[Sans-Culotte]

That’s because these days they remake good stuff badly. Back in the early days of Hollywood they tended to remake bad stuff trying to figure out what they screwed up. The version of Maltese Falcon with Bogie was the 3rd time they made that book into a movie in 10 years, the first 2 stank, then they got it right and stopped screwing with it.

Oh, I agree that some remakes are superior. But as you say, those remakes were done long ago. I've seen the version of The Maltese Falcon with Ricardo Cortez - not good at all compared with Bogie's. Other great remakes include The Dawn Patrol (Flynn version), Ben-Hur (Heston version).

[discostu]

The problem with most modern remakes is that they aren’t really remakes, they’re spoofs (ref, 21 Jump Street movie, or TIm Burton’s Dark Shadows). And the ones that aren’t spoofs are brand leverage, often times they take a story that WASN’T actually intended to be a remake (or based on), but it had some similarities, so they re-arranged some names and used the existing logo hoping to drag in that audience.