Star News (Korean) pointed out that Harry Knowles of Ain’t it Cool News — much like most of the commentors here — thinks that the planned Hollywood remake of JSA is a shockingly bad idea. Actually, it seems Harry is quoting a piece from somewhere else, and I’d be kind of curious as to where since I don’t see any links, but regardless, I find myself nodding in agreement (for the most part, anyway):
My outrage for the Oldboy remake has been flushed down the toilet.
At least Oldboy CAN be remade. How do you even remake JSA? The scenario is so deeply korean and unlike Oldboy there really aren’t any universal themes to convey. What the hell could they make Joint Security Area into? A movie about how white people and black people should get along? Or Northerners and Southerners? Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans?
Normally this kind of ludicrous stuff would crack me up. So why am I so outraged? This isn’t even about trying to remake a classic. This is a brilliant movie about South Koreans and North Koreans, how they are enemies and brothers at the same time. JSA is a study of this fascinating and heartbreaking korean dynamic. And as a Korean it offends me when some turd comes along thinking if he gets rid of all the cultural stuff and a all-caucasian cast he can remake it and make money.
I’m jumping the gun I know. But my point is why remake the movie you’ll definitely have to change so much that it won’t even resemble the movie your supposedly remaking? Why even get the remake rights?
Please, if you need assimilate a Park Chan Wook movie, take Sympathy for Mr.Vengeance.
There’s more, including a great quote by one of my favorite directors, Kim Ki-duk, who said:
I don’t understand American remaking korean movies. If they like them so much why not just show them?
Exactly.
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39 Comments
“I don?€™t understand American remaking korean movies. If they like them so much why not just show them?”
I’ve been saying that all along, thank you! Unfortunately, I think the reason, frankly, is that idea doesn’t fly because a lot of young American dimwits (which is a huge chunk of the market) aren’t always keen on watching “AzIanZ” in films that don’t speak English and are reluctant to settle for subtitles. Okay, not to single out Asian cinema, but I also do mean foreign cinema as a whole.
I think I felt more initial annoyance that they’d remake Il Mare or Yupgi Girl, but that was probably my Jun Jihyun fixation being played out.
No, you’re right. This movie is best left as is. There’s a dynamic here that works only in a civil war, and best played out within the psychological definitions of the Korean sense of “han” that every Korean loves to wallow in. The idea that it could be translated to the US-Mexican border cheapens the seriousness of the Korean situation.
What’s it going to have? A Mexican-American border patrol agent having dinner daily with a Mexican border crosser? Perhaps a hispanic DEA agent facing off with a mule from a drug gang?
The beauty of JSA was its way of taking an obviously evil institution like North Korea, and giving it a human face at the level of a border guard, matched against an equally human South Korean that we could automatically sympathize with.
But, as long as they don’t do the Volcano High special and turn it into a hip-hop Kung Fu movie, I’ll be sated.
If they just show the Korean movies, nobody will watch them.
Why is it that the Americans need to see a watered-down, rehashed version of foreign movies? Ultra-nationalism? Low IQ level?
La Totale == True lies; Nikita; Les Choses de la Vie == Intersection; A bout de souffle == Breathless; Taxi [I mean, man...]; L’appartement == Wicker Park; etc etc…
I mean, what’s the point there…?
dda,
I think Hollywood is buying out foreign screen plays because Hollywood actors and directors would rather read Noam Chomsky and parade around like activists rather than make their own movies.
Hollywood can do all the remakes, but priceless movies such as “La Reine Margot” or “Tous les Matins du Monde” could not be remade by Hollywood no matter what resources they combine with millions of dollars.
There is no charm or character to Hollywood movies.
Abridged Asian Blogging
The Canadian-Chinese divide on democracy, killer robots, anti-Putin mobsters, the lessons of Vietnam, and more, all on today’s (abridged) Daily Linklets
This is very, very ironic.
The United States is, far more than Korea, a place where one has the freedom to pursue one’s creative interests, where creativity is often prized over actual knowledge. Korea is a pressure cooker of comformity where hapless boys and girls spend their formative years getting just four hours of sleep and living in schools and study halls in order to eke out a few more points on the sun?ng, followed by four more years of non-creativity where people are forced to slave over their s??nbase or kyosu.
Yet Korea is somehow producing creative films and Hollywood is supposedly churning out “watered-down” and “rehashed” remakes.
If I remember correctly the Yi youngae character was not an adoptee. She is supposed to be a descendent of Korean father who chose the third country; after the Korean War, NK prisoners at Gejedo island were given choices, either to go back to NK, stay in SK, or go to a third country.
Some (about 10% of prisoners) chose the third option. They hated both Koreas. I am not sure the list of choices but I remember Philippines was one. Sweden, according the movie, was in the list.
