A few weeks ago, a prominent writer wrote an essay talking about the evils of remakes. If it stirred up much discourse, I didn’t see it. The writer in question is a beloved and respected figure in the writing community, and their stance on remakes seems noncontroversial. Who would be foolish enough to publicly argue that remakes good?

“Brian, do you mean retellings? Those can be a lot of fun!”

Retellings can be great. Sometimes you can’t even tell when something is a retelling.

One great example that comes to mind is the TV series House. It is a modern retelling of Sherlock Holmes, where instead of solving crimes and helping Scotland Yard, our hero is unravelling medical puzzles for the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. House is Holmes, addicted to Vicodin instead of Heroin. Wilson is Watson. Lisa Cuddy is Irene Adler. House even lives in an apartment numbered 13B.

House works as a retelling because while the characters are transformed or transferred to a different setting, the themes carry through. Brilliance in spite of addiction, the importance of friendship, and perception through extrapolation are all themes of both the original and the retelling.

The Hulk in comics and other mediums is usually a retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, exploring the duality of man and themes of obsession. It’s usually a retelling, but sometimes it’s a reimagining.

“How is a reimagining different than a retelling?”

As I am defining it, a reimagined story takes milieux, characters, or events from the original story and opens them up for exploring different themes. A really good example of a reimagining is Wicked. The novel reimagines the story of The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of The Wicked Witch, expanding her character and the world of Oz with a specific focus on the animals. The darkness from the original books by Baum is preserved, while entirely different themes around acceptance and perception are explored through Elphaba.

The jump from the page to stage is where Wicked changed tone, in much the same way that the Wizard of Oz changed tone when it became a movie. Wicked the musical preserved some of the same themes from the Wicked the book, but added themes around peer pressure and love persevering. These new themes continued, when the Broadway musical was translated into the Wicked movies.

While the move from The Wizard of Oz to Wicked is a reimagining, the transition of Wicked from book to musical to movie is more along the lines of a remake.

“Changing medium isn’t necessarily a remake, Brian.”

That wasn’t a question, and you’re right. What makes it a remake is the specific changes I flagged. Some of the characters were changed, along with the the tone and the voice of the story itself. The book is moody and dark. The musical is light and whimsical.

Remakes are good when something new is added, expanding, enhancing, or even just acknowledging what make the original enjoyable in the first place.

Remakes are great when they are so transformative, you forget they’re a remake entirely. For example, most people don’t realize or remember that the movie, The Wizard of Oz, is a remake.

“You mean Return to Oz in the late 80s, right? That wasn’t a remake, that was a sequel.”

No, I mean The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland in 1939, is a remake. If you go searching for “The Wizard of Oz” and “original” you’ll land on the 1939 movie. But the first Wizard of Oz movie came out in 1925. It is a silent movie, not particularly faithful to the original novel, but it came first and gave us the first iteration of the same actor playing a farmhand as well as the scarecrow.

The 1939 remake of The Wizard of Oz is so good that the 1925 movie is all but forgotten. Other examples of this phenomena include The Fly (remake 1986, original 1958), The Thing (remake 1982, original 1951), Scent of a Woman (remake 1992, original 1974), Ocean’s Eleven (remake 2001, original 1960), Scarface (remake 1983, original 1932), True Grit (remake 2010, original 1969), Ben-Hur (remake 1959, original 1925), and many, many others.

Something being a remake does not automatically mean it is bad, anymore than it means it is automatically great. There have been some truly forgettable remakes. Robocop, for example. I’m told that the remake is actually a lot of fun, looks good, and worth seeing, but there’s probably a reason that when I mention Robocop, you’re probably thinking of the original.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is great, highlighting Gene Wilder’s charm and comedy. Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, on the other hand, is weird and didn’t land for me. I can name other remakes that fell flat, but what’s the point? A bad or boring movie is going to be bad or boring, whether it’s a remake or not.

We’ve spent a lot of time looking at the past, but now let’s take a glance at the future. Henry Cavill is going to star in the Highlander remake. Excellent! I’ve liked Henry in everything I’ve seen him in, and I expect the Highlander remake to be fun.

People will say with extreme confidence that some movies can’t be remade. I don’t think that’s true. Disney has a recent streak of remaking a bunch of beloved cartoons into live-action versions, and most of those remakes have raked in a ton of money, even when the quality of the new doesn’t compare to the original.

It’s important to remember that a remake doesn’t replace the original. It’s just a different version. It might be better, or it might suck. We had multiple remakes of Spider-man in what seemed like a short span of time, and all three Spiders-man were great. Some may like Toby better, or Andrew, or Tom, and No Way Home gave us a movie where you get all three.

So in summary, let’s judge a story or movie by its content, rather than be prejudiced about whether it is a remake or not. The world is a better place for having Judy Garland’s version of The Wizard of Oz in it. And who knows? Maybe there’s a remake of The Wizard of Oz in our future that brightens our world even further.

If you stretch the definition of remake just a little bit, the Wicked movies are that remake. People will talk about Wicked for years to come. It has all the hallmarks of a generational touchstone.

Oh, and to make sure I’m not misunderstood, I don’t think everything should be a remake. We need to give original stories a chance to breath and be seen or read, too.

Goodness, where do I start?

I turned 53 on March 5th, which was a Thursday this year. 53 on 3-5. That’s kind of neat.

