CineTV Contest - Dream Remake - 1997's CONSPIRACY THEORY, starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts
Conspiracy Theory (1997)
starring
Mel Gibson & Julia Roberts
If you haven't heard of this movie, here's the trailer from Youtube.
1997's CONSPIRACY stars Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts in an action drama about a mentally-unstable taxi driver targeted by dangerous governments agents when one of the conspiracy theories from his self-published newsletters happens to be ... REAL.
Mel Gibson appears have had some trouble in his personal life, from his substance addiction to his racist outbursts. Not to defend the guy but he used to be in some damn-good movies. APOCALYPTO and PASSION OF THE CHRIST still haunt me to this day. Anyway, the other star of this movie is Julia Roberts. I don't know much about her personal life but she's another one of those 90s stars who was basically in a ton of good movies herself. Her recent premium TV series haven't been all that great but nowadays it's basically illegal to make anything unique hat's not a remake ... but speaking of remakes, I'd love to see a modern 2020's era version of this movie lol.
This movie has some fun comedy bits and some great live-action special effects scenes. It's from a time period before all the super CGI heavy fluff we're used to. Someone needs to do a study on what hundreds of hours of computer imaging does to the brain, compared to hundreds of hours of real-life action and special effects. Special effects have improved immensely in the last decade but somewhere deep down I'd like to think our brains know or sense when something we're seeing didn't physically occur, that our eyes can somehow instinctively spot discrepancies in digital fakeries.
If I were to remake 1997's CONSPIRACY, I'd used the same exact stars but set them in the modern online-heavy, geopolitical landscape. An olde, rugged Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts because she's got swagger and charm that a lot of these instagram, Youtube stars will never have. Of course, speaking of CGI there'd probably be a lot so hopefully we could get whoever does Michael Bay's stuff because despite the shallow plots and gimmicky characters, his live-action TRANSFORMERS series is always a visual spectacle. I'm not sure what the conflict of the story would be in a modern-day remake of this film ... the original had something to do with earthquakes, space, and a presidential assassination. Nowadays, with the immensity of online information and misinformation, maybe it'd be silly for the government to be worried about bad press because most of the modern public already knows the government is lying to us, robbing us, poisoning us, and brainwashing us toward our own oblivion and we're too numb to care, or maybe it's always been like that.
Perhaps a movie about Julia Roberts character being made the legal counsel for a pharmaceutical company using celebrities and politicians to push a rushed and improperly-tested new drug that will line the pockets of the elite with billions of cash but Mel Gibson's character returns to reveal that the drug has a chemical that makes the grandchildren of those who take it--basically sterile. It's the perfect crime, no one would notice the negative side-effects in a single generation, all nay-sayers would be called crazy for decades, and by the time the proof of wrong is widely recognizable in the grandchildren--nothing can be done but to watch as unstoppable global depopulation take place. It sounds a little like CHILDREN OF MEN, starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore but hopefully this movie could be a little less bleak. CHILDREN OF MEN was a great movie though. I'll have to give that one a rewatch sometime soon.
1997's CONSPIRACY THEORY was to me, a C+ or B- movie, but I think a modern remake could be interesting.
I watched this movie a long time ago, at that time I liked it, maybe it is bad to watch this type of movie after a while
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Yeah it's a bit of an old movie. I recently watched it and while not utterly flabbergasted I was impressed at the thought that most, if not all, the special effects were live-action and not cooked up in some computer-graphics lab somewhere. Thanks for reading!
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I do not know if you get to see this movie but as you say this pair of actors were very famous in the 90s, still in the modern version of Mad Max invited Mel and the film for which always remember Julia is Pretty Woman, as you say a new version of this film with all that offers the current cinema in terms of effects, plus l all digital would certainly give an interesting result and with actors to the height otherwise it would be a bread
Yeah Mel Gibson was great in Mad Max and so was Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Current cinema relies too much on computer-generated special effects, which makes sense since it's cheaper than live-action special effects, but I think deep down there is something uncanny about fakery that can maybe be sensed on some unconscious level. But the devil's advocate argument would be all the new deep-fake technology that super imposes faces and generates realistic photography indistinguishable from legitimate originals. Perhaps in the future, nothing will be real. Whether in the mind or physical reality, bread and circus is still bread and circus, and people would rather have bad entertainment than none at all.
This is very true, there are many movies that entertain, but they are very bad and exaggeratedly fantastical, especially in cases where they pose theoretically possible scenarios, only in the fantasy genre impossible things like magic or mythological animals are accepted, to name a few.
A few days ago I went to see Jurassic World: Dominion and it was disappointing, I expected more, I saw it very flat, I felt I wasted my time, nothing like the first trilogy.
Sorry to hear that about "Jurassic World: Dominion." That movie did appear to be another one of those cookie-cutter franchise cash-grabs but I was hoping it'd be a little more interesting than the last one -- the one about them trying to save dinosaurs from a volcano or something like that.
One of my favorite dinosaur movies is "We're Back! A Dinosaur Story." It's from 1993 so it's a bit dated and it's an animated movie but I recently rewatched it and was surprised with how much better story-telling was back then. If you're looking for a more serious movie about big monsters, I'd recommend 2010's "Monsters," 2008's "Cloverfield," or 2014's "Godzilla."
Of the three you recommend I have only seen Godzilla 2014, I liked it, the others I will look for them to see how they are.