3 Awful Sci-Fi Remakes That Should Never Have Existed

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Remaking a beloved science fiction film is a huge risk for any director. Classic films become iconic because of a unique combination of innovative ideas, relevant themes, and a memorable visual style that captures the spirit of their time. They leave a lasting impact on our culture. To justify a remake, filmmakers need a fresh and compelling new approach. It’s a difficult balance – paying respect to the original while also creating something original and worthwhile, and many attempts fall short.

Many science fiction remakes fail because they miss what people loved about the originals. They often remove the thought-provoking ideas and meaningful themes, replacing them with simple action and special effects. This leaves audiences with a shallow imitation that lacks the spirit and intelligence of the original, ultimately damaging a property that was perfectly fine as it was.

3) RoboCop (2014)

The original 1987 film, *RoboCop*, remains relevant today because it cleverly and brutally critiques corporate greed and the way media often exaggerates stories. It accurately foreshadowed many issues we now face. The 2014 remake, however, failed by softening the violence to achieve a PG-13 rating. This missed the point of the original’s shocking brutality, which wasn’t just about gore. The graphic violence was essential to the film’s message, highlighting how corporations can strip people of their humanity. By removing that harshness, the remake turned a thought-provoking and rebellious story into a standard, unremarkable action movie.

The 2014 remake of *RoboCop* changes the central, heartbreaking element of the story. The original film’s power came from watching Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) fight to get back the identity that was brutally taken from him and replaced with a manufactured one. However, the remake’s version, played by Joel Kinnaman, is too aware of what’s happening, which removes the crushing tragedy and turns it into a typical revenge story. Even with strong actors like Gary Oldman and Michael Keaton, the film feels creatively safe and lacks meaningful themes.

2) Total Recall (2012)

Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 film, *Total Recall*, is a famously creative and over-the-top sci-fi adventure, known for its quirky humor, impressive special effects, and memorable Mars location. The 2012 remake, however, is a dark, uninspired, and visually unoriginal film that removes everything that made the original special. A key mistake was its decision to eliminate the journey to Mars, swapping the bright red planet for a bleak, rainy, and depressing Earth. This instantly showed a lack of imagination, leaving the film looking just like many others from that time.

While the remake of *Total Recall* isn’t visually striking, its biggest problem is that it quickly dismisses the core question of what’s real and what’s a fabricated memory. This ambiguity was key to the original film’s suspense and paranoia. By resolving it early, the remake loses its psychological depth and becomes a simple, predictable action movie. Furthermore, Colin Farrell doesn’t capture the same commanding presence that Arnold Schwarzenegger did, leaving the whole film feeling flat and uninspired.

1) War of the Worlds (2025)

The 2025 version of *War of the Worlds* is a remarkably bad and poorly executed film. Instead of a theatrical release, it went straight to streaming and tried to update the story by presenting everything as if it were happening on computer screens and phone cameras. This approach doesn’t work at all, turning a worldwide disaster into a collection of choppy, low-budget videos. Instead of feeling the fear of an alien invasion, viewers are stuck watching Ice Cube’s character, a Homeland Security analyst, simply look at a screen while the world is destroyed around him – off camera.

As a critic, I have to say this new take on *War of the Worlds* completely lost me. The choices made just didn’t work, instantly killing any sense of suspense or drawing me into the story. Honestly, the effects looked cheap and the direction felt clumsy, which made the alien invasion feel…well, not threatening at all. And this weird focus on a screen-based gimmick? It created distance instead of immersion. What really disappointed me was that it missed the whole point of the original story – that feeling of humanity being small in a vast universe. Instead of a gripping adaptation, it felt like a boring tech showcase, and frankly, it’s one of the worst sci-fi adaptations I’ve seen in a long time. It’s just a soulless and frankly, incompetent production.

What sci-fi remake feels totally pointless to you? Share your thoughts in the comments and join the discussion in the ComicBook Forum!

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2025-10-15 20:12