From the link - "He ran for president as both a Republican and Democrat and founded a Montessori school in California. He was an opponent of nuclear energy and a longtime advocate for Native Americans and bonded with another actor-activist, Marlon Brando."
Sounds a bit scatter-brained...
And "activists" in general?
So, what was better, the original or the re-make?
IMO Laughlin was the quintessential leftist - loads of passion without an ounce of reason or common sense. He had his own sense of right & wrong but it was functionally relativistic and permeable.
He reduced issues beyond simplistic and into simple-minded. When he would attempt to articulate his positions they usually came out as a garbled mish-mash of sloganistic rhetoric. In other words he probably felt as though he knew what he knew but couldn't tell you in plain English why.
The degree to which his first movie worked was because he reduced his protagonists to the level of cardboard standups. That made it easy to hate the (white) landowner and love the little indian chirren.
His sequel was worse than the original - it was overbearing in its pontificating and endless condescending lecturing.