Swiss, I meant.
And, why do you assume a Swiss will speak good English. They may speak good German, but English?
Yeah, good question, however I may have confused it with Swedish who are supposed to speak fluent English…besides, whatever her accent was, it wasn’t Swiss
Then you have her perfect Korean…
Hollywood is a money-making venture. Nobody these days talks about making an art. Everything comes down to dollars and cents.
Foreign film adaptations are good because the movies are pre-market-tested, i.e. less chance of failure. This fact is important because over 60% of Hollywood movies do not make money.
The story has to be relevant to the U.S. audience. The money-paying public does not want to see something happening in far-off lands. They want to see something they can RELATE to (the most important selling point).
Movie trailers are so important in “hooking” people in. The actual content can be so-so as long as the movie can bring in significant number of people in the opening week.
It is all business at Hollywood.
Americans, heck, North Americans want ACTION. And Hollywood is the best when it comes to special effects, violence, blood and gore. That’s what makes good money and bring people to the theaters. Nobody wants to pay and sit there to watch cinegraphy, good plot, on top of that, subtitles.
exactly what i was going to say baduk.
as far as creative american movies go, there are still plenty of them being made; just check cannes or sundance. problem is, those movies don’t appeal to a large audience, and that’s what hollywood productions are about.
dda, yes of course, americans need to see “watered-down”, “rehashed” versions of french films because of ultra-nationalism and low-iq. it’s ultra-nationalism and low iqs that keep us from understanding learning french so we can watch french movies. in case you haven’t noticed, SUBTITLES SUCK!
I like Baduk’s point about “pre-market-testing.” A remake is in that regards a safer gamble than working from an original screenplay.
Regarding action, blood, gore, etc., Koreans are getting good at that, too (Shwiri, Silmido, Taegeukgi Hwinallimyeo). But the difference between them and, say, a Jerry Bruckheimer movie (and there’s a guaranteed moneymaker for you if ever there was one), violence in those movies (especially the latter two) is really helping to tell part of the story.
OMG, I didn’t even occur to me until just now that 4 of Korea’s biggest blockbustersShwiri, JSA, Silmido, Taegeukgi Hwinallimyeohave all had as their theme the tense relations between SK and NK.
…Someone could write a good master’s or doctoral thesis examining how the portrayal of relations between the two countries has changed in movies over the years….
There have been a lot of debates on remakes over at koreanfilm.org. There are a lot of great filmmakers/actors in the US who make good films - but those aren’t the ones that get backed by the major studios, who spend more $ on the advertising than they do on actually making the film, and who get their plotless CGI movies to open on 2000 screens. It’s pretty hard for smaller American-made films to get shown, let alone foreign films, and decades of avoiding subtitles in lieu of dubbing has conditioned the vast majority of North Americans to think ’subtitles suck’. For me, subtitles rock (or should I say ROCK!) but DUBBING SUCKS! (A little OT, but in these days of P2P dvd rips hogging bandwidth, the ability to rip subtitles and turn them into a textfile the size of a small photo is something I think is pretty cool, especially considering how easy it is to make, edit and share them.)
As for the remake craze, most of it is due to Roy Lee - this article from almost 2 years ago provides a great deal of information about how he got the Ring remake made and started the ball rolling. It also makes it clear that $$$ is the driving motivation behind re-making products that have already been successfully tested (not that that will surprise anyone). It’s too bad the original JSA couldn’t have been shown - oldboy has built up a buzz and being tagged with ‘from the director of oldboy’ would probably mean it would do well in rep cinemas…
I’m big on subtitles, too. Heck, I’m so used to watching closed captioning on English-language shows now (my wife uses them, not that she needs to), that I have trouble following them if the captions are turned off!
Curious… you too? haaaaaa…
I don’t mind subtitles at all (if they’re professionally translated as they should be), but I can’t stand dubbed movies. Cheapens the whole things.
Ray: You too with the closed captioning!? Hah!
Agreed on both counts. Some subtitles are good; some are not so good. It isn’t just the skill of the translators, though. If they go by too fast, or they’re, say, white on a white background (which happens!), well, that’s not so cool.
Dubbing is bad enough, but how about in Hollywood movies/TV shows, when, say, a couple of Russians are talking to each other and they’re speaking English with Russian accents!? It’s so commonplace, but so distracting.
Curious,
Do you like to know why the Korean movies revolve around SK-NK relationship? There used to be many Korean movies like comedies, love stories and children stories. However, these days, the hype is on the political movies.
I think there is a conspiracy going on. Movies can change how people think. Just ask any communist the best way to spread propaganda; it is through movies. Is it any wonder KJI is into movies? NK, despite their economic difficuties, has made some costly propaganda movies.
