Can we stop with the Disney live-action remake movies already?

We think it’s time we just accept the painful truth: Disney doesn’t make original content anymore. They’re a content mill for Star Wars, Marvel, and all the original titles they’ve already made in the past. Disney’s sole purpose now is to churn out more & more of what they already have. Meanwhile, all the new ideas the creatives at Disney likely have will just rot in the corner waiting for an executive producer to care – a day that may never come.

While Disney announced they’re making twenty different Marvel and Star Wars shows (can we just rename them to Quantity over Quality Studios already?) they also slipped in another disheartening announcement yesterday: more live-action remakes of the animated classics you grew up loving.

Do we need a terrifying real-life marionette Pinocchio rampaging through our nightmares? Absolutely not. Is Disney going to make a live-action Pinocchio anyway to terrify the young and old alike? Of-freaking-course they are.

Animation is a great medium

Animation exists for a reason. Storytellers choose their medium intentionally, not just by some roll of the dice. Animation exists to tell stories that would otherwise be odd in a more realistic medium. This could be because the visuals would look strange, off-putting, or even so outlandish it would break your suspension of disbelief – we’re looking at you Lilo and Stitch & The Little Mermaid.

Animation also serves to make things more whimsical & magical. Not to mention it can be utterly perfected – every single inch can be manipulated to look exactly as you want it.

Not to mention animation can also make movies that might be scary feel a lot more family-friendly. For example, if they ever made Tangled into a live action remake it’d end up feeling a lot more like the rated R movie Room than it would a Disney Princess movie.

Leave good ideas alone

Listen, we get it, Disney is obsessed with copyright. The last thing Disney wants is for something they currently own to enter the public domain – heaven forbid someone writes a dark story about Mickey Mouse, let’s say, trying to commit suicide . . . oh wait, Disney already did that in a comic strip in the 1930s. 😒

We’re begging you Disney to just leave a good thing alone. You became the iconic company you are today because you delighted children, parents, and pretty much everyone in-between with your exciting, magical, and interesting new stories. At this point, you’re actually losing your credibility as a creative force in the industry.

Okay, sure, sometimes Disney liked to “borrow” old fairy tales, but at least they retold them in a way that made them feel like a new story. Now Disney is just a content mill repackaging the same old stories over & over again, which ultimately makes us hate the stories we once loved. It’s depressing.

We don’t want these

There are a lot of rumors about live action remakes coming from Disney – we’ve peppered some of these titles throughout the article. (Yeah apparently Tangled wasn’t the hypothetical we thought it was).

From Peter Pan & Wendy to the second iteration of a live action Cruella to whatever the heck Chip N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers is, there are a lot of remakes headed for release in the next year. They’re even doubling down on the Lion King remake nobody liked by creating a live action prequel.

Please, make it stop.

Some aren’t even live-action!

Here’s what really puts the twist in our pants though, some of these so-called live-action remakes aren’t even live action! Movies like the Lion King are CGI, which stands for computer-generated images. You know how they make animations like Toy Story 4? Computer-generated images.

The Lion King remake isn’t a “live-action” movie. It’s literally just a different and less good animation style for that story. A “live action” Lion King or that Chip N’ Dale movie can only truly be live action if they had trained animals on set – something we know they did not and will not do for various reasons like morality and cost. Take your pick on which you think they care about more.

They’re not good

In the end, one might be willing to forgive the giant corporation that is Disney if their remakes were enjoyable – but they aren’t. Sure, the first one – the live action Cinderella was kind of cute & fun. It really only worked because everyone has heard about 15,000 different iterations of the Cinderella story, so what’s one more?

However, all the others have been bad. The Beauty and the Beast remake was incredibly underwhelming and the Mulan one was fraught with controversy – not that many people saw it anyway since it’s on Disney+.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that Jungle Cruise is inspired by a mediocre Disneyland ride we have to say it’s probably the Disney project we’re most excited for because at least it’s a new story with new characters. Anyway, Pirates of the Caribbean was also inspired by a ride and it became a wildly successful franchise . . . oh no. Wait. We recant our excitement.

In the end, Disney will keep doing this unless it stops making them money, which means the only way to force them into making new original content again is to stop paying to watch these crappy remakes, but we all know that’s a big ask. So for now, it looks like we’re stuck with nothing but bad adaptations for the foreseeable future.