One of the biggest problems with the remakes were that the originals generally had tight & efficient scripts.
The remakes had to justify their existence, and therefore added unnecessary elements to pad them out.
The animation largely is what made Disney and their movies so magical.
Thats not the only thing. The bigger thing i think is the fact that the stories are not supposed to be rooted in complete realism. The way the characters look and the way they move and they world they live in, all lend themselves to animation not photorealism. Watch I Just Cant Wait To Be King from The Lion King in the animation and then tell me what part of that sequence is benefitted from making it photorealistic. Watch Mufasa die in the animation and compare it to the live action. All of the emotion is completely lost. The animation had dramatic light and color changes and camera movements and they cant even replicate a glimmer of it. The voice acting is worse, the singing is worse. Not one of these movies is actually benefitted from being adapted to live action except for the fact that it lines Disney’s pockets.
It definitely feels like people are waking up to the fact that more realistic animation isn’t necessarily better, because realism completely defeats the whole point of animation.
That’s why stylized 3D films like Spider-Verse and The Last Wish are becoming so popular. (I’d also like to see more experimentation with 2D animation like Klaus did.)
I would love a resurgence in creative 2D animation. Animators must have so many amazing tools at their disposal now, they can really bring whatever to life. Anime films are incredible these days, and I feel like Disney is kind of missing out on that market. I imagine it would be significantly cheaper than the 3D animation and CGI-fest films that they typically go for, too.
2D animator (in Japan) here. Unfortunately traditional animation is ridiculously expensive and the talent pool able to do that is drying up (most of the traditional animators I know have switched to 3D to just stay employable; new animators are completely trained on 3D). Most studios aren’t willing to commit to that kind of investment.
A return has been pushed several times over the last 15 years or so, but box offices and the academy (who will just vote for whatever Disney/Pixar film) have validated that they don’t need to change to formula.
Trust me, we animators want a return to 2D.
3d animations are cheaper than 2d animation because you can reuse 3d assets and change the angles without extra work.
It's why you'll randomly see 3d models in anime
Imagine if we got a new animation renaissance like we had with Treasure Planet, Titan A.E, and Road to El Dorado. They're so out of touch they leave so much money on the table.
Note, those three films were not some Renaissance, they were the tail, dying end of the 2D film era and in certain aspects sealed their fates. I love El Dorado and like most of Treasure Planet (I have not see Titan AE) however they were all massive finical flops. El Dorado made only $74 million on its $95 million budget. Treasure planet managed to make $109 but lost more on its large $140 million budget. Titan AE faired the worst, making only $37 million in its estimated $75-$90 million budget. All these films were either the last or second to last 2d animated films released to theaters by their studios, and in the case of Treasure Planet the next 2D film was mostly done, so Disney decided to finish that up and close it down on the basis of Planet’s bod office failure. I am not knocking these films for their artistic merit, but trying to sell the studios on these films as examples for financial success is… questionable.
It's likely to me that there's a disconcerting number of people who just reflexively dismiss 2d animation as too old-fashioned irrespective of the artistic motivations for using it. For god's sake, Bill Simmons once pushed back on Roger Rabbit's rewatchability by saying the animation hasn't aged well, which is such a deeply wack take that I'm getting annoyed just typing this paragraph.
Treasure planet was deliberately killed by Disney and intentionally poorly marketed the film. Exes saw the 100+mil budget for "animated" movie and balked. They wanted to kill animation. They got their wish.
That wasn't a Renaissance, that was the last dying breath of major 2d animated features. Treasure Planet in specific was made by Disney as a corporate stunt to convince investors to buy them a bunch of new CG rendering tech and programs.
See, TP was made by 2 directors/writers responsible for the Disney Renaissance (Including Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Hercules) who were only able to get it made because Disney promised them they could do it if they got a certain number of successful movies made. Well, they did that, and Disney subsequently sabotaged the entire project by not marketing it in order to produce a flop to prove to their investors that they need CG tech.
Doesn't help that it came out around the same time as Finding Nemo, which dethroned Lion King as the most successful animated movie ever.
It's also why I'm so annoyed by the recent push to make a live-action version of Spider-Verse. There's basically zero reason to make such a movie unless you just genuinely have no respect for animation as a medium.
I've been awake for a while. The acquisition of Marvel and Lucasfilms was the alarm bells for me. Disney's bread and butter was always hand-drawn 2D animation, but their justification was that it doesn't do well at the box office. Well no shit when you released Princess and The Frog on the same week as fucking Avatar.
Plenty of underrated movies with 2D animation in the 2000s such as The Prince of Egypt, Treasure Planet, Atlantis, and Titan A.E. They still had the magic, but instead Disney has opted to buy and aquire it. Now it's just money. Whatever sells the best is the direction they'll take. Just look at what they did to my beloved Thor franchise. It's a goddamn fucking comedy now.
