now they’re making a live action moana in 2025. it hasn’t even been 10 years, disney is lowballing so hard with these lifeless remakes. hopefully ariel flops bad enough that they change their minds.
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Nah. The Little Mermaid live action was pretty good. There are many kids I know that prefer the remakes than the original cartoons. I’m okay with letting them have their own movies that us old folks maybe don’t like as much
What if we tried coming up with new stories instead of giving our kids the same reheated leftovers from yesterday?
“Capitalism breeds innovation”. The “innovation”: Entertainment executives too afraid to try out new ideas for the absolute dread of commercial failure, so they’d rather give us Despicable Me 8 and Toy Story 6 instead
These remakes feel like a copyright extension as well as a cash grab for Disney. Win win for the mouse
Easy money. That’s the result of late stage capitalism consumer culture.
What if we tried coming up with new stories instead of giving our kids the same reheated leftovers from yesterday?
All of theater is basically a nostalgia game. Shows and Operas have been playing for hundreds of years, and that’s fine. Even something like “Lion King” is a not-so-subtle replay of the incredibly traditional Shakespearean play “Hamlet”.
And plays like Peter Pan were going on for decades before Disney’s cartoon edition.
Sometimes, its nice to just lean into the nostalgia. A changed song or two with a new set of actors is … fine? Its how its been done for decades, or even centuries of theater.
I’m well aware most of the themes and plots in literature are an exercise in “Can I copy your homework?” “Sure, just change it up a bit so it doesn’t look obvious”.
But there’s “original”, and then there’s “are you even trying?”. We all know the current live action remakes were done for copyright extension reasons and little to no effort was put into refreshing up the stories, giving them a nice twist, nada.
If Sophocles was able to do retellings of ancient myths, which his audience already knew in full, and still could keep people interested in the play and even introduce enough innovations to earn the praise of his peers, then so can we even if we start from a material that’s not truly original.
Actually, Lion King is a testament Disney knows how to do this. When it came out, nobody was saying “This movie is trash. It’s just Hamlet with talking animals”, even though when you’re told you can clearly see it takes lots of themes and character archetypes from said play. But it also changed things up a bit to warrant being it’s own thing, and praised accordingly.
Treasure Planet was one of the best animated Disney movies of the early 21st century (and arguably, of all time) and the story could hardly be called original. It’s what the movie built on top of that, including the experimental seamless union of animation styles, that made it great. But it was a comercial flop (more of a self-fulfilled prophecy with its release date), so the mouse said nevermore.
Its how its been done for decades, or even centuries of theater.
Trying to compare mediums like animation movies to theatrical plays is bound to make for some strange comparisons. With movies if I want to take a stroll down memory lane I can just replay the old ones, even show them to my kids for them to see what I liked when I was their age.
On the other hand, it’s in the very nature of theatre to redo the same plays over and over by one same company, sometimes in an itinerant fashion sometimes not. Because it’s a live spectacle, that’s the only way for new audiences to actually watch the play.Trying to compare mediums like animation movies to theatrical plays is bound to make for some strange comparisons. With movies if I want to take a stroll down memory lane I can just replay the old ones, even show them to my kids for them to see what I liked when I was their age. On the other hand, it’s in the very nature of theatre to redo the same plays over and over by one same company, sometimes in an itinerant fashion sometimes not. Because it’s a live spectacle, that’s the only way for new audiences to actually watch the play.
Except you know as much as I do that “The Great Gatsby” and “A Star Is Born” is remade every 20 to 30ish years. That’s well within movie/cinema tradition.
When I look at the good remakes, like Aladdin, I can easily point out that all the songs have changed significantly. Will Smith is more of a rapper than a singer. As such, the Genie songs were closer to rap. And that’s an interesting change.
The stunts in the live-action version of Aladdin are real. The actor they chose was an expert parkour guy with incredible moves: able to leap, roll, climb, and descend on-par with Jackie Chan. These stunts hit in a way that a cartoon-movie could never do.
Finally: each Live-action remake is ~2 hours of runtime rather than ~1h 30m. There’s at least 30-additional minutes of script in all of them. Its not always used effectively, but I think its safe to say that Cinderella, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid all did a good job with the additional 30-minutes. (Other movies: Dumbo or Mulan, did not do a good job).
Actually, Lion King is a testament Disney knows how to do this. When it came out, nobody was saying “This movie is trash. It’s just Hamlet with talking animals”, even though when you’re told you can clearly see it takes lots of themes and character archetypes from said play. But it also changed things up a bit to warrant being it’s own thing, and praised accordingly.
One more thing (I’m making a new post because I forgot about this point a few days ago…)
All the parts that weren’t stolen from Hamlet were stolen from the 1966 Japanese-anime “Kimba the White Lion”. Which were basically the animal parts. Simba himself is damn near identical to a golden-fur’d Kimba.
The actually unique story, which Disney had to pour tons-and-tons of money into to actually get done, was Pocahontas. But as we all know, Lion King made more money, so Disney learned its lesson.
Uniqueness / new stories don’t sell as well as you think they do. Unfortunately. Its a lot easier to take designs from 30+ years ago (ie: a 1990s cartoon stealing a successful style from a 1960s anime) than to invent a new style.
The difference was that in 1990s, we didn’t have Wikipedia, so it was harder to notice what was, or wasn’t “stolen” or “borrowed” from other cultures.
Yeah I just ignore their existence. The last one I watched was beauty and the beast I think. And I didn’t like it so I was like aight I’m out
Honestly, I thought Beauty and the Beast was the weakest of the remakes so far.
Mulan was stupid, mostly because of superpowers given to the character.
