Disney's Live-Action Thread

An example of the modernization thing being bad is Disney apparently having listened to that subset of people who completely ignored Part of Your World and think Little Mermaid (1989) is anti feminist because she 'becomes human solely because of a man'. When that was never true, she's clearly shown enjoying the experience of the human world, just like she said she would in Part Of Your World. Eric is part of it but not the sole motivator. But that take's existed for literal decades.

Granted, I will admit to not having watched the 2023 movie (yet?) but apparently some stuff was edited to make it clearer that that's not what's happening. When they never really needed to. And that's the kinda thing I associate with 'used a buzzfeed article for update notes'

If I'm wrong and nothing of the sort happened, tell me.

Edited by stargirl93 on Jan 8th 2024 at 2:23:31 PM

I think part of it is that Disney's animated films were usually either based on very old stories that had already had dozens of versions in many different media, or on relatively obscure books like Dumbo or The Rescuers where most viewers weren't going to be familiar with the source material.

By contrast, the live action remakes are each an adaptation of one very specific film that everyone and their grandmother has seen. That creates a greater expectation of fidelity to the source material, since said source material is now both well-known and well-defined.

It's sort of the end result of internet discussions about greater media trends, you'll see the same patterns across any live action adaptation, remakes and George Lucas Altered Version. Not helping things is rumors taken as fact and clickbait headlines pushing things out of context or just a poorly worded comment.

That said, it gets frustrating when all people do is bring up and complain about rage baiting youtubers as though these films are beyond reproach simply because there is a hatedom.

Maybe, but that just makes it sound like the actual problem is that expectation of fidelity in itself. Like, that the people have artificially created a standard to apply only and solely to this specific situation but isn't actually there, which naturally causes problems when that standard isn't adhered to.

Especially given that several of the Disney Renaissance films were based largely on specific previous adaptations of the source material, rather than necessarily being completely original takes. IIRC, Beauty and the Beast, for instance, which took elements from previous stageplay versions but made a point to give the female lead more agency.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 8th 2024 at 11:45:48 AM

Two trivial things about the Little Mermaid remake that amused me, because to me, it showed how anal they were about addressing criticisms or questions about the original, was

1. Where did Ariel's dress go after she turns back to human.

2. Why is Ariel wearing a dress when Triton changes her back?

It's funny to me because only a small portion of Disney fans ask that, and the fact that Disney addressed it in the remake in a "two birds, one stone" kind of way. Ariel's dress got caught on a rock, and later when Ariel is changed back, she finds her dress washed up on the beach.

Also, it took me a long time notice another "fix" that the remake did. They rearranged the placements of the "Under The Sea" sequence, and Ariel first seeing Eric's statute in her grotto. This confused me, until I realized it was to fix the Plot Hole from the original about how Triton beat Ariel to the grotto, when Ariel left in the middle of "Under the Sea".

Watch how in thirty years the current generation accuses the re-remakes of not going with their values.

They see all those small trivial details and yet they miss the big picture stuff. Like how the visuals don't line up with the lyrics for under the sea. They keep the SAME lyrics and the visuals don't match what is happening? HOW? WHY? Is this artistic expression?

YMS also pointed out how stupid it was that Eric no longer killed Ursula in the remake. See, a guy doing that is bad. It's offensive. No, let's have Ariel do it.

Edited by Patar136 on Jan 10th 2024 at 1:30:51 AM

He's far from the only person to bring that up. Ultimately now it means Eric does nothing to change Triton's mind about humans.

Comparing the renaissance animated movies being lifted from sources to what live action movies is a wrong comparison. The animated films took their own interpretation of the source material while the live action movies literally just go "hey remember the thing?" while trying going after a specific version of the story.

This isn't a purism thing. Beauty and the Beast LA was terrible because it missed the more animated, expressive looks the character have while going all Red Letter Media snark in the lines.

Not always. I brought up Beauty and the Beast Animation as an example for a reason: it's directly based off of several specific previous adaptations, with its own twists mostly being to the tune of giving the female lead more agency.

The point of comparison at the time was Aladdin LA, because it's pretty much exactly what happened there.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 10th 2024 at 7:10:08 AM

BANB LA didn't try to deviate or do anything though. It is still trying to lean on the animated version. The only thing it tried to reference on the "original tales" was the garden rose.

And my point is that adaptations that don't necessarily try to do something completely different are nothing new.

It's wasn't new for the Disney Renaissance, it wasn't new for Disney even in the beginning (consider how tired and retreat stories like Snow White and Cinderella were in Disney's earlier days). Sometimes, a movie wants to tell an story everybody knows in a new context for a new audience.

The whole idea that it's a "flaw" is a criticism that doesn't hold a lot of water, in large part because it's really only this subsection of thirty-forty something Disney fans trying to inflate is at a problem for this very specific set of films. But as it's not particularly problematic anywhere else, it just comes off as a double standard.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 11th 2024 at 6:05:55 AM

But that's the my point - the renaissance films, while taking stuff from original tales, still spun something original. Hell TLM was very divergent from its source material. Meanwhile the live action was totally trying to hammer the "the thing you watched from the original - but live action!" with additional "taking points of what people in the internet tried to make a big deal".

