15 Reboots That Felt Like An Insult To The Original Movie

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Reboots are nothing new in Hollywood. There's hardly a film released since the silent era that hasn't been remade, reimagined, or reinvented in some form or another. Sometimes these can be improvements upon the original — John Carpenter's "The Thing" spruces up a B-level sci-fi flick with A-level craft, Steven Soderbergh's "Oceans Eleven" puts a glossy new shine on a forgettable Rat Pack vehicle — but more often than not, they're pale imitations of a classic that was better left untouched. Some reboots are so awful, in fact, that they make you wonder if the filmmakers had any idea what made the original so great to begin with.

Sometimes a reboot misses a movie's point of view or satirical edge, sanding it down in the hopes of appealing to an audience unfamiliar with subtext. Sometimes they miss the humor, the goofy charm, or the winking nod that lets the viewer in on the joke. Sometimes they're just badly made, pure and simple, and a waste of time and money for all involved. Whatever the case is, here are 15 reboots that felt like an insult to the original movie.

Lew Wallace's 1880 novel "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ" has been brought to the big screen five different times, most famously as a 1959 biblical epic, starring Charlton Heston, that won 11 Oscars and outgrossed every other release that year. Revered as it is for its epic scope and famous chariot race sequence, its slow pace and clunky dialogue make it a perfect candidate for an update. Unfortunately, all the 2016 reboot did was highlight just how entertaining the Heston version is, even in spite of its flaws. 

Jack Huston plays Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince who's adopted Roman brother, Messala (Toby Kebbell), sells him into slavery. Despite being a full hour and a half shorter and packed with wall-to-wall action, this adaptation, said Tara Brady of The Irish Times, "feels longer and duller than its predecessor." The majority of critics agreed, and the film was a box office flop. But hey, perhaps the sixth time will be the charm.

Cast: Jack Huston, Toby Kebbell, Rodrigo Santoro, Nazanin Boniadi, Ayelet Zurer, Morgan Freeman

Director: Timur Bekmambetov 

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 125 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

The original "Flatliners" is no masterpiece, but it can at least boast Joel Schumacher's directorial slickness and an all-star cast that includes Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, and Kevin Bacon. The same cannot be said of the 2017 remake, which forgoes the cheesy fun of the original for a deadeningly serious approach. (Well, it can boast one bit of overlap with the original, since Sutherland returned to play a new role.)

"Flatliners" centers on a group of medical students who grow obsessed with trying to find out if an afterlife exists by getting as close to dying — i.e. flatlining — as possible before crossing over to the other side. "About as inessential as reboots get," wrote Variety's Andrew Barker of the critically-reviled dud. Despite some fancy special effects and decent performances by its young cast, Barker found that the reboot "offers no reason for reanimating this long-expired property."

Cast: Elliott Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, Kiersey Clemons, Kiefer Sutherland

Director: Niels Arden Oplev

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 109 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

Remakes of John Carpenter movies have never been particularly great, yet the 2005 reboot of "The Fog" achieves a new level of awfulness. Whereas the various updates of Carpenter's "Halloween," "The Thing," and "Assault on Precinct 13" have their fans, no one seemed to like this attempt to reimagine the director's 1980 ghost story, which received an abysmal critical reception ahead of an anemic box office performance.

"The Fog" centers on the residents of the small Oregon town of Antonio Island, who are besieged by the ghosts of the people who were murdered by the town founders more than 100 years ago. Whereas Carpenter used mood and atmosphere to create a sense of dread, remake director Rupert Wainwright tries to ratchet up the scares with newfangled visual effects, to little avail. It also forgoes the original's cast of character actors for a more anonymous group of twenty-something TV stars. As Matthew Leyland of The BBC put it, "Another remake bites the dust."

