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You couldn’t make Blazing Saddles these days. They’d take one look at the script and go
spoiler
“We can’t make this, this is Blazing Saddles, they made it 50 years ago. Do you want Mel Brooks to sue us?”
Funny story Mel Brooks actually did an animated version of Blazing Saddles called The Legend of Hank to prove that he absolutely could make it today.
It’s basically the same concept but with samurai instead of cowboys.
“Ain’t no business like shogun business.”
Huh. TIL.
Though the actual argument for why you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles now is the the entire genre it’s lampooning is dead.
The humor is pretty much still fine and flies, other than Mel playing a Native American, but even that is still kinda-maybe-sorta-okayish-maybe? since Mel’s character isn’t the butt of the joke, but other than that brief scene I can’t recall anything that watching now makes me cringe.
I think the Mel Brooks scene is satirizing old Hollywood’s habit of casting whites in the roles of poc. Plus, I don’t see how a yiddish speaking native could be offensive to anybody.
3 weeks after release Israel starts setting up fences around a small bit of Arizona and calls it the very west bank.
Missed opportunity for wild west bank.
Oh, that is much better.
You might be right, and maybe the reference to old Hollywood was more subtle and went over my head.
I think it’s the fact that he speaks Yiddish in that scene rather than…well anything else. I can kind of read it as a comment on the tendency of the Western genre to cast white actors in deerskin clothing and feather headdresses instead of actual Native Americans…so I’m kind of willing to file it in the same folder as Robert Downey Jr. wearing blackface in tropic thunder. For that scene to be made today I’d want to see that point more clearly made, and I’d want real Native Americans involved in the production to be on board with it.
I think the big difference with Tropic Thunder is that the IDEA of black face is very explicitly the joke. Robert Downey Jr’s character and the idea of black face is what is being made fun of.
You might be right that it’s a commentary on Westerns, and it went over my head, and maybe because it was made when it was you didn’t have to be as explicit with the target of the joke it was just more subtle. The scene certainly doesn’t feel hateful, but it’s definitely odd to watch today. But given how explicitly the movie is making fun of racists and racism I’m certainly willing to give it some benefit of the doubt.
Yeah the blackface in Tropic Thunder is very much in the text of the film. I seem to remember it being a direct parody of a Vietnam War movie where a white actor unironically played a black man, but I may be Mandela Effected because I can’t find any references to this.
Mel Brooks playing an Indian Chief in a short scene in Blazing Saddles…doesn’t really have room for it to be in the text, but given the movie has an overall theme of racism in Westerns I think the subtext at least could be there. Especially since this movie leans on, breaks, then demolishes and spills out through the fourth wall, it has that same “we’re actors playing roles” mechanic that Tropic Thunder does. Slim Pickens even delivers the line “I’m working for Mel Brooks!”
Men in Tights, however…
What’s wrong with Men in Tights?
They roam around the forest looking for fights.
I watched it recently with my kids and it was a bit cringey, in that the humor seems to be targeted at teenage boys. Spaceballs was much better.
Every decent joke in the film was a repeat from a previous, better Mel Brooks film.
I feel that people who think Blazing Saddles is too risque to get made today are the butt of the jokes they thought were funny.
As a side note: I thought I liked Westerns because I loved Blazing Saddles. Then I watched a few Westerns during the pandemic and now I realize I just like Blazing Saddles. lol
Westerns can either be amazing or terrible.
Not much in between IMO.
Love watching this movie on network TV.
They leave in all the N-words and censor the farts.
well no one wants to hear such an abbhorant sound coming from their television now would they?
*Marge farts* “Well, that shut me up…”
I am looking forward to whatever he comes out with in Space Balls 2 though. That’s going to be fun. And Rick Moranis will be back!
You couldn’t make Deadpool & Wolverine today because it just came out and people would not be ready for a reboot this early.
That’s the kind of shit i would do when i were a billionaire.
It’s already a reboot.
I wanna see a modern Zombie movie with how people would actually react to news of a zombie outbreak given how people behaved during the pandemic
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Half the population claims it’s all a hoax and lets zombies bite them because anything else is a violation of their freedoms
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Large swaths of gun owners take to the streets, and half of them die quickly because they put more money into the number of guns they had or making them tacticool instead of putting rounds through them or sighting them in.
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It gets overly politicized.
