Can movies be remixed?

Lawrence Lessing said in his TED talk “participatory culture is a rich site of informal learning, we throw ideas out in the world and bring them back in an improved way because of our engagement with communities.” This is commonly seen in movies and TV shows.

Have you ever watched a movie and the plot, storyline or a particular scene look familiar like it's been taken from another movie? Often times it is from a movie made in the past that was remixed for the present. In many cases the remixed film is thought to better than the previous because of new technology or a higher production value, though sometimes the original work is still better.

A good example is one of my mom's favorite movies “TheStepford wives". A remake of the 1975 film. Both were based on the novel written by Ira Levin. The 1975 movie is about a beautiful young woman who moved with her family to a little town in Connecticut but later realized that her neighbors especially the wives are not as perfect and proper as they seem to be.

Although the remake made quite a lot of profit, the movie got a lot of backlash because it didn’t live up to the expectations of the 1975 “Stepford wives” fans. Mainly because most people, like me, remember the first movie to be a dark satire, about the misogynistic, upper-class American (male) rather than the new 2004 film which was such a flop because of the twist in the storyline. "Stepford wives" is a good example of two separate directors taking the same story and putting a spin on it, they put in a-lot of creative work but at its core its the same story/premise, taking an old idea and made it theirs.