Why Americanized, English-Language Remakes Bring So Much Baggage

America does not have the transportation infrastructure to replicate the quotidian train ride at the heart of the original film. The train is both a literal and metaphorical vehicle for the film’s central conflict. Not only are the train and train stations the film’s setting, the train’s chamber and carts metaphorically reinforce the film’s exploration of social hierarchy and classism. Being in transit by rail is what intermittently helps train passengers evade the zombies who ravish the city and what sequesters the passengers and the infected together. Replacing the train with a bus or subway route wouldn’t be as effective because these systems are inherently staccato. Zombies aren’t exactly mindful of closing doors. Can you recall the last American film you saw with a multi-hour train ride? The Polar Express? Unstoppable starring Denzel Washington? (That’s the one with the unstoppable train the size of the Chrysler building). Exactly.

3. Reinforces a Troubling Paradigm

When it is assumed that the willingness of American audiences to watch a film is contingent on that film’s proximity to what Hollywood typifies as American—English-speaking, often white—the legitimacy of non-white, non-English-speaking Americans is inherently impugned. More than that, the particularities of experiences from outside our borders are reductively othered. Yes, the “universality of human experience” can be a draw to watching a film in a language you aren’t fluent in. But also, being open to watching stories that capture experiences you cannot empathize with (like having functional nationwide public transportation) is also incredibly generative. Hot people watch international films!

The impulse to Americanize non-English films, from both Asian countries and other non-white countries around the world, often has its roots in xenophobia. The narrative accommodations that need to take place to make a film legibly American often sap the story of its culturally relative riches. For example, Bong Joon-ho and Adam McKay have a forthcoming Parasite project in the works with HBO Max. While it is unclear where it’ll take place and who it’ll involve, taking the original film and injecting it into an American setting could fundamentally rupture the integrity of Parasite’s original concept.

Were Parasite’s concept Americanized, it would have to address the complex, generational racialization of poverty in the U.S. and the history of Indigenous genocide, chattel slavery and other quintessentially American factors. Bong’s original film could devote more time and eloquently develop its meditations on social class because it was set in a comparatively more racially homogenous country. An American adaptation of Parasite would be a gargantuan undertaking because, for it to be successful, it would intrinsically necessitate responses to American problems that Bong’s original work did not have to account for.

This returns us to the complication presented by New Line Cinema’s creative team selection. There’s plenty of baggage when we get American remakes of non-English, non-white films. But are those films given a pass when their creators are on board, as in Bong’s case? Are they given a pass because it’s giving a Hollywood boost to talented Asian creatives, as in Tjahjanto’s? Are the xenophobic roots deracinated by the identity of the recreators or the involvement of the originators?

It’s still got its pros and cons, but because of America’s history of economic and cultural imperialism, American movies do not get a free pass when adapting films from other countries. “Americanizing” something—rather than making it fresh and specific to Nigeria, India or even Italy—is not always a mere expression of creative license or an effort to spotlight an international story for a domestic audience. It can sometimes be a gesture of dominance expressed through whitewashing; yet another iteration of a deeply American impulse to access, adopt, adapt and approximate a thing to itself.

I sincerely hope that the American Train to Busan is fantastic. More so, I hope that American audiences will continue to seek out dazzling international films and that every time an American remake is in the works, Americans respond not with relief but with apprehension. With these grains of salt, perhaps we can move towards a moviegoing culture that more readily accepts originals regardless of culture or language, and doesn’t balk at subtitles. Here’s to hoping that international releases are more widely viewed, that Tjahjanto makes the most of his remake and that the American Train to Busan doesn’t bite.

Adesola Thomas is a screenwriter and culture writer. She loves talking about Annette Benning’s performance in 20th Century Women and making lasagna. You can follow her on Twitter.