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“Have you seen Starship Troopers?”

It was that question that made me realize that I was not just someone who liked to casually watch movies. I actually enjoyed learning about film. Not just plopping on the couch and throwing in a VHS tape (it was 1998) or going to see a blockbuster on a Friday night with some friends, but following writers and directors, examining themes, and critiquing lighting and cinematography. Now, I know that Starship Troopers is unlikely to ever appear on the AFI’s list of top 100 films of all time, and that some people regard it as a poor adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s novel, but that is not the point. It was not the film itself that made that connection in my head. It was my immediate reaction to the question and the reasoning behind it. Allow me to get back to the question.

“Have you seen Starship Troopers?”

I was sitting in an elevated office with two walls made almost entirely of half-inch-thick Plexiglas. The office itself was kind of beat up. The built in wrap-around desk had chips in the laminate and the carpet looked like it had not been cleaned in ages. I was sitting in an old office chair with no arms, and I found out that if I was not careful the chair back might just fall off and send me tumbling to the floor. I was interviewing to be a Customer Service Representative (CSR for short) at Blockbuster Video. This was the first question I was asked by the assistant store manager, Dave. Initially I was thrown off by the question seeing as how I was expecting to be asked any number of standard interview questions:

“What do you consider your greatest strength and your greatest weakness?”

“Why do you think that you would be a good fit on our team?”

“If a customer has a problem that you deem to be unimportant, how do you handle the situation?”

Any one of these questions I was prepared for, but this guy was asking me if I had seen a Sci-Fi movie starring Casper Van Diem and Neil Patrick Harris.

“Of course I saw it. How could I have missed it?”

The answer seemed like a no-brainer to me. Not only was the film an adaptation of a Heinlein novel, but it was directed by Paul Verhoven. Why would anyone have not gone to see Starship Troopers? That’s when it all clicked in my head. Maybe other people didn’t go see films just because the director was the man responsible for Robocop (my favorite film of all time), Total Recall, and Basic Instinct. Hell, maybe other people didn’t even know that the same guy directed all four of those films. It was at that moment, and during the subsequent two hour conversation about film that passed for my job interview, that I found out that not only did I like movies but I loved film. Sitting here ten years later, having watched thousands of films both good and bad, I am reminded of that one moment where it all seemingly began.

As fond as that memory may be, I’m currently fuming over the desire of Hollywood to ruin everything I hold dear in the film world. I imagine some of you may feel the same way as I do about the new Hollywood obsession: the remake. Now I’ll be the first to admit that there have been a few remakes that have entertained me. One or two I even found to be more fun that the original, but by and large they are unnecessary and often incredibly boring. Most of the films that are remade are either classic pieces of cinema history or fantastic foreign films, and every time an American director gets their hands on it they inevitably fuck it up in some way. This is not a brand new way of thinking in Hollywood. They were doing it back in the late 50’s and early 60’s, they just weren’t as blatant about it. The Magnificent Seven is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. As a matter of fact, there are multiple classic westerns that are remakes of his films. I am not taking anything away from these classics, but you have to understand that remakes go back a long way in American Cinema. I could go on with this for quite some time, but I just wanted it to be a lead-in to the news I heard today:

Spielberg, Will Smith Remake "Oldboy"

Seriously? If you have been lucky enough to see Oldboy, you will immediately know why this is possibly one of the worst ideas in the history of the pointless remake. Oldboy is literally a film that takes you to places you never thought you would go. You follow Oh Dae-su through his capture, imprisonment, release and subsequent trail of vengeance, and when you finally come to the end of this journey the film absolutely tears you apart in ways that a Speilberg/Smith summer blockbuster will never ever be able to. I truly hope that this either goes away or somehow Will Smith does not end up in the lead role, because otherwise this will be an absolute disaster.