The Plague of the Live Action Remake

Graphic by Anika Dua

So, Disney has this serious obsession with remaking literally every animated movie they have on file, and with The Little Mermaid and Peter Pan remakes coming up soon, it’s become clear that they have no plans to stop anytime soon. Which is a problem. 

First of all — why make these remakes at all? Most of the time, they’re terrible.  Animated events that have been translated into live action ones are often worse, somehow, and they make things really awkward. Take The Lion King as an example. A beloved childhood film with dynamic characters and beautiful scenes (peak Disney, let’s be real). But then a live action remake comes out which… literally who thought that would be a good idea? They were like, “Hey! Let’s make a perfectly well done movie with no people in it into a live action film with people in it!” Deep, deep sigh. It’s giving Cats. In the end, we think that the movie ended up looking like a documentary with dubbed human voices layered over it. Yawn. Beyoncé’s tracks may have been the only good thing to come of this disaster. 

From Disney’s perspective, live action remakes are an attempt to awaken the nostalgia within an audience that has grown up with Disney movies. You know, really squeeze every cent out of storylines they’ve come up with decades ago. Bonus: capitalize on the emotions of Disney adults in order to make up for a lack of creativity. Maybe those are valid excuses. Disney adults deserve their own separate article, but we digress. Live action remakes tend to fail in a lot of ways, whether it be tacky CGI for some of their upcoming remakes, very messy, modified storylines, and their overly realistic animal characters (Why does Sebastian look like that?). These failures make us wonder if this is really a Disney trend we want to keep supporting. 

Some things are better left in the world of animation. Not everything needs to be remade to look more “realistic.” Isn’t that the whole point of some of these movies? Their impossible magic is what makes them special. And Disney is taking that away with their live action obsession.