Weekly discussion: the original vs the remake for newcomers [v4]

Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts. Maybe an unpopular opinion but here we go.

This came up at a meetup recently and the room was split, so curious what the broader community thinks. For context, I am working with a pretty modest budget so high-end suggestions probably will not land.