A short article here comments on film directors needing to change more than just the language to successfully remake a foreign language film. While I agree with this philosophy on some level, I have to ask is it really necessary to remake them at all?
There has been success where the movies have received a lot more exposure after being remade, like The Ring or The Departed. This exposure has also been good for the original movie and everyone will have a preference of which version they prefer. However, there have also been disasters where films have lost their original brilliance in translation, like Vanilla Sky.
Can’t we just keep the movies in the original version and have greater exposure to these great foreign films? Watching foreign films not only expose people to different languages, but also to different cultures. Foreign films are different because cultures are different, people are different. Do we really need a glossy Hollywood movie for every good foreign film released?