Angela Mollard: The eight Hollywood sequels that must be made
If they can make a sequel out of Top Gun more than 30 years after the original, there’s plenty of worthy Hollywood classics crying out for an update, writes Angela Mollard. Here’s my top eight.
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Tom Cruise has said reprising his role as Maverick in a Top Gun sequel is “a love letter to aviation”.
From the trailer it looks more like Cruise has filmed a love letter to himself.
But it’s fun to speculate what might have happened to Maverick, the renegade fighter pilot, in the 34 years since he engaged in air gymnastics with Iceman and seduced Kelly McGillis.
Of course, Cruise will play it as “the hero returns” — presumably with a younger love interest (McGillis says she’s “too fat and too old”) — but we all know what would’ve happened to Maverick in real life. He’d have been the naval equivalent of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein and would have been discharged from the forces to live out a sad little life in Florida in a duplex next to Thomas Markle.
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Anyway, all this talk of a sequel has led me to ponder which other films I’d love to see remade. Here’s my top eight.
Thelma and Louise
Everyone knows Thelma didn’t really die. While Susan Sarandon insisted the pair drove off the cliff as per the original script, director Ridley Scott has long speculated that Louise might’ve shoved Thelma out of the Thunderbird at the last second. Of course she did and 28 years later Thelma is a barrister who defends women in rape cases. Through her work, she runs into Brad Pitt’s character, JD, who is in prison for armed robbery. Love rehabilitates him and the pair go on a road trip in Louise’s memory. The film wins plaudits for presenting a relationship where the central couple are roughly the same age.
Good Will Hunting
There is no way Matt Damon’s character Will left his best friend Ben Affleck’s character Chuckie in Boston to go chase a girl. A couple of decades on Will is head of cyber security for the CIA and his old mate is a trusted cop with his ear to the ground. Together the pair uncover the shady dealings of a corrupt president played by Elon Musk, who, coincidentally, is married to Will’s former love interest Skylar, played by Minnie Driver. Is she in on the deception?
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The Day of the Triffids
Having survived the initial invasion by the bloodthirsty alien killer plants in 1962, Earth has recovered. But the meanest weed in the galaxy has come back for another crack at destroying humanity. This time, however, they have allies. Breatharian activists, battle-hardened by farm invasions to halt the exploitation of wheat, join forces with the triffids to rid the planet of greedy consumers. But what happens when the breatharians discover the triffids’ secret: that they are the only plant to consume oxygen and spout out CO2?
Cast Away / Ghost
Nearly 20 years after he was stranded on a deserted island with only a volleyball called Wilson for company, Tom Hanks’s character Chuck has deep mental health issues brought about by real human interaction. After being cautioned by police for loitering around the local sports centre, he joins a pottery class and meets Demi Moore’s character Molly who is still grieving the loss of Patrick Swayze in Ghost. Art and suffering bring them together in the cheesiest, weepiest movie since Marley and Me.
All The President’s Men
Nearly half a century after Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman’s film was deemed “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” by America’s National Film Registry it’s time to reflect more modern presidencies with a sequel called All the President’s Women. The tale of a US president who has sordid affairs with escorts while in office then lies about it. Alec Baldwin would play the president. Bill Clinton and Donald Trump come on board as associate producers.
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Pretty Woman
As we approach the 30th anniversary of the dream pairing of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere surely the duo could reprise their roles for a remake. When Gere’s Edward attempts to rescue Roberts’s Vivian at the end of the original movie she declares that she’ll rescue him right back. That doesn’t happen. He reverts to type as a corporate raider and she leaves him (taking the brown spotty dress) without revealing she’s pregnant with their child. Three decades later Vivian is dying of cancer and their son tracks Edward down. As she takes her last breath, Vivian learns that her former lover has spent the intervening decades bankrolling health clinics for sex workers.
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The Shawshank Redemption
Arguably the best movie ever made on the friendship between two men which does not pivot around car chases or fighting over a woman. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman could sit chatting for 90 minutes on a beach in Mexico and we’d still watch it.
Die Hard
Office Christmas parties are no fun these days so the setting for the remake of the original Die Hard takes place at a house party for European nobility. A reboot, rather than a sequel, Bruce Willis’s John McClane, has been replaced with a female lead who plays a duchess flying in late to try to reconcile with her playboy prince husband. Meghan Markle, bored with motherhood and propping up the Commonwealth, replaces Willis in the lead role. Yippie-ki-yay.