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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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.
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.
Fewer remakes period would be nice. Fewer CG blockbusters with ridiculous casts of overpaid actors and more fun stylised CG/animated movies would also be nice and probably tempt me to go to the cinema more often, but I know I’m not the target demographic. Although it’s a Sony movie, Spiderverse is a great example of this being done well, although they are also making more regular Spiderman. I’ve not seen a regular Spiderman movie since the old ones from the early 2000s, back when there weren’t 10 superhero movies a week.
Splitting movies into parts is another emerging trend I’m not a fan of. If you are going to do it, make each movie feel satisfying in itself instead of finishing out of nowhere with an unsatisfying non-ending or cliffhanger. I’m kind of shocked so many people are OK with these bullshit endings.
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.
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
If they do make them, they should at least make them incredibly good. The new Peter Pan and Wendy movie SUUUUCKS. Not because there are black actors in it, at all. It sucks because it’s very bland and just boring.
Also that movie didn’t need to get made, because the 2003 Peter Pan (NOT by Disney, which is probably why nobody knows about it) was AWESOME. Seriously, see that one.
I do agree. But least Moana is mostly humans and can mostly actually be live action, and not CGI. I’ve seen a couple of the remakes, but they impressed me so little I haven’t watched the others. But, if Dwayne plays Maui, I’m in.
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.
I’ve always wanted the opposite to happen. I want to see live action movies made as cartoons. Mostly with sci-fi/fantasy stuff where the impossible is made possible, and animation would make visualizing some of the fantastic things a lot better and ultimately easier. I mean if 90% of the movie is already animated with CGI, why not just also animate the last 10%, too? 🤷🏻♂️
20,000 Leagues under the sea could be a cool remake.
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
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.
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.
I’ll know they are serious when they remake Song of the South. All live-action segments are now animated, previously animated segments are now live-action.
You know what, let’s not stop there. Live-action remakes of the Don Bluth movies, starting with The Secret of NIMH, then All Dogs Go To Heaven, An American Tail, then Land Before Time. Shit, let’s do Rankin, too! Who’s up for a live-action The Last Unicorn?
They would never do it, but I think an honest remake of Song of the South would be absolutely amazing.
Leave the rich white people out, have the characters be entirely made up from the ex-slave sharecroppers. Show the miserable conditions, and show their escape into the fantasy of Uncle Remus.
Maybe make the reflection of the real-life antagonists a bit more clear with the characters of Br’er Bear and Br’er Fox, and maybe stir in some revenge fantasy while you’re at it.
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.
