Disney’s latest live action remake, Snow White, has not been doing very well in the box office, only making $145.7 million worldwide. It also has a 1.5/10 star rating on IMDb, although the movie has been subject to review bombing, and a rating of 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you have been following Disney live action remakes for the past few years this isn’t surprising.
The first live action remake Disney ever made was Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which was released December 25, 1994. The first modern Disney live action remake was Alice in Wonderland, releasing March 5, 2010. It wouldn’t be until May 30, 2014 with the release of Maleficent where Disney live action remakes would come at least once a year.
These remakes have been very hit or miss, with some being well received, Cinderella (2015) and The Little Mermaid (2023), and others not, Mulan (2020) and Pinocchio (2022). Many people online have expressed how they are growing tired of all these remakes, and I can’t help but agree.
What was originally an interesting concept has become a soulless cash grab preying upon people’s nostalgia for the original versions of these movies. New animated movies produced by Disney tend to be either sequels to older animated movies or not as heavily advertised. This is pretty disappointing because instead of relying on old IPs Disney could be creating new stories and adapting new fairy tales instead.
I find that the live remakes tend to look dark and muted compared to the original movies’ bright and lively visuals. Some people may prefer the darker and more muted look, but I am not one of them, I find it quite boring to look at with some scenes being a little difficult to make out what is happening due to how dark they are.
The costumes in the live action remakes are almost never as good as the animated movies’ outfits either. Of course, I understand that you can’t make animated movies and live action movies outfits the exact same, but even not comparing them to the animated movies they aren’t very good. Belle’s yellow dress in the live action Beauty and the Beast looks flat and fairly uninteresting, I actually found her blue dress in the beginning of the movie to look more interesting than her ballgown.
How the live action remakes modernize the original stories can also be very odd. Like how in the live action The Little Mermaid the second verse of Poor Unfortunate Souls was completely removed from the song. This was supposedly to ensure that young girls don’t feel like they shouldn’t talk. I get what the creators were trying to do, but they could have at least tried to write a new second verse for the song.
There are tons of fairy tales that Disney hasn’t adapted into movies yet and even more original ideas that they could make movies on, but they choose to keep remaking their older films. While some of their recent animated movies haven’t been well received, namely Wish, there are still some that have been huge successes, like Encanto.
I believe that if Disney put as much money into new stories that they put into adapting their older works we could get some lovely stories. All I know is that I personally will not be watching any more live action remakes from Disney.
