Cliffhanger Remake?

can you really improve on this?

Earlier this week the world was informed that StudioCanal have decided to remake the 90's Stallone action film Cliffhanger. I have decided that I have a problem with this.

My problem doesn't lie in the fact that Hollywood insists on plundering my 13-year-old self's favorite films, or that remakes simply have a tendency to suck. It lies in the fact that a remake of a 90's action film does not make any sense in the current global political context.

First, a history lesson: the modern American action genre is cut up into three distinct time periods. These periods are: 

1. The post-Vietnam war, Reaganite 80's;

2. The post-Soviet 90's; and 

3. The Globalised, post 9-11, technophilic 2000's.

The first category refers to films like Rambo II, Missing in Action, and Commando. These films feature a lone, muscular protagonist (Stallone, Norris and Schwarzenegger respectively) who singlehandedly takes on entire armies and wins. These films are influenced heavily by the United States' loss in Vietnam, and can be seen as Hollywood trying to overcome America's loss by symbolically claiming victory. Lots of blood, gore, and one-dimensional characterisation ensues.

Films like Die Hard, True Lies and Cliffhanger belong in the second category. In these films, the location has moved from foreign soil to the heartland of America. Where the films of the first category were about America asserting its values overseas, these ones are about America defending itself from foreign invaders. Again, the defense is performed with characteristic gusto. The baddies tend to die in increasingly spectacular fashion. In Cliffhanger, you have a good, honest American rock climber dispatching baddies in many awesome and varied ways: impaling them on stalactites, crushing them in avalanches, etc. etc. Each death is more spectacular than the last.

The third and most recent category is the exact opposite of the first two. Included in this are films like the Bourne Identity and Casino Royale. In these films, the protagonist is not particularly muscular and does not serve as a symbol of American values. The character of Jason Bourne for example does not even know at the beginning of his adventure if he is American or French or English or Russian or whatever. The action sequences are often shot with a handheld camera give a sense of gritty realism. There is lots of interaction with sophisticated technology: mobile phones and laptops becoming the tool of the hero as opposed to the simple yet effective weaponry of earlier action films.

The films of the first two categories reflect a simplistic "us vs. them" political landscape. The enemy is clear, and what must be done to them is even clearer: kill them and then say something glib. Films of the third category offer a murkier morality, where the distinctions between the goodies and baddies are hard to define. The action is less of a spectacle, forgoing the unnecessary brutality that make films in category one and two such simple-minded entertainment.

I guess my point for this post is this: now that action films have com this far there is no going back. A studio that attempts to remake a film like Cliffhanger does so to it's own detriment. If they keep the same basic layout, then they find themselves a decade too late thematically and aesthetically. If they choose to 'modernise' the plot by Bournifying it they lose the essence of the original film. Gabe Walker can never be Jason Bourne. 

My bet is that the studio will be having the good guys texting each other constantly and using smartphones to update their facebook status shot with a shakey, hand-held camera. There will be a Jack Bauer-esque interrogation scene where the good guys torture a baddie in order to find out where a WMD is. Gone will be the smug remarks after an enemy gets horribly and spectacularly killed. Gone will be a muscular Stallone, replaced by Shia Labeouf or some other skinny white boy. Gone will be the simplicity of the 'kill all the bad guys and everything will be alright' mentality. Gone will be Cliffhanger, replaced by some thing that is definitely not Cliffhanger.

Leave the goddamn film where it is. This remake cannot work.