All Together Now: All We Need is a New Yellow Submarine?!

Yes, it sometimes seems all we do here is complain about remakes, but there's a reason for that: remakes catch our (and your) eyes more easily because we know something about the film being remade. Every day several new film projects are announced and some of them are completely original, but we usually only write about the ones we have some prior connection to: a remake, an existing book being adapted, etc. So the perception that all that's being made are remakes is a bit skewed.

That said, Disney and director Robert Zemeckis (The Polar Express, Forrest Gump, Back to the Future) are trying to remake The Beatle's Yellow Submarine.

We may now commence with the gnashing of teeth, tearing of hair, and rending of clothes, and tossing of giant green apples at Blue Meanies.

First off, let me say that someone doing a new animated film set to Beatles music is not the worst idea ever. I raved earlier this summer about the last part of the Beatles: Rock Band trailer (Gigantic Blue Ganesh-y Hindu Rhino-phant!!) and would love to see a truly creative, innovative film maker take that sort of mad, passionate approach to a feature film. (Of course, that section of the trailer was heavily inspired by the madcap look and feel of Yellow Submarine.)

(And yeah, like most folks, I do like parts of Julie Taymor's Across the Universe--it's wildly hit-and-miss uneven and when it flops it flops mightily, but when it connects--as with "Let It Be," "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," "She's So Heavy," "Happiness is a Warm Gun," and "Hey Jude"--it's wonderful.)

Thing is, I feel strongly Robert Zemeckis is not the person to do something exciting and mad and passionate with a new Yellow Submarine. In fact, since Used Cars in 1981, Zemeckis has worked pretty hard throughout his career to not be mad or passionate. Ironically, one of Zemeckis's earliest films--right before Used Cars--was I Wanna Hold Your Hand, a fictional romp through that first US Beatles appearance and the accompanying Beatlemania in 1964. So I don't doubt Zemeckis loves the Beatles--I just fear his Yellow Submarine will be bogged in nostalgia and weighted with cultural and personal importance rather than reckless flights of creative chaos.

Now I have been warming to Zemeckis in recent years with his motion-capture Beowulf and what footage I saw a few weeks ago of his Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey during the promotional Amtrak train stop. I like Zemeckis's sort of "Illustrated Classics" approach to bringing new, mostly faithful adaptations of canonical literature to life using CGI animated mo-cap. However, nothing Zemeckis has done in the past decades suggests he has of the sort of reckless, psychedelic, absurdest creative or imaginative streak to make a new Yellow Submarine really soar.

Obviously the Beatles are experiencing one of their many, many "hot moments"--The Beatles never, ever go away, thankfully, but about every five to ten years they seem to cycle back up to the forefront of the pop consciousness. Lately there's been Taymor's Across the Universe and now the huge cultural splash that Rock Band is going to make on September 9 with kids under 18.  As we all know, the number one place today's youth are being exposed to classic (ie, older than 15 years) pop and rock is via Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Plus, this fall will see the accompanying re-issue of all the re-mastered albums. (I have my coins set aside for Abbey Road.)

The original Yellow Submarine remains a trippy visual and cheeky delight (despite the fact that, of course, it does not use the real Beatles' voices): Blue Meanies, Old Fred, the Nowhere Man Jeremy Hillary Boob, the climactic freak-out battle. And of course the songs, including the ones first released with the film: "All Together Now" (a simplistic favorite of mine as a young kid, before I discovered Sgt. Peppers and Abbey Road), "Baby You're a Rich Man," "Hey Bulldog," and of course Ringo's title song. The film also features such existing Beatles tunes as "Eleanor Rigby," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "All You Need is Love," "When I'm Sixty-Four," and "Nowhere Man."

In fact it's that cornucopia of musical Beatles goodness that's holding up Disney and Zemeckis's planned remake: The project is contingent on Disney being able to wrangle all the song rights, although it appears that deal is finally coming together.

I'm trying not to pick too much on Robert Zemeckis--I'm looking forward to Christmas Carol, and I really admire what he's doing with mo-cap. But I Iook again wistfully at that Beatles: Rock Band trailer and sigh because I just do not believe Zemeckis on his own can come up with anything that cool. Now if he brings in a team of wild-eyed visualists and Beatles-drunk Imagineers and lets them run loose, maybe...

So what do you folks think about a Zemeckis Yellow Submarine remake?

And check out this great original trailer with the actual Beatles themselves mockingly pretending to be jocular:

Comments

[Spaz]

Flame me all ya want, but I can't stand The Beatles. AT ALL. So much for sucking up to ya, Locke.

[Locke Peterseim]

Well I'm technically a Stones guy myself, if I have to choose sides. I like the Beatles plenty, but I'm no Beatlemaniac. Still, side 2 of Abbey Road is about as close to album perfection as you get.

[Margaret]

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don't know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Margaret

[JRBear]

This is horrible news!!! Maybe since the 'videos' from "Yellow" are being released on VH1 to plug the new RockBand Beatles release (I just saw one this morning)...people will rise up and squash this ill conceived idea. A better idea would be to re-release a hi-def version of the classic original.

Oh God...what could be worse!? Next thing you know Disney will want to re-make "Alice in Wonderland" into a hideous freak show.....oops...too late!