I just read a long article about why Dune appears to be going to do well at the box office and Blade Runner re-make didn’t do well. The whole thing was about the better advertising, PG instead of R rating (hasn’t anyone learned the Deadpool lesson yet?) – the Dune film’s “stellar ensemble cast”. WTF – I would have said Blade Runner 2049 had a pretty stellar cast too, leading off with Harrison Ford….
Of course, probably the most important factor was not even mentioned by the movie “guru”. Blade Runner is a classic whereas that can’t be said about either the 1984 version Dune or the later mini-series – which was better but ….
This is an important aspect of the poor performance of many remakes – Conan, Total Recall, etc
Total Recall also highlights another reason why re-makes flop – like Robocop as well, for instance.

They weren’t great stories, really, but the lead actor or the left field quirkiness or the originality of the idea just happened to grab something at the time so that even though the tech they were made with was dated – re-making them with you-beaut 21st century tech misses what made them popular in the first place. Blade Runner falls into this category as well…

leaving Doctor Who out, about the only series where I would have to say the new version is better than the old would be Battlestar Galactica.. but that is as much about not having Lorne Green in a major role as technical advances….
They’re going to re-do Babylon 5 apparently – it will be interesting see if it works….
The Star Trek movies suffered from this problem as well. The new Khan movie might be technically better but the old Khan movie had Shatner and Ricardo Montalbarn…
I could go on and on but I won’t – do you agree with my analysis? Thoughts?