By Lisa Fary
I don’t know if it was the headline or the glasses of Big House White wine, but I got nauseous when I read about a Footloose remake.
I just. . . you know. . . it’s not. . . . what I mean is. . . .
NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
There’s nothing wrong with Footloose!
Right?
Footloose has nothing to do with sci-fi, but I’m really bothered by this.
It’s a classic story of an urban kid in a small town that’s banned dancing. It’s a struggle between the Kevin Bacons and the John Lithgows of the world. It’s the timeless tale of the older generation who insists that their way is best and refuses to let the younger generation be who they need to be and make decisions for themselves.
So, the soundtrack is a bit dated. You get that with Kenny Loggins and Bonnie Tyler, but the karaokeability of those songs can’t be beat. I’ve sung “Footloose” and “Holding Out for Hero” many, many times in a smoky Arizona boite, and given the opportunity will sing them again in a similar boite in Philly. That’s just good music.
The costumes, on the other hand, aren’t that dated since that whole 80s look has come back strong (guess who owns two pairs of non-ironic skinny jeans now and is making a set of legwarmers? Yep. Me).
A Hollywood studio wants to remake Footloose as a Zac Efron vehicle and has fast-tracked it in the wake of High School Musical 3’s $42 million opening weekend. I get that Hollywood isn’t in it to make viewers happy. I get that they’re in it for a quick buck.
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So, why am I so upset about this? It’s not like Footloose is some Oscar-winning triumph. Am I being unreasonable? Have I turned into the Gen X version of the Baby Boomer who won’t shut up about how awesome things were when they were young? Who can’t accept that maybe the next generation has something to contribute? (BTW, Boomers, that’s really irritating when you do that).
Or does the idea just suck?
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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku and had a Kevin Bacon crush for years after seeing Footloose.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
There’s nothing wrong with Footloose! Right?
Right! I think it’s the best of all the 80′s dance movies.
I’m willing to ignore most remakes, but this one bugs me cause of Zac bleeping Efron. For serious, remake people? He looks like he has the same skin texture as a Ken doll, which I’m sure is no coincidence since Disney is linked with Mattel.
Thank you!
Zac Efron just looks so sanitary.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Footloose! It’s one of the essential movies from my formative years. Heck, it’s probably (at least part of) the reason I took gymnastics and dance for years and years. I really don’t understand the studios’ recent rush to remake everything under the sun. First Deathrace, then Rocky Horror, now Footloose? I know there are original ideas out there, even in Hollywood. It would be really great if some of those would get made instead.
I haven’t seen any of the HSM movies, so my only knowledge of Zac Efron is as young Simon Tam in one flashback from Firefly. He did really well in that, but that was six years ago. I have no idea if he’s any good now. I’m pretty sure he’s no Kevin Bacon, and that’s the real problem.
…Who can’t accept that maybe the next generation has something to contribute?
It would be bad if you couldn’t accept that the next gen has something to contribute IF they were contributing their own things. But remaking our OLD things and passing them off as their NEW things is not contributing. It’s stealing. There are plenty of good, original ideas out there.
They pop up all the time on TV and independent films. So the studios can’t convince me it is neccessary to keep remaking stuff that is perfectly fine the way it is.
I’m right there with you on this one! I have watched Footloose more times than is probably healthy to admit. I still get happy when I hear Holding out for a Hero. And I’m sorry, Zac is fine in HSM, he was cute in Hairspray, but I do NOT want him destroying a character that Kevin Bacon portrayed perfectly. What I really want to know is why in the hell are studios remaking films that aren’t even all that old??
Have I turned into the Gen X version of the Baby Boomer who won’t shut up about how awesome things were when they were young? Who can’t accept that maybe the next generation has something to contribute? (BTW, Boomers, that’s really irritating when you do that).
No, you haven’t. You like originality. I wish more people did. It’s not just something that affects this generation, though. I remember my first savvy pop-culture thought when I was about 6 or 7. I was watching Alvin & the Chipmunks (which in and of itself was already a remake of an old cartoon), and as Alvin and the boys were singing “Yakkety-Yak”, I said to my brother “You know, they probably use old songs like this because they think that kids like me don’t know that these songs are old. So they sound new to us, but really they’re just re-using old stuff. But they don’t know that some kids DO know old songs, so that doesn’t work.” My brother was astonished.
But it’s the same thing with this. Hollywood remakes this stuff, because there’s a whole generation of kids now who didn’t grow up with Footloose. It’ll be new to them.
The thing is, they should be developing an identity of their own!