Nice to see other people in favour of a complete "makeover", shows I'm not completely mad

If it was going to be a "regular" remake (ie cover only the events of GFI, no rise to power stuff) then perhaps it could open with the attack on Bonasera's daughter (a very dramatic opening scene, two tough guys beating up a poor defenceless maiden). This would help the audience to understand Bonasera's anger. It should also show the actual job being done by Gatto and his men, and show Bonasera weeping with joy when he reads about it - i.e. the audience sees the whole Bonasera story from start to finish, rather than having it feature in two scenes only.

Another idea is to tell the same story as GFI, but shot from different points of view. So we don't see the horse in the bed or the hit on Vito, but we do see Gatto being approached and converted by Barzini's men, and Sonny conducting the war while Micheal is in Sicily. This would avoid the difficulty of re-making classic scenes while remaining faithful to the original film.