If Tangled gets a live action, you'd have Flynn's actor comment about hair physics impossibility, you'll have some unnecessary lore about the flower that would somehow make Gothiel's character even worse, and would make a checklist representation that either ends up not doing anything or making things worse.

Edited by Ookamikun on Jan 12th 2024 at 8:40:40 PM

Well, Tangled is already a fairly self-aware film, I'm pretty sure Flynn actually says something to that effect in the movie.

Edited by lbssb on Jan 12th 2024 at 11:23:24 AM

And again, not always. Several of the original animated Disney films were verbatim adaptations that endeavored not to change much and just be a new version of something people had already seen. Several others were adaptations that got panned at the time for changing too much.

It bears repeating: it's nothing new. This isn't something that started with the live action films and is suddenly a problem now with these specific films. Spinning it as such requires applying it selectively.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 12th 2024 at 9:34:14 AM

In my opinion, making these films live action means you are already disrespecting the source material. Because a lot of what made these films work was the animation. The animation was one of the factors that contributed to its success. But the reason this wasn't focused on in the story presentation was because it wasn't the focus of the films! It was there to communicate the emotions and expressions! It was there to help complement the characters!

But Aladdin 2019 is an upgrade. The parrot now doesn't talk and it's just a parrot! We removed its character entirely! This is so much better!

I can't get behind that mentality. These stories predate the Disney animated movies, and they're not the be all end all of what they're supposed to be.

Was Little Mermaid disrespecting Hans Christian Andersen, because he conceived the concept as a prose story and the concept was made to work in that medium? Is Aladdin disrespectful to Arabian history by daring to adapt a folktale into an Americanized form (putting aside the Americanisms they added that were panned as disrespectful, of course)? Is Peter Pan disrespect to the stage play, or the Muppet or 3D Christmas Carols an insult to every other version of a Christmas Carol made previously? Are the Disney Stage Plays also an insult to the animated versions?

Where does that condemnation end? Applying it here and only here, while not applying it anywhere else, is a double standard.

Storytelling is storytelling, and stories are made to be retold over and over again. Sometimes those retellings keep things the same. Sometimes those retellings change things. Forcing a retelling to be one or the other is a false requirement.

Yes, Hollywood does use remakes as a means to make money and garner free attention from brand association, and yes they keep making these movies because they make them money (which they do because they're popular). But even so, the concept of remaking a popular story in a new medium or style isn't, in itself, somehow an insult - it's something that always, always happens, because at the end of the day people like retelling stories they enjoyed. This is true both for older stories with a lot of history, and for newer stories like the Lion King that Disney itself created.

SI find the idea that such a thing should never be done to cultivate a "sacred" status for certain versions of stories a specific group of people enjoy to be far more destructive and negative than the alternative, tbh. Or at least, entirely arbitrary.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 12th 2024 at 10:12:41 AM

I respectfully disagree. The argument that "Oh, well it's not actually an original story and it came from another medium" are irrelevant. These Disney renaissance films were wildly successful. They were beloved for the most part on release and they have left a cultural impact. When people think of the Little Mermaid, or Aladdin or Hercules many people think of the Disney project first. And what about something like Lion King, an original animated story? Translating something into another medium and removing the aspects that made the original adaptation work means that by transforming it to another medium you have decided to cut out the things that made that story work in the first pace. And these live action remakes are replacing those beloved features with ugly visuals, less color, reduced facial expressions and emotions, worse music (or no music) and baffling creative decisions.

Also, cultural appropriation is not the same thing as Animation Age Ghetto where the creators and the audience are somehow embarrassed about "I can't watch cartoons anymore. They are for kids. Therefore this "live action" movie is better" without any sort of understanding or appreciation of those animated stories.

Why? You didn't actually give a reason, you just went on to repeat your initial point that adaptation as a concept is wrong.

This is how adaptation works, yes. It's the same for every adaptation from one medium to another has always worked since way back in Aristotle's time.

Attempting to spin that as a problem is never going to work, because it's baked into the concept of adapting and storytelling in the first place. Every single new version of a story is always going to do that. It's part of the process.

And all that's an opinion. Is the crux of this "it's an insult when someone adapts a story I personally like in a way I don't personally like?"

There's a reason why people typically dismiss concepts like They Changed It, Now It Sucks! as elements of Fan Myopia. It assumes that the things the fans want specifically is the only thing that matters, and as such any differences no matter what they are are intrinsically wrong because they change from what the persons speaking wants to see. But that's all dolling an opinion up as a flaw in someone else for not satisfying one's personal desires.

It's okay to just not like these movies. It's okay if not morally right to have a serious issue with the company regarding how films are commercialized (more on that second one in a sec).

But it's when you get to forced universal "criticisms" like "it's an insult and intrinsically bad to remake stories at all into another medium" or "it's bad writing to retell a story and not change enough at all" or "it's bad writing to retell a story and change too much" that things go into imposing one's opinion as "fact" onto everyone else. Down that road leads to 80's and 90's fans No True Scotsman-ing everyone else.

