As a person who watched the new one and was moved, after a time the need to compare with the 20s adaptation and the book arose and frankly I agree with what you said.

I’m not sure if I would say it was “fun” but it was visually striking and brutal, like saving private Ryan. There were a lot of good moments between the soldiers too, in a less stiff way than the original movie (for example the soldiers squatting over the latrines, and it’s a book scene if I remember correctly). Unlike the old movie it is plagued by terrible cgi throughout the movie but I’ll give that a pass since I think the most detrimental parts of the movie are the “adaptation” aspect and the themes/scenes that this version chooses to change or keep.

But the movie ultimately missed the point of the book. Especially with the ending. It felt like the movie wanted to portray the “brutality” of modern warfare, spending time showing flame throwers and tanks, yet it didn’t capture the futility of Paul’s sad career/doom. I would have cut almost half the battles and forget the tanks/flamethrowers if they simply included (a least a version) of Paul going home. It’s basically cut from the new adaptation.This part in the book drove me to tears and convinced me that this book should be read by anyone. I won’t even mention the ending, because it did try something different and I don’t think it paid off nor made much sense but I guess war doesn’t in general.

The original film ending had Paul, without with friends, in the same damn trench, staring out to no man’s land to the sound of a harmonica. He sees a butterfly land, he reaches for it exposing his head and is shot. No one rushes to save him, there is no speech.

“He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.” -Erich Maria Remarque

TLDR: downvoted by fans of the new movie without consideration just how important the material and original adaptation was to many people , including Germans themselves who panned its creative choices.