.

I am not one of those movie watchers who decry the very concept of remaking a film. Quite the contrary, there are several films where the remake is the classic that we revere to this very day. 1941’s The Maltese Falcon was the third adaptation of the novel, while The Thing from 1982 is a wonderful and unique adaptation of the source material while leaving the original film version standing as its own version and a classic. This applies to foreign film remade into English language version as well with Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia crafting a better film than the 1997 Norwegian production. There are also films crying out for a new version, such as Starship Troopers, which while having its fans, so thoroughly inverts the themes and point of the novel as to be like an adaptation of 1984 that crafts Big Brother as the hero.

But, with all that said, there are certainly mountains of remakes that exist for no purpose and that terribly miss the mark, skill, and heights of the films that they imitate. The made for television version of Double Indemnity drops a crucial subplot and an entire act and spends its time with a lifeless cast that only serve to remind the audience why John Huston once proclaimed that he solves 90 percent of his problems by casting the film correctly.

Last night my sweetie-wife and I began watching the 2016 production of Ben-Hur on Amazon Prime. This, like the ’41 Maltese Falcon is the third adaptation of the 1880 novel by Lew Wallace, the first being a silent film from the ’20s and the well-known and massive production which made a star of Charlton Heston from 1959. We decided to watch this 2016 version because we are fans of the director, Timur Bekmambetov who directed the Russian fantasy/horror film Nightwatch. We have watched about half of this Ben-Hur and while we will complete the movie I can already announce that it is a terrible remake that missed the point of the story and presents the audience with visuals that are meant to excite but instead provoke, at least in me, laughter, such as oar-powered galleys judging by the bow-wake that are slicing through the seas at nearly twenty knots.

In the sprawling story of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ Judah Ben-Hur and the Roman Messala are friends closer than brothers, torn apart when Messala, made the military commander of the local legion, demands the names of Jews agitating against Rome and Ben-Hur refuses. Messala, following an accident that nearly kills the Roman governor of Judea, condemns Ben-Hur to enslavement aboard a galley. By a circuitous sequence of events Ben-Hur returns years later burning with hatred and a thirst for revenge for the treatment of his family at the cruelty of Roman occupation and even the death of Messala was unable to lift the hate from his heart. However, witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion transforms Juda Ben-Hur, making him a believer in the Christ and turning him away from hatred and revenge.

This version’s Judah Ben-Hur begins as a pacifist making the presumed ending as a return to baseline rather than a transformation of a hate filled man into a devout Christian. The accident from the source is changed into an actual assassination attempt with Ben-Hur giving the would-be killer time to escape, changing an unjust political conviction into one that can only be judged as fair considering Ben-Hur’s guilt in not turning the man over. The entire revenge plot of the story, both in the novel and in the previous adaptation turns on the fact that Ben-Hur and his family were actually innocent, removing that element weakens the story beyond measure.

Beyond the changes to the plot, the 2016 movie only throws into sharp relief the genius of the 1959 film. Director William Wyler never showed the face or allowed the audience to hear the voice of Jesus, but instead as in every great horror film, left it to the audience’s imagination, showing the effectthis man had on others, how this face that we never see caused hardened Roman warriors to quell their spirit and to wordlessly lower their swords.

We, my sweetie-wife and I, will finish this movie but what I have seen already is more than enough evidence that it should have never been produced.