From ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ to ‘Scarface’: 13 Film Remakes Better Than the Original

The 1958 adaptation of George Langelaan’s short story bears little resemblance to David Cronenberg’s remake that would come 28 years later. Yes, there is an inventor (here named André Delambre, played by Al Hedison) who creates a machine that transmits matter instantaneously through space. Yes, that man decides to test the machine on himself and unwittingly turns into a fly-human hybrid. And yes, he ultimately asks his significant other to kill him. But that’s where most of the similarities end. The original is more of a mystery, answering the question posed in the opening scene: Why (and how) would this woman kill her husband in such a violent way? Today’s audiences are likely to think that the plot moves slowly, the acting is cringeworthy, and the dialogue is flat: It’s all very much a film of the time. However, it’s a slow, suspenseful build, and we’ll give it credit for the final, disturbing reveal of what the “fly with the white head” looks like up close as it’s screaming “Help me!” and about to be devoured by a spider. (The movie was a hit at the box office, but it received mixed reviews.)

While that first Fly hewed closer to the original source material (with a few notable changes), Cronenberg’s film (which he wrote with Charles Edward Pogue) increases the terror (remember the iconic “Be afraid. Be very afraid” tagline?) and fleshes out the story of the ambitious inventor (now named Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum) and how things go so horribly, devastatingly wrong. Rotten Tomatoes — where the 1986 remake boasts a 94 percent “fresh” rating — describes the newer movie as a “surprisingly affecting tragedy.” Indeed, who can forget the final scenes, which take the viewer through a roller coaster of emotions. The desperation as Seth Brundlefly tries to get his girlfriend, Ronnie (Geena Davis), to hop into the telepod with him so they can fuse together with their unborn child. The terror of waiting to see what’s going to come back out of the telepod once he goes in. And the heartbreak when you realize Seth — now an unrecognizably hideous creature — still has enough humanity left inside him to ask Ronnie to end his life. —Kimberly Nordyke

The two Ocean’s films play like different kinds of jazz: the 1960 original is cool, easy-listening — smooth, loose and just a little sloppy — while Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake is pure bebop, fast, tight, and meticulously arranged.

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. didn’t act in so much Ocean’s 11 as hanging out. The Rat Pack ruled Vegas, and the film let them do exactly that, drift through scenes, trade jokes, croon a tune or two and look impossibly relaxed while pretending to rob five casinos at once. The heist was never really the point; the vibe was. Sinatra hated rehearsals and insisted on one-take scenes, which gives the movie its boozy, improvisational rhythm. Fun and charming, sure but often off-key and, in places, tone-deaf. (The humor, in particular, with its sexist and racist undertones, has not aged well.)

Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Elevenby contrast, hits every cue. This is crisp, clockwork filmmaking — a movie engineered with the precision of one of Danny Ocean’s own heists, where every cut snaps into place and every gag lands perfectly on the downbeat. Every member of the crew is clearly sketched, from Brad Pitt’s sharply sarcastic, constantly snacking “Rusty” Ryan and Matt Damon’s eager but insecure Linus to the old-school Vegas smarm of Elliot Gould’s Reuben and the smooth-talking charm of inside man Frank Cattan, aka Bernie Mac. In the original, you’d be hard-pressed to name more than a couple members of the original cast. Soderbergh would go loose and shaggy in his own sequel, Ocean’s Twelve (2004), which feels closer in tone to the 1960 original, but for his first job, he gets away clean, leaving you grinning, and wondering how he pulled it off. —Scott Roxborough

In 1998, Disney remade its 1961 classic The Parent Trap, this time starring 12-year-old Lindsay Lohan, who took on both roles of twins Annie and Hallie — originally played by Hayley Mills. There are several reasons this version stands out above its predecessor: It’s more rewatchable and universally beloved thanks to its humor, memorable characters and heartfelt performances. Lohan pulls off two distinct personalities at such a young age, each with different upbringings, parents and accents — making it even more impressive considering it was her film debut.

