What do you expect? Not about angry disagreements but they are two different films.
The original was a 1978 low budget independent film made with new technology over 20 days. Given the time frame it was made it, the shoestring budget and the rookie filmmakers and actors/actresses, it's simple, unpolished and a freshman outing by kids in their teens and 20s.
Flashforward to 2007, Rob is not a rookie, in fact, it's his 3rd film. It wasn't low budget, it certainly wasn't independent and it was made in a lot longer time than the original ever had. Rob had time to write his story, develop it, put in a ton of characters to fill in the backstory the original never got. Not to mention the filming technology and technique that wouldn't exist without the original and all that came after it long before Zombie ever got into movies.
He had money, creative freedom to a point and his own vision, which ironically is a rehash of his previous films with the white trash uber violence that is his wheelhouse. Carpenter created his wheelhouse the first time out.
So taking into account the fact that tastes, let alone times changed in the 29 years between movies, not to mention the watershed moment of all the 100s of Halloween like movies that came out in that time, then yes, Rob's is going to be "better". But as I've put it so well, it's subjective. Extremely. And with a huge asterisk.
Rob had more depth, though it's debatable if that's really the way it had to go (as opposed to the original's idea of a good home but a boy gone evil/bad). He had all the bells and whistles. His was polished, but you can still polish a clunker and it be a clunker.
Rob could've been better at casting, writing, even directing. That would've made it "better" for me. And this isn't angry, this is facts. Halloween II would've been great had it not had Michael in it. What it was, was the furthest thing a Halloween movie ever was. Mental, brutal, non redeeming. As an original idea, it was good, but not a good fit in the Halloween franchise. The fact that the series has yet to recover from it, now on it's 3rd take (3D, Returns, now this) proves that.
Even III and 6 didn't hurt the franchise this bad. So under all those circumstances, all those facts, you're entitled to your opinion, even if it's not shared. Taken with a huge grain of salt.
To be fair, one can say that Amityville and TCM remakes were also "better" hotter actresses, better, deeper stories, but again, for reasons. Time and money being chief among them. You can't make a 70s movie in a 2000s sensibility. Doesn't work. You have to modernize it, tweak it and give it an edge. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. But in the end, originals are always better because they set the foundation other people build off of. Ir's not a new house, it's a remodel.
"He came home." - Dr. Sam Loomis from the original HalloweeN
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