Disney's Live-Action Thread

The movie is estimated to make between 45 and 50 million on opening weekend. Not too shabby, but at the lower end of the predictions. It still has a long way to go, considering the overblown budget it has.

I feel like they should have had Spielberg direct it rather Burton

Spielberg and Disney have been opponents for a long time, with him co-founding Dreamworks as a rival studio, and Amblin Animation having to compete against Disney animated films. They did briefly come together a few years ago for The BFG, but that's it.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Mar 30th 2019 at 12:34:00 PM

Thanks Eisner.

Edited by megaeliz on Mar 30th 2019 at 3:25:53 PM

I do wonder what the live action Dumbo film would look like if Spielberg had directed,I'd say he's a better director in general.I think Tim just wanted to make Big fish 2

One of the characters would be having daddy issues. :P

here you go

I’m not sure if it’s Trippy enough.

Spielberg would have been a much better fit, I think. He’s good with Whimsical and heartfelt stories like this. (His BFG was criminally underrated IMO.) At this point, the only thing Burton can do, is weird.

Edited by megaeliz on Mar 31st 2019 at 1:44:44 PM

I don't know. I mean, it is basically the original score made even more eerie.

ow poor dumbo

He might have flown to the top of the pyramid but its looking like its increasingly like its a poor performance thanks to performing below expectations,maybe they should have adapted the film closer to the original movie?

Dumbo had the least name-recognition out of the three films being remade this year, but that also gave it the most leeway to update the story for a modern audience. If it got good word-of-mouth, maybe it could've done better, but I still wouldn't see it beating any box-office records or the like.

That being said, I'm not sure how wise an idea it was to release three remakes within the same year. They've done well enough, but it may feel like too many remakes at once. It took Marvel Studios nine years to earn the goodwill to release three films in a single year. Obviously, these films are connected in the same way the MCU films are, but they're similar enough to be considered a spiritual series if that makes any sense. I mean, we're currently talking about all the remakes within a singular thread here.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Apr 1st 2019 at 8:31:04 AM

From a few years ago, but since we were talking about the Aladdin live-make:

We should be glad of one thing,at least they did not make live action Dumbo talk

There wasn't much to worry about that. Dumbo was a silent character in the original, and this was in part a nostalgia piece.

I think there was because even though Dumbo is a silent character, he has always been a very expressive character, too. So expressive, I didn't even notice that he didn't talk unless someone pointed it out to me.

> There wasn't much to worry about that. Dumbo was a silent character in the original, and this was in part a nostalgia piece.

Right,but this film has barely anything in common with the original film,giving him dialogue wouldn't have been to surprising given all the other choices they've made

also if you view twitter here's a Lindsey Ellis thread on Dumbo

Dan Olson's thoughts.

Wat.

Did they hire a writer from the set of “Captain Blackbeard snorts pixie dust”?

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Apr 3rd 2019 at 10:07:45 AM

No, they hired the writer from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Dark of the Moon, and Age of Extinction.

Dude has seen some s*** brooooooo.

…Yup. Thanks, I'll skip it.

Of all the live action Disney remakes, The Lion King kinda pisses me off. This is a movie that’s entirely about talking animals. which means that there’s no fucking way this is going to be a "live action" film. It’s not a Cinderella, a Beauty and the Beast, a Mulan, or even a Jungle Book. Those movies all had fantastical elements that had to be animated, but they still starred live actors on actual sets that could actually do a live-action performance. The Lion King, on the other hand, will have to be entirely animated. So it will just be the exact same animated movie except the animation will make the lions and hyenas look hyper-realistic, I guess. How very necessary. Hooray.

I know people are freaking out over the new cast list, but come on. Since they’ve been announced, there’s always been something that unsettled me about the live action remakes, and I think a few people have already said it by now: there’s no point to them. And I'm not saying that Disney shouldn’t remake some of their animated movies. I'm saying that there's a problem when they’re remaking the wrong ones.

People love The Lion King, and Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella, and The Jungle Book. Of those, I can almost guarantee at least one of them is on everyone’s top ten Disney movie list. There is something so incredible and charming about each one of these movies that keep people coming back to them years later. They are classics. But remaking them is a risky endeavor, and one that doesn’t always play out well. While some of these stories might benefit a little from the longer runtime and the ability to introduce slightly more adult themes, overall none of those changes really add anything to the story, and in the end for each of these movies that have had a live action movie made of them (and released, because some of them aren’t yet), I’ll always choose the animated version over the live action remake.

But for The Lion King, you can’t even call it a live action remake, not when every single character is going to be CGI. It’s just another kind of animation at this point. Case in point: I saw a Facebook post once where someone photoshopped the faces of the CGI animals to have big eyes and expressive faces, and it basically looked exactly like the animated movie, just 3D. And people were commenting like “oh wow it looks even better like that.” Like no shit Sherlock that’s why it was animated in the first place! We already have that movie.

And what’s even more frustrating is that they’re taking what is arguably the most popular Disney animated movie ever made (and universally liked, unlike Frozen) and redoing it for no reason, other than the vain hope that having “realistic” animals and star power attached to the film will somehow make them money. And it’s insulting to the original movie, and to everyone who loves that movie. All that’s going to happen is they’re going to take such a lighthearted yet poignant and thought-provoking movie that is perfect for kids and they’re going to make it darker, more “grown up” (translation: scarier and more boring at the same time), and somehow more awkward looking because while CGI is good, trying to make something both realistic and mimicking animation never works.

If Disney is so desperate for money, and really wants to try and resell its animated movies as live action, then they need to go with the animated movies that didn’t do so well, or the ones people don’t remember as much. People have been saying for a while now that they really want to see a remake of Atlantis, and honestly? Fuck yeah. That is the kind of movie they should remake. Not just because it’s the perfect movie to fill with all kinds of big name stars, but because it’s also great for showcasing how great your CGI department is. It’s already a pretty dark animated movie, in comparison to the others, so not much story-wise would have to change if they want to make it more for teens/adults. Also, visually, it would be a different change of pace from the overuse of modern day/futuristic outer space settings that most live action movies have these days. I can see something like that being made into something like Pirates of the Caribbean, and it might even open the doors for original sequels. Other movies that might benefit could be Treasure Planet or the Black Cauldron, and maybe even The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Disney animated movies are held in such a high regard because they’re timeless. They tell stories that we can relate to, have characters that we fall in love with, are beautiful to look at, and contain songs that to this day most people would know at least the chorus of. They have stood the test of time, some for eighty years. People love them because the creators filled them with care and love and effort. These remakes don’t have that same charm. They’re cash grabs, very obviously in some cases, and the same amount of effort that was put into the animated originals isn’t there. But if they really tried, they could probably make some decent remakes of the lesser known animated movies, and also might inspire people who haven’t seen or heard of them to check out the originals. I know they don’t want to do that because they’re afraid of the risk, but sooner or later people are going to stop giving them money to have their childhood favorite movies ruined by mediocre acting/singing and uncanny CGI.

It's the reason I seriously hope that Frozen II outdoes this Lion King remake at the box office.

> It's the reason I seriously hope that Frozen II outdoes this Lion King remake at the box office.

In all likelyhood it will

I've heard someone suggest that one of the reasons for the Disney remakes is so they can release them overseas in markets that never got the original films in theaters. For example, China didn't get the original Lion King in theaters, so now Chinese audiences will have an opportunity to see the film on the big screen.

... I may be horribly wrong, but that could be a reason.