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
Easy money. That’s the result of late stage capitalism consumer culture.
These remakes feel like a copyright extension as well as a cash grab for Disney. Win win for the mouse
It’s one of those things you can’t un-see
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.
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.
I thought Aladdin was good too.
Moana might be pushed by Dwayne Johnson since he’s still playing Maui and has a pretty huge ego and influence
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.
Okay now you sold me on it.
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?
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.
Thank you Margot Robbie. Can’t wait to watch you on the big screen in the upcoming “Barbie” movie
Never heard of it.
Barbenheimer on Saturday!
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.
You’re right. I’m only referring to their movie and streaming service revenue. From the constant losses on movies and the fact that they have lost millions of Disney plus subscribers for 2 quarters in a row, I don’t see that service even being profitable by that 2024 expectation. I’m sure the writer strike will further hamper their ability to produce content. I don’t see more people signing up for a service that is shedding subs and offering little new content.
As long as Disney fanatics continue to buy anything $DIS, then they will continue to pump out these cash cows.
This is the essence of it: Remakes will continue as long as they make money.
But Moana’s animation was so beautiful…it was one of the best parts of that movie.
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.
I would have liked The Lion King a lot more if it had somewhat matching voices. The least they could have done is bring back Jeremy Irons opposite James Earl Jones and do Be Prepared. But as is, most of the voices were just jarring.
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The Little Mermaid was a huge hit. So huge in fact, that they greenlit Moana as a result so I don’t see them changing their minds. I liked Moana, but to be honest I think it probably works best as an animation. What’s exciting about it though, is that there hasn’t been a huge CGI-fest movie about Polynesian myth that takes place in a time without any colonization. It’s exciting.
There has been talks of a Moana remake before the little mermaid cast choices were released. As far as I can tell, support was there if auli’i cravalho maintained her role but that is not the case. And a “CGI-fest” about Polynesian myth is a bit insulting if the cast, writers, and directors are not Polynesian. Or don’t respect Polynesian culture like the original Moana production team did. I am not looking forward to this film.
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.
It’s infuriating how many of the biggest media releases these days are either re-release, remakes, or very stale additions to long standing franchises.
I hate how much Hollywood is relying on pre-existing stuff, it’s incredibly lazy.
They keep starving or burning out the actually creative writers, so no one wants to make new stuff for them.
Not just that. There used to be a time when producers took risks. They were the ultimate arbiter if something got made or not, and they would sometimes gamble it all on a total roll of the dice, but because of it we got multiple generation defining films (like the Godfather or Star Wars to name a few).
Now companies like movie studios are massive and the power is no longer consolidated like that, and a board is much less keen on taking a gamble, so they take safer risks. How do they know what’s safe? Well there are all these statistics that they’ve paid for, and those statistics have told them:
Previously existing IPs have a guaranteed audience.
So they just keep rehashing the same thing because its a “guarantee.” While I may not like the new DIsney movies, and think that Lion King (2019) is a fucking abomination, it is a) the highest grossing animated film of all time, b) the 7th highest grossing FILM of all time, and c) has a bigger box office than the original lion king by almost double.
Let’s go back to when Disney made original content like Snow White. /s
The story might not have been original, but it was the first feature length animated film. It was revolutionary and original at the time. It was a feat of innovation when a lot of people said that animation was a cute trick but wasn’t good enough to hold an audience attention for longer than 10 minutes. The “animation is cinema” debate has been going on for as long as cinema has been a thing.
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
20,000 Leagues under the sea could be a cool remake.
I’d love to see a good modern CG 20,000 leagues movie
