Hollywood loves a remake, but do we?
As the fourth version of A Star is Born packs them in, Mel Gibson is threatening to remake Sam Peckinpah’s classic 1969 Western The Wild Bunch. Film fans are rightly alarmed, but remakes are a reliable way for Hollywood to score at the box office, despite often being wholly pointless. Unfortunately, Gibson has previous convictions in this area. See, if you really insist, his unnecessary and 1999 refurbishment of John Boorman's classic Point Blank, a retread so wretched that it accidentally justified its title, Payback. Boorman’s comment on Gibson’s effort wasn’t exactly diplomatic: Lee [Marvin] finally said to me, ‘OK, I'll do this picture with you on one condition.’ ‘What?
