This yr’s remake depend is unquestionably inflated by the current enhance to 10 finest image nominees, simply because the all-time mark set in 1936 is probably going a consequence of falling in one of many two years with a dozen contenders. Nonetheless, remakes are overrepresented this yr. Traditionally, 11.5 p.c of finest image nominees are remakes by this broad definition, but this yr that quantity is 40 p.c. And because the academy expanded the perfect image class a dozen years in the past, that is the primary yr with a couple of nominated remake, not to mention 4.
Does a film’s standing as a reboot matter to voters? The numbers recommend not. Given what number of nominees and remakes there are from annually, the foundations of likelihood recommend we might anticipate about 10 remakes to have gained. Actually, the precise variety of profitable remakes is 9, fairly near that statistical estimation, suggesting a scarcity of bias for or in opposition to tales which were instructed earlier than. These 9 rebooted champions: “Mutiny on the Bounty,” “Hamlet,” “Gigi,” “Ben-Hur,” “The Sound of Music,” “Oliver!,” “Chicago,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” and “The Departed.”
That stated, a have a look at these winners one after the other exhibits extra trigger for concern amongst this yr’s remakes. Solely “The Departed,” primarily based on the 2002 Hong Kong thriller “Infernal Affairs,” is a real remake if we had been to go by a a lot stricter definition. “Mutiny on the Bounty” had been instructed solely as soon as earlier than, in a 1916 Australian movie that’s now misplaced. That movie, together with “Ben-Hur,” had not but been made as a sound movie. The sooner model of “Lord of the Rings” was animated. Maybe most vital, “Gigi,” “The Sound of Music,” “Oliver!” and “Chicago” remodeled earlier non-musicals into musicals, which maybe deserves one other categorization altogether.
The 4 contenders this yr are lots nearer to “The Departed” than to the opposite eight champions, with out practically a lot daylight between the present model and the sooner one. “West Facet Story,” specifically, is kind of just like its 1961 counterpart, and might want to defy historical past to change into the primary remake of a earlier finest image nominee (not to mention winner) to say the highest prize.
