I have a definite opinion about remakes.
Usually, they aren't improvements on the originals. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Oh, I concede that technical advances in filmmaking have made it possible for a remake to be better than the original. But even in the 21st century, remakes are rarely, if ever, improvements.
I offer, as Exhibit A, "The Invasion," which premiered on this day in 2007.
Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that "The Invasion" was "the fourth, and the least, of the movies made from Jack Finney's classic science fiction novel." I don't feel qualified to agree or disagree with that statement since I haven't seen all three of the previous incarnations. But Ebert's assessment surely affirms my own of remakes.
I also have a definite opinion about Nicole Kidman, the female lead of "The Invasion." I like her. I liked her the first time I can remember seeing her — in "Dead Calm." And I have liked other movies in which she appeared — "To Die For," "The Others" and "Eyes Wide Shut" come to mind. So does "Moulin Rouge," for that matter.
But Kidman has had about as many misses as hits in her career, especially in recent years, and I would put "The Invasion" on that list.
And it isn't necessary to see the other three film versions of the story to reach that conclusion, either.
All four movies do have a few things in common — primarily, the extraterrestrial invasion. The first couple of movies were transparently titled "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." The third was named, simply, "Body Snatchers."
(Returning — ever so briefly — to the plausibility angle, Ebert asked, "Do you expect a movie titled 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' to be plausible?" It is a fair question, and my answer, after careful reflection, would be, "Yes. It doesn't have to be completely plausible — which is good since it is hard to imagine how it could be. But there needs to be enough plausibility to allow the viewers to suspend considerable disbelief.")
As I presume it was with each movie version of Finney's novel, "The Invasion" opened with the arrival of alien spores on Earth. In the only version I saw previously (and I have heard it was the same in the other two), these spores took the form of pods that encased their victims. They changed that a bit in "The Invasion" — the spores apparently attached themselves to a space shuttle that crashed following re–entry and scattered its debris from Dallas to Washington (that's a pretty impressive debris field). The debris was contaminated, and anyone who touched it became infected. When the victims fell into deep sleep, the infection seized control of them entirely.
Replacing the pods in "The Invasion" was a kind of film that covered the victim while he/she slept.
No one really seemed to notice what was happening at first. Oh, there were reports in the news of some strange virus in the U.S., and there were more dire reports from abroad. But, like most people, Kidman (a Washington–area psychiatrist in the movie) went about her daily routine, oblivious to what was happening until one of her patients, a victim of domestic abuse (Veronica Cartwright, who appeared in the 1978 version of the story), told her, "My husband just isn't my husband anymore."
Now, given the conversations those two were sure to have had in the past, it would be plausible for Kidman not to understand that Cartwright wasn't discussing abusive behavior — but rather the zombie–like behavior of those under the influence of the aliens. Her husband was one of them. The viewers never saw that character when he wasn't under the aliens' influence, but they knew it the first time they saw him sitting in Kidman's waiting room.
He had the look.
If you ever saw "The Stepford Wives," you would recognize the look — flat, dull, emotionless. Bloodless. Soulless. Measured in words and actions.
Kidman's character had to become proficient at the look, pretending to be one of them in order to maneuver around the city without drawing attention. That required her to maintain total outward neutrality no matter what was happening around her.
Absent any real plausibility, "The Invasion" suffered when it asked viewers to accept some pretty preposterous things.
Like, for example, the fact that a medical researcher (played by underrated actor Jeffrey Wright), a colleague of Kidman's love interest (played by Daniel Craig), was able to discern all kinds of information about this previously unknown virus from a single sample — in a couple of days. He was also able to determine how to eradicate the virus. Cancer researchers who watched this movie must have been jealous.
That would have been enough as far as I was concerned, but then there was a scene when Kidman and her young son were trying to get away in a car that was set afire by a Molotov cocktail. After it was struck the car could be seen virtually engulfed in flames, and I am pretty sure the windshield was broken when the vehicle was hit, but the car kept going, even seemed to accelerate, toward the occupants' appointed rendezvous with a helicopter.
I had to wonder how would it be plausible for someone to keep driving with flames all around like that? I mean, I was never any great shakes at science when I was in school, but you don't have to be a physics major to imagine what would happen to someone who tried to keep driving under those conditions.
Sorta like someone trying to continue driving with one flat tire. Common sense tells you it won't end well.
Then there were things that required specific knowledge of how they do things in Washington to comprehend how off the charts the plausibility factor had become.
For example, in Washington the law prohibits any building in the city from being taller than the Capitol — yet the movie clearly showed the helicopter landing on top of a (nonexistent) D.C. skyscraper.
I know how Hollywood loves to run a good thing into the ground, but trust me, this story has been driven deep into the ground. Let's move on to something new, shall we?
