Four Films That You Didn't Know Were Remakes

1)    1)  Air Force One

Believe it or not, this film’s original incarnation was a 23 minute silent film from 1922.  In this film, the British Prime Minister is flying to London from a historic League of Nations meeting in Geneva where the fictional Mediterranean nation of Greblazia has been peacefully divided into protectorates of seventeen different League of Nations members.  Prime minster Wicklington is crossing the English Channel in a biplane, a flight which took upwards of four hours back then.  The plane has three seats, one for Wicklington, one for the pilot, and one which is supposedly empty.  As the plane leaves continental airspace, an assassin from Greblazia, complete with an olde-timey sinister handlebar mustache, pops out of the third seat’s compartment.  To thwart his assassin, Prime Minister Wicklington insists on confronting him in a duel atop the biplane’s upper wing, but not until they both engage in an inexplicable dance number.  (The music would be usually provided by an in-theater pipe organ.  The original score for this scene has, unfortunately, been lost to history.)  Wicklington uses his experience garnered in the Royal Dueling academy to defeat his assassin, the day is saved, and the once proud nation of Greblazia still doesn’t have its sovereignty or dignity.  But since the film was intended for a primarily British audience, this is seen as being a heroic and happy ending.  Another interesting fact is that Wicklington’s memories of the Royal Dueling Academy are the first known use of flashback in a film.

2)     2) The Matrix

While the 1999 version of the film depicted humans whose consciousnesses were trapped inside a computer, the original 1957 film depicted humans who were physically trapped inside a computer – the computer being an ENIAC machine the size of a city block.  This computer is supposedly the most powerful computer of its time, although now mp3 player could probably outwit an army of these things.  It is powered by humans riding stationary bikes and operating erg machines 24/7, who know nothing of the outside world.  When the building’s rogue janitor, Morpheus, frees the denizens of the computer, they are lead on chase, complete with cheesy special effects, by Officer Smith.  The escapees are finally saved when Neo accuses Officer Smith of being a communist.

3)     3) Toy Story

Toy Story actually takes the structure of its plot from a 1939 western/musical entitled “Outer Space Comes to Amarillo.”  Starring singing cowboy Gene Autrey as Woody and Humphrey Bogart as Buzz Lightyear, the film is about a space captain who inexplicably lands in Olde-Timey Amarillo and upsets the status quo, which the local sheriff tries to fix, but not without bursting into song every ten minutes.  The two resolve their differences when they are forced to team up to thwart a band of cattle rustlers.  Instead of Buzz Lightyear’s catchphrase being “To infinity, and beyond!” Bogart’s character frequently breaks out with “I’m need a drink!” 

4)   4)   Almost Famous

Cameron Crowe’s coming of age story was not, in fact, based on his own experiences as a teenager writing for Rolling Stone.  The story is actually adapted from a 1937 film which is itself adapted from a Horatio Alger novel about an industrious teenage orphan/journalist who is embedded with the Merry Negro Frolic Vaudeville Troupe, who perform in blackface, and are racist beyond anything we can imagine today.  The plot of the film and the novel, both of which are entitled “Almost Famous and then Famous, or, Industrious Johnny and the Minstrel Men,” revolves around Johnny Coppperbottom being sent on what is thought by his editor to be a wild goose chase: producing a story about a vaudeville troupe for this newfangled medium called “magazines.”  After resisting immoral (read: pre-marital) sexual advances, friendships with minorities, and the chance to blow his newly acquired fortune on strawberry phosphates at the drug store, good ole industrious Johnny surprises everyone by publishing a story and is awarded a job as editor and twenty seven dollars, which was a lot of money back then.  The scene in which Billy Cudrup’s character famously proclaims “I am a golden god” while tripping on acid is almost directly copied from the original scene, in which Silas Greenly, the leader of the minstrel troupe, stands at the helm of a Mississippi riverboat and claims “Hark, assembled revelers, it brings me the most satiating pleasure to proclaim to you before me that I have all the lustre and splendor of a debauched pagan idol!”  He then puts on blackface and performs an act where he tries and comically fails to rape a plantation owner’s wife.