Little Poseidon talk

I’ve been learning a lot from my film classes lately, and the idea of remakes always bugged me. Why do them? Well, the main reason is obviously spectacle; studios now have better technology and they can make King Kong look more realistic, along with the plane crash and island scenes. However, when you only concentrate on the visual spectacle, you leave out a lot of important things such as the emotional interaction between characters. Things such as motifs and symbols become lost and the story is simple and filtered. I started thinking about this after watching The Poseidon Adventure (Ronald Neame, 1972).

As much as this was a funny disaster film to watch (for my generation at least), there is a lot of symbolism along with the conflict of authority and religion. It’s not something you typically think about when you want to watch a disaster film... maybe that’s why this film was nominated for so many Academy Awards. It was just filled with human sympathy and religion. If you followed the Reverend, you would be safe. If you followed the ship authorities, you would die. Um, yikes? The cinematography used to establish the two on different levels is also interesting.

I’m not sure I want to see the new Poseidon (Wolfgang Petersen, 2006). I saw a clip where the ship was tipping from the wave, and looking at all the new technology made me feel uncomfortable. The way the ship was controlled, the elevators, etc... it just seemed too exaggerated. And I hear the film lacks the human connection from the 1972 version. So, you get your spectacular visuals, but lack of everything else. Well... maybe I should watch it to see if there’s any symbolism, but I doubt they will be religious. Just had to spill that out. :P

Oh! For some reason, I found it HILARIOUS that John Williams scored the 1972 Poseidon film! Anything he does post-Star Wars gets me curious for some odd reason...