I always wanted to start a movie club called "The originals" that watches original movies every time a remake is made, and if the remake looks any good, go see it too.

Which remakes specifically are you talking about? Remakes of old movies made largely because they think enough time has passed to make money off it again? or remakes of foreign movies made because too many people can't handle subtitles?

I'm not averse to them I suppose, but it would help if someone could point out some good ones (the Departed was a foreign remake, right? haven't seen either yet)

Here are some remakes I can remember

DeathRace - take the most enjoyable B-movie of all time and release a stale Jason Strathom action flick that doesn't have one iota of the zany humour or outrageous premise. A failure and insult to the original.

Horror Movies - If based on old films, like the original but with the tension replaced by jump scares. If foreign, like the original but with the creepyness replaced by jump scares.

I am Legend - why did they attatch the name of a classing book and enjoyable film to a completely different "Will Smith fights phsycho Zombies" movie? No idea. I also have no idea why they didn't bother to write an ending before filming it. You know somethings wrong when they film two totally different endings and they're both awful.

Batman Begins/ The Incredible Hulk/James Bond = are these remakes or "series reboots"? I guess this kind of film doesn't count.

War of the Worlds - Haven't seen the remake yet, the original was great.

Alice and wonderland - more of a quasi sequel than a remake. It was also pure crap... How on earth do you make something as magical as Alice in to a boring and uneventful "girl must kill a dragon with a sword" movie.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - It was like the original, except the fun sets were replaced with CGI, the umpa Lumpa songs slid right out your other ear, Depp gave what I thought was his performance with the least deapth and... just... come on! The first one was a masterpiece that still holds up!

Yeah... I'm not a big remake fan.

If it's a plain remake without any addition, new twists or own charm, no doubt, most of them suck and are redundant.

There are cases though, where remakes of the same material can be great.

Example: The Front Page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Front_Page, orignally a Broadway comedy.

1st movie based on the Broadway stage play: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Front_Page_(1931_film)
2nd movie/1st remake and one of my most favourite screwball comedies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Girl_Friday
3rd movie/2nd remake, one of many brilliant Billy Wilder movies and my favourite Lemmon/Matthau movie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Front_Page_(1974_film)
4th movie/3rd remake, not a bad one (the original material is just too good to be destroyed), but nevertheless by far the worst one imo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_Channels

So in this case the 2nd and 3rd movie of the same material became classics.

There are other examples, where both, the original and the remake are great and became classic, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Samurai
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnificent_Seven

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarface_(1932_film) one of the defining movies of the gangster genre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarface_(1983_film) today better known than the original

Depends. I can certainly name more bad remakes than good, but ultimately i'm open enough to them. I liked the newer (Lindsey Lohan) Freaky Friday, for instance. It really depends on how the remake relates to the original. I'm quite upset about the upcoming Karate Kid. Nominally it can't be a "karate" kid, since it's set in China, and that's the other problem of it being set in China. The original movie was as much about the Western perversion of what Oriental martial arts were really about, which really can't be the case when the movie is set in the Orient

Also the remake of The Pink Panther. So much fail.

I did enjoy the 90 Night of the Living Dead remake and the 04 Dawn of the Dead remakes. Night Was more of an update, with Dawn being a new take on it. Both managed to offer up some new, compliment some old and not stink.

I can't stand them. They usually take something that I enjoyed the first time and bastardize it. The new Clash of the Titans for example pisses me off and I haven't even seen it. Clash of the Titans was the last film worked on by special effects wiz Ray Harryhausen. He was considered by most to be the greatest special effects artist to use clay models. He worked on the original King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, Jason and the Argonauts, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, etc. Now it's like they are spitting in the face of his life's work by saying we can do it much better and easier with computers.

What I never understood is why people don't take a movie that had a good idea that was poorly executed and improve upon it. Now that would make sense. Instead they decide to ruin the ones that already succeeded.

I liked the remake of Willard. Crispin Glover is really good in that movie.

Ben-Hur (the one with Heston) was a great remake. Mutiny on the Bounty (the one with Marlon Brando) and The Departed were also great remakes. Most movies shouldn't be remade though

Hate them for the most part their are only a few that I like better then the original ones. The remake for Nightmare on Elm Street looks horrible and I don't even like any of the original movies.

There is also the option of taking good movies that haven't aged well because of some significant flaw and re-master the movies to eliminate that flaw. An example of this would be to take Ladyhawk (a very good 80s movie that has awful 80s music in it) and replace the music with an orchestral score that suits the movie.

I don't mind some of them, but the majority seem to be garbage.

Depends on the movie.

Things like Clash of the Titans and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were tragadies while things like Friday the 13th and Dawn of the Dead ranged from good to better than the original.