Is reuse really a new thing?

I was reading this and thinking “I was never particularly into Jonny Quest, but the premise is solid, and if they do something about Hadji it could be a pretty good movie”.

But why  all the remakes? Why does everything have to be a rehash of something from a few decades ago?

The obvious answer is because of ever-lengthening copyright.

But then I thought about how characters and stories have been reused for centuries—millennia, even. From reusing Osiris’ story for both Moses and Jesus, through the endless retellings of Cinderella, to the many adaptations of Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes.