Don't Get Sold on Spike Lee's Oldboy
Why 'cash-grab' remakes are the most offensive
Fuck you Spike Lee.
I wish I could just leave my sentiments at that, but I should probably elaborate. Fair warning, the fuck expletive has a tendency to slip into my diction when my rants go off the rails. Could I edit them out later? Possibly, but I think I’m going to take a page from Spike’s book and exhibit zero empathy towards my audience.
Every once in a while a remake will come out that will make me check my pulse to ensure I haven’t somehow died and slipped into the sixth circle of hell (That’s the one for heretics enclosed in flaming tombs, which still sounds significantly more palatable than the crime Spike has committed to cinema). Before I progress down this rabbit-hole filled with rabbit-shit, it may be best to establish my ethos in regards to this ticking-time bomb we call Hollywood and society.
Ethos: The character of an individual as represented by his or her values and beliefs; the moral or practical code by which a person lives.
-Oxford Online Dictionary
I absolutely loathe commercials. They make me want to actively un-buy things, and for those of you unaware, we live in a capitalist kind of world. As a result, our senses are constantly bombarded with advertisements and this obviously includes film. Movies exist as little more than another vehicle to pour our current currency into. Yes, yes, there is still ‘art’ and ‘integrity,’ and all that virtuous crap, but when you break all the shit around us down to the core, it’s all a big fucking commercial. This in itself isn’t inherently bad, everyone is trying to sell you something in some way. It could be a physical product or a pitch for a type of pilfered philosophy. Hell, even I could be considered complicit in the system by trying to sell you on this idea right now.
I think that is why I get so viscerally upset at most remakes; I have already bought this bullshit once, and Hollywood is trying to repackage it and sell it again like a box of non-shit-smelling chocolate assholes. Rather than try to win over an American audience with an inspired retelling of a foreign film, they elect to excrete out a movie for the sole purpose of cashing in on people who don’t like subtitles. For every Suspira, there are a dozen remakes that spit in the mouth of their original material (and not in the loving way). This is why we need to scream at the clouds about Spike Lee’s complete and total bastardization of the 2003 classic, Oldboy.
What is an Oldboy and how do I get one?
On its face, Oldboy is a South Korean revenge drama directed by Park Chan-wook. And, to quote the current kids, it fucking slaps. Now if all the children would please leave the premises immediately or at least attempt to cover their eyes, because we are going to talk about what I can only describe as ‘fucked-up shit.’ If you have a slightly stronger stomach and haven’t seen the 2003 original, I highly encourage you to watch it before reading this. The story takes some twists and turns and is best experienced as much in the dark as possible. I will administer this one warning though, incest is present and is a plot point, so do what you will with that information.
Authors note: I would normally encourage people to seek this out on their own, but this movie is a little hard to find online. I think this is a heavy film but ultimately worth experiencing so here is a link to watch it. I advise moral caution and using a device with an adblocker.
Last chance to avoid spoilers folks, here it goes…
To give the down and dirty version, Oldboy is the story of Oh Dae-su, a man who is being held in the drunk tank at a local police station on his daughter’s ninth birthday. After being bailed out by a friend, he is abducted and held in captive isolation for fifteen years inside a hotel-room like prison where he is fed dumplings everyday. During this time, the news tells him that he has been framed for his wife’s murder and his daughter has been put into foster care. After fifteen years pass, he is put into a hypnotized trance and suddenly released. During his quest for answers/revenge, Dae-su meets a young sushi chef named Mido that he’d seen on TV during his captivity. When they meet he fails to fully consume a live octopus and passes out. Mido takes him back to her place because maybe in Korea that’s just what you do.
After finding out his daughter is with a foster family in America, Oh Dae-su sets his sights on the identity of his captors. He eats and purges dumpling after dumpling until he finds the one taste connected to the room he spent fifteen years in complete isolation. He follows the delivery boy and engages in what I can say is a fucking masterpiece.
We are going to talk about this scene later, but this is when Dae-su finds out that this is a type of privatized hotel-prison. His abduction and subsequent stay were paid for by a mysterious benefactor from his past. This changes the question of the film from ‘Why was Dae-su imprsioned?’ to “Why was Dae-su released?” Mido has come to ‘know’ (as in the biblical sense) Dae-su and tags along as they explore his old high school, which is home of the Evergreen Oldboys.
When looking through old yearbooks, Dae-su stumbles across a familiar face and suddenly remembers a rumor he was rumored to start. It involved two siblings that were, lets say, sinning together. This rumor may have led to the sister thinking she was pregnant and pitch herself over a dam wall. The brother, Lee Woo-Jin, is revealed to be the mysterious man who blames Oh Dae-su with all of this.
“You want to torture me, but I can simply kill myself first. Do you want revenge, or do you want the truth?”
-Lee Woo-Jin
Oh Dae-su locks Mido up in the hotel-prison to keep her safe during his final confrontation with Lee Woo-Jin. He arrives at Woo-Jin’s penthouse and is given access via the elevator. In the room, Dae-su thinks he has the upper hand in exposing Woo-Jin’s identity, but the tables are flipped right off their fucking hinges when it is revealed that Mido and Dae-su were hypnotized to fall in love…oh and that she is actually his long lost daughter.
