Has Disney run out of ideas? Or have they just completely succumbed to corporate greed and see an easy way to make cash? (hint: it’s the latter)
The 2010s saw the outbreak of the live-action plague. At first, it was mostly contained and wasn’t spreading. The disease had been discovered in the 90s, but it slowly died out and lurked underneath the industry waiting for its time to strike. Then, the year 2010 hit. The plague was unleashed. The growth was slow, but the it was spreading fast. It took a few years to infect the whole studio, but surely it did. The demise of unique and original stories was near. Now, in the 2020s, the sickness has spread everywhere completely drained every ounce of creativity and wonder from the studio, leaving everything they make sad and lifeless, tainted by the stench of greed.
The Disney remake plague literally started at the beginning of the 2010s. On March 5th, 2010, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland was released, the first Disney movie released in the 2010s. Although not the first live-action remake the studio had produced (The 90s gave us 101 Dalmatians, 102 Dalmatians, and two separate live-action adaptations of The Jungle Book), it was the first in this new wave that would end up taking over the entire studio.
I’ll admit, I didn’t hate Burton’s take on the classic story when it first came out (and I still don’t). Maybe that was because I was 7 years old when I first saw it, but maybe it was because it was still a somewhat fresh concept. We hadn’t yet been forced to consume the never-ending soulless takes on (what still are) beautifully animated films.
After Alice in Wonderland, it was a few years before we saw another remake. Though the studio was still putting out movies that were based on previous works, they weren’t outright copies and still had some creativity to them. For instance, 2014’s Maleficent is technically a live-action retelling, but it’s not just Sleeping Beauty in live-action, it’s a backstory of Maleficent and how she became the evil villain that we saw in the original. My problem is not with these movies.
I never had any strong opinion about the matter either way until 2019. That year saw four (!) separate live-action remakes from Disney. Dumbo, Aladdin, The Lion King (though in this case it’s technically count it as animated since it’s completely in CGI), and Lady and the Tramp all came out within an eight-month span. Since then, I have been adamantly anti-remake. Slowly, my resentment has been growing with every eye-roll and groan when another is announced. But now, I am more fed up than ever.
On April 3, The Rock announced on Twitter that Moana would soon be added to the list of films getting the live-action treatment. This announcement comes not even seven years after Moana first premiered. With the other remakes, the least amount of time between the original has been twenty-two years. Though this movie is still in development, it could very well be released before the original is even ten years old.
With the other remakes, it could at least be argued that these older stories (especially the ones made over half a century ago, as with Cinderella) deserve a revamping for the new youth, that enough time has passed and it would now be fun to see these old stories in a new form. But that doesn’t seem to apply to Moana.
As of right now, The Rock is returning to play his role as Maui, and Auli’i Cravalo will be reprising her role as Moana. So, if they are recreating the same exact movie with the same exact lead cast, what is the point?
The Rock claims that he is making it to get more representation for Polynesian people, but why couldn’t they just create a new story that centers on Polynesian people and stories? I’m not exactly the right person to be talking about representation, but I do believe there is a better way than just recreating the same stories over and over.
I think it’s pretty clear that the motivation here is money. Why would you need to come up with a new idea when you can just revamp the old ones? The Lion King remake grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide. Aladdin grossed $1 billion. Clearly, Disney can get away with reusing the same old ideas. In fact, the five live-action films produced by Walt Disney Studios that made over $1 billion were all either remakes or sequels.
Though they made a pretty chunk of change, that doesn’t seem to reflect their quality. Although I am not one to say that critic ratings are the most important, The Lion King got a 52% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes and Aladdin 57%. It seems that nostalgia alone is getting butts in seats, and money in Disney’s pockets.
The fact that these movies are getting made instead of original ideas deeply depresses me. Imagine every time you walk into a theater, all of the choices are stories you’ve seen before.
Aside from the aspect of being lazy and reusing old ideas, the issue with live-action remakes is that they are essentially disregarding the entire art form of animation. To say that these movies need to be remade is to say that animation is inferior. This tells people that you should watch an animated movie and go “Wow! I can’t wait to watch this story with real people and CGI animals!”
