I confess just a few weeks ago I was saying that Hollywood has never made a remake better than the original. But maybe they've finally turned that string of bad remakes around. First "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and then "King Kong." The preview looked great, and the reviews have been spectacular, starting with the earlier ones from England.
I also just found out that Sir David Frost (yes, from That Was The Week That Was, for those of us old enough to remember, the Nixon interview and now going to join Al Jazeera) has gotten the rights to The Dam Busters and is going to remake it. They've gotten the permission from the family of the real people involved, which is encouraging, and have even said they must use the original score, even if they do use up to date CGI for the special effects. That could potentially be very good.
There are lots of older movies that don't stand up because of lame special effects that could stand remakes. Another I've heard about is Logan's Run. It was a big deal when it came out in 1976 then it looked so lame in comparison when Star Wars came out less than one year later.
Or forget special effects, as such, but how about redoing things like John Wayne's awful The Conqueror about Temujin (better known as Genghis Khan) with an asian, preferrably Mongol, cast? That's a story that begs to be filmed well, maybe by someone like Mel Gibson?
If Hollywood has run out of ideas they can go back, not to movies that worked but to movies that failed, not because the story was bad but because the particular film maker or technologies weren't up to the task. Think of a more recent film, Ridley Scott's truly horrendous Kingdom of Heaven which totally misrepresented the Crusades?
Hey, that's the ticket! I say we seize control of a Hollywood studio and make the kind of movies WE would like to go see!