Why Bother to Make Remakes? : Movies: Films are updated because they have a proven story line. But they carry a lot of baggage. And, generally, they don’t do better than originals.

Remakes have no better track record than original movies. Yet they continue to be made.

For the two redos that worked fairly well in the last year, “Angels in the Outfield” and “The Three Musketeers,” there were many more that failed big, such as “Miracle on 34th Street,” “Love Affair,” “The Getaway” “Black Beauty,” “Lassie,” “Body Snatchers,” “Frankenstein” and “The Browning Version.”

And yet, there are a number of remakes already in the pipeline, including “The Women,” “Sabrina,” “Godzilla” and “Dodsworth.”

The reasoning behind remakes is “there’s already a solid story there that a whole new generation will buy into if it’s done correctly,” says Tom Sherak, distribution head at 20th Century Fox, the maker and distributor of John Hughes’ new version of “Miracle on 34th Street.”

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“There’s such a paucity of good material, that we sometimes--too quickly--look to material that’s worked well in the past,” says former Hollywood Pictures chief-turned-producer Ricardo Mestres.

But that straight-line logic is fraught with all kinds of sharp curves, from the actual development of the project to selling it to the public. “The fact that it’s a remake can bring some goodwill,” says entertainment attorney Nigel Sinclair, “but it’s only marginal to the success of the film because audiences are always looking for something fresh.” Such films as “Speed,” “Forrest Gump” and, most recently, Disney’s “The Santa Clause,” became hits because they provided a clear alternative to audiences.

The concept of remakes itself isn’t necessarily unsound, however. Such respected directors as Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford pursued remakes of their own movies. Hitchcock made two successful versions of “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” as did Ford with “Red Dust” and the retitled “Mogambo.” Occasionally it takes several tries to get it right. John Huston’s 1941 version of “The Maltese Falcon” was a vast improvement over earlier attempts. Still, some material is, by its very nature, sacrosanct. Often, remakes are a damned-if-you-do proposition.

Critics are more likely to disdain remakes of cherished movies. “There’s no reason to ever remake a Preston Sturges comedy,” says Tom Pollock, chairman of Universal Pictures. “It’s not possible to do it better. Yet hardly a week goes by that someone doesn’t approach me with a remake of ‘Sullivan’s Travels.’ ”

Another factor--rarely given consideration--says Times movie reviewer Peter Rainer, is that the success or failure of many movies has as much to do with when they are released as with their content. “If you’re just trying to recapture the magic, you’re almost doomed to fail,” he adds. “There has to be an overriding reason why it was made.” (The same has been true lately of sequels. “Star Trek: Generations” being one of the few exceptions.)

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Both “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Love Affair” (and its more recent remake, “An Affair to Remember”) were perennials with a great deal of residual affection.

A remake of the Christmas film failed, says one executive, because of the tenor of the times, which seems to demand that sentimentality be leavened with an edge of healthy sarcasm (note: “The Santa Clause”). And “Love Affair” also seemed stuck in another era, according to Rainer.

Even some compelling reasons on the surface don’t always justify doing it again. For instance, one studio executive was considering a remake of “Lolita,” arguing that the 1962 Stanley Kubrick adaptation did not fully explore the obsessive pedophilia in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel. But, in tackling the material more honestly, “we would have made a movie that could be seen as morally repugnant, so we passed,” says the executive. (The project has since gone into development at Carolco Pictures with Adrian Lyne to direct.)

It is perhaps best not to have a strong precedent against which to be measured. Martin Scorsese’s recent “Cape Fear” had a modest pedigree--the original 1962 film, starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, was a routine bad-guy-versus-good-guy thriller. Scorsese and screenwriter Wesley Strick made the good guy (Nick Nolte) more ambiguous and the bad guy (Robert De Niro) almost mythically monstrous. “They made it more complicated. And they also had more fun within the confines of the original story,” says Pollock, whose studio released the remake in 1991, grossing about $75 million.

Foreign film remakes have a slightly better success ratio (e.g.: “Three Men and a Baby” and “Down and Out in Beverly Hills”) because the American public is usually unaware of the original, says Sinclair. But, even so, there are missteps.

Reworkings of old TV series on the big screen also manage to maximize familiarity without breeding contempt--”The Fugitive,” “Maverick” and “The Flintstones.” On the downside there was “The Beverly Hillbillies.” Certain larger-than-life themes like the Robin Hood and King Arthur legends, and particularly mythic monsters (vampires, werewolves), are generally given good grades as remakes. “There’s a fascination with those subjects that transcends the generations,” says Gordon Armstrong of the Entertainment Marketing Group.

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But even these films, Armstrong says, do best when they distance themselves from previous versions, both in their making and marketing. “Body Heat” was inspired by “Double Indemnity,” although was not directly based on it and therefore was perceived as a new movie, while the most recent remake of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” in 1981 came with all the encumbrances of the past film versions. The makers of the new “Godzilla” will be going in the exact opposite direction of the cheesy Japanese original--super-real special effects, the best today’s technology can provide.

And, the hope is that creators of such upcoming new versions of “The Women,” “Sabrina,” “The Jungle Book,” “Little Women” and “Dodsworth” will bring a new twist to these tales, lest they wind up in ever-increasing scrap heap of failed remakes.