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The literal collapse of civilization, yet some corners of the government and billionaires are still trying to milk out the last drop of money
Don’t look up was basically this but a meteor instead of zombies. It was honestly kind of a depressing movie lol
What’s crazy is that they made the movie before the pandemic, but it was almost a parody of the trump administration and the response to covid.
Well, It also works as a nice allegory for climate catastrophe.
That’s what it was written as.
Ah shit I said this but didn’t bother to see this first
Shaun of the Dead kind of did it.
Gun owners patrol the streets shooting at the cdc
I actually think it would be good uniting force for a divided country:
- The “it’s a hoax” portion of the population will simply become zombies
- The “we love guns” portion of the population can now take their life frustrations out on the zombies
- The “we need to fix this world” portion of the population will learn to fight too and provide vital aid and supplies to the (likely growing) “we love guns” group
- The “we need run away from this madness” portion of the population will just hunker down and play on their smartphones
Either way, everyone kind of wins
I think you’re a little off on the “we need to fix this world” guys.
Although zombie films / TV series lean heavily into the action side of things, that’s just because it’s more entertaining than watching people building things, developing tech, doing scientific research.
Remember with COVID 19? Huge numbers of people immediately set out to find a cure, inventing and deploying ways to prevent and monitor the spread, creating pop-in treatment centres, etc.
true, they would be coordinating the attacks
You forgot the activists protesting for zombie’s rights to eat our brains
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Zombies ain’t rea…OH GOD ITS EATING MY FACE…still don’t believe it, he’s just on drugs.
Krokodil!
28 Days Later had a dinnertable conversation that was exsctly like how people were talking during covid.
Isn’t that the “… but then it wasn’t in news reports anymore; it was in our back yards, and coming in the windows…” monologue? Excellent scene.
Get bitten on purpose to prove its a hoax and own the libs
Avenue 5 has a pretty funny scene where a series of skeptical conspiracy theorist types are ignoring a very specific warning, claiming that the people they see dying before their very eyes are an illusion some kind of special effects and each follows to their own death.
That scene scared the shit out of me more than any horror movie ever could.
Feed, by Mira Grant, is fun because it takes place years after a zombie uprising, but in a world where George Romero movies existed, so everyone knew what to do. It was a catastrophe, but not an apocalypse.
As written and performed by Simon Pegg.
In this version, all the zombies are in line for toilet paper outside the grocery store.
In the sequel, you combine it with The Mummy, where they use the mummy for toilet paper.
“Don’t look up” is essentially the simulation of a modern apocalypse scenario
There’s a series called The Bite, it was filmed during earlier quarantine times of the ongoing pandemic and features a bunch of cast from The Good Fight. Is good.
I was gonna say Independence Day, for this reason. “Fake news, probably just CHINA! Sad!”
Zombie deniers being eaten as they continue to insist it’s a liberal hoax.
Unrelated but I was thinking if it was a zombie outbreak. And I’m stuck in a retirement home. Am I safe? They can’t bite me, they don’t have teeth
You couldn’t make Gone With the Wind today because everyone in it has died
Technically Correct
Everyone?
This reminded me of a question I had a while ago, but maybe it is easier to search up now. What is the oldest movie with at least one actor who is still alive, and what is the newest movie where no actors are still alive.
Maria Riva, the daughter of Marlene Dietrich, played as a child actress in The Scarlett Empress (1934) and is still alive. She’s 99 years old now.
Your other question is much harder to answer.
I appreciate the answer! And I agree that the second one is a question that I am not sure how to find the answer to. It would be easier if we only limited it to the cast, but if it was extended to the crew, it gets a bit more complicated
If it gets to the crew or extras, it becomes impossible. Lots of them you wouldn’t even find out if they died from public sources.
Main cast may be doable, it’ll probably be a hobby film done by one person.There is one way to be sure
Rip!
deleted by creator
Use different actors?
Since everyone in the previous one is dead, why would they take the chance?
100% of people who live, die. Don’t live! Wait, no…
Actually, only around 92% of all people who ever lived, died. So there is a chance!
The later in history you’re born, the lower your chances of dying. People born in 2024 have only a ~3% chance of being dead, while the death rate for people born just 100 years ago is over 99%. We’ve gotten much better at being alive as time goes on!
This table from the SSA messes me up. Apparently at 119 you’ve still got a 1 in 10 chance of survival. That seems rather optimistic.
IF you have already lived to 119 ……
Your life expectancy is 0.6 years ……
AND you have a one in ten chance of surviving one year
Any movie where 1 cell phone would resolve the situation. A lot of serial camper killers would get shut down pretty fast.
