5 Movie Remakes That Actually Beat The Original — And Yes, The Numbers Prove It

Ocean's Eleven (2001) Didn't Just Remake The Rat Pack Movie — It Humiliated It

The Soderbergh version sits at an 83% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes with a 74 on Metacritic, while the original 1960 Rat Pack heist flick limps in at a rotten 47% and a 'mixed or average' 57 on Metacritic. Rotten Tomatoes' own consensus calls the original 'easygoing but lazy,' coasting on Rat Pack rapport, while the remake is praised as 'fast-paced, witty, and entertaining.' This isn't a close call — it's one of the widest critical gaps between an original and its remake in Hollywood history.

True Grit (2010) Went Up Against John Wayne's Own Oscar Role... And Won

The Coen brothers' version holds a jaw-dropping 95% on Rotten Tomatoes compared to the 1969 original's already-solid 87%, and The Hollywood Reporter flat-out named it one of the rare remakes that surpassed the original. The remake earned 10 Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, while critics praised it for restoring Mattie Ross — not Rooster Cogburn — to the emotional center of the story the way Charles Portis's novel always intended.

The Fly (1986) Turned A Campy '50s B-Movie Into An Oscar Winner

David Cronenberg's body-horror remake scored 'universal acclaim' with an 81 Metacritic rating versus the 1958 original's 62, and it walked away with the Academy Award for Best Makeup — the only Oscar Cronenberg has ever won. The Los Angeles Times review at the time literally called it an 'artful remake of a tacky 1958 classic,' which is about as blunt as a critical reassessment gets.

The Departed Took Martin Scorsese's Long-Overdue First Oscar — Not Infernal Affairs

Scorsese's 2006 remake of the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs won Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars, finally giving Scorsese the statue that Goodfellas and Taxi Driver somehow never earned him. One review went as far as calling The Departed 'a better and more important movie [than Infernal Affairs] in almost every way,' and the film's own end credits notably bury the original's title after three minutes of scrolling names.

Dawn of the Dead (2004) Is The Hot Take We're Still Willing To Die On

Look, the 1978 original is a stone-cold classic with a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, and we're not pretending otherwise. But Zack Snyder's remake still landed on Rotten Tomatoes' own list of the 25 Best Horror Remakes, and at least one Metacritic critic went all in, writing that it's 'essentially a remake of a sequel... but it more than surpasses the original.' Critics and horror fans genuinely remain split on this one, which is exactly why it earns a spot on this list instead of a unanimous victory lap.