Bad Idea Bros

By Ryan O'Connell on 12/30/2015 • ( 0 )

They remade Point Break.

Don’t act surprised. You and I both knew it was going to happen, especially once all these X Games sports started taking off and the suburbs became littered with skate parks and homemade vert ramps. Since the original came out in 1991 the zeitgeist has caught up to it. Middle America is even into surfing, something that is geographically impossible by all measures and standards.

So they remade Point Break. It was inevitable – like socks in your stocking or sitting through The Christmas Story one more time at some point on Christmas. Spoiler alert: he gets the effin’ BB gun and yes, he almost does shoot his eye out. And for a hot take: the best part of that whole movie is the end, when they are in the Chinese restaurant. The whole movie could have been that family in that particular restaurant and it would still be a holiday favorite, even not even more of one.

But back to this Point Break remake- whatever problems I may have with the original, whether it’s the dialogue or the holes in the plot, you can’t knock it’s importance and place in the hearts of a particular generation (specifically, mine) and you can’t throw shade at it’s re-watchability level, which is through the roof. And while a sequel would have been even worse than a remake over twenty years later, a remake wasn’t entirely a terrible idea, provided the basic framework of the original exists. Yet based on the trailers I’ve unfortunately seen, the “basic framework” is more like “eh, basically framework.” There is still a FBI agent named Johnny Utah and he still infiltrates a gang of robbers led by a dude named Bodie. And at one point, they rob a bank, albeit on motorcycles, with pictures of ex-presidents on them, a nod at the original where Bodie’s crew rock actual masks of ex-presidents.

Meaning that instead of this:

You have this:

Which translates to this:

That’s what I call a warning sign- i.e. trying to be cute with your references to the original. You know what was cool Point Break remakers- the bank robbers wore actual masks of ex-presidents. It was campy, it was cool, it was a wonderful Halloween costume. I would have thought that when the question came up in meetings if the robbers would wear the masks again, whoever had the audacity to ask that question would have been laughed out of the room. But nope. Not the case. And if anything, it seems like the tip of the ice berg.

In the original, the ex-presidents were surfers, searching for the ultimate wave. Their bank robberies could be mirrored with the seasons, when the waves were the best. They robbed to finance their lifestyle. That’s what we call crystal clear motivation. You want to surf, but you don’t want to be bothered with having a job- rob some banks. Simple enough. Yet the phrase “simple enough” seems to have been lost on the Point Break re-makers because they felt that A) simply being surfers wasn’t enough and B) robbing to finance their surfing wasn’t enough. To which I reply again…

These new dudes are some kind of international terrorists, not stealing money but “liberating it.” And they are extreme athletes, not just surfers. So really, it’s not Point Break at all. It’s some baloney bastardized version of it and please see the aforementioned Adam Sandler gifs for my thoughts on that move. Because as it’s been said on too many occasions, bigger does not necessarily mean better. Really, it’s just bigger- more clutter, which is what this remake looks like- clutter. It’s not about catching some bank robbers looking to pay for their surf wax, it’s taking down an international ring of terrorist types, looking to bring down the financial market. Come on. That’s like having some beers and having a good night and thinking that it’d be fun to replicate that evening, only this time with tequila.

Why does everything need to be junked up? Why ruin a good thing? Why not listen to Michael Scott. Or shit, look at thew new Star Wars, a movie that should be the gold standard going forward for anyone looking to remake or reboot a movie. They aren’t trying to re-invent anything, nor are they looking to super-size the original. They looked at what worked and ran with it- keeping those principals and things they learned in front of them the whole time. It’s something the people behind this Point Break remake could have taken a page from. Don’t raise the stakes, don’t make the players something they are not. I mean what the hell- the FBI took some liberties with the original Johnny Utah. Now this FBI is cool with sending this tattoo’d bloke on the hunt of “international terrorists.” What is this- Homeland? What happened to the young bucks staying in the rear while the seasoned professionals run the show. You do that and guess what you don’t have- compromised agents, blurring the line between the the people they are chasing and the people they want to become. Oh shit, then you don’t have a movie.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Maybe we should all just go see Star Wars again instead.

Sounds like a plan.