Just put the camp outside of cell service. Plenty of camping in the mountains outside of cell service.
Still fully believable
The newer phones have satellite SOS features.
That’s not at all common yet though, it’s pretty much a gimmick in a few select phones.
Pfft, that’s a fad that will never catch on. Just like that internet thingy.
Logical solutions to problems don’t happen in many kinds of horror movies. Even the tiniest bit of common sense applied would destroy so many, cell phones or no.
Our group of teenagers should definitely split up to search for the monster and/or serial killer!
Rather than making a swift exit to anywhere else, we should instead hide in this building where we think the killer is
Oh my god! It’s the killers childhood home where he brutally killed one of his family members in each room! Let’s hide in there, but we should each find a hiding spot in a different room.
What if we kissed on the infanticide balcony
Let’s walk right by the car we got here in and go house in the creepy building that we think the killer lives in and that we were too scared to enter before he killed our friends!
That’s why I love Cabin in the woods. They make it a creepy movie, but also make fun of all the common horror tropes by having the haunted grounds be a very orchestrated event.
“Oh no my cell phone doesn’t work” It’s because the creepy org turned on a cell phone jammer
“Why don’t they just leave?” The creepy org blows up a shit load of tnt to make the tunnel collapse
“Why don’t they find an alternate route out?” The creepy org put a fucking force field around the area.
That movie definitely ventured in to silly territory, but then it was quite directly a well-meaning parody of horror movies that kinda’ HAD to get a bit silly to do too much with the premise.
It would be kinda funny for someone to make something that starts as a horror movie but then everyone acts in a sensible manner without contrived reasons for their efforts failing, resulting in the whole dangerous situation falling apart over the course of the plot until its more a sort of parody of horror movies than a proper example.
That’s just a normal movie
The best horror movies are the ones where all the characters act in a highly capable and intelligent way and the monster/force/whatever still keeps beating them. Like The Thing. Or Alien.
If only Hollywood paid good writers what they’re worth.
I want a horror movie where some of the heroes are genre-savvy, Practical Guide to Evil style. I picture it starting as a horror, and shifting into a kind of heist storyline
There are also a swath of movies that couldn’t be made because of the ubiquity of surveillance cameras.
Who did it!?! ~Checks camera~
Jesus Christ it’s Jason Bourne
Heh in the new Mission Impossible, it’s
Tap for spoiler
a scary computer program interfering with the audio/video feeds so you couldn’t rely on them. Pretty well done overall, not bad at least.
Commando. Arnold spends a good chunk of the movie stopping people from getting to a pay phone to let the bad guy know he escaped their custody
Not just cellphones but every house now is equipped with a camera on the doorbell and possibly several more throughout the house. Back in the day serial killers basically just had to not be around when the police showed up and had a pretty good chance of just getting away
scribbling notes
- don’t be there when police arrive
- also steal the cameras and tech
Also disable the Internet beforehand so that the cameras don’t upload stuff to cloud storage.
Introduce a character that’s a teacher so sick of cellphones in their class they bought a jammer off the internet. Make that character the serial killer’s first victim.
You couldn’t make half of Seinfeld because with cell phone all the funny situations don’t occur.
None of those situations were funny to actually live through. They’re only funny in a TV show.
True of literally every sitcom.
“Comedy is tragedy plus time”. I like to say it’s comedy plus distance.
24 (TV series) is like this if I remember well. The daughter would have had a cellphone now.
Eh, series today still use this trope. “Oh no, I’m out of battery” or the comedic “My battery is at 1%, let’s take a selfie!”
That scene where he calls the phone in his stolen car would still be funny
That’s why so many tv shows are now written as period pieces or based in the 80s and 90s.
You couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today because Westerns aren’t nearly as popular as they once were, and so it’ll be harder for jokes to land
Also Gene Wilder hasn’t done anything for 8 years
Dude…too soon.
Mel Brooks did an animated movie called the Legend of Hank that was more or less a kid friendly remake of Blazing Saddled to prove he could make it today.
…how kid friendly? Haven’t been able to introduce my kids to his stuff yet!
What in the wide, wide world of sports is that supposed to mean?
Period Westerns aren’t much popular. However:
- Wind River
- Hell or High Water (<- do NOT sleep on this one!)
- No Country for Old Men
- Sicario
…and so on.
