i realize when i talk about remakes sometimes i refer to the remade movie as recent or not that old when sometimes these movies are my age or older. what i should be saying is that the studios try to justify these remakes in the name of modernizing of them, but i feel that is a often ruse and a deflection from the truth. a lot of the original stories aren't so long ago that now is very different. some stories already were set in the past or the future, and in still others the time didn't really matter. a lot of remakes are done because of special effects upgrades, and certainly those improve all the time, but it's kind of a flimsy reason to remake a movie instead of making a brand new one, which i'll address further in a moment. finally, a lot of movies are remade just because people don't want to read subtitles, hear foreign accents, or think about other cultures than their own, and that's just sad. i don't really object to the existence of remakes themselves because that would be stupid, there are remakes i like and love and, as you said, some of the most famous and even best movies of all time were themselves remakes, but recent years have felt like a frenzy to bring back still familiar properties in the pursuit of pure capitalism far more than art, and besides the repercussions that has on the kind of movies that are produced and what people see, i feel like the artists behind them (directors, writers, actors, etc.) would be better off using their talents to create and bring to the culture a new work. i know that's a personal judgment, but i think there is more going on than just my idealism and aging.