A lot of people seem to think The Little Mermaid is doing quite well and if you’re just reading the headlines from all the major reporting groups I could see why. If you look at the box office numbers, it is a different story. Many sources state the break-even point for it to be north of $500 million and after almost a month in theaters it still hasn’t made the mark.
Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and their animation studio have produced a lot of content since 2020 with most of it losing money, barely breaking even, being critically panned, or having terrible viewership. Disney is in turmoil financially and it’s clear that their current pool of talent isn’t delivering what fans want to see. Elemental just released to the worst opening weekend for a Pixar movie ever. They need some changes to right the ship. Chopping some live actions from the line up may be something we see if they dry up as a major cash source as is indicated by The Little Mermaid.
Honest question, what is Disney being in financial turmoil based on? They beat/met expected EPS (earnings per share) three of the last four quarters. They are more than a TV/streaming/movie making business. They have LOADS of assets. They report losing money on streaming, but if you look back they didn’t expect streaming services to be profitable until 2024. it looks to me like Disney is and will be fine financially.
Live action remakes are fine if they bring something new to the table that brings a new perspective to the original.
Like the upcoming “Barbie” movie, for example.
Barbenheimer on Saturday!
Thank you Margot Robbie. Can’t wait to watch you on the big screen in the upcoming “Barbie” movie
Never heard of it.
Some of their movies work okay as live action, they weren’t great, but with the context of the story being human centric, making a live action version is understandable. But when they make “live action” versions of something like Lion King, then just use CGI to make the lions anyway, wtf disney. Plus when they used CGI and made realistic looking lions, it removed the expressiveness the cartoon versions of the lions had.
The absolutely hard stop for me is fucking Lilo & Stitch, my favorite disney cartoon movie, and the movie that will lose the most in translating it into live action. Fuck disney, they actively make the world of media worse. They own too much, and pump out mediocre workshopped slop.
Aladdin was one of my favorite Disney animated movies and I also enjoyed the live action version. Was it something I was asking for? No, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with making a live action version just as long as it is well done.
Just wait till they ruin Moana for us.
The live action movies haven’t ruined the originals for me. Even the ones I hated. But I LOVED the Beauty and the Beast remake, so I’m happy for that one being made.
Moana might be pushed by Dwayne Johnson since he’s still playing Maui and has a pretty huge ego and influence
Okay now you sold me on it.
I literally just posted if Dwayne plays Maui, I’m in, lol. And I haven’t had much interest, none lately, in the remakes. I love Dwayne, though.
The new Little Mermaid was fantastic. Hard disagree, as long as they keep the quality. I didn’t care for most of the other live actions.
The Little Mermaid was good, they put more effort into the casting this time I think which helped, nothing against the other actors, but Halley can sing like an angel and Melissa McCarthy did Divine proud. I think a lot of it has to do with copyright more than anything else. While they don’t reset the copyright, they give Disney vast new swaths of copyrightable material on the same subject with the same name. But lord they totally do NOT need a new version of Moana yet.
But Moana’s animation was so beautiful…it was one of the best parts of that movie.
It is because their previous CEO said animated movies are for kids:
https://gizmodo.com/disney-ceo-bob-chapek-animated-films-quote-frozen-pixar-1849710032
The board finally got rid of him and his mentality, but the “make everything live action so that people who think animation = kid can still watch our stuff” division is still churning out stuff while the “how do I make AI art into a whole Disney movie for pennies” division is still trying to get off the ground.
I mean, he was right. Those movies were 100% made and designed with children as their primary target audience. Can an adult enjoy them too? Sure, why not? An adult can enjoy a cartoon like ninja turtles or a video games like mario, so they can enjoy Disney cartoons. By virtue of it being targeted for a young demographic from conception, makes it not “for adults” by its definition. I can’t believe this dude got fired because a bunch of people got upset about that statement.
The author of the above article is either a complete moron, watches Disney as his only form of entertainment, or works at Disney, because he seems to be taking what the CEO said REALLY personal.
The CEO said that after parents watch an animated film like Frozen with their kids for the 2nd time that night, when they go to bed, they might want to put on another animated film like Toy story or Beauty and the Beast for themselves??
WTF??
I don’t know what planet he lives on but most parents I know would rather shoot themselves. They are gonna put on a real show like a crime show or a drama or something, not an animated film.
I think you have a typo where you describe Bob Chapek’s statement. According to the article, what he said was:
“I always say that when our fans and our audiences put their kids to bed at night after watching Pinocchio or Dumbo or Little Mermaid, they’re probably not going to tune into another animated movie. They want something for them.”
And the writer of the article is clear that parents may not be interested in watching another animated film. However, he appears to be making the point that the CEO of Disney shouldn’t be suggesting that people move away from Disney content. It might seem ridiculous that adults would want to continue watching Disney, but at the same time, keeping eyeballs on Disney content is a big part of the Disney CEO’s job.
The only live action remake I would approve is a remake of 1979 movie The Black Hole.
Do it you cowards
I wonder when they’ll do Song of the South
They all just feel so……lifeless and uncanny
I’ve tried to avoid the new ones, but with kids I inevitably end up at one. They are all so bland and boring. They don’t even try to be there on thing. I guess if you’re hungry potato chips work, and there’s an entire aisle at the grocery store to choose from, but if you want something decent, you gotta look somewhere else.
But wait. Did the kids like it?
20,000 Leagues under the sea could be a cool remake.
I’d love to see a good modern CG 20,000 leagues movie
The main purpose is to hold onto the copyrights they have and thus their empire. The copyright for Moana isn’t set to expire till 3065. Why would they need a refresh so soon?
I think there’s something to be said for accepting that we’re old and what our kids get excited for and enjoy isn’t going to and doesn’t need to make sense to us.
It would be nice if they used more practical effects though.
