The question most film remakes need to answer is whether or not they bring something new or different to the table that justifies their existence. For American remakes of foreign films, that justification is generally language accessibility. When there’s a great idea for a movie out there already done once, but there’s an untapped audience that just doesn’t enjoy reading subtitles, it’s an attractive prospect to skip all that creative development and just make the same movie in English. The results (with plenty of notable exceptions) tend towards pale and uninspired reflections of the original film.

Nostalgia can be a powerful drug. While under its influence, I could talk at length about how great the 1981 Clash of the Titans is. In reality, that’s a 10-year-old version of myself talking, wowed by monster battles, mechanical owls, and bickering Olympian gods. OK, so maybe the present-day version of myself is still enamored of all those aspects, particularly the legendary Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion swan song in the monster department. But that doesn’t…