Before he was ever accosted by apes, Charlton Heston galloped to Oscar gold for his performance as a Jewish prince turned slave in the 1959 historical epic Ben-Hur. The film was the most expensive of its time and yielded great financial and critical success to the tune of 11 Academy Award wins and label of second-highest grossing movie to date. It was a remake.
Many fail to acknowledge that their celebrated Ben-Hur is not in fact the first of its ilk. Rather, it’s a “remake” of a not-so-proliferated 1925 silent film, which was in turn a “remake” of a 15-minute film fiasco from 1907. But all this “remake” business seems a big hogwashy once we peel back some layers. I mean seriously is 2016’s Ben-Hur really to be thought of as a remake of a remake or a remake? Remake has become an ugly and ubiquitous term, one that depending on the circumstance can be thrown with the bathwater if we merely interpret the phrase. After all, how does one delineate “remake” from “adaptation”, particularly when we are discussing films that have been adopted from novels? Read More
