You're going to need a sociological perspective view on this kind of question. Even though I feel the same way since that was what I have been doing all my life; watching American movies (dubbed or not) and watching alot of dubbed foreign (Chinese, Japaneses etc) series/movies growing up in Thailand, I realize when I live here that Americans are a bit different.
WARNING: I'm going to list some stuff I noticed after living here for years. These are my opinion and might hurt some feelings.
A bit of clarification before I begin. When I say "Americans" in this post, what I mean is the "general" movie watching audience which involves alot of "young" people.
1.) Average American cannot do subtitles. Thats pretty much it. Its something that complicated the movie and takes away from the entertainment. Now I know someone here is going to talk about Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon to try to argue me out of this concept. But if you look at CTHD, notice how it is first of all a martial arts movie which is a stereotypical "Asian" movie. CTHD also attracted the more sophisticated audience. When I went to the theater, I notice alot of older people (probably those artsy fartsy people) watching the movie (I went to the theater 3 times for this movie). Contrast this to a horror movie like ring where you know most of the audience will NOT be sophisticated.
2.) Americans cannot identify with Asian people. Ask any average American how many Asian movie stars do they know? What you'll probably get is Jackie Chan and Jet Li.. and if you're lucky some other big names. Now ask any Asian how many American movie stars they know. You will get ALOT of responses. When I was in Thailand my friends and I would go out to the movies every Friday and we would be like.. "Oh Tom Cruise new movie is out lets go watch!" or "Arnold new action movie!" Same thing isn't reciprocated in the US. People generally go to the movies because they like a actor or actress so that really cuts down on the traffic if they don't identify. Once the import of Asian movies inside of US is equal to the import of American movies inside Asia (on the BIG screen mind you) then we can probably change this.
3.) Americans are a very ethnocentric culture. I don't blame Americans for this because I know its because they can be this way. Why? Well because they don't have to. Americans don't have to learn another language, why would they need to? Fact is; America is an extremely powerful empire that is very similar to the empires of old. Just think about it here. Did Rome cared about what other cultures are doing back they were the king of the block (other then Greek culture maybe)? I mean everyone wanted Rome's roads, education, status, power, clothes, money, influence etc etc. This is not an anti-American statement but just the truth. I'm as American as anyone here (probably more so
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Conclusion: The movie industry knows what I mentioned above and this is why they remake the movies. Its about money and they know they can get the most money by remaking these movies. Once its more profitable to just buy rights and subtitled movies in the theater, then they will start doing it. These past few centuries have been the time of the Anglo-Saxon and will change in the future but for now thats just the way things are.
Sorry for the long post. You probably didn't want to read my rant lol. If you disagree definitely tell me your reason!