The film’s villain, San Francisco publicist Meredith Blake (Elaine Hendrix), who’s engaged to Hallie’s dad Nick Parker (Dennis Quaid), delivers one of the movie’s most iconic moments during a chaotic camping trip. In the scene, Annie and Hallie prank their father’s high-maintenance fiancée by placing a lizard on her head — only for it to end up in her mouth as she screams. While the prank is conniving, the incident, along with Meredith’s overall character, is still referenced in pop culture today. The scene also paved the way for Nick to rekindle his romance with the twins’ mother, Elizabeth James (Natasha Richardson), where the film’s family chemistry shines. — Lexi Carson

Brian De Palma’s Scarface takes the bones of Howard Hawks’ 1932 gangster tragedy and detonates them into something grander, louder and more grotesquely beautiful — a fever dream of Reagan-era aspiration. What had been a cautionary tale about Prohibition-era racketeering becomes, in De Palma’s hands, an opera of cocaine and capital, drenched in the lurid hues of Miami Vice modernity. Oliver Stone’s script, written during his own battle with addiction, pulses with both disgust and fascination for its subject: the immigrant who conquers America by embodying his darkest impulses.

Al Pacino’s Tony Montana is not merely a gangster; he’s a self-made demigod of appetite. Every line he snarls — “Say hello to my little friend!” — is at once comic bravado and capitalist manifesto. The camera worships and indicts him in equal measure, circling his palace of mirrored excess like a tabloid helicopter. De Palma, always a master of operatic violence, stages the film as a moral pageant and pop spectacle: bullets spray in slow motion, cocaine glitters like communion dust and Giorgio Moroder’s synth score thrums with synthetic desire.

Scarface is not realism; it’s mythmaking. Its bloodletting and profanity, once condemned as vulgar, have aged into prophecy. In a culture that equates fame with virtue and luxury with salvation, Tony Montana becomes both saint and martyr — a man destroyed by the very dream he realizes. De Palma’s vision fuses crime cinema, soap opera and Greek tragedy into a single, electric pulse of ambition. What began as a remake ended as an American gospel: the story of a man who wanted the world, took it, and found it empty. — Seth Abramovitch

John Carpenter’s The Thing is that rarest of cinematic feats: a remake that utterly surpasses the original. Where Howard Hawks and Christian Nyby’s The Thing From Another World (1951) was a tidy parable of Cold War caution — manly scientists banding together against an alien menace — Carpenter’s version is a descent into existential dread. Set in the blank whiteness of Antarctica, his film strips humanity of all comfort, leaving a small group of men trapped in an outpost where identity itself becomes unstable. The “thing” isn’t a lumbering humanoid in a rubber suit but a protean nightmare — flesh mutating, absorbing, imitating. Rob Bottin’s groundbreaking practical effects still have the power to shock, their grotesquerie serving not cheap thrills but philosophical terror: If the enemy can look like you, what does it mean to be human?

Carpenter directs with glacial precision. Every frame seems frozen in paranoia, every silence weighted with mistrust. Ennio Morricone’s spare, ominous score — its heartbeat bass line pulsing like the creature’s own respiration — fuses perfectly with Carpenter’s measured pace. This is not action but attrition, a slow erosion of sanity under conditions of isolation and suspicion.

Where Hawks’ film ends with reassurance — “Keep watching the skies!” — Carpenter’s ends with nihilistic ambiguity: two survivors sharing whiskey in the dark, unsure whether either is still human. The film’s iciness, both literal and emotional, mirrors the Reagan-era anxieties of contagion, conformity, and mistrust of authority. It’s a movie about infection in every sense — biological, psychological, cultural.
Critically dismissed upon release, The Thing has since been recognized as a landmark of horror and science fiction, a work as cold and pure as the landscape it inhabits. Carpenter transforms pulp into paranoia, spectacle into philosophy. His film doesn’t merely update the original — it devours it, imitates it, and becomes something terrifyingly new. — Seth Abramovitch