Technology is one of the drivers of remakes. When movies first came along, a lot of them were remakes of written material (a book or play). Then when sound be

Technology is one of the drivers of remakes. When movies first came along, a lot of them were remakes of written material (a book or play). Then when sound became available, a lot of silent films were remade as "talkies." Then came Technicolor, and you had an excuse to remake a B&W film in color. After a long period of incremental improvements in various areas, we got usable CGI, which gave you an excuse to remake an analog film (or "enhance" it, and that's in quotes because of George Lucas' fiddling about adding digital stuff to every shot seemingly for ADHD reasons). Speaking of Charlton Heston, Planet of the Apes went from guys wearing rubber ape masks in the 70s to a pretty successful modern-day POTA franchise that is almost completely CGI, with apes talking and using vivid facial expressions and such. Not sure it's "better" per se... it's almost a different art form, apples and oranges. Which is why I end up thinking a lot of remakes are justified, in that they're almost working in a different medium in some cases.