When /Film’s Chris Evangelista and I spoke about these films on a recent episode of the /Film Daily podcast, we speculated that if anyone ever decided to remake “The Wages of Fear” again today, it might rely more on CGI and lose the tactility and tangibility that made the first two films so great. You can listen to that conversation below:
To be fair, this teaser trailer doesn’t seem to feature excessive amounts of CGI. What it does feature, unfortunately, is a significant amount of gunplay — footage of what seems like a team of professionals locking and loading, launching grenades at helicopters, and getting into gunfights. This iteration of the story forces the characters to transport the trucks through “hostile zones controlled by armed rebels,” according to the official synopsis, so perhaps this is a way to potentially raise the stakes for modern audiences. But another crucial reason the first two movies work so well is because of the simplicity of the mission: Get this material from point A to point B.
It’s obviously too early to tell for sure, but I wonder if introducing a bunch of characters with guns as an obstacle might make this version lose some of the relatability of the previous ones, which were as much about the mental fortitude of the characters coming up with creative ways to navigate around downed trees and sketchy rope bridges.
We’ll find out when “The Wages of Fear” hits Netflix on March 29, 2024.