transcultural film remakes can offer insight into how distinct cultures have different ideals for the heroic. A protagonist who appears admirable in Scandinavia can have values, traits, or skills that are perceived as less appealing, on average, to audiences in other regions of the world. Screenwriters and directors who want to import a story from a different culture must therefore consider how their main character should be adapted in order to maximize a remake's chance of artistic and commercial success (Singh). Such character adjustment, when informed by the expectations of a new film market, is part of the process Linda Hutcheon refers to as transculturation (141–48).
In this article, I examine eighteen American remakes of fifteen Scandinavian films, from the 1930s to the 2010s. These case studies include nearly all Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish films that have been remade in America, with the exception of a...