Needless to say Dae-su doesn’t take this news too well. He first threatens Woo-Jin, but soon starts pleading with him not to tell Mido, even resorting to begging like a dog and gleefully removing his own tongue with a pair of scissors. It is truly an uncomfortable and pathetic scene to witness. Woo-Jin stifles his laughter as he exits to the elevator and promptly blows his brains out after reminiscing of his sister. Dae-su and Mido meet up with the earlier established hypnotist in an attempt to erase this troubling memory. The movie ends with it ambiguous if it worked.
I told you this shit was fucked! I absolutely intend to sound pretentious, but what a fucking film (insert chef kiss here). It is a cinematic experience I want to boil on a spoon and inject directly into my quivering eyes. Which is something I should probably talk to my therapist about, considering the themes…
The director has stated he was inspired by the story of Oedipus Rex and the character’s relentless pursuit of the truth. The story, for those unfamiliar, ends with the King gouging out his eyes upon the revelation he had accidentally killed his dad and married his mom (the original motherfucker, if you will).
Fuck you Spike Lee: Part Deux
Maybe that is why I find what Spike did so insulting, because his film’s entire existence is so abhorrently unnecessary. I mean, here we have a perfectly good incest revenge movie, and he has to come and shove ‘America’ right up its ass. Which I mean he has to dumb it down to the point the movie bludgeons the audience over the head enough that class action lawsuits could be filed. If Spike wants to tell you something, he is going to scream it in your face, he will yell it from the mountain tops in his purple suit (because nuance is for cowards, I guess).
This biggest issue is his handling of the daughter aspect of this story. The reason the 2003 original works so well, is because they bury the lead a little bit. They mention the daughter once or twice, but they kind of want to make the audience forget about her, like Oh Dae-su has. The entire point of the story is the reckless pursuit of revenge and how it makes you fail to see the bigger picture around you.
Spike decides to boldly eschew this complicated character in exchange for the Basic American ““Badass.”” From very early in the film, it is very apparent that Joe has a daughter and that he has to do whatever he can to protect her once he gets freed. Spike adds the stakes of saving the daughter because he thinks the audience is too dense to remember the protagonist even has one. This is another one of those points that I can hear Spike screaming in my brain, “Hey! This guy has a DAUGHTER! Did you know he has a DAUGHTER? He would do anything to protect his DAUGHTER. HE DEFINITELY WOULD DO ANYTHING EXCEPT HAVE WEIRD GROSS SEX WITH HER OBVIOUSLY.”
Just look at the opening character introductions to see exactly how much cinematic time (and our short precious lives) Spike is wasting. In Chan Woo-park’s original, the character of Oh Dae-su is established and abducted in the first five minutes of the film. It’s so cinematically efficient it’s borderline orgasmic. Even the character’s name has been selected to reflect further themes of the film.
“My Name, 'Oh Dae-su', means getting through one day at a time. That's what 'Oh Dae-su' means”
-said during Dae-su’s drunken ramblings
How does Spike handle this perfect piece of cinematic language? By putting on a pair of lead filled hulk hands to smash into your face with heavy-handed expository information. Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin) is pissing in an alley and pouring a bottle of vodka directly into a Styrofoam cup. I would like to give someone the benefit of the doubt that his name is an intentional, oxymoronic reference to something, but based on the amount of lackadaisical effort, I assume it was just a name Spike picked it because it sounds like ‘Dae-su.” (Although it could be a reference that the character is a douche).
Doucett was a name for a person of sweet, pleasant, or mild disposition as it is derived from the French word "douce," which directly translates to "fresh." Some sources also believe that it could be derived from the French word "doux," which means "soft."
We’re already well passed the five minute mark just so Spike can really hammer home that this man is a piece of utter human garbage. He talks shit to his ex, tries to accost a client’s wife, and haggles for a shitty rubber duck that’s five bucks for his daughter’s birthday while he stumbles the streets shitfaced. Spike takes twice the time as the original and all that has been accomplished is that I hate Josh Brolin and I wish I was as drunk as he is pretending to be.
I want to meticulously comb through both of these films and point out every inferiority with Spike’s, ‘reinterpretation,’ but I would like to finish this newsletter before the eventual heat death of the universe. I could spend days just dissecting the astronomical difference between Choi Min-Sik and Josh Brolin during their captivity scenes alone. But my issue isn’t with Brolin, it’s with the guy that’s calling “cut!”
The Hallway Brawl
Rather than pick apart this brick of shit bit by bit, lets look at one of the most iconic scenes from the film. Even if you watched the original fight posted above, do yourself a favor and just watch it again. Really try and take in the frantic, chaotic nature of that slobber-knocker of a scene. Notice the claustrophobic conditions, how uncoordinated it all seems, look at the exhaustion present in every performer as the fight drags further and further down the hall in its singular shot. Now let’s look at Spike’s ‘reinterpretation.’