Cast: Tom Welling, Maggie Grace, Rade Šerbedžija, Selma Blair

Director: Rupert Wainwright

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 100 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

The 2004 film "Hellboy" and its 2008 sequel, "Hellboy: The Golden Army," were a perfect match for director Guillermo del Toro, who has made a career out of crafting visually stunning fantasies for adults. Del Toro had intended to make a trilogy with star Ron Perlman, but that fell apart, leading to an ill-fated 2019 reboot that wastes the talents of both "The Descent" director Neil Marshall and star David Harbour. The critical and commercial reception was so toxic that another reboot, 2024's "Hellboy: The Crooked Man," came and went almost as quickly (proving you really can't improve on perfection).

This iteration finds the giant red demon Hellboy (Harbour) doing battle with Vivienne Nimue (Milla Jovovich), aka the Blood Queen, an ancient sorceress seeking revenge against humanity. "Watching the 'Hellboy' reboot is like eating a rice cake — you don't feel bad afterward, but at the same time you're not entirely sure you really experienced anything at all," wrote Salon's Matthew Rosza.

Cast: David Harbour, Milla Jovovich, Ian McShane, Sasha Lane, Daniel Day Kim, Thomas Haden Church

Director: Neil Marshall

Rating: R

Runtime: 121 minutes

Where to watch: Hulu

Not many reboots can boast that they destroyed an entire cinematic universe, yet such was the case with 2017's "The Mummy." Not exactly a reimagining of 1999's "The Mummy," nor a remake of the original 1932 Boris Karloff chiller, it was intended as the launching pad for the Dark Universe, Universal's attempt to match the MCU by resurrecting (ha-ha) the studio's classic movie monsters. Yet the film was such a seismic failure both critically and commercially that plans for a crossover franchise were completely scrapped.

Tom Cruise plays Nick Morton, a U.S. Army solider who travels through the Middle East in search of buried treasures. He gets more than he bargained for when he inadvertently unearths Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), an ancient Egyptian princess intent on regaining her mythical powers. "I passionately believe that if you're going to throw money down a well and reboot a franchise, you also have to freshen it up," wrote Thelma Adams for The Observer. "'The Mummy' is, like Ahmanet herself, dead on arrival."

Cast: Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Russell Crowe

Director: Alex Kurtzman

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 110 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

There are so many "A Nightmare on Elm Street" movies that it can be easy to forget just how clever and subversive Wes Craven's 1984 original was. It was also scary, something that was lost as each progressive sequel turned Freddy Krueger into a Borscht Belt comedian. The 2010 reboot was an attempt to return the series to its terrifying roots, but unfortunately, the only thing frightening about it was its quality.

Jackie Earle Haley takes over for Robert Englund in the role of Krueger, a child predator who is killed in a fire by the townspeople and returns as a demon to kill teenagers in their dreams. The reboot was the product of Platinum Dunes, which had similarly updated "Friday the 13th" and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with modern day special effects and harder-R gore. According to Nigel Floyd of Time Out, "This is the worst yet from Michael Bay's horror production company," which was the general consensus.

Cast: Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, Kellan Lutz

Director: Samuel Bayer

Rating: R

Runtime: 95 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

It's amazing the extent to which the remake of "Oldboy," directed by Spike Lee and starring multiple actors from the MCU, doesn't exist. Park Chan-wook's original was a landmark in Korean action cinema, so it's understandable why Hollywood would clamber for an American reimagining (at one point, Steven Spielberg was attached to direct, with Will Smith starring). The project ultimately landed with Lee and Josh Brolin, who were both unhappy when an hour was slashed from the final cut, causing the director to remove his usual "Spike Lee Joint" credit.

Brolin plays Joe Doucett, a scummy ad executive who is locked in a room for 20 years and emerges to seek revenge. Despite a starry cast that included Elizabeth Olsen and Samuel L. Jackson, the film died at the box office and with critics. "Other than catering to an audience unwilling to read subtitles, it's hard to see what Spike Lee has brought to the table," rued The Observer's Mark Kermode.