Animation should not just be the blueprint. So many animated films could not be made in live-action. How would the wondrous, dreamlike visuals of fantasia be shown in live-action? Lord hope I will never see this happen in my lifetime. How could the candy-filled tracks in Wreck-It-Ralph be shown with CGI? How will live-action Stitch look?
In my opinion, live-action just cannot capture the same magic as the animated originals. Many people had their own stupid reasons to hate the new live-action Little Mermaid (this will not be a discussion about the race swapping, all I have to say about that is people need to grow up), the most recent reason that has sparked outrage is the look of Ariel’s sea creature friends, Sebastian and Flounder.
At the first look, I was absolutely appalled by this. How could they take this character (that admittedly doesn’t really look like a crab) and make him look so…dull. His realistic look starkly contrasts the magical under-the-sea look of the movie.
Though Studio Ghibli (hopefully) has enough dignity to never let this happen, imagine what a live-action My Neighbor Totoro would look like. Devoid of all style and substance. How would Totoro himself even look in CGI? What about the soot sprites? Catbus? None of the characters would have the soul that makes Ghibli movies have such an impact. I would probably no longer describe the movie as feeling like a warm hug.
Everything that makes animation feel so special is lost in live-action. Animation can do what live-action can’t. The suspension of disbelief is inherently built into animated movies as we’re already aware that it does not equally represent our real life. We can easily watch a cartoon lobster sing to a couple about kissing in the middle of the water and feel charmed. We don’t have to make it feel like it could theoretically happen. We don’t have to make it look like our world, but it fits into that world.
A CGI Sebastian is going to pull you out of the story (aside from his HORRID design) because we don’t see talking crabs in real life. Making things look like how they would look in our real-life rids animated movies of all the magic that we get from the original world it was built to be in.
This issue may be most prevalent in Disney movies, but it’s starting to become clearer and clearer that we’re in the era of reboots, remakes, and sequels. Every single one of the top ten highest-grossing American films of 2022 fits into one of those categories. Not a single one was a stand-alone film not based upon a pre-existing franchise. The same for 2021.
I haven’t even touched on the remakes of non-animated films, and quite honestly I don’t think I have the patience to. Though I don’t want to get too far into it (because I honestly don’t think I have the mental stamina to look at something that will just depress me with the state of cinema today), franchises are also causing a huge drought of creative and new content. Though it’s a bit off-topic, I believe it’s worth at least touching on.
The over-reliance on franchises and sequels is getting out of hand. Since Marvel pulled off the feat of telling a large story over a decade, other studios took note. It seems that every movie is getting the franchise treatment or a sequel today, even when it’s not needed.
This is yet another symptom of Disney’s influence on the media market. With Marvel, Disney was able to build up the most comprehensive film universe to date, spanning across 31 films and 12 series over 15 years. After the roaring success of the MCU, it seems that every studio wants to cash in on it, so fewer and fewer original stand-alone films are being made. Not every film needs a sequel/franchise/prequel/tv show/whatever else they can think of! Some things are better left contained in a two-hour film!
As for the future, I’m very conflicted about how to feel. On one hand, I want to completely give up on the future of cinema in this stage of American capitalism with Disney seeming to have its foot in like 75% of the media that is being released. Also, the list of Disney’s live-action remakes is growing larger and larger, and I don’t anticipate it slowing down anytime soon. Snow White and Mufasa: The Lion King are both slated to come out next year, and there are 11 other remakes that are yet to have a release date.
On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of original films with original concepts in the past year. The top ten list of highest-grossing movies for this year so far includes five movies with original concepts (The Super Mario Bros. Movie, M3GAN, Cocaine Bear, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and Jesus Revolution), and although some are based on already existing IP’s, I would still consider them original since they’re not directly related to any other movie.
Still, we are not even halfway through the year yet, so I expect this list to change greatly within the coming months (especially with the release of two more Marvel Studio movies, and three more DC Studio movies). I guess it’s a waiting game to see what happens.
Journalism 2.0 