This one might be a little bit of a rollercoaster. Lots of emotional ups and downs.

Let’s start with birthday cards. Growing up, I didn’t think much of them, though I still have one my friend Tim gave me when I turned 18. He’s an artist, and he drew me with a saxophone, robotic dogs, and some other things I was (and still am) into. That one meant a lot to me. I haven’t heard from Tim in several years. I have tried reaching out several times.

Birthday cards are cool, though. You don’t really appreciate them until you stop receiving them. This year, I received 2. One is from my mother-in-law, who is sort of my biggest fan, and one of the reasons The Repossessed Ghost is published. She read a printout of Spin City, loved it, heard from Melissa about my urban fantasy, and continuously asked her when she could get her hands on it. I didn’t want to just print it for her, which motivated me to pull it from the trunk and reconsider my publishing options.

The other card came from Mary Robinette Kowal, which set off a series of reactions. She is one of many people I would love to be friends with, and the card made me feel special. We are well acquainted. I had a blissful moment of thinking, “Someone I admire cares about me.” But then I remembered that I support her Patreon, and she sends out cards to all of her folks on their birthday. I’m really more of a customer than anything, and those warm fuzzy feelings evaporated, leaving me feeling a little cold.

I don’t have a surfeit of friends. I believe I’m like my mother, in that I’m a very difficult person to enjoy. The friends I have (like Mike Baltar) are exemplary people, able to overlook my shortcomings, at least for a time.

To celebrate my birthday, Melissa helped me organize a roleplaying game day. I would run it, and Mike, Bryanna, Chris, and a few of the kids’ friends would play. It looked like it was going to be too many players, at first, but then it settled down to me plus 5 players. I spent most of the weekend before my birthday preparing, and then we played on the Saturday after my birthday.

I wrote up all the characters in advance, with backstories that interwove with the history of the place and the history of each other. On the day of gaming, when one of the Bryanna’s friends canceled on us, I was a bit distraught. It put a big hole in my plans.

Melissa filled in for a little bit, and she did great. She eventually got tired of it and went off and took a nap, but she was there long enough for the game to get going and hit critical mass. The one-shot went off as a one-shot, and I think everyone had a good time.

I spent Sunday recovering, and then early Monday morning, around 2:30AM, I woke up with a familiar pain. A kidney stone.

Well, shit.

I hadn’t had one in a while, so I was due. Fortunately, the pain wasn’t so intense that I was nauseous. I immediately took an old Vicodin and went back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I let work know that I was probably not going to be available, took another Vicodin, and slept more. I woke up groggy in the afternoon, felt a bit out of sorts on Tuesday, but was otherwise fine. The pain never got out of control. I didn’t have to go to the hospital.

The work week became a jumbled mess. I fell behind, couldn’t catch up, and became extremely frustrated with some terrible decisions which I believe is going to jeopardize our ability to make a decent product. Thursday, I woke up motivated enough to do something about it, and over the last couple of days, I’ve sent in motion things that will either correct the course and save the company and our product, or lead to me getting fired. I’m hoping for the former, but not counting out the latter.

Throughout all of this, Melissa and I have been “playing tennis.” I put that in quotes because we’re going to the tennis courts, with tennis equipment, but we’re just trying to get good rallies going. Not keeping track of points. It’s gamified exercise, which is what I need since my blood pressure has been completely out of control lately. Yesterday, after an extremely stressful day at work, the machine said I was at 196/127.

There are more things I could say about my perspective on my health. It gives me a kind of super power, even if it’s macabre.

Because I love my friends, I’m playing tennis and trying to exercise more so that I’ll have future birthday updates to write about. As pessimistic as I may about my chances, I’m still doing things that, in theory, will prolong my life. At the same time, the pessimism, the certainty that there isn’t that much time left on the clock, unlocks my ability to say things that need to be said, because when else will I have a chance to say them?

It’s vitally important to remember that multiple things can be true at once.

1. We should not be engaged in war with Iran, and the US strikes were illegal and unjustified
2. Iran has been sponsoring terrorism for a long time
3. We can hate the position Trump and Hegseth have put us in without hating our troops

If we wish to be a land of laws and justice, and The Constitution reestablished as the law of the land, then Congress should assert its war powers and impeach Trump for violating our laws.

No one wanted this, but we’re all going to pay for it. We are going to pay in money, and we’re going to pay in blood.

There are many reasons Trump should be impeached, and there are several duties Congress has failed to fulfill.

Honestly, there isn’t much nuance here. As I understand it, we vaporized an elementary school.

Feel what you want to feel about the Iran government and their leaders, the people of Iran are innocent, and often victims themselves. It’s okay to grieve the loss of life. In fact, we should be grieving.

We should be grieving the loss of US lives. Last I heard, 4 troops have died, so far. Maybe it’s way more than that. Hegseth and Trump are both rather blasé about it, basically saying “It happens” and “They know what they signed up for.”

Our troops are not to blame. I’m repeating this because I’ve seen some stuff on social media that really twisted my stomach in knots. Yes, they’re volunteers. But trust me when I say that most of them didn’t volunteer for this, and they’re not in a position where they can easily unvolunteer.

Gas prices are going to go up, as will the prices of non-related products, which sucks. This is going to get worse before it gets better, and it’s all stupid and avoidable.

I am so, so tired.