Right off the bat we are off to a bad start. The way both parties approach is awkward and in the scene I almost expect a fighting game or Scott Pilgrim style “VS" to pop up on the screen. The whole thing just screams ‘STAGED.’
And I am partially convinced that Spike shot the scene right to left just to try and be different. It goes back to the subverting expectations point I made in a previous newsletter, choices in remakes that just call doing the opposite a ‘subversion.’ I could forgive all this if the action was at least interesting, but instead it is cartoonish and over the top, with looney-toon-esque sound effects shrieking through the score. Not to mention Spike decides to completely abandon the closeness and tight-space of the original setting. The ceiling isn’t present in the side shots, giving the impression that this is all just taking place on a big set with stunt doubles and a caricature of choreography. This just turns Joe Doucett into a basic bitch action hero and offers less stakes because of his perceived invincibility.
There are claims that a three hour cut of this movie exists and all I can think is, ‘please god please don’t give me more is this proof god exists and abandoned us or proof he never existed at all oh god oh god please don’t make me watch more of this shiiiiiiiiiit.’ That may be slightly dramatic, but considering that Spike takes SO MUCH FUCKING TIME to establish and infinitely worse character than the original, I have to assume most of the cut is just more unnecessary, brain-bashing exposition. I have a theory that the studio made him cut it to the legal length that could curtail concussions (Which is probably an hour and forty four minutes, isn’t it Spike?).
What are you trying to tell me to feel, Spike?
Rather than continue to rail against the rest of this shit show, I would like to focus on a bizarre change concerning Spike’s take on the villain and the ending. Once again, Spike has decided to forgo subtlety and nuance and provide, what I would call, a slightly more problematic villain.
In the original, Lee Woo-Jin is not a saint by any means, but I would argue he at least maintains a modicum of sympathy. Is he creepy, weird, and takes things way too far? Absolutely, but the complication comes from his sad, romantic feelings surrounding the loss of his sister. This has caused him to dedicate his life to revenge, and it is all-consuming, just like Dae-su’s has become.
“You really are the very monster I created, aren't you?”
-Lee Woo-Jin
Well Spike wants to get it across that anyone who incests is inherently evil. Rather than it be an inappropriate romance among siblings, Spike makes their entire family a den of inbreeding and incestuous intent. After being exposed, the father of Adrian’s family takes a shot gun to every member in the household. I think Spike was shooting for The Amityville Horror but ended up more in Awkwardville.
The insistence of the fatherly incest also implies a type of queer-coding of the main villain. Coding is essentially a way of communicating information to an audience. It may help to think of it as a type of “encoded information,” in language. So what I mean is that Spike’s villain is sending some subliminal messages. Adrian’s effeminate traits and demeanor are meant to be taken in stark contrast of our hyper-alpha-masculine hero. Incest apparently wasn’t evil enough, Adrian has to be portrayed as queer AND incestuous to really hammer home his horribleness. Even if this wasn’t Spike’s conscious intention, I think its inclusion and deviation from the original leave it susceptible to pointing-out and criticism.
Let’s close the lid on this trash fire
I know this has already been a long and wandering rant, but I need to quickly cover the cluster fuck that is the remake’s ending. Again Spike makes some decisions that make me wonder what his actual intentions with this film were (aside from a huge fucking paycheck, of course).
I talked about the original ending earlier, and if you’ve seen it, you know it is a display of a visceral and uncomfortable range of emotions. I would call it the equivalent of a modern tragedy and is intentionally difficult to watch. Choi Min-sik cannot be eclipsed and is giving it his all, so how does Spike ‘reinterpret’ this scene? By throwing out literally everything about it that makes it so powerful.
Spike’s take is so unmemorable, so nothing, that I couldn’t even find a clip of it. Brolin screams a a little bit, he crawls on his knees, and asks Adrian a couple times to not tell his daughter, Marie. Adrian complies and then embodies the audience’s psychological state by putting a gun in his own mouth and pulling the trigger. Brolin writes a letter to Marie and uses diamonds (Yeah there was diamond subplot added but was so unnecessary I neglected to mention it till now) to check himself back into the prison-hotel and the movie ends with him cradling his homemade Wilson. I’m sorry, but what the fuck?! What does this mean Spike? Is it an allegory for the prison system, Spike? Tell me what to feel other than stupid Spike! YOU HAD TEN YEARS AND THIS IS THE BEST YOU CAME UP WITH SPIKE? WHERE’S MY OEDIPUS ALLEGORY YOU MOTHERFUCKER?!
Needless to say, Spike did not Do The Right Thing in respect to this remake. Other cultures’ stories have value deserve to be told, but most importantly, they deserve to be told well. And is it really so difficult to do a little bit of reading?
I got a good laugh at my reading of the first sentence. That definitely shows how you truly feel. but I understand well what you're saying. I didn't see the movie, but after watching the clip you provided I can see that the director should have made an animated superhero story instead of trying to make bullshit look real. My complaint that I have seen in not just movies but in music also are remakes where the artist/director made a few minor tweaks and then advertise it as being a fantastic makeover.