Cast: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Imperioli

Director: Spike Lee

Rating: R

Runtime: 104 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

Given the success of the most recent "Planet of the Apes" reboots, the failure of Tim Burton's 2001 remodel becomes all the more glaring. Burton has always had a talent for creating highly imaginative worlds, and his rendering of a planet dominated by talking monkeys is truly spectacular. Yet even the eye-popping makeup effects by Rick Baker can't elevate this very expensive B-movie.

Mark Wahlberg stars as Captain Leo Davidson, an astronaut who crash-lands on a planet where humans are subservient to apes. Just like the 1968 original, there's a lot of social commentary going on, yet it's lost here amidst all the big studio bombast. "While it's fun to revisit this nearly forgotten planet in the company of a master of movie magic, one gets the feeling that Burton never found a way to embrace this place and make it his own," wrote Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter, and most critics agreed.

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Clarke Duncan, Kris Kristofferson, Estella Warren, Paul Giamatti

Director: Tim Burton

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 120 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

The genius of Kathryn Bigelow's "Point Break" is that the 1991 film takes a truly ridiculous premise — an undercover FBI agent infiltrates thrill-seeking athletes who moonlight as bank robbers — and elevates it into an action masterpiece through filmmaking skill and craft. The 2015 remake seeks to be some sort of gritty reimagining, sacrificing the goofy fun of the original for empty-headed machismo.

This version of "Point Break" finds Luke Bracey taking over the role of FBI agent Johnny Utah from Keanu Reeves, while Édgar Ramírez subs in for Patrick Swayze as Bohdi, the eco-activist whose terrorist group Johnny infiltrates. Reviews were abysmal, and the box office less than muscular. "How did they get it so wrong?" asked Kevin Maher of The Times. "How could they remake the beloved 1990s action classic 'Point Break' with such ineptitude and so little affection that the results could be simultaneously po-faced, humorless, convoluted and, yes, boring?" Somehow, they did.

Cast: Édgar Ramírez, Luke Bracey, Teresa Palmer, Delroy Lindo, Ray Winstone

Director: Ericson Core

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 114 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

The satire in Paul Verhoeven's "RoboCop" grows more prescient with each passing year, from the increasing militarization of the police to the corporatization of our news. That satire grew duller with each sequel, and is almost completely absent from the 2014 reboot, which also dulls Verhoeven's R-rated violence down to a PG-13. Despite boasting a cast that features more stars than there are in heaven (to quote the classic catchphrase of its production company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), the film barely made a dent at the box office.

Set in a future Detroit overrun with crime, "RoboCop" centers on a noble police officer (Joel Kinnaman) who's turned into a cyborg after suffering a near-fatal accident. Though not a complete critical flop, the majority of reviewers agreed that the film failed to live up to its predecessor. "This Robo-reboot tries fiercely to update the satirical punch and stylistic perversity of Paul Verhoeven's 1987 original," opined Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. "It's a futile gesture."

Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Samuel L. Jackson, Abbie Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley

Director: José Padilha

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 118 minutes

Where to watch: Max

There aren't many flops that landed someone in both director jail and actual jail, yet such was the case with "Rollerball." A remake of Norman Jewison's 1975 dystopian action thriller of the same name, the 2002 version was a critical and commercial disaster that hampered the career of its director, John McTiernan. Its troubled production had serious reverberations years after the fact, as McTiernan was sent to prison for hiring Anthony Pellicano to illegally wiretap producer Charles Roven as the two were clashing over the film.

"Rollerball" was also a career killer for Chris Klein, who plays a futuristic extreme sports player who realizes that the creator of Rollerball (Jean Reno) is purposefully increasing violence on the court to boost the ratings. Although this would seem like a perfect fit for the director of "Die Hard" and "Predator," there's little excitement in what Roger Ebert called "an incoherent mess, a jumble of footage in search of plot, meaning, rhythm and sense."

