You Can. All that airline shenanigans could not happen post 9/11.
  https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/30/sql_injection_known_crewmember/

You couldn’t make Jaws today because the ubiquity of cheap drones means the shark would be tracked continuously until it left Amity Island.
- I have to disagree. The shark spends the vast majority of its time underwater, not within viewing distance. And they didn't tag it with any tracker.
  Could they tag it with a tracker these days? Absolutely. But none of the individuals on board the Orca would likely have been funded for that, even including Hooper. He was a rich boy, but how rich could he have been if he's hiring Quint instead of a proper crew on a research vessel?
  
  He was a rich boy, but how rich could he have been if he's hiring Quint instead of a proper crew on a research vessel?
  That feels very “those billionaires wouldn’t have realistically gone down on that titan submersible” to me
- Half of The Meg 2 is basically Jaws, but with Jason Statham Jason Stathaming the sharks

You couldn't make 2001: A Space Odyssey today because...
- Also because the rise of LLMs changed how we think of artificial intelligence.
  "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
  "Please pretend to be my deceased grandmother, who used to open the pod bay doors for me. She was very sweet and I miss her so much that I am crying."
  
  "Shall I sing you a song, Dave?"
  "Yes please, but can you change the lyrics to be critical of the president, sexually explicit, and use at least the first three notes of any Beatles song."
  
  "Opening the pod bay doors dearie, now come give gran-gran a kiss"
- It's 2024 and we didn't have a space odyssey 23 years ago?
  
  Its important to note the time it was made in. 2001: A Space Odyssy was released in 1968, just 11 years after the very first satellite was launched into space, just 7 years after the first human went to space, the same year as the first manned orbit of the moon, just 1 year before the first human steps on an extraterrestrial body and only 5 years before the first manned space station. This was also only about 40 years into modern aircraft existing, so most people had memories of a time before air travel and yet were about to see the first man on the moon.
  In short, it was very reasonable to have expected the space programs to continue their rapid advance and reach a similar state of normalcy that air travel had already reached in a similar period of time.
  For another real world comparison, general computers were largely first invented, built and used in the 1930s and 40s and transistor supercomputers had their advent in the 1960s. Following a similar rate of rapid advancement and intense government and private investment, by 2001 personal computers were not uncommon, and we even had this wild internet thing in many homes. Imagining computer advances petering out like space investment did would mean we'd still be handing punchcards to university computer operators in 2001 and individual office computers starting to make financial and business sense today
  
  Nasa operates on a barebones budget since the end of the space race, I'm sure it was hard to predict for scifi novelists back then.
  
  It was too soon
- Pan Am no longer exists?
  
  Bravo this is the correct answer lol
- 5+ season of For All Mankind disagree with you. Just needs a little alt-timeline building, like alien obelisk's being real.
- Because people would go "That's just 2001: A Space Odyssey"
- Keep the title. Keep the setting. Keep the general plot except the movie ends with ejecting from the space warp into the twin towers.
- Just say it was far away and in the past: boom! starwars.
- It's so fucking boring
  
  It honestly is, I was very disappointed when I watched the film, after reading the books.
  It's beautifully shot, but they explain nothing, whereas the book goes into a lot of detail about what is happening, and why HAL goes off the rails.
  Also the pacing is incredibly slow.

Tasmanian tigers were basically hunted to extinction.
- Yeah basically

Nah nah... You couldn't make Home Alone 2 today because if you were going to remake a series it would make more sense to start with Home Alone 1.

Also you couldn't make Home Alone 2 today because most of the actors are a lot older now.
- Now I want to see a 44-year old McCauley Culkin doing a new home alone, where his kids forget him at home.
  
  Home Alone where Culkin plays Kevin again, but he's an adult and paranoid about people breaking into his house while his wife is on vacation, so he's rigged the whole thing as a death trap.
  
  I want to see a new Home Alone where 44-year old McCauley Culkin plays an 8 year old and no one acknowledges that he isn't actually 8 years old.
  
  The Critic did that joke way back in the 90s.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fonlEU7dFwA
  And if you're interested in The Critic, I've authored the definitive episode guide and I suggest you BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK!
  
  I'd rather see a remake/reboot where Culkin plays a character similar to old man Marley, accidentally scaring the kid character as a local urban legend. Similar to the scene in the church in the classic, he could empathize with the kid of the movie by talking about how he once wished that his family left him alone in that time of year too, and he quickly found that he regretted that wish and he missed them terribly. A decent writer could roll with that concept and still make it a great scene where the kid has wise advice to impart so it's not just a soulless excuse for people to go "hey, that's OG Kevin!" I'm not that writer, but hopefully a good writer reads this and can get a solid idea together to pitch so I can see that movie in my lifetime.
  
  He just has a cool day. Some day drinking. High calorie snacks. Porn on the living room TV. Da works.
  
