by Reed Milliken
The Guilty (2018, Gustav Möller) is a Danish drama crime thriller about an emergency dispatcher and former police officer, Asger Holm, who answers an emergency call from a kidnapped woman. When the call is suddenly disconnected, the search for the woman and her kidnapper begins. The Guilty (2021, Antoine Fuqua) is an American drama crime thriller about an emergency dispatcher and former police detective, Joe Baylor, who answers an emergency call from a kidnapped woman. When the call is suddenly disconnected, the search for the woman and her kidnapper begins. Sound familiar?
The following article includes spoilers for The Guilty (2018) and The Guilty (2021). Viewer discretion is advised.
The following article includes spoilers for The Guilty (2018) and The Guilty (2021). Viewer discretion is advised.
When a movie is remade, a new version of an already made movie is created to tell the same story using a different cast and alters the theme or changes the story's setting. Remakes are by no means a new concept, but my grievance towards them first started when I saw that Bong Joon Ho’s six-time Academy Award-winning, South Korean drama-thriller, Parasite (2019), was being remade into a TV show on HBOMax. With the film’s laundry list of awards and overwhelmingly positive reviews, Parasite (2019), is the closest thing to a masterpiece we have gotten in the last ten years.
So, you may ask yourself, if this movie is so good, why would it need to be remade? In this situation, where the remake involves taking a foreign film and remaking it in English for an American audience, the answer is simple. People don’t want to read subtitles. Joon Ho acknowledges this and even goes as far as to mention it in his acceptance speech for Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars, “Once you overcome the-one-inch barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” (Joon-Ho, 2020). From a personal perspective, this is very true. Movies such as House (1977), Train to Busan (2016), and The Guilty (2018) are all amazing films that I wouldn’t have watched if I was afraid to read subtitles. A film being made in a foreign language isn’t always the reason for remaking a movie, but it is one of the most popular. A prime example of this involves the two films I want to discuss today, The Guilty (2018) and The Guilty (2021).
The Guilty (2018) was produced in Denmark and was therefore released in Danish. This version of the film has been very well received by audiences and critics alike; mostly due to its style of storytelling is. As mentioned before, The Guilty (2018) follows an emergency dispatch operator named Asger Holm as he tries to help a woman who has been kidnapped. However, the camera never leaves Holm’s perspective, and every aspect of the kidnapping story is heard over the phone. By keeping the story within the operator's room, we're forced to picture the rest of the story in our heads. This made for an entirely new film-watching experience, almost combining the charm of reading a book with the luxury of watching a film.
So, you may ask yourself, if this movie is so good, why would it need to be remade? In this situation, where the remake involves taking a foreign film and remaking it in English for an American audience, the answer is simple. People don’t want to read subtitles. Joon Ho acknowledges this and even goes as far as to mention it in his acceptance speech for Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars, “Once you overcome the-one-inch barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” (Joon-Ho, 2020). From a personal perspective, this is very true. Movies such as House (1977), Train to Busan (2016), and The Guilty (2018) are all amazing films that I wouldn’t have watched if I was afraid to read subtitles. A film being made in a foreign language isn’t always the reason for remaking a movie, but it is one of the most popular. A prime example of this involves the two films I want to discuss today, The Guilty (2018) and The Guilty (2021).
The Guilty (2018) was produced in Denmark and was therefore released in Danish. This version of the film has been very well received by audiences and critics alike; mostly due to its style of storytelling is. As mentioned before, The Guilty (2018) follows an emergency dispatch operator named Asger Holm as he tries to help a woman who has been kidnapped. However, the camera never leaves Holm’s perspective, and every aspect of the kidnapping story is heard over the phone. By keeping the story within the operator's room, we're forced to picture the rest of the story in our heads. This made for an entirely new film-watching experience, almost combining the charm of reading a book with the luxury of watching a film.
Unfortunately, The Guilty (2021) is not many of these things. Released three years later and in English, this version of the movie has not been as critically successful as its father film. Furthermore, there are a plethora of differences between the two when it comes to the story and how it is told. In what I assume was an effort to differentiate itself from its predecessor, The Guilty (2021) does not use as unique of a storytelling method. For starters, the camera is taken outside of the operator's room, therefore ruining the magic of being able to picture the situations on the other end of the line for yourself. My father, who I watched The Guilty (2018) with at the time, as well as myself both really enjoyed being able to picture the action for ourselves. On top of being able to experience a unique filmmaking experience, this technique also was beneficial to building tension. With fewer cuts between different locations, and not truly knowing for sure what is going on the other end of the line, we both found ourselves captivated and immersed in the severity of the situation. Not only does the camera stay with Asger the whole time, but we do too, feeling each twist and turn just as Asger is experiencing it. Going back to The Guilty (2021), by leaving the operator’s room and cutting to other locations, the suspense, at least for me, was ruined. Therefore, a large part of what made the original so special and so unique became absent in the remake. I encourage filmmakers to distance themselves from the original work when producing remakes, but not so much so where the intrigue is lost.
Furthermore, the differences lie deeper than just what you see on screen, as a lot of the meaning and context behind The Guilty (2018) is lost in its adaptation. For starters, there is a change in the name of the main character. In the Danish version, the emergency dispatcher is named Asger, while in the American version, he’s named Joe. This may not seem like too large of a change, it even makes sense for an American name to be chosen for the American version, but a lot of depth is lost in this translation. In Danish, the name Asger means spear, deriving from the Old Norse elements Æsir or ás, meaning "gods" and geirr, meaning "spear". This name is a proper reflection of the character, a spear is a pointed weapon made for quick, violent jabs. As we find out by the end of the movie, the reason Asger was put on dispatch duty was because he killed an innocent teenager by gunshot. His name reflects the reason he was put in the position we see him in the film. As for the American version, the main character’s name is Joe. In English, the name Joe just means an ordinary man, i.e. the phrase “just your average Joe”. While it could be argued that the character was named Joe as a juxtaposition to his true nature, I don’t think it’s that deep.