Westworld
You couldn’t make Back to the Future II today because a positive outlook on the future is no longer believable even for a family film.
You just have to switch the first and second future, the default future is the Biff timeline, then you have to change the future to make the hoverboard timeline.
That would actually be so cool but I can already see the scathing online criticisms:
“New WOKE BTTF2 ruins a family movie with vulgar dystopian future, not an ounce of original thinking in the writer’s room. Entire second act of film missing as plot is resolved in only 1 trip.”
Might be better to just stick to original stories and concepts, tbh.
You couldnt make back to the future today because their future is already in our past, their future (2015) is already 9 years ago now
I can’t tell if the thread has some sort of running gag or if you’re actually confused by the concept.
You don’t have to make the future 2015. You don’t have to make the past 1955. You’re making the film, today, not when it was actually made, thats the entire point of the prompt.
I feel like the future being 2015 is extremely in line with the gag.
I feel like the future being 2055 is extremely in line with the gag. Because we make the movie in 2025. And the plot is going 30 years into the future.
You couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today, most of the cast is dead.
That’s fine, a mega-corporation can just buy their AI rights from their estates
If AI ever learns to shout like Gene Wilder, the species is doomed.
Hold it hold it… What the hell is that shit?!
Well you’ve got things like Tupac’s hologram performing. And then there’s things like this
The company is planning a biopic, an avatar show and a KISS-themed experience
They couldn’t make Mrs Doubtfire in this day & age - no one would believe Pierce Brosnan and Sally Field make enough money to afford a live-in nanny.
Also, they couldn’t make Mrs. Doubtfire 2. Full stop. There will never be a sequel to that magnificent gem.
I thought Pierce Brosnan’s character was some sort of rich guy. I forget what Sally Field did.
Yeah, he is a rich dude, whole thing in the script about his luxury car. However Sally and Robin Williams? Absolutely could not afford that house in SF today.
There’s a lot of real middle class families in SF who have a house like that…because one of their grandparents bought it in 1933 and they inherited it
Today on house hunters international…
And then there’s the whole drag thing.
It’d be spotted immediately, like Tobias as Mr. Fingerbottom.
Mrs Featherbottom
When Maeby calls him Mr Fingerbottom he only corrects the “Mrs.”
Everyone would just accept that they hired a drag queen for a nanny.
Also Robin Williams is dead.
You wouldn’t make “Back To The Future” now because it wouldn’t be the future…
BTTF remake, traveling between 2025, 1995, and 2055, with new problems for those particular times? Marty introduces dubstep to the grunge crowd? Accidentally prevents the spread of the Internet?
Tubes? Where we’re going, we won’t need a series of them.
And somehow when he comes back to the present Trump was elected President. What did he do!?
The first movie doesn’t even go to the future, and they say ‘back to the future’ to mean returning to 1985.
Forward to the past?
Most films that require some degree of miscommunication couldn’t work because cellphones are ubiquitous.
Additionally a lot of old sci-fi films based on a hypothesis that later turned out to be pseudoscience are here as well.
Modern media just handwaves this easily with phones being broken or low battery whatever. It still works
Even makes it a tiny bit funnier (if it’s a comedic miscommunication, not if it’s “someone gets killed” miscommunication)
Even in movies before mobile phones, more often. Than not, they could resolve any problem by just telling the other people something, but they don’t because the movie would be over.
Also, ever since covid, a lot of movies became way more believable. Man if only the people knew that a pandemic was coming. If only we knew how dangerous it was, if people in other countries could’ve been warned from other countries where it’s already ravaging
Didn’t stop any of the wacky bs in iRobot from happening. Cellphones do cure a lot of what ails older pics, but they can be waved away by things like ‘oopsies! Forgot to charge it.’ or ‘the club is so loud I didn’t hear the ringer.’ and my personal favorite ‘forgot to take it of dnd’.
You couldn’t make Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone now because you’re not Warner Brothers and don’t own the copyright.
I mean, you could totally make Home Alone II today as long as you set it pre-9/11, so I take this to mean “these movies that were set in the ‘present day’ could not be redone and set in the ‘present day’ of 2024.”
You couldn’t make Back to the Future because 21st century streets are no place for minors on skateboards.
