If my alternate LOTR books were released, what would you say? Oh, that's interesting, an alternate telling of the story. I might not enjoy it, but isn't that interesting. Or as you say here, "what the hell?" My reaction would be the latter.
And I didn't say Frodo would be "completely unlikeable" just "very" - stop misquoting me!!! :p The changes I've described do not fundamentally alter the arc of the story, as radical as they might be. It's the same characters (at least in name) in the same world on the same mission.
My "beef" is a theory about why remaking media in the same original form may be a bad idea in principle. I concede I could be totally wrong and that's why I'm engaging in discussion with anyone who doesn't just dismiss the argument.
If I want to use the same characters in the same situation, that is the kind of remake I'm addressing as a bad idea. I think of a remake I enjoy, like Sabrina, and it is based on a play. I think of a remake I'd like to see, Harvey, and it is also based on a play. I can't think of a movie that was originally a movie that I'd like to see remade. I don't think I've read a book that I'd like to see rewritten. I might want more stories about the characters, but not the same story told differently.
I think that remakes of Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were so lousy because they looked like mere imitations of the older movies rather than better imaginings of the original books.
And when a movie is remade from a movie (rather than freshly interpreting the original source material), what are the chances it be as good as the original? The original is the standard.
But maybe the issue is that only 'good' movies are remade and thus are more likely to pale in comparison to the originals. We should be remaking the bad movies! We'll start with Gigli.
Postscript: It is fun the muse about which remakes we thought were good and which we thought were bad. But I'm curious about exactly why this might be. To this end, I am wondering if remakes of movies which were originally conceived as movies is bad in principle because you're translating less than you are xeroxing.