I think commie money(some from China) is flowing into Korean movie industry(Choongmooro). If you examine the content of these movies, JSA,TaeKookgi and others, then you will notice these are in some ways pro-North propaganda. The theme of these movies is that Korean unification is the most important thing for Korean patriots. While dealing with NK situation, they contain no reference to the brutalities of NK regime. None at all!
When these commies lose power, i.e. by the next election, many truths about the Korean movie industry will come out. Their source of money and why they were so overtly pro-North at this time.
Someday, truths will all come out.
ShawnLee wrote: “But, as long as they don?€™t do the Volcano High special and turn it into a hip-hop Kung Fu movie, I?€™ll be sated.”
How dare you say that! I actually enjoyed Volcano High hip-hop style on MTV!
Curious,
You’re right about everything, except I would take those english-speaking Russians over dubbed Russians. At least it’s their voice!
While we’re on that subject, did anyone find Yeong-ae Lee’s English in JSA to sort of make you cringe a little? Even her English needed subtitles sometimes… I had to rewind twice to figure out what she was saying in some scenes, and sometimes I was never sure. A Swedish-Korean Major, suuuuurre… I could cut a knife through that cement-thick Korean accent.
Her acting was just fine otherwise. I just found this kind of comical.
Are there any Swedish Koreans?
I had that same discussion when I saw it. I thought that it was a pity that they couldn’t find a Korean actress (if not someone famous than a talented unknown) who at least looked mixed and who could speak English convincingly. I told my girlfriend at the time that the choice they made of using Lee Y??ng-ae would affect the movie’s popularity among English-speaking audiences, even those used to reading subtitles.
Just not believable, and it seriously distracted from an otherwise excellent movie.
My girlfriend told me that apparently lots of Koreans thought she looked like she might be mixed (maybe her light skin, like lots of Koreans don’t have light skin… ha!). She wasn’t saying that she thought this way, just that others supposedly thought that way (she had read that somewhere).
And yes, Curious, there are Swedish Koreans, or Korean Swedes at least. (In the movie, Lee Y??ng-ae’s character has one parent who is Swedish… or was it Swiss?). Lots of Koreans were adopted by Swedish families. The movie “Susan Brinks’ Arirang,” was based on the autobiography of a bitter Korean-Swedish adoptee.
From as best I could tell, Choe Jinshil did an excellent job with the language (she sounded convincing to me, but I don’t speak Swedish), but the film went beyond just trying to portray her story and tried to make a political point with interviews of adoptees talking about how they hated their Korean mothers for doing this to them.
Kushibo:
Please bail me out over on that other blog that we’ve been commenting a lot on recently. I’m pissed as heck at what bluejives wrote.
Then there’s the fact that she comes to her motherland (Korea) for the first time and speaks the language perfectly. I forgot about that part
Oh, yeah! We did discuss that, too.
They would have been so much better off giving an unknown kyopo actress from Europe or North America a chance. They had a good storyline and enough big names in the movie that they could have attracted audiences even without Lee Y??ng-ae.
“I don?€™t understand American remaking korean movies. If they like them so much why not just show them?”
Um, I like lots of Korean movies, but this quote I find offensively hilarious. I mean, C’MON!
Anyone remember that stunningly original Korean movie, “Singles”? Anyone listened to an obvious remake of a Brit-pop song done in Korean? Hell, the Chosun just ran a feature on the brilliant genius behind ALZip, which is basically WinZip in Korean.
Now here are Koreans complaining about Hollywood remakes… I mean, C’MON!
There is a bunch of adoptees in Sweden, I remember meeting a few a decade ago or so.
Agree that ??´?????? was totally unconvincing in her role of a half European (I think it was Swiss, but who cares, really…? The investigating is a mix of Swedish and Swiss, being neutral countries and all, and ??´??????’s name in the movie is Sophie Jean, which would lead us to believe she is impersonating a Swiss). The Korean population’s interest in/knowledge of the rest of the world is so dismal (what was that drama about ?œ???™???s studying in the States, where the actors spoke utterly bad English?) that they wouldn’t know anyway. Besides, it was about making a block-buster, not giving someone a chance… Not that Hollywood is much higher on the credibility scale (Chinese Geisha anyone?).
I loved the film, although I dislike that woman and I ain’t a big fan of ??´?³‘??Œ. But ?†¡?°???¸ is a great actor, and ??´?³‘??Œ did pull his thumb outta his cutesy ass on this one.
Mingi,
[and I did a stint making subtitles for videos...]
I think Hollywood is buying out foreign screen plays because Hollywood actors and directors would rather read Noam Chomsky and parade around like activists rather than make their own movies.Almost fell off my chair reading that one
Paul,
in case you haven?€™t noticed, SUBTITLES SUCK!Ask my wife: when we were in Korea, I spent rambling about the bad subtitles in foreign movies, and the mistakes that were made… She always pleaded me to shut up and watch
“Not that Hollywood is much higher on the credibility scale (Chinese Geisha anyone?).”
