With the Little Mermaid abortion I ran across an interesting trend for films that is probably going to accelerate quickly: "Reimagining" a film.
For an example I'm going to use Malum (2023)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9472334/
Vs Last Shift (2014)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2965466/?ref_=tt_trv_trv
This is the exact same director, 9 years after making Last Shift he just 'reimagined' it with a black lead instead of the white lead. Basically the same film except a few minor changes, basically all of them for the worse but pushing modern social 'narrative' points.
This is a bizarre trend, especially when it is the exact same person doing both projects. Financing your original film except now blacker should be impossible, at this point it is clear Hollywood is financing special interests and not actual quality. There's no excuse for funding shit like this.
There's a lot of other examples of works being 'reimagined' recently but this one stands out quite a bit, and people are even cheering the 'reimagining' as some sort of progressive stance on their original films.
Who is excited for Cameron to 'reimagine' some of his classics? We may be seeing just the tip of the iceberg for this bullshit. I wonder when they'll just begin removing the originals from streaming options and only keeping the 'reimagined' versions.
Indeed. Currently watching a Ukranian-based film called The Rising Hawk. Only a bit of the way through so it's maybe a little early to give it high marks, but I like what I've seen so far. I've meant to check into more Russian films in the past too.
Edit: Aside from some mild pacing issues, rest of the film holds okay overall imo. Not bad for a budget of only $5 million, and retains a low level of wokeness. Not exactly a "brilliant" piece of work mind you, but it's at least good enough to not make you cringe all the way through.