What is there to say about a perfect movie?
Young Guns was easily my favorite movie for about five years. Seeing it again in 2011, after not having watched it in probably a decade, caused me to ask myself a few questions. The first was, “How is it that I know every line in this movie word for word, but I can’t name half of the presidents of the United States or half of the US state capitals?” The second was, “How was this movie my favorite movie when it came out in 1988 if I wasn’t allowed to see rated R movies until I was sixteen?” I was more perplexed in figuring out the answer to the second question than I was in the first. The answer to the first one was easy. I knew every line of the movie word for word because I’ve watched it over 100 times. Looking at my current list of movies (yes, I have a directory ranking every movie I’ve ever seen), I see that Young Guns is still in the Top 25 and thus receives a rating of A+. The next time I update this list, I will move Young Guns closer to the Top 10. It’s a fantastic movie. If I saw it today for the first time, I doubt I would evaluate it as relatively high, but I can’t push away all of the memories this most recent viewing evoked.
I should have watched the original version of The Blob (1958 – Steve McQueen) before watching this version. It seems, to me, that if a movie is a remake, you have to see the original film first to see that movie. That is if you plan on watching either movie. At the same time, the original is often so much better than the remake that it might make you appreciate the newer version even less. And if you are a big fan of the movie, you might also go a step further and read the book (if the film was based upon a book). No matter how much we, at times, don’t want them to, Hollywood is going to keep remaking movies. Whether Hollywood is out of original ideas or they know that a newer version of a film is a fortune waiting to be happy, we don’t know. We understand that some remakes will be good, some will be bad, and some we will shake our heads and ask ourselves, “What were these movie studios thinking?”