My main reason for not making a mountain out of a molehill is that this isn’t the first time a meaningful name has been stripped of significance in favor of the name Joe in an American remake. Oldboy (2013) is a Spike Lee directed remake of the Korean mystery thriller Oldboy (2003), directed by Park Chan-Wook. In the original, the main character’s name is Dae-su, which means “to get through one day at a time”. Oldboy (2003) follows Dae-su as he is imprisoned for fifteen years, leading his name to signify the long, slow-paced life that he lives. Changing foreign names to a more common American one in this context is a no-brainer, but it’s unfortunate to see the new name choices become stripped of meaning when the originals held such significance.
My main reason for not making a mountain out of a molehill is that this isn’t the first time a meaningful name has been stripped of significance in favor of the name Joe in an American remake. Oldboy (2013) is a Spike Lee directed remake of the Korean mystery thriller Oldboy (2003), directed by Park Chan-Wook. In the original, the main character’s name is Dae-su, which means “to get through one day at a time”. Oldboy (2003) follows Dae-su as he is imprisoned for fifteen years, leading his name to signify the long, slow-paced life that he lives. Changing foreign names to a more common American one in this context is a no-brainer, but it’s unfortunate to see the new name choices become stripped of meaning when the originals held such significance.
On top of this, the twists and turns of the plot of The Guilty (2018) are copied, in some cases, word for word in The Guilty (2021). Therefore, anyone who wishes to watch the original after the remake will have the story spoiled for them, removing one of the most compelling parts of the movie, the tension. It could then be argued that the target audience for the remake are those who have not seen the original, therefore being able to enjoy the twists and turns as I did while watching the original, but I argue that if nothing is changed to the plot of the story then why does it need to be remade? If there are only aesthetical changes made to the film compared to the original, then is remaking it worth it? Again we go back to the issue of subtitles, but there are much easier ways to make foreign films a bigger appeal to English-speaking audiences, such as dubbing, rather than remaking the whole movie from the bottom up.
A common trend I noticed while perusing reviews for The Guilty (2021) is that those who hadn’t seen the original enjoyed the remake much more, those who had seen the original enjoyed it much less, and vice versa. What this means is that remaking a movie can damage the original work it was based on. The common intent while remaking a movie is for the story of the original to be more easily viewable by a wider audience. Instead, remakes are damaging the original films by making them less enjoyable for those who watched the remake. If remakes accomplished what they set out to do, then that would be a different story.
The length in time between the release of the original and when the remake gets greenlit is another large issue with remaking a movie. There were only three years between the release of The Guilty (2018) and The Guilty (2021). If a remake is made long enough after the original that modern-day technology can make a significant difference in the look and feel, then remaking the movie feels more worthwhile. Godzilla (2014) was released 60 years after its predecessor, Godzilla (1954) In the time between the two movies, there were vast improvements to almost every aspect of filmmaking. Godzilla (1954) brought the Kaiju to life through clever puppetry and suits shot on film, whereas Godzilla (2014) utilized CGI and VFX and was shot on digital. When you boil it down, both movies are the same when it comes to story, but due to these improvements, the look, style, and feel of the movies are vastly different. With only three years between the two versions of The Guilty, there was nothing new to bring to the table from a production standpoint.
A common trend I noticed while perusing reviews for The Guilty (2021) is that those who hadn’t seen the original enjoyed the remake much more, those who had seen the original enjoyed it much less, and vice versa. What this means is that remaking a movie can damage the original work it was based on. The common intent while remaking a movie is for the story of the original to be more easily viewable by a wider audience. Instead, remakes are damaging the original films by making them less enjoyable for those who watched the remake. If remakes accomplished what they set out to do, then that would be a different story.
The length in time between the release of the original and when the remake gets greenlit is another large issue with remaking a movie. There were only three years between the release of The Guilty (2018) and The Guilty (2021). If a remake is made long enough after the original that modern-day technology can make a significant difference in the look and feel, then remaking the movie feels more worthwhile. Godzilla (2014) was released 60 years after its predecessor, Godzilla (1954) In the time between the two movies, there were vast improvements to almost every aspect of filmmaking. Godzilla (1954) brought the Kaiju to life through clever puppetry and suits shot on film, whereas Godzilla (2014) utilized CGI and VFX and was shot on digital. When you boil it down, both movies are the same when it comes to story, but due to these improvements, the look, style, and feel of the movies are vastly different. With only three years between the two versions of The Guilty, there was nothing new to bring to the table from a production standpoint.
When foreign movies are remade by an American studio and there is no ulterior motive other than to introduce the story in a more easily digestible form to American viewers, producing the remake doesn’t feel as worthwhile. Going back to that quote by Bong Joon-Ho, if someone isn’t willing to jump that one-inch hurdle to watch a great movie, then maybe they don’t get to watch that movie. It may seem like I’m gatekeeping, and maybe I am, but running around the hurdle instead of jumping over it by remaking it in English, only for a more bland version of the movie to be produced is a terrible way to overcome that obstacle. It not only ruins the original for those who watched the remake first, going against what the remake set out to do, but it strips the original of all of its meaning and importance. If Hollywood continues this trend of remaking film after film, creating a more dull and bleak version each time, how long is it before these stories are lost in the very thing that set out to make them known? I leave you with this question: would you rather jump that hurdle and preserve the movie’s true nature, watching a great film in the process, or run around it and watch a mediocre movie instead?
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