It is a good time to be a Disney fan right now. For starters, it seems like everything the studio has touched is turning into gold. In the last year alone, Disney dominated the box office, raking in a record-breaking 13 billion in revenue worldwide.
Apart from their success with franchises like Marvel, Star Wars, Frozen and Toy Story, Disney has figured out that the live action remake model is a massive money maker.
From 2014, Disney has released at least one live action remake every year starting with Maleficient, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from Angelina Jolie’s villainous point of view that was so successful it required a sequel five years later. In 2015, there was Kenneth Branagh’s excellent take on Cinderella, followed by some moderately successful ones like The Jungle Book and Alice Through the Looking Glass, and then the recent heavy hitters like Aladdin, Lion King and Beauty and the Beast that each brought home over 1 billion in earnings.
Disney doesn’t seem to be slowing down either, having just announced an impressive lineup of remakes currently in production. Emma Stone is set to star in Cruella, and Halle Bailey will be taking on the role of Ariel in the musical retelling of The Little Mermaid (I’m also really excited about the new songs by Alan Menken and Lin Manuel Miranda).
Economics aside, the response to live action remakes from critics and fans has been mixed, and I can understand why.
As a Gen Xer who grew up in the golden era of the Disney Renaissance watching The Little Mermaid, Lion King, Aladdin and Mulan, I feel a little possessive about these animated classics that defined my growing up years. I’m almost afraid that the disappointment of watching a mediocre remake would somehow tarnish the memory of my entire childhood.
It’s a difficult path to navigate when you take a film that’s beloved by an entire generation and attempt to make the exact same thing again. Do you play it safe (and boring) by keeping close to the original or try to give it a fresh spin at the risk of ruining it?
Seeing how Disney has experimented with different approaches over the years, they’re not quite sure what the strategy is yet.
If It Ain’t Broke
Perhaps the easiest way to approach a live action remake is to stay religiously true to the source material, right down to shot-for-shot recreations of scenes.
Which is something director Jon Favreau did when he remade Lion King. “I think this story has been enduring now since it first hit the screen as a 2D animated film and then through the theatrical run of the musical production and people know it very, very well…so we felt that it wasn’t appropriate for us to take the title and make up our own story. We really wanted to stick to the things people remembered,” he explained.
While it’s not technically a live action because the entire movie was shot on a soundstage using virtual reality instead of real animals on the plains of Africa, the remake of Lion King in 2019 was in essence a stylistic upgrade from the original hand drawn animation to a fancier photorealistic version.
As far as the narrative goes, nothing additional happens in the remake.
I loved everything about the original Lion King but watching the remake reenact the entire show with realistic-looking animals, it felt like this was Disney’s way of flexing its advanced CGI abilities and A-lister casting just for the sake of it.
This also brought up the problem with photorealism. There are certain things you can do with animation that doesn’t translate well into live action. Take for example the iconic Hakuna Matata scene where Timon, Pumbaa and Simba dance-walk in sync through the jungle; having animated characters do it is at once outrageous and flamboyant and fun. When I watched it for the first time at 12-years-old, I enjoyed it so much I immediately decided that Pumbaa was my spirit animal and Hakuna Matata was my anthem.
But when that same scene is done by realistic-looking animals, it comes across as odd and hollow. As K. Austin Collins wrote in his review for Vanity Fair, “We value [animation] for, well, its animated nature: as a medium to convey emotions that are bigger onscreen than in real life, and exaggerated expressions, flights of fancy, a complete rejection of physics.”
Which is not to say that I didn’t fan-girl out at Beyonce’s killer vocals and Seth Rogan’s spin on Pumbaa – we also need to talk about how adorable fluffy Simba is – but ultimately, I walked away from the movie feeling like this was an unnecessary flex and it made me miss the original version even more.
Giving It A Fresh Spin
At other times, it seems that Disney wants its remakes to be something different entirely. Niki Caro’s directing of Mulan represents the biggest departure from its animated original to date. In describing her vision for remaking Mulan, Caro explained, “We can think of [this movie] as a coming of age for people of your generation, for whom Mulan really marked their childhood. This movie, I hope, can be embraced as a more adult telling.”
This makes it less of a fun cartoony story with characters breaking out into song at every turn and more of a cinematic martial arts action movie with exquisite sets, stylistic sword fights and dazzling kungfu moves.
After the mild disappointment from watching the remade Lion King last year, I was all in for a more adult telling of Mulan.
Narratively, a lot has changed from the original. There’s no Mushu; Gong Li plays shapeshifting witch Xianniang; Mulan is now a badass warrior with superior qi powers; and Li Shang is replaced by a combination of commanding officer General Tung and a much hotter love interest, Honghui.
Then there’s the music, or lack thereof. Indeed, one of the best parts of Mulan was being able to sing along with gusto to the big soaring musical numbers, which is noticeably missing in the live-action version. It was comforting to hear the instrumental version of “Reflections” playing in the background during pivotal moments, but if I’m honest, I really missed having Li Shang belt out “I’ll make a man out of you”.
Although none of these changes are a dealbreaker for me. At the heart of it, Caro’s Mulan is a visually gorgeous film that leveraged on the strength of the live action format. Each fight scene is beautifully choreographed – we see Liu Yifei running along walls and acrobatically dodging spears on horseback with her hair flying in the wind. It is a solid film on its own right and more importantly, it did what a live action remake is supposed to do, which is to bring the source material to life, even if it takes many creative liberties along the way.
Reaching The Next Generation
If nothing else, Disney remakes are a great way to reach the next generation of kids who didn’t have a chance to grow up enjoying the classics.
When I had kids, one of the things I did was to introduce them to all of my favourite animated films. They liked the more recent hits like Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, but they weren’t quite as impressed by old school options like Dumbo and Bambi. I told them about my experience watching Dumbo as a kid and how it gave me all the feels but just five minutes into the show, they were all “this is boring, can we watch Frozen again?”
And I get it, Dumbo was first released 79 years ago and the animated movies that kids are used to these days are on a different level altogether. It’s like going back to watch the 1941 Adventures of Captain Marvel in black and white after watching Avengers: End Game.
So when Dumbo was remade as a live action last year, my kids finally watched it and they loved it. My 11-year-old snuggled in close when Dumbo’s mother looked on helplessly as was taken away in a carriage. At the end of the movie, she said, “wow that was so sad but also kind of sweet.”
Perhaps moving on with the times is all about embracing new franchises like Frozen and everything in the Pixar universe (all of which I love), but maybe it’s also about giving new life to the very best stories that we grew up watching.
