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This evening I watched Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes), the Spanish film from 1997 of which Vanilla Sky (2001, starring Tom Cruise) is a remake. I was curious to see how they differed. To say that Cameron Crowe "adapted" Open Your Eyes to produce Vanilla sky is vast understatement. It's a remake, for sure, perhaps even a scene-by-scene remake (it's been something like six months since I saw the latter film, but, hell, they both have the same actress of the part of Sofia), as if the Spanish film was deliberately reconstructed on American turf. I don't know what Industry protocol says about "remakes" but this isn't an adaptation, it's outright intellectual and artistic theft. What's the point of doing the re-make? Was it just to inject Tom Cruise? If so, that's certainly an error in judgement, as he's got to be the principle defect of the American production, which is otherwise a little a more smoothly polished (and pretentious) than the Spanish one (Tom Cruise is beyond smooth and pretentious, he's just sickening.) An empty Times Square certainly has a more profound effect than some square in Madrid, and the American film has that nifty line about "when we're both cats." Perhaps those are the main differences. Those and the ridiculous haircuts in the Spanish film. (Interestingly, the Atticus Finch-esque lawyer is equally present in the Spanish film -- it's not a Cameron Crowe-ism as in Almost Famous.) And, "Vanilla Sky"? Who thought up that title? Cameron would have done better to keep the title of the film he copied. If you got the feeling that Vanilla Sky is an advertisement for cryogenics, well, it might not be a total coincidence; apparently the director of Abre los ojos actually did sign up for some such service. In conclusion, I'm a bit confused as to why the American movie was made given that so little of the Spanish film was changed, and I'm curious on what (legal, artistic) terms this was done; and I'm a bit anxious to see what they're going to do to Solaris in its American reproduction. That whole bit of making it "more sensual" doesn't bode well, but at least Solaris (a) has been out for more than four years, (b) is based upon a novel, and is not a rip-off of a pre-existing film.