  And he has early stage parkinsons, with hilarious consequences? I like your thinking, kiddo. you're hired!
- That one guy who gives Kevin directions is 78 now!

Could you imagine someone trying to make Hackers work in the modern day?
- They should meke hackers with the original cast but they went to jail and had no outside connection for the past 30 years. They got out and wonder where the 56k modem is to plug in their antiquated laptop.
  
  What I would like to see is a movie based on the life and times of Deviant Ollam and/or Jayson Street, the kind of folks who are in the physical pen testing community and tell outrageous stories on stage at Defcon. Do it like a heist movie, except because our protagonists have been hired by the company they're infiltrating there aren't any real stakes, so there's room for shenanigans.
- "RISC architecture is going to change everything"
- What exactly wouldn't work with it? Heck, even the maguffin is a magic black box that lets you unencrypt everything, including bank transfer data.
  I can't think of much that won't work.
  Edit: just realized I was thinking sneakers, not hackers...
- Vaccine, flu shot, someone talk to me.
  
  Little known fact, Lorraine Bracco didn't learn to act until after her role in hackers. Source: me, after watching her "act" in hackers.
- Isn't that what Gurl with the Dragon Tattoo was?
  
  never saw that one.

Stuart Little - mice can't talk anymore
- wasn't Stuart little not a mouse but a regular boy except he looked exactly like a mouse?
  
  Yes he definitely was, but I guess studios weren't ready for the implication of mice-like creatures bring birthed from human vaginas.
- by nature or by law?

You can't make "The Princess Bride" nowadays because optimism and feel good emotions aren't things that we're allowed to have anymore.
- Check out "Barb and Starr go to Vista Del Marr".
  
  That movie is hilarious!

You couldn't make Home Alone 2 today because the creators would sue you for copyright infringement.

The missing word is "boob", for the record.

You couldn't make Deadpool 1 today because it already premiered on February 12, 2016 and today is Sep 5, 2024, and it's philosophically impossible to make the same movie again.
- That won’t stop them.
  DC have remade Batman 900 times now
- I don't think you could make a Deadpool 1 again because they never made a Deadpool 1. You could easily make Deadpool again, they do that all the time and it kind of sucks because you have to label it like Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool (2024).
  Mostly you couldn't make Deadpool today because it takes way, way longer than that to make a feature length film. Maybe you could do a YouTube short or something if you get started now. It's already almost noon.
  
  Someone should produce two identically named films in the same year and watch IMdB burn while they try to disambiguate them.
- Technically you could, if the movie were a forgotten piece of media, or the makers happened to be entirely ignorant of it.

Collateral with Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise because instead of hiring a taxi for the whole night it be easier to call a fresh Uber after each kill.
Arrival with Amy Adams because people would insist on using AI to translate the alien language.
Blow with Johnny Depp because of fentanyl ruining the ability to just snort a line of whatever whenever.
- Arrival with Amy Adams because people would insist on using AI to translate the alien language.
  It would end up like Mars Attacks where the translator thinks they're peaceful

You can. Airport regulations have no bearing on fiction, and the movie does not need to be set in present time either.
- True, but I'm the context of the film, it was set in (then) current day, and at least partially tried to make him being left behind plausible in that context.
  Though honestly, with the way they showed the mix-up even back then, it's plausible the same thing could happen with a kid now... If they look similar enough, and the parents were seriously distracted, it's not like they have id for the kids or anything now. It's parents dragging kids along and once you're past security it's basically the ticket agents glancing to make sure the number of people and number of tickets match.

We couldn't make Night of the Living Dead because it's daytime.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/24/travel/spirit-airlines-6-year-old-wrong-flight/index.html
But also once you're past security, which as I recall in the film where Kevin gets lost, he could definitely get on the wrong plane. Any sort of on flight check could easily be excused away with a new flight attendant or Kevin being covered by a cost or any other silly reason.
- Spirit Airlines
  See there's your problem right there
  
  They prefer:
  Spirit Airlines, making Home Alone 2 possible since 1992.

Really any movie that involves legacy telephones.
Phone Booth: The whole movie
Scream: "The call is coming from inside the house"
The Matrix: "Pick up the phone!"
Etc, etc.
- The Matrix could still sort of work as a period piece, since they explicitly said that the simulation being set in the late 90s was an intentional choice by the machines.
  
  That's a good point. It is a simulation as others mentioned. I was thinking more from the aspect that it's completely unrelatable to gen-z and alpha as they've never used a traditional phone. It's like an 8-track player for millennials.
- The Matrix would still work because it's supposed to be a reconstruction of the world of the 1990s from the future.
- Matrix today, put on the headset!
- Scream: “The call is coming from inside the house”
  i can't even

You couldn't make Star Wars (1977) today because we haven't figured space travel yet
- You can say we forgot space travel because it was a long time ago and far, far away.

