Remake Rocky Horror? No Glee From Me.

Glee may be great, but this is absurd.

I don’t watch Glee.  I know, I know, I really should because it’s the bestest thing in the whole wide universe.   I believe you!  I just didn’t start watching from the beginning and now I have to go back to Season 1.  I’m a purist.  I’ll get to it.

But no matter how great the show is, I refuse to accept that Glee creator Ryan Murphy should remake the Rocky Horror Picture ShowDeadline.com reports that Fox is hoping that Hollywood’s latest hot property will helm a brand new version of the cult horror classic.  I can only hope that the upcoming Rocky Horror themed Glee episode has sparked untrue rumors.  Please, please let them be untrue…

I don’t have a whole lot against remakes in general.  Maybe I’ve just come to accept them as the current Hollywood MO.  Maybe I do believe there is nothing new under the sun and everything is really a remake.  Maybe I’ve just been driven to cultural apathy and originality impairment.  But no matter how you feel about remakes, this is a horrible, horrible, horrible idea.

First, let’s just admit that remakes of cult classics are failures.  Take a movie from which people have memorized copious quantities of dialogue and remake it and you’re destined to lay an egg.  Now let’s add a few more layers.  How about a movie that still plays theatrically all over the country every week?  The egg grows.  A movie that not only inspires quoting, but also dressing up, singing along and ten trillion Halloween costumes every year?  Your egg is now the size of a monster truck.   A movie that fans have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of time?  The egg is starting to eclipse the sun.  A movie that even I have seen at a raucus midnite showing?  The egg just ate the universe.  That’s a serious egg.

I have no doubt that Ryan Murphy is a very talented fellow.  Glee is a huge success, critically acclaimed and by all accounts, actually good.  He made Eat, Pray, Love into a movie with Julia Roberts.  Yeah, that doesn’t increase his cred with me, either, but he did.   But I don’t care if he’s secretly Batman, nobody should be remaking Rocky Horror.  Under any circumstances.

I do love the homage – the Rocky Horror Glee Episode idea is genius.  We love it when the young people show some love to our cultural icons.  We just don’t love it when they think they can do it better.  Or that those icons need “updating” or “improving”.   Maybe Frank N. Furter would be better as a motion capture CGI character!  Let’s have Brad and Janet be played by Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus!  Oh, the humanity.

Leave it alone, Fox.  Walk away, Ryan Murphy – this can do nothing but harm your promising career.  For the love of cult classics everywhere, leave the Rocky Horror Picture Show alone.

For those of you who are sane, you can get the original Rocky Horror on Blu-ray, in a 35th Anniversary edition, starting today.  Isn’t that a far better choice?

I think so, too.

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