Mrebo said:

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.

Now is an interesting thought. Both those films you mentioned have the same director, and I think they both suffered from a lot of the same problems (not the least of which is a niche director who is only good at certain types of films and tends to leave a gross sticky residue that doesn't quite seem right on the films that are clearly out of his range).

While we agree about both films not being very good; I disagree with you about their attempt to copy their celluloid predecessors. I think both remakes make a clear attempt at embracing their source material over their predecessors.