Hollywood has been going pretty bonkers with the whole “rebooting every movie” schtick over the last few years, but we’re really entered into dangerously worrying levels with its latest project: a remake of Face/Off, John Woo’s 1997 action classic starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage.
According to Deadline, Paramount Pictures is rebooting Face/Off with a new cast and will be written by the guy responsible for penning great films such as *checks notes* um, The Cloverfield Paradox and Sonic the Hedgehog.
Welp, this isn’t going to turn out well is it?
For those who need a refresher, Face/Off is about an FBI agent (Travolta) and a domestic terrorist (Cage) who get their faces and bodies exchanged, resulting in a high-stakes version of Freaky Friday filled with John Woo’s operatic gun-fu action, and some of the hammiest greatest performances from Travolta and Cage we’ve ever seen onscreen.
It is also a goddamn masterpiece and no film quite defines 90s action quite like Face/Off, which begs the question: why are Hollywood messing around with perfection?
The behind-the-scenes crew assembled so far have a hell of a mountain to climb in order to match John Woo’s handiwork on the original film. While we should take all this with a few gains of salt seeing how the project is in its still early days and no director has been confirmed, it’s not particularly encouraging that the writer for some pretty dodgy films is penning the Face/Off reboot script.
Why couldn’t they just eat a peach for hours instead?
But perhaps the biggest obstacle to this remake being a success is the inimitable duo of John Travolta and Nic Cage. That pairing is what made the original Face/Off work so well and history has shown it is near impossible to capture that magic again with new actors.
Just look at what happened with the Point Break remake when they tried to mould two random blokes into the new Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze.
But look, we’re judging the project before we’ve even seen anything so let’s give it the benefit of the doubt for now.
Seeing as how the film’s concept is so reliant on the two lead actors, here are a few of our nominations for who should replace John Travolta and Nicolas Cage:
- Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy
- Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield
- Vanessa Kirby and Samara Weaving
- Henry Cavill and Matt Bomer
- The Rock and Timothée Chalamet
You know what, the Face/Off reboot may not be a complete disaster after all. If Paramount are reading this, we have many more suggestions so give us a buzz.