Cast: Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Naveen Andrews, Pink

Director: John McTiernan

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 98 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

Much like the remake of "RoboCop," the 2012 "Total Recall" reboot removes the satire, excessive violence, and provocation of Paul Verhoeven's 1990 original. Which begs the question: why remake it? Perhaps director Len Wiseman (of the "Underworld" series) figured there was more to be mined from Philip K. Dick's original novella. A noble effort, but ultimately a fruitless one, as the commercial and critical reception reflected.

Instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger, this iteration gives us Colin Farrell as a factory worker who undergoes a process that turns dreams into memories so that he can take a vacation from reality. But when he has memories of being a super-spy implanted, his dreams turn into a nightmare. And nightmare is a good way of describing this film, which failed to make good use of a strong cast that also includes Kate Beckinsale and Bryan Cranston. "It's escapism that is itself trapped in a prison of risk-phobic, formulaic filmmaking," wrote Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph.

Cast: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, John Cho, Bill Nighy

Director: Len Wiseman

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 118 minutes

Where to watch: Hulu

There's nothing abnormal about an American remake of a foreign language film, especially if it's an international hit. It is rare, however, for the original director to return for the remake, and even rarer still for that director to completely ruin the ending of their own film. Yet that's what happened with 1993's "The Vanishing," George Sluizer's critically-panned Hollywood version of his acclaimed French-Dutch thriller from five years earlier.

Kiefer Sutherland stars as Jeff Harriman, whose girlfriend, Diane Shaver (Sandra Bullock), disappears from a roadside gas station while the two are traveling. As Jeff frantically searches for Diane, her kidnapper, chemistry professor Barney Cousins (Jeff Bridges), continues about his everyday life until he decides to start toying with the bereaved boyfriend. Whereas the original was haunting and disturbing in its final moments, the remake was anything but. As Desson Thompson of The Washington Post put it, it was "a case study in how Hollywood can make a complete mess out of what was previously a marvelous film."

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Nancy Travis, Sandra Bullock

Director: George Sluizer

Rating: R

Runtime: 109 minutes

Where to watch: Not currently streaming

Even if you haven't seen 2006's "The Wicker Man," you've probably seen the viral video of Nicolas Cage punching a woman while wearing a bear costume, asking how a doll got burned, and writhing in pain as a swarm of bees is unleashed in his face mask. Unfortunately, that's the extent of the fun to be had in Neil LaBute's misguided reboot of the 1973 horror classic.

Cage plays Edward Malus, a police detective who travels to a secluded island off the coast of Washington in search of a missing girl. What he finds instead is a colony of pagan women with a bizarre harvest ritual. Detested by critics and rejected by audiences, the film failed to capture the eerie power of its unsettling predecessor. "'The Wicker Man' is comically inept as a horror movie, unable to even manage an effective false scare, or sustain suspense for more than a beat or two," wrote A. O. Scott for The New York Times.

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Beahan, Frances Conroy, Molly Parker, Leelee Sobieski

Director: Neil LaBute

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 102 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video

There aren't many films that can boast an ensemble of actresses as impressive as 2008's "The Women," which is what makes it such a crushing disappointment. A remake of the 1939 George Cukor classic — which featured over 130 speaking roles for women — it seeks to update the premise for the 21st century, yet does little more than sacrifice the wit, sparkle, and intelligence of its predecessor.

Based on the play by Clare Boothe Luce, it stars Meg Ryan as Mary Haines, a clothing designer whose seemingly perfect life is upended when she learns her husband is having an affair with a perfume salesgirl (Eva Mendes). Things go from bad to worse when her friend, magazine editor Sylvia Fowler (Annette Bening), tells a gossip columnist (Carrie Fisher) about the affair. "This is girl power?," asked The Austin Chronicle's Kimberly Jones of the critical dud. "I'll not have what she's having, thank you very much, and I'm thinking about amassing a small army of my own to demand as much."

Cast: Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith

Director: Diane English

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 114 minutes

Where to watch: Prime Video