Live-action Disney remakes
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""I want new stories..AT ONCE!! Sadly, they're so devoid of ideas, they only have enough talent to ruin old classics with political correctness. GODDAMMIT!""
— Hitler Rant Parodies' response to the new live-action "Little Mermaid" teaser trailer.
In the 2010s, after the success of Alice in Wonderland, CEO Bob Iger has started green-lighting live-action remakes for Walt Disney Animation Studio's 2D animated movies, due to their unprofitability, poor marketing and possible negative response regarding their live action adaptations of their original franchises.
Note that this list does not include remakes of live-action/animation hybrid films (such as Pete's Dragon), animated films that were produced by another studio and later adapted as live-action films by Disney, live-action films another studio made based on the same story as a Disney feature, which were later acquired (such as Fox's Ever After or Pathé's The Wind in the Willows/Mr. Toad's Wild Ride), the direct to video release The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story, or based on animated television shows (such as Kim Possible or Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers).
Movies that Got a Live-Action Remake
- 101 Dalmatians and its sequel
- Alice in Wonderland and its sequel
- Maleficent and its sequel
- Cinderella
- The Jungle Book (twice, one in 1994, and another one in 2016)
- Beauty and the Beast
- Christopher Robin
- Dumbo
- Aladdin
- The Lion King and its prequel
- Lady and the Tramp
- Mulan
- Pinocchio
- Peter Pan & Wendy
- The Little Mermaid
- Snow White
- Moana
Why It ReMakes Fun of Walt Disney's Legacy
- They just serve only exist as an example of Hollywood's lame "Everything Old is New Again" ideology, and also to show that history repeats itself.
- In many remakes starting from 2017's Beauty and the Beast, their plot points end up as being exactly copied the footage from the original to the point where such movies end up as copycats more than rehashes. The worst offender being The Lion King where it is just shot-to-shot remake with nothing new and original elements added.
- Their characters have badly butchered where it went to underused or out-of-characters as they barely act like their animated incarnations.
- They highlight the societal stigma further that "animation is strictly only for kids" (which is so untrue) to an extent where it gets so annoying and irritating.
- Overuse of CGI, with the designs for the anthropomorphic characters looking uncanny, like the enchanted objects and wolves in Beauty and the Beast remake.
- Poor acting, with the main roles having wooden and inferior performances of the original animated movie.
- They butchered the iconic musical songs, with "Be Prepared" being the worst offender where it has been given new lyrics but is far too short compared to the original. Not even the new songs could've escaped from the mediocre writing and shoehorned just for the sake of it.
- Our characters rarely have any emotion while speaking, with a few exceptions.
- Poor editing in the Disney Renaissance remakes, as they put in pointless changes, with some scenes being cut for no reason.
- They serve as pointless nostalgia pandering, ending up as more of a trademark renewal than an actual movie. For example, in The Lion King, Mufasa is voiced by James Earl Jones for the sake of it, instead of the new voice cast.
- The remakes also lack the charm, depth and emotion that made the originals memorable and iconic.
- On that same topic, Disney apparently can't understand that it's the animation what makes the original movies so special, when you move it to Live-Action type, the magic is lost. For example, in the original 1994 The Lion King, the characters show more emotion and expressions thanks to the animation and the character designs, in the remake it doesn't work as all the characters look realistic and they're not expressive in the slightest.
- Think about The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, arguably the best aspect of that movie is its visually striking animation; if you do the movie in Live-Action, the story still works but it just wouldn't be the same as the animation what makes it special. This could be the reason why every animated film wouldn't need to be photorealistic.
- They tend to have their runtimes needlessly extended by an additional 20-minute minimum, extending most of their films' runtimes to between 100-125 minutes as opposed to their animated originals' standard runtimes of between 65-80 minutes, thus making these films drag on for way too long to where it could come off as boring to some audiences. And what make matters worse is that most of these "extended scenes" serve no purpose whatsoever in their respective films since they often have no impact on the films' respective main plots and therefore serve as filler in general. Heck, you can cut out these "extended scenes" from these live-action remakes and their films wouldn't be any different whatsoever.
- It feels like it was trying to cash in on the popularity of movies, like Aladdin, The Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast, which is the same thing that it is the soulless cash-grab from Disney.
- They sometimes have race-changed certain characters for the sake of diversity, with the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio and Ariel from the Little Mermaid being the biggest offenders.
- This is not only racist but also a disgrace to the original characters.
- Our main characters have terrible chemistry.
- Some remakes can flanderize characters like King Stefan in Maleficent, the Grand Duke in Cinderella, and King Louie in The Jungle Book (2016).
- Overall, the live action remakes have caused the start of Disney's domination over the film industry.
Redeeming Qualities
- They all used to be good before 2017. For example, Cinderella (2015) and The Jungle Book (2016).
- Like most remakes, they serve to introduce the Walt Disney Animation Studios movies to a newer generation.
- They managed to correct some criticisms like the plot holes and the inaccurate costumes of Lumiere and the male villagers from the original Beauty and the Beast.
- They did at least add several elements that the original films never explained in the remake, like in Beauty and the Beast where we see how Belle's mother died (despite her actual name never said onscreen) and how the Beast turned into selfish jerk.
- Another example in the original Pinocchio film, the Coachman never interacted with Pinocchio, and never notices Pinocchio's escape. Here in the remake, the Coachman does interact with Pinocchio and sends his minions to chase them after seeing Pinocchio.
Reception
While many people love the live-action Disney remakes for the depth they consider they bring to the older Disney films (oftentimes disliking them for what they see as being corny, outdated and having slightly sexist/racist elements), there are many fans of animated Disney who absolutely hate the live-action Disney remakes for what they consider to be soulless imitations of the movies that they loved for years, and feel like Disney is running out of ideas and are just producing them to rake in money via nostalgia pandering. They also feel that it's another attempt to minimize 2D's influence in current Disney, considering how as of yet there's no word of live-action remakes of the Pixar, current CGI Disney movies or 20th Century Fox Animation or Blue Sky Studios movies (despite Fox's own 2D animated movies like Anastasia).
After Cinderella (2015) on, the remakes tended to have scenarios very close to the original animated movies, rather than being sequels or new takes on the stories, which have garnered a negative reaction as well.