Often, in discussions about old movies, someone will say, “That movie couldn’t be made today.”, and inevitably someone else will disagree.
My highschool physics teacher said the Nazis recorded X-ray video of Holocaust victims knees as they walked. Because MRI machines and other medical imagers aren’t large enough to walk around in, the films are still one of the best sources of how the bones actually move naturally under load in situ surrounded by the connective tissue.
The radiation dose required to expose regular film at 24 frames a second killed the subjects.
I really hope they don’t ever make movies like that again.
In 2021 my friend’s roommate said you couldn’t make a movie like Borat these days. I immediately pointed out they made a Borat movie the year before.
I didn’t point this out, but he claimed to be 6’2" while being a few inches shorter than me, and I’m 5’11".
Pootie Tang.
Cleopatra. There’s no way anyone would release a 4 hour historical drama as a movie. It would be a TV series these days.
Down Periscope. It is the best and most accurate submarine movie in existence.
“Buckman! There was a fingernail in my food, ya fatass moron! Yesterday, it was a Band-Aid!”
Buckman: “Sorry, sir. The Band-Aid was holding the fingernail on.”
Famously, you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today because they already made that move in the 70s
No Way Out (1950). Depicts a race riot. At one point a character uses the N word dozens of times in a row uninterrupted. Much of Sidney Poitier’s career would be hard to remake these days. Pressure Point (1962) where he’s a therapist trying to deprogram a Nazi. Maybe that’s exactly what the world needs a remake of right now, but we’re not gonna get it.
Basic Instinct (1992), Body Heat (1981), that sort of thing. They might remake it into a TV show, but they’re not putting that much sex in theaters.
Charlie Chan. A series of detective films about a Chinese detective who was always played by a white guy. Though you could make this movie in 2026, you wouldn’t cast a white person.
Countless movies where the subject matter is painfully out of date. They used to make anti-alcohol pictures when prohibition was a thing. Couldn’t vs. wouldn’t, I guess.
Even if you cast an East Asian actor, i don’t think you could do Charlie Chan films, given how he’s a ” Yellow Peril “ stereotype. Even Marvel had to make their equivalent character a deliberately racist stereotype played by an actor
Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. No way would a studio agree to do that much hand-crafted work. They’d just have the stars reacting to a bunch of tennis balls and “fix it in post.”
I think the biggest issue is David Bowe just hanging dong.
His leotard does not hide much in that movie.
Look up all the stunts Buster Keaton did, and shiver. Or The Little Rascals or Hal Roach’s Rascals, whatever they were called.
Or the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet - while probably one of the best versions ever, nobody today would dare to think doing a movie like that today - it would be criminal.
Song of the South
Hell, I’m a bit surprised they managed to make that one in 1946.
not a film, but a show. Little Britain. God, they got away with soooo much.
Birth of a Nation.
Although Tarantino would probably try, so long as he could star in it alongside Samuel L Jackson, and call Samuel L Jackson the n-word ‘for the cinematographic art of it, really, it’s crucial to the film’. Because, aside from feet, that’s his fetish.
I was gong to say Birth of a Nation but then I thought about who the American people elected and I changed my mind.
Scream.
The killer would try to call the girl in the first scene and she would just be like “Ew, who actually calls on the phone?” and hit cancel. Roll credits.
Alternatively the scariest movie the girl ever saw would be Five Nights at Freddie’s.
Scream 7 did actually change it up a bit, and most of the interactions with the killer were done over FaceTime
I’m surprised this isn’t a joke in the newer Scream films. At least I don’t remember something like this.
police story
Heathers
Not because it’s too controversial, but because dead school children have lost their shock value in the US
