For me the first thing that comes to mind is Tales from Earthsea. I don’t think it’s excellent or anything and has plenty of problems but people act like it killed their dog. While it has its problems that have been covered extensively, I think it has a beautiful atmosphere and art.
IMO it would have been better received if it wasn’t advertised as an Earthsea adaptation and was just its own thing.
The Aladdin live action remake was shat on mercilessly by the internet, but I thought it was a fun, true to the spirit of the original while introducing a few new ideas to keep it interesting, and (imo very respectfully) stayed out of Rob William’s lane by not trying to recreate his genie. And Will Smith did a great job with his version.
/shrug
I didn’t really follow the online conversations around the movie, but I did watch it and it’s not entirely that long ago since I watched the animated movie either. If I was to try to judge the movie without the context of the orighinal, I’d say it was fine, nothing about it was terrible but I also didn’t find anything about it particularly good or memorable. I think Will Smith did a fine job and I don’t think he’d be anywhere near the top of the list of what I would criticise about the movie in that case.
But I do think context matters, and in context I think it comes out looking pretty poor. Genie as written for the live action movie pales in comparison to the animated one. In terms of craft I think the live action one feels like a soulless board-room directed husk, and I really miss the feeling of a creative voice in the whole thing.
If you’re going to remake something, I it should be better, or enough of a reinterpretation to be considered distinctly different.
I am glad others liked it, but if I someone asked me which they should watch I would tell them the original animated movie because I think it is a better piece of entertainment, and that makes the modern one feel like an absolute waste of time, money, skills and effort that could have been spent so much better.
We LOVED this film, and even convinced our local cinema to have a sing along one night.
The first time we watched it we had to leave the cinema early due to a tornado warning. But we were so pleasantly surprised by what we saw (expected trash after those awful trailers) that we went again. And then again.