Depends on the source movie and what the film makers goals are with the re-make. Point/Counter: Psycho is one of the highest regarded horror films of all time and deservedly so. Hitchock invaded a place where we're at our most vulnerable, the shower, and delivered two twists. Twists which everyone knows about 50 years later, namely (SPOILERS, but seriously this movie came out in the 60's) the lead actress getting murdered at the halfway point and Norman Bates and his mother being the same character. When Van Zandt remade this in the 90's, he decided the original was so sacrosanct he would alter nothing. Same script, same cinematography, nothing new added, an a yawning audience anticipating what was a total mind fuck in the original. Why bother if you have nothing to add, no statement to make?
Inglorious Basterds is on the other end of the spectrum, re-making 70's flick that no one remembers. Now Tarantino just borrowed the name and the most bare-boned plot elements from the original and made his own film unconcerned with any relationship with the original.
To me, the answer to a good re-make lies in the middle, and the example I'll use for this is Dawn of the Dead. It paid service to the original, but blazed its own trail. It had the mall, it had the zombies, and that's all you really need. The had their own original characters, and told a different type of story. While the original Dawn was a commentary on consumerism and the emerging middle class, the re-make was a take on eroding modern relationships, people re-learning how to work together for a common good, rather than a selfish want.
Depends on the source movie and what the film makers goals are with the re-make. Point/Counter: Psycho is one of the highest regarded horror films of all time and deservedly so. Hitchock invaded a place where we're at our most vulnerable, the shower, and delivered two twists. Twists which everyone knows about 50 years later, namely (SPOILERS, but seriously this movie came out in the 60's) the lead actress getting murdered at the halfway point and Norman Bates and his mother being the same character. When Van Zandt remade this in the 90's, he decided the original was so sacrosanct he would alter nothing. Same script, same cinematography, nothing new added, an a yawning audience anticipating what was a total mind fuck in the original. Why bother if you have nothing to add, no statement to make?
Inglorious Basterds is on the other end of the spectrum, re-making 70's flick that no one remembers. Now Tarantino just borrowed the name and the most bare-boned plot elements from the original and made his own film unconcerned with any relationship with the original.
To me, the answer to a good re-make lies in the middle, and the example I'll use for this is Dawn of the Dead. It paid service to the original, but blazed its own trail. It had the mall, it had the zombies, and that's all you really need. The had their own original characters, and told a different type of story. While the original Dawn was a commentary on consumerism and the emerging middle class, the re-make was a take on eroding modern relationships, people re-learning how to work together for a common good, rather than a selfish want.
Just my opinion