The remake is extremely popular these days. Especially if it's a darker, grittier version of the original.
The Good: Sometimes it reignites interest in the original material. Advances in technology (or even storytelling itself) can even help the original story be holistically better than when it was first released. A current example might be the "Tron: Legacy" movie that's coming out next week. I genuinely think that the technology that was around at the time of the original film simply couldn't accommodate what the story needed to be visually successful.
The Bad: Fans of the original rarely like remakes, reasoning that you can never replace a classic, or even do it justice. Sometimes the pendulum swings the other way and people focus a lot on the remake and forget about the original. While I'm a huge fan of the Christopher Nolan Batman films, I'm afraid that people have really forgotten how amazing the Tim Burton ones were.
The 'grim and gritty' trend is nothing new. Debates could go on endlessly as to where it really started; I'd say it's more of a steady evolution that took decades. "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns," "High Noon," EC Comics, and Quentin Tarintino are all from various decades which had various trends surrounding them, but each were revolutionary in their own way. I would hardly think, though, that the 'grim and gritty' approach is a holistic improvement on storytelling. Half the time it's inappropriate for a story. It's merely popular, just as several decades ago, the more idealistic, colorful, cleaner films, comics, and TV shows were popular.
I just watched the original John Wayne "True Grit." And I think comparing it with the new Coen Bros. movie that's getting ready to come out is a great example of what I'm talking about. The original film is a classic western, but I found it a little strange that with all the characters' talk of Rooster Cogburn's 'true grit' and the story's message of how lawless criminals will act, the look of the film was clean, idealistic, and at times pastoral (which was popular at the time). This new film that's coming out seems to let the visuals of the film echo the story's undertone of Maggie's (a stubborn, good Christian girl) immersion into the cold, dark reality of the west.
Time will tell how these trends really affect storytelling in general. Just know that someday, the bright, sunshine, Pollyana-style stories will be popular, and some director will want to remake "Terminator" where instead of guns, there are flowers.
