Rebooted ‘Remo Williams’ Could Be the Next Indiana Jones, If Hollywood Doesn’t Blow It (Again)
by Jim MullaneyIn an early review of Spider-Man 3, Britain’s Times Online reviewer infamously wrote:
Also disappointing is the inability of the director, Sam Raimi, to end the romp without a fleeting shot of the American flag. The Stars and Stripes just happens to be fluttering behind Spidey as he makes his triumphal return to honour, probity and good honest fist-fighting.
I thought of this review the other day after I’d exchanged a few notes with a reader (I certainly can’t call him a fan) who contacted me at my public email address. The guy was unhappy with my treatment of Muslim terrorists in one of my recent novels, and what started as Pee-Wee Herman-level “I know you are, but what am I?” schoolyard taunts quickly devolved into anti-Semitism. I’m part of the Zionist plot, see, and the plot of my book was just a plot within that larger plot.
So what do my Zionist leanings and Spider-Man’s fluttering Stars and Stripes have to do with Remo Williams, that old Eighties action flick? To begin with, Remo Williams isn’t just the title of a 1985 film, produced by Dick Clark and distributed by now-defunct Orion. Remo is also the main character in nearly 150 Destroyer novels (26 of which I’ve had a hand in writing). It’s okay if you didn’t know that. Aside from a quick opening title credit to series creators Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, much of what makes Remo The Destroyer was jettisoned for the movie.
While the original Remo Williams didn’t do well at the box office, it has picked up a cult following through home video and cable. I’ve gotten mail from fans who’d enjoyed the film for years before finding out the books even existed. And if my mailbox is any indication, pretty much everyone who came to the books via the movie agrees with us old-time fans: None of us can believe Hollywood did such a lousy job adapting the characters to the screen. But in our current age of endless updates and reboots comes some fresh cinematic hope, and if things work out Remo will soon be starring in a brand new motion picture adaptation brought to the screen by Sony and some of the folks who gave us Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Hopefully this time it’ll be the real Destroyer we see, a goal best achieved by not ignoring or re-imagining what’s made the book series a success. (more…)







Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?