Oh yeah, that. That kind of bugged me too… I am usually more comfortable with native ______ people/actors acting out the character of their own nationality, yet, the objective of actors is that their supposed to act like someone they’re not, even if that means their own nationality. But they’re supposed to do it WELL. If Ms. Lee of JSA had been more fluent, it would not have been as discrepant (not like it’s an easy thing for her to pull off, but just making an observation).
Asian actors taking roles of characters of other nationalities isn’t *too* much different than caucasian actors doing the same…say, a real-life American actor (with German ancestry, if you will) takes the role of a Irish guy. Lots of actors all around do this, I guess. It’s their job. The Chinese actresses in Memoirs of Geisha, from what I understand, are mainly speaking in English (I don’t know how much Japanese is spoken in that; I guess we’ll have to see). Now the question is if their English is up to par. No matter what, they will still sound like Chinese people speaking english as opposed to a Japanese person doing the same thing…but who cares, right? Most Americans won’t notice, or care (They all look the same anyway, right? ;)) My point is that this kind of thing happens in cinema a lot, but sometimes it’s just waaaay too obvious (JSA).
I wanted to get that out of my system once and for all. I love watching movies and especially foreign movies these days (something else to explore other than Hollywood). Sorry for the rambling!
Lucy “cross-eye” Liu speaking reciting extremely awkward Japanese in Kill Bil…
baduk wrote:
And, why do you assume a Swiss will speak good English. They may speak good German, but English?
I’ve met a quite a few Swiss and they all spoke pretty good English. Same with the Dutch I have met.
But even if her character might not speak English perfectly, given the character’s position, a viewer would expect her to speak English pretty well.
At the very least, she wouldn’t speak English like a Korean. She might speak Korean like a Korean, though, since her father (?) was a Korean native.
They need to get their story straight. On one day, they’re bragging about the economic benefits of the Korean wave and how Korean movie rights are being sold abroad. The next, they’re complaining that foreign countries are buying the rights to Korean films rather than just showing Korean movies in the theaters. You just can’t satisfy some people…
Anyone know if the makers of Two Cops bought the story rights from Lethal Weapon?
Cathartidae wrote:
They need to get their story straight. On one day, they?€™re bragging about the economic benefits of the Korean wave and how Korean movie rights are being sold abroad. The next, they?€™re complaining that foreign countries are buying the rights to Korean films rather than just showing Korean movies in the theaters.
Who they?
I think this might be two different theys.
The movie, JSA, is a pro-North movie. Just look at the poster. The NK soldier is a hero, while SK’s Lee ByungHyen was a liar who killed his friend in the heat of the battle.
The previous movie, “Shiri”, just lamented the fact that Korea was divided into two countries. Tragic nature of star-crossed lovers coming from the enemy camps was quite believable.
However, in the movie, JSA, the writer and the producer are accusing SKs to be liars while making a hero out of NK soldier, who supposed to be more humane, more patriotic and more heroic.
NKs are Just a good people suffering under the bad system? Is it really?
At the beginning phase of Korean War, the same fuzzy feeling pervaded the SK. Thinking NKs are reasonable people (heck, five years prior to the war, we were the same people!) many in SK thought the war would bring unification. And, there was, I believe, intentional “defeats” and ?€œretreats?€? on the South military’s part.
However, when the commies came into Seoul and rounded up military officers and police officers and even their families, lined them up and shot them up without any mercy, SKs realized they are mistaken. When NKs took away all personal possessions from farming villages including the land and the seeds and made them the properties of the communist party, SKs realized the horror of the Communist system.
I am afraid this misperception about NKs being the “good” people and the communism being the alternative form of government is prevalent in SK once again. After all, we are the same people, they say. Would the NKs hurt their blood brothers, they wonder. The answer was already given in the Korean War.
The movie like JSA was made with an ulterior motive. The writer is obviously either a pro-North commie or a sentimental and delusional pacifist. There is no area in DMZ where the SK and NK soldiers can meet like in that movie. The whole thing is unrealistic and totally absurd. It is obvious everybody who worked on that movie never served in Korean military. Maybe in the prison for being pro-North sympathizers?
It is about time to call “killers” with the proper name. NKs, under naive belief in communism, played the role of Russian puppets and killed many during the Korean War. Now, as the underlings of China, they are again poised to kill many innocent people in this so-called NK nuke crisis.
The people who made JSA are just helping these commies to do just that.
Kushibo,
You’re right, I worded that poorly. I went for snark over seriousness and it ended up a mess.
Just forget what I wrote:)
I meant that link about children’s stories was here.