Let's Have a 5 Year Limit on Movie Copyright

posted by Jett Loe

Look at the shot above.  It’s great.  Strange and mysterious.

A man and a young boy, dressed alike, stand contemplating a door.

There’s something odd in the image.  The poster on their left is mounted upside down.  And what’s that attached to the bottom of the door?

Ahh – everything in the room is inverted.  Top has become bottom.  But why?  What’s going on here and what’s behind that door?

Unfortunately this is not a dream sequence, or reality as a dream; the film in question in not some eerie exploration of the unconscious, the unknowable, (how can a thing know itself?), but Poseidon, remake of another film, The Poseidon Adventure, in which a large pleasure crafted is turned upside down by a powerful wave:

I’ll give you a few seconds to recover after seeing who the Captain was in the original, (incredible as it seems now, for decades Leslie Nielsen’s comic potential was not recognized).

The remake of The Poseidon Adventure, (and how apt that they retitled the pic ‘Poseidon’ = let’s remake the film but you know, lose the adventure), does what all the contemporary remakes seem to do. That is, remove what was interesting or vital in the original.

The most memorable scene in the original Poseidon is not the boat’s capsizing, (though that is impressive – and since we know it’s not CGI is much more effective than the ray-traced deaths of the remake):

Nope, the most chilling scene in the original is when our lonely group of heroes, struggling to make it to the surface, encounter another group of survivors heading in the opposite direction.

This is genuine dread.

We have the real sense of the arbitrariness of life, of just how random it all is.  It’s pure happenstance that we’re watching a film following the group that lives.  In a parallel world we’d be watching a movie starring those heading to their deaths. The scene fills one with unease – the unease that comes when you think about someone who’s been killed by a car – but only because he stopped that little bit longer for a cup of coffee before crossing the street. There’s no plan and we could disappear off this planet at any time.  It’s the best scene in the film.

And of course it’s not in the remake.

Which leads me to this. As evinced by the frames at the top, Poseidon is a brilliantly shot film.  The cinematographer, John Seale, who has done great work for decades, lights it wonderfully.  Visually the film is sumptuous and worthwhile viewing, even with all the CGI.  So I suggest  we change copyright law.  A modest proposal – let’s limit it to 5 years.  That way, folks who are of a mind to re-dub a film to make the script more compelling could do so; distributing it legally and getting some cash in the proceeds.  Who knows what interesting, fascinating, strange, eerie and beautiful work could result?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:01 am. It is filed under Action, Blog, Piracy, Remakes, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.