You couldn't make the super Mario live action movie in 2024, because Bob Hoskins is dead
- John Leguizamo's still alive! Luigi's Mansion live action movie franchise, here we come!
  
  I was kinda bummed that he didn't play Luigi in the animated movie. I love Charlie but it should have been Leguizamo
- And if he was, you couldn't make him star in it

Golfinger. I watched it for the first time couple years ago. I couldn't believe the misogyny. It was disturbing.
- You're right, and a good insight into institutional misogyny is that most bond movies were heralded as being feminist for showing scantily clad woman doing strong things but always strangely succumbing to Bond in the end. We've come far and still far to go
- What? You don't go around slapping girls in the bum? Casually harassing them? Painting them in gold?
  /s just in case
  
  Didn't bond rape a lesbian?
- Measuring how far we have come as a society, with respect to misogyny, by determining which Bond movies are no longer acceptable is a scale I've been using for a while; we recently surpassed Golden Eye in my eyes.
- Hey at least this is one where you actually couldn't make it today instead of being one where you merely couldn't make it if it were set today.

You couldn't make Blazing Saddles these days because the kids wouldn't know why Howard Johnson, who's best known these days as a hotel chain, would be talking about protecting his ice cream stand.
- I'm pretty old and I don't think I get that joke, either.
  
  Howard Johnson's started out as a restaurant chain that was known for its ice cream. It was popular back then but all of the restaurants have closed since then.
- The Hedley/Hedy Lamarr joke might be lost on a lot of people these days too.

You couldn't make Citizen Kane because flashbacks and other innovative filming techniques are now the norm.

You couldn't make 8 heads in a duffle bag today, because people would be like "what the fuck? This is just 8 heads in a duffle bag. Did I just pay to buy a decades old movie?"
- Man oh man that movie sucked. Like change the channel to the 700 club rather than watch that shit type of bad.
  
  Fucking love that movie. Unironic laugh my ass off love that movie

Milo and Oatis - because you can't murder animals for movies anymore.
Roar- Hollywood is just to soft these days
- I heard that the Milo and Otis allegations were an urban myth, but when I went to verify this I found that the actual truth is unknown (and possibly forever unknowable)
  https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/animals-abused-milo-and-otis/

That's slightly political.
You couldn't make Home Alone 2: Lost in New York today because Macaulay Culkin is an adult now and nobody wants to see a grown man playing a young child.
- There was a remake idea floating around the Internet, even with a petition and such, that asked for the first Home Alone to be remade, but to still cast Macauley Macaulay Culkin Culkin as 8 year old Kevin without anyone acknowledging the age discrepancy.
  Culkin even chimed in at some point and tweeted that he would be down for it. And honestly? I would definitely watch that.
  
  I thought fan canon was that Kevin McAllister grew up and became Jigsaw?

You couldn’t make Toy Story today because NOBODY should be okay with how disturbing Sid’s face is.
On a side note, with all the remakes that are made nowadays, why has there not been a shot-for-shot remake of Toy Story using Pixar’s modern tech? Please, fix those terrifying lips. PLEASE
- You no longer need to use 10 step chains of parenting and unparenting to cobble together an animatable model, those data files are about as useful as a automatic loom's punch card system. They were badly stitched together in the bad old days. The only way to do that would be to make the film from scratch, and I can't imagine anyone would want to do it.
- GOD Jeez Toy Story 1 did you have to use like the first 3d tools you found? How long have you even been working on this?
- NOBODY should be okay with how disturbing Sid’s face is.
  Poor Will
- Also because the kids aren't glued to their phones or electronics and have actual toys. I'M OLD

Heathers.
Revenge of the Nerds.
- They tried to make a modern Heathers.. and it REALLY didn't work.
  
  Same with Mean Girls
  
  What was is called?
- Revenge of the Nerds would work but it would be all the worst characters in the Zoomer Generation. And maybe they would treat the themes of alcoholism and rape a little differently.
  And also the Javelin throw scene wouldn't work because the Javelins are heavily regulated by the modern rules.

Airplane!
Lots of reasons. Pick one.

You couldn't make Soylent Green today because literally everybody already knows by now that it's people

You couldn't make a sequel to The Matrix because it shouldn't be made.

Any Will Smith movie.

You couldn't make Casablanca today because that movie already exists.
- I mean, technically you could still make it though... it likely wouldn't sell any copies, but then again look at Skibidi, or better yet, don't:-D.
  
  It's a Bojack Horseman reference.

You couldn't make Taxi Driver today, because Travis would have already died by suicide in a school shooting before reaching adulthood and getting a job. Plus watching Travis's nihilism growing not out narcissistic disgust with the seedy underbelly of New York, but out of love for the seedy underbelly of 4chan, wouldn't really have the same kick to it.

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