Can anyone think of any remakes that are better than the original film, and why they are better?

I was watching The Fly remake recently, and although I enjoyed the original (with Vincent Price, no less) it isn't a patch on the '86 version. Probably Jeff Goldblum's best performance ever, and Cronenberg is a horror director I have always thought brilliant.

Though I'm not really sure if it's a remake, strictly speaking. It takes the original short story and goes in a different direction, much like John Carpenter's The Thing and the preceding Thing From Another World (based on the same short story, but [i]very[i/] different films.

Heat is an excellent remake of Mann's earlier LA Takedown. DeNiro and Pacino are both stellar in that.

P.S. War of the Worlds was not a good remake.

I suppose it depends on the fact that special effects have become a lot better.

The Thing remake had incredible effects for the time and made the film, if it had have been a remake of the original it would have blown it away.

In the case of War of the Worlds - again, the effects were great but as a movie it wasn't fit to clean the boots of the original.

The Haunting - the original scared the life out of me but that pile of Hollywood detritus that 'Everyfilm' Nielson was in was pure pap.

I don't know, I guess I'm biased - if you look at garbage like Pink Panther and Fun with Dick and Jane, I came out of the cinema feeling my humour had been raped and I felt unclean. It's left me with a morbid fear of remakes.

I would have to say that I haven't yet seen a good remake and I guess that these days I'm reluctant to spend good cash trying them out.

The Fly? yeah okay it's a lot better than the original but then Goldbloom has fly genes - he seems to play a fly in everything he does.

Trust me, I'm a doctor.

Even without such great effects, JC's film tops TTFAW quite considerably. It's a Hell of a lot more faithful to the Campbell short story, for one, the monster isn't relegated to a Frankenstein's-monster-alike and the subtext is a lot more complex than simple right-wing Yank hero versus intellectual pinkos. The actiung and atmosphere are leagues ahead, too. TTFAW was good when I was wee, but not any more.

For more alien terror, what about Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The 70's version over the 50's, with Donald Sutherland in the lead role. Seems a bit better with a bit more distance from the height of Commie paranoia, though that was what it's all about (paranoia, not Commies in particular).

The Maltese Falcon ('41, I think) was a good 'un (though the prior version isn't shabby either), Humphrey Bogart as Sham Shpade, and Sydney Greenstreet, Mary Astor and Peter Lorre into the bargain. Cracking noir.

The Bourne Identity? I haven't seen the original, so I wouldn't know, but that was an okay film.