Reimaginings. Adaptations. Remakes.

If the butter-side-up of Hollywood’s bread is sequels, then these are surely its butter-side-down. They don’t really hide it anymore because we all know about it, and while I’d like to say I could just dismiss this as greedy producers and a lack of good writing talent, it’s not that simple. And while that’s partly because I’ve spent a good chunk of my life watching films, and am not predisposed to panning the entire medium, the fact is, remakes have always been a part of Hollywood. The increased literacy rate has made it a bit easier to spot as well.

Now, I’d like to consider myself well read, but often it gets easier to just defer to the movie and assume you’ve gotten the gist of it. Gone With The Wind is a great example. Irrelevant of your personal feelings on the movie, it’s hard to deny the effect it had on the industry, setting new standards for acting in a medium that had only been using sound for about a decade. It was also one of the first real blockbusters outside of Birth of a Nation.

Yet the movie itself was based on a book, one that I am constantly encouraged to read, but may never get to, simply because the film was able to take something purely literary and breathe such visual life into it. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to just read about Scarlett O’Hara without Vivien Leigh’s chilling performance.

Gone With The Wind also had little creative licensing taken with the book, but, at other points, Hollywood just decides to take the rights of a book and run with it in what can be described as a “profitable” direction.

The 1931 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein saw all the deep philosophical introspection of the original material stripped away in the name of making one big monster movie. And while many literati can lament the film’s butchering of one of the great English novels, what it did for Hollywood and our childhood needs little explanation. Frankenstein, alongside Dracula and The Wolfman, gave new meaning to the word horror and runs as deep as our Saturday-morning cartoons, theme parks and Halloween nights.

Even Die Hard is based on a 1979 novel called Nothing Lasts Forever. Die Hard. As in Bruce Willis driving a semi into a fighter jet and screaming yippee-ki-yay, Die Hard.

Of course, not all adaptations are good things, or even come from novels. Early this year was one of the most painful announcements I’d heard out of Hollywood in a long, long time.

They’re remaking Escape From New York.

The movie wasn’t even that good, it was just campy, starred Kurt Russell and a lot of people — including Ernest Borgnine — got shot. I don’t see how they could make it that fun again. Though they’ve certainly got a good angle, having tapped Live Free or Die Hard director Len Wiseman and up-and-coming inductee to Hollywood badassery himself, Mister Gerard “This is Sparta!” Butler from this year’s 300, which is itself an adaptation of a graphic novel.

If there’s one big adaptation coming down the pipe though, it’s the new Star Trek movie, slated for a Christmas 2008 premiere. Directed by Lost creator J.J. Abrams, and starring Chris Pine (Smokin’ Aces) as Kirk, Zachary Quinto (Sylar on Heroes) as Spock and Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) as Scotty, this film has become a divisive topic among film fans and Trekkies alike.

However, I’m with John Campea from TheMovieBlog on this one, the last decade’s worth of decline in the popularity of Star Trek justifies a reimagining of this, the 11th Star Trek film. I would love for the series to still be popular, but it’s not, the films have seen low returns, the last TV show was cancelled, and I don’t see much reason to stick with the old continuity if it means no more Star Trek ever. This remake at least gives the series a chance to grow and make a new market for itself.

Six months ago I threw in my chips with Hollywood’s overabundance of sequels, and I’m doing the same now with remakes. The engine of Hollywood is always advancing, and if this is the direction it takes, past experience has taught me that it has a damn good chance of finding some quality stories to tell.