You couldn’t make American Beauty for a LOT of reasons (including prevalence of digital video, marijuana legalization, increased public awareness/concern about pedophilia, etc)
You couldn’t make Clueless because shopping malls are dead (or at least nowhere near as cool as they used to be)
You couldn’t make Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream because heroin and cocaine are quaint drugs by 2020s standards
You couldn’t make Paris is Burning because Harlem gentrified big time (I know this is a documentary but still)
You couldn’t make The Matrix because no one would believe human batteries would be happy and content living in a simulation of 2024 (also no telephone booths)
I almost said The Truman Show because we basically live in that world already but fuck it, I wanna see a 2024 version where the producers have to keep desperately introducing crazier plot developments to try and compete for a TikTok-addicted audience unamused by “just another reality TV show”, and constant set issues like cast members getting fired right and left for sneaking smartphones onto set.
I mean, you could totally make Home Alone II today as long as you set it pre-9/11
Yeah, it’s like saying “you couldn’t make Saving Private Ryan, because Europe is no longer at war”.
I think you’re absolutely correct, but I think the difference between “Home alone today” vs “Save private Ryan today” is, that when thinking about home alone, because the story is essentially time/context agnostic, they might imagine in being today, but in the save private Ryan it is specifically refering to 2nd world war, so noone would think about it being placed in today’s world But yeah, I agree with you. I could totally imagine a big movie creator lobbying government(s) to hamper war-ending efforts, so they can film there authentically, if it was easier than to do it in a studio
Europe is currently at war.
Saving Private Ivan
You could set it in Ukraine.
You couldn’t make The Matrix because no one would believe human batteries would be happy and content living in a simulation of 2024 (also no telephone booths)
Rewatch the movie. Smith says, slightly paraphrasing, “We tried to make the Matrix a paradise, where none would suffer, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. Many wouldn’t accept the programming, entire crops were lost.”
So they simulated life as it was, complete with shitty apartments and asshole bosses.
He also talks about how they chose 1999 very intentionally for the simulation, as it was the peak of human civilization before the era of the machine. But nowadays instead feels like we’re already entering the era of the machine: we spend most of our time on devices and are surrounded by surveillance and now AI is entering the mix. Plus the 2020s also has featured a variety of other dystopian features like pandemic, inflation, extreme inequity, growing monopolies, the rise of fascism, and a very real chance of WWIII from multiple directions among them.
You have to remember 1999 was in fact an exceptionally peaceful and optimistic time in western society (at least in the US, which is where the film focuses on), but the year still had its “everyday woes,” making it the setting with a perfect balance between an ideal life and a crappy one. 2024 is way too far in the crappy direction.
Yeah, but 2024 sucks way too much for the premise that it’s as good as the human brain will accept.
Trainspotting with Meth would be… A train wreck…
I kinda want to see this now
You couldn’t make Clueless because shopping malls are dead (or at least nowhere near as cool as they used to be)
Not in smaller towns, but big malls in bigger cities are still thriving.
As an European, it boggles my mind that small town malls were ever a big thing in the US.
In my country, cities still have malls, but small towns never did. There’s just not enough people + anyone who wants to go shopping will just go to the nearest city.
Then again, I guess our cities are American small towns by population…
Small town America didn’t have a “third space”. That’s essentially what made malls successful.
European small towns still have a walkable city center of some kind with restaurants and shops. Shopping malls are America’s version of the European city center.
True, but it’s less of a universal experience than in the 90s, and thus would be significantly less relatable to a growing population of teens, many of whom have few or no accessible third spaces left. My understanding is it’s mostly upscale malls and shops that are still thriving; most other standard mall retail has moved online.
You couldn’t make Back to the Future because 21st century streets are no place for minors on skateboards.
Delete this misinformation.
I wish we lived in a world where I could
(also no telephone booths)
Speaking of telephone booths: With their disappearance the 2001 movie “Phone Booth” also lost its location.
You couldn’t make Jaws today because the ubiquity of cheap drones means the shark would be tracked continuously until it left Amity Island.
I have to disagree. The shark spends the vast majority of its time underwater, not within viewing distance. And they didn’t tag it with any tracker.
Could they tag it with a tracker these days? Absolutely. But none of the individuals on board the Orca would likely have been funded for that, even including Hooper. He was a rich boy, but how rich could he have been if he’s hiring Quint instead of a proper crew on a research vessel?
He was a rich boy, but how rich could he have been if he’s hiring Quint instead of a proper crew on a research vessel?
That feels very “those billionaires wouldn’t have realistically gone down on that titan submersible” to me
Half of The Meg 2 is basically Jaws, but with Jason Statham Jason Stathaming the sharks
