Nate von Zumwalt and Jared Hurst
Surely Spike Lee knows that the “remake” is the most hazardous terrain for a director to explore. Beyond the usual critics, there lie an obsessive and carping band of film fans ready to lambaste any rethinking of the original vision—and often before a script has even surfaced.
On that note, Spike Lee’s Oldboy recently hit theaters, which reimagines Park Chan-wook’s 2005 Sundance Film Festival selection of the same name. Lee is considerably loyal to the original in his remake, which see Josh Brolin swapped in for Choi Min-sik as a kidnapped man left to his own devices as he tries to escape imprisonment and track down his captors. Below we’ve juxtaposed five GIFs from each version to emphasize the similarities in both narrative and style.
Which Oldboy do you prefer?
Both men wake up disoriented in an isolated hotel room, replete with surveillance cameras.
Each is resigned to flipping through channels to begin piecing together their stories…
…Which leads to the realization that their wives have been murdered, and a wall must be punched.
In an obsessive desire to find and kill their captors, they spend downtime training and shadowboxing.
And when they spring from suitcases, they check their wallets and prepare to avenge their wives’ deaths.
And then Nicolas Cage shows up for no reason at all.
