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For one thing, there aren't really that many original ideas for movies in the first place - if you boil it down, there's only a relatively small number of basic stories, and most of them have been done to death regardless of wheather or not the films were "remakes" or not (for instance, there have been 20 James Bond movies (not counting Never Say Never Again), and each of them has had the same basic story). Also, when done right remakes allow for people to take old material and breathe new life into it (John Carpenter's remake of The Thing is a perfect example of this - take a hokey 50s sci-fi movie and turn it to a really cool 80s sci-fi/horror movie).
Granted, there are some films which should be "untouchable" in terms of remakes, and most remakes aren't really that great (though I don't see any reason to condemn the remake of Poseidon Adventure sight unseen - the original film was fun, but hardly an all-time classic). However, when you get to the point where you're condemning The Island for being a remake of a cheezy 70s schlock film which is best known today for being on an MST3K episode, you're really not giving newer films a chance (from what I've heard, there's plenty of reasons to condemn The Island that have nothing to do with its remake status...)
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