Very good points. I might add that people often forget that some of the great classics of Hollywood history are in fact remakes - The Adventures of Robin Hood for example, or Ben-Hur. I somewhat disagree with you about the datedness of CE3K. While it's certainly and clearly a movie of its time, I don't think it has aged poorly, except in the light of shallow Michael Bay speciall effects orgies that so often become blockbusters these days - but that doesn't make them better movies. Which isn't to say that a remake of CE3K couldn't be, in theory, interesting and even good, though it's unlikely - I suppose for every great remake of a good/great movie, there are at least a dozen utter failures nobody remembers. But take Ben-Hur again. The version from the 1920s, available on the DVD/Blu with Carl Davis's score, is totally engrossing even today. It's less a matter of remaking something because it's no longer "watchable", but rather one of presenting a fresh take on the same material with "modern" technology, or perhaps also (see The Fly) to present a new view on the same story. Finally, I've long considered the equation "remake = Hollywood's utter lack of ideas" to be wrong. A large percentage of movies are based on novels (or novellas, comic books, stage plays, you name it). How is that in any way more original than a remake? And then of course there are those movies that are remakes of movies based on books - again Ben-Hur comes to mind. Or movies that are based on books that had been filmed before, but with the new version going back to the source and not the script of the first film version - like Lord of the Rings or apparently Planet of the Apes (I've never seen the new versions). The combinations are endless.