Why Do Movies Get Remakes, but Books Don’t?

If you’re a liberal-arts nerd like me who thinks about culture all the time, you have probably pondered this question: why do people remake movies, but not books?

Yeah, I know. On the surface, this seems like a silly and even naive question. Movies, after all, are a popular medium. They belong primarily in the category of the performing arts, like theater and ballet and classical music. And, as we all understand, no one over ever gives the “final” performance of Hamlet or Don Giovanni or The Jupiter Symphony. Yes, there are certainly “classic” performances of all these works—some of them, made in the past century, have been recorded for the ages—but none is ever the last performance. Each generation must have its own Hamlet, Don Giovanni, etc.

Okay, so we’ve settled that question.

Or have we?

It’s true that cinema, as a form, has much in common with theater, but it is not the same as theater. That is, a film is more than just the acting in it. A film is also editing, cinematography, sound and visual effects, and so on. A film is the summation of all the choices made by the director, the cinematographer, and all the other people who collaborated on it.

In fact, film has a lot in common with non-performing (non-mimetic, if you want to be Greek about it) art forms like poetry and prose. The specific details of the execution contain the essence of the art, more than the underlying composition. Would anyone argue that the “compositional” parts of Citizen Kane—that is, the script, or the basic story—are just as important as Orson Well’s completed, 1941 black-and-white film?

I think not.

So here’s the rub: film is both mimetic and non-mimetic. At its best, film achieves the level of high art, and movies that reach that pinnacle do not get remade. For example, no one has remade Casablanca or 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I sincerely hope that no one ever will.

Fortunately, as every American over the age of seven knows, most movies made in any given year are, emphatically, not art. They are as disposable as last week’s top 40 hits or the comic books. Some are good, but most are not. And very, very few are classic. Thus, most successful movies will, someday, get remade, so long as a substantial section of the population still has fond memories of the original but is eager to see a new incarnation.

Okay, so now we’ve settled the question. Right?

Not really.

Again, the problem is not so straightforward as saying that “bad” movies get remade while “good” movies don’t. The fact is that a lot of a good movies—and even some really good movies—get remade at some point. Look at The Manchurian Candidate, The Pink Panther, Murder on the Orient Express, and countless other beloved films that have been made into less-than-stellar remakes. Hell, even J.J. Abrams The Force Awakens was, essentially, a remake of Star Wars (although it wasn’t marketed as such).

Conversely, there have been many “bad” pop novels throughout the decades—e.g., The Godfather, Jaws, The Exorcist—that were extremely successful commercially, but which have never been rewritten or repackaged. This is not simply a matter of copyright. I’m pretty sure that if Random House wanted to hire a talented young writer to reconceive The Godfather as a novel for modern audiences, the rights to the original novel could be secured. But this will never happen—not because it’s impossible, but because there is no demand for a new incarnation of The Godfather.

So we’ve come back to my original question: why do people remake movies, but not books?

I think, ultimately, it comes down to what Marshall McLuhan figured out fifty years ago in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. In this landmark book, McLuhan first formulated his ideas about “hot” and “cool” media. Simply put, hot media contains more sensory information; they require less mental participation from the viewer. In contract, cool media contain less sensory information, with gaps that have to be filled in by the viewer. In this construct, movies are “hot” and books are “cool”. Books require imagination, language, visualization, etc. Movies just require eyes and ears; they are a sensual, visceral, passive experience.

In short, books are a fundamentally difference experience from cinema; it occupies a different part of the brain, and the soul.

Unlike books, most movies exist entirely in the time when they were made; the actors, the costumes, the vernacular of the dialog—it all depends on current fashion and convention. That’s why movies get stale so quickly. A film which is a blockbuster and Oscar contender one year might seem dated and clichéd a decade later (and sometimes even less).

Books, on the other hand, create their own time. A book recreates its world—it’s milieu—each time a reader reads it. Its language might seem dated, but its impact doesn’t. A modern reader can pick up Tom Jones, written in 1749, and become immediately engrossed in the story of love and lust in 18^th Century England.

The same is not true of C.B. Demille’s 1923 film The Ten Commandments (yes, that was the version before Charlton Heston parted the Red Sea). Today, it is hopelessly old-fashioned and remote. It is inaccessible to us, as modern viewers. It has ceased to exist.

Henry Fielding has been dead for over two centuries, and Tom Jones is in the public domain. But no one will ever rewrite his book. No one can. And anyway, there’s no need—the original is still fine. But I am 100% certain that someone will make a new movie adaptation of the novel, despite the enduring existence of Tony Richardson’s fabulous 1963 version.  (Have you seen that movie? I thought not.)

And, so, my original question for this blog post comes down to a mystery. The ineffable but undeniable difference between books and movies.

Sadly, I suspect the answer might be even simpler than this. Movies are remade because they can be marketed successfully. If people ever become willing to queue up around the block to buy a rewrite of The Godfather, then The Godfather will get a rewrite. But I don’t think that will ever happen. Mario Puzo’s book is safe for the ages, as is Ulysses and The Sound and the Fury and For Whom the Bell Tolls. (And, yes, also the Harry Potter novels; Rowling is a hell of a good writer.)

So, that’s settled.

I think.

Author’s Note: I first posted this essay some years ago on my old blog, Bakhtin’s Cigarettes.