翻拍经典剧费力不讨好？

十年后，《还珠格格》重返荧屏！但别高兴的太早，此“格格”已非彼“格格”了。这部二十世纪九十年代经典剧集的翻拍版本，凭借改编的故事情节，全新的演员阵容，惹毛了几乎全国的观众。
Princess Huanzhu comes back on the small screen after a decade. But wait, it's not the same old princess. The rehashed 90s classic, with a revised storyline and a new cast, is almost pissing off the whole country.

新浪微博的一项调查显示，94%的受访者对新版《还珠格格》投反对票。
A survey on Sina Weibo shows that 94 percent of respondents voted against the new version.

四川大学24岁的研究生新生蒋越说道：“只有一个还珠格格，那就是赵薇。”
"There can be only one Princess Huanzhu, and that is Zhao Wei," claimed Jiang Yue, 24, a new graduate from Sichuan University.

新版《还珠格格》毫无例外地证明了一条定律：一般来说，翻拍经典电视剧是个彻头彻尾的坏主意。
The new Princess Huanzhu is not the exception which proves the rule: as a general thing, remaking classic TV shows is a truly bad idea.

翻拍经典老片而成的电视剧常常会落入平庸与俗套。
TV shows based on old classics can often end up falling flat.

例如，去年翻拍的电视剧《红楼梦》，就受到了全国上下的评论家以及心明眼亮的观众的猛烈抨击。在美国，同样的悲剧也发生在《霹雳游侠》和《飞跃情海》这两部剧集上。这两部曾经的畅销片，其现代翻拍版本都因收视率极差而与第二季无缘。
The remake of A Dream of Red Mansions last year, for example, was savaged by critics and savvy viewers across the country. In the United States, there was Knight Rider and Melrose Place. Neither of the modern remakes of the previous hits got a second season because of poor ratings.

而造成这种局面的罪魁祸首并不是差劲的明星或拙劣的制作。纽约雪城大学的罗伯特 J. 汤姆生教授相信，大多数翻拍剧集之所以失败是因为制片人忽视了那些最初让这些剧集火起来的因素。
And it's not because of bad talent or poor execution. Professor Robert J. Thompson of Syracuse University, New York, believed most TV remakes fail because the producers missed what it was about these shows that made them a hit in the first place.

汤姆生教授在接受《纽约时报》的采访时说道：“一部热门电视剧的认知度和最初使其获得成功的原班演员，制作风格以及拍摄态度紧密相连，任何与这些因素相背离的因素都会造成审美上的不协调感。”
"The identity of a hit TV series is so intimately tied to the original stars, style and attitude that made it a hit in the first place that any deviation from that creates a real sense of aesthetic dissonance," said Thompson to The New York Times.

美国电视节目博客《影视特讯》的首席写手——杰西卡?瑞伊更为深入地探讨了这个问题。她说问题很大程度上源于对过去经典情节的过分渲染。
Jessica Rae, lead writer of the US TV blog Small Screen Scoop, takes it further. She says much of the problem lies with romancing the past.

即使原剧并不怎么样，让新演员来演绎这些故事仍然像是一种近乎亵渎的行为。瑞伊说道：“在我们的记忆中，那些老剧集显得比它们实际上的要好，所以新剧集很难与其竞争。”
Even if an original show wasn't that good, it can seem almost sacrilege to have new people playing these parts. "We remember it as better than it was, so it's hard to compete," Rae says.

当娱乐业不停扰乱我们对经典剧集的记忆时，人们开始怀疑这个产业是否存在着巨大的创意危机。
When the entertainment industry constantly messes up our memories of classic shows, people question if there is a huge crisis of new ideas in the industry.

“翻拍旧剧集要么是因为缺乏新创意，要么创新过头，沦为劣等，”一位名叫亚历山大?耐科斯基的网民说道，“所有的翻拍片无一例外，都悲怆地验证了创意已死这个事实。”
"Remaking old shows because you have no new original ideas or innovation is cheesy," said an Internet user named Alexandra Nakelski. "All of those remakes are a sad testimony to the death of creativity."

这样一来，娱乐业唯一能反败为胜的方式是：请给我们一些真正优秀，新颖，原创的电视作品！
Well, there's only one way that the entertainment industry can strike back: give us some really good, new, original shows, please！
 
(China.org.cn, 21世纪英文报, August 4, 2011)