Because those things aren't faults, under any circumstances. They're part and parcel into the concept of storytelling and mediums in the first place, have been for millennia, and they're just elements of someone choosing to tell the story they want to tell. And that's underscored by how those "flaws" vanish when observed in movies people claiming them are actually inclined to like.

Or, in short, you're not going to like every story or retelling that comes out. While each story in itself is worthy of criticism (and there's plenty of criticism to be had about these remakes on a case by case basis), the concept of stories being made that aren't the same as other versions of the story you enjoy is not, itself, one of them. And the people who tell those stories are certainly not insulting other people by not meeting that impossible standard wtf.

What's an insult is Disney not paying the original writers their proper royalties when making these films. The original writers have issue with that, because that's their due as the original creators and Disney refused to give it do them. Disney's been using these films to print money, often without care or regard for what's around them, and that's bullshit. It's already backfired on them with Mulan, where they were so keen on China's money that they alienated the rest of their audience, and then China didn't even like it anyway.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 12th 2024 at 10:56:00 AM

There is nothing wrong with changing things in and of itself. Changes are neutral. However, it has been my consistent experience watching these terrible remakes where I am reminding myself "these changes they are making are making the story worse." Very rarely have I watched a Disney live action remake and thought "that's a good change." And even when I do, it feels like it is overwhelmed by all the bad decisions they make alongside it. It doesn't matter if Kevin Kline made a good Le Fou if the rest of the movie has bad music and relatively bad acting. I don't care if the Mulan story is more adult without the songs if the main character is unrelatable and boring. Who cares if the girl who played Jasmine did an okay job if her co lead can't sing.

I'm sorry, but making Jafar just a regular boring guy in Aladdin 2019, or removing the facial expressions of characters in The Lion King, or having Emma Watson auto-tune her songs in the musical called Beauty and the Beast, making Alice and Wonderland remake look hideous, downplaying Maleficent's villainy and making her some misunderstood anti-hero and those awful child actors in Dumbo among other examples make for an unsatisfying viewing experience. And they keep reminding you of the original with callbacks and nostalgia points or running gags or even just copying the story we already saw over and over again. I'm supposed to treat the remake as its own thing? I can't! They keep reminding me that the animated film exists, especially when they took something that worked fine and made it worse somehow!

If you can seriously look past all of that and ignore these painful creative decisions and how a lot of these stories feel like over glorified tech demos then I commend you. Don't let me and my stupid opinion bother you. But I cannot get behind what feels like lowering my standards for a story, that already worked well, so that I can say "Oh, this movie is gud. It's gud movie because it totally makes better decisions than original movie" like having Ariel steer a ship to kill Ursula. The mermaid who didn't know what a fork was now has an understanding for steering wheels. Great change. There is a montage sequence where a dung beetle rolls around Simba's hair in a ball of shit (a perfect analogy of the movie btw.)

I don't get it. I don't know if I even want to get it. I don't understand how people can look at these movies and decide they are not only on par but better than the animated films. At the very least, it should be as good as the original movie. Right? Am I insane for asking that? And most of the time it's not even that. The only "good one" that people keep telling me about is Jungle Book 2016. And as somebody who loves the original book by Kipling and wanted to see an adaptation of it on screen, that film really pissed me off. I wanna tear my own fucking head off when I watch these films. I. Don't. Understand.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just going crazy.

I have the exact same issue with 2019 Jafar, though one of the things that puts it into perspective for me is that that’s this isn’t a new problem for the character.

The Broadway play has the exact same issue with Jafar (arguably worse, even, despite them casting the brilliant Jonathan Freeman), and there’s a case to be made that it goes all the way back to Return of Jafar turning him into “generic evil dude” and filing off the traits that initially carried the role (the only place he really comes back is the Hercules crossover, funnily enough). It comes from the belief that, nowadays, hits the Marvel films; that villains are mostly there to be intense and evil, and it’s the other characters’ job to carry scenes around them, when Jafar isn’t that kind of character.

It comes from later writers not really getting how the original’s pace was meant for more characters than usual to carry scenes, and how that included Jafar, resulting in lulls in the middle and ending parts Jafar usually pushed forward. The Broadway play tries to fill those parts with Babkak, Omar and Cassim, but as much as I love those characters they don’t quite manage it, and the minimized Jafar outright destroys the Broadway shows ending.

Despite this, if would totally watch the Broadway play a third time if given the opportunity. It doesn’t keep me from enjoying the adaptation, I can just see where it could’ve been improved.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jan 12th 2024 at 12:20:45 PM

I think a more bland Jafar could work if they kept Iago around as comic relief, but for some reason the talking bird is also made a serious no-nonsense villain, I don't really get it.

I think you’re right. That’s what happened in Return of Jafar. Jafar there has much less personality, but he’s carried by how Iago and later Abis Mal have much more personality to bounce off him with, so it becomes less notable unless you watch the first film and it back to back.

But with Broadway Jafar, Iago’s much more of a yes man, and LA Jafar basically has nobody since Iago has barely any dialogue.

Maybe it's also me but LA Jafar looks like he would be the hero in another movie. Which just tells you a lot about how unthreatening he seemed.