There’s an oft-repeated maxim that alleges there are only seven ideas in the entirety of fiction and that everything we watch and read is based on them. Well, perhaps. In today’s Hollywood, though, they need only one. It’s called the remake.
Not long ago, I heard a rumor that a new version of Ben-Hur — a remake of the Charlton Heston flick, itself a remake of the 1925 silent film adapted from Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel — had hit theaters. Skeptical, I headed online to hunt down the trailer, and YouTube, as is its wont, forced me to watch another ad. It was a preview of the remake of The Magnificent Seven, starring Denzel Washington, based on the 1960 movie starring Yul Brynner, which was itself a remake of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.
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