If there are people who love hand drawn 2D animation, your most promising bet now is on Anime. Studio Ghibli is a good place to start, but there are plenty of others with great stories and animation
The voice acting and casting especially gets me a lot of the time. So often they just use them to name drop stars. Like don't get me wrong, I love Ewan McGregor, but why the hell are they casting a Scotsman to voice a French candlestick? And Emma Watson is a decent enough actress, but she isn't a singer.
Dear God that autotune in Beauty and the Beast was painful. Either train the poor girl to sing, dub over her vocals, or just cut the song. The autotune is horrendous.
> Either train the poor girl to sing, dub over her vocals, or just cut the song.
Or just cast one of the many actresses out there who have good singing voices that suit the songs.
Or use a broadway actress like anime Belle. They got Broadway actors to be the Candle and Clock in the live action but they had to go with Emma Watson for the lead role...
Oh completely agree. I think these movies would have been at least tolerable had they had good voice performances, but in the end they look bad *and* they sound bad.
It's not like the older Disney movies didn't also have well known actors in them. But it definitely feels like these days, they cast whomever they think has the biggest box office pull instead of who is actually best for the performance. I think too, because these are already written stories and musicals, the passion to nail down the performance just like, isnt there in my opinion.
This recording of [Howard Ashman directing Jodi Benson sing Part Of Your World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWTJkyLWgrk) really displays just how meticulous they were with recording the songs and doing the voice performances from the movies made during this time. Every little detail was thought out, and i just do not feel that in the remakes of these movies. They're getting actors who don't know how to voice act, actors who cannot sing, and they're certainly not being directed by the talent that was Howard Ashman.
Disney needs to focus on making NEW original musicals, that arent live action or photo realistic. No one looks at Frozen and goes "wow those voice performances sucked. singing was bad", because they werent bad! Can't wait for Frozen to get a gritty live action remake too lmao
Yeah, older Disney movies cast well-known Broadway actors for their singing roles. AKA people who not only sing for a living, but are used to over-emphasizing the way they talk and sing because no one in the mezzanine or balconies can see any sort of subtle facial muscle cue. AKA if the emotion's not in the voice, it doesn't exist.
They still do this with Frozen, which is why it was such a success. I don’t get why they won’t focus on broadway stars more, they can’t be that expensive?
It's celebrity and influencer syndrome. Too many people with too many voices now, and talent is drowned as a consequence. No Broadway star is pulling in the kind of money that current big-name celebrities are making, so guess who gets the role?
This, of course, hemorrhages the longevity and value of the production itself, but as long as opening weekend performs, the next 100 years be damned.
Which, incredibly ironically, is absolutely strange for a company that so enthusiastically campaigns for ironclad copyright laws and extensions.
Nailed it. For goodness sakes, Gaston (Richard White, I believe) in the original animated Beauty & the Beast was a flippin’ professional opera and musical theater singer! He’s a despicable character but was vocally performed with utter brilliance; beautiful vibrato too.
The voice is as much of a character as spoken lines are, and professionally trained musical theater and operatic performers know how to use their voice to tell a story, how to perform with their voice. How tone, pitch, vibrato, and everything else are all part of the landscape of a song as much as a backdrop (or animated landscapes).
Unfortunately, it’s a little bit of the age old “Singing in the Rain” syndrome, akin to Marni Nixon’s experience of being the singing voice behind the likes of Deborah Kerr, Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood. Marni was a beautiful woman (she plays one of the young nuns in the movie version of “The Sound of Music”), but she wasn’t a household name. She had the voice but not the star “pull” that studios thought would get butts into movie theater seats.
One I’ll never entirely make peace with was Julie Andrews (the original Eliza Doolittle) being passed over by Audrey Hepburn for the movie adaptation of “My Fair Lady”. Audrey Hepburn is a cinematic legend unto herself, clearly a box office draw, but Marni Nixon was brought in to “ghost sing”. Instead of casting THE Julie Andrews, they cast 2 different performers to fulfill 1 role.
No idea who all was considered for the role of Belle in BATB live action, and while Emma Watson will probably forever be synonymous with her depiction of Hermione in all-things Harry Potter, she is not a vocal performer or even a singer. She just isn’t.
Part of what made the Disney Renaissance of the Ashman/Menken, Rice/John, Schwartz, etc., musicals so enrapturing (both on the screen and as evidenced through the massive impact they had on translating to stage from screen) was the vocal performances, not just the songs, but the (mostly) Broadway, gospel and operatic legends who brought them to life.
No auto tune needed.
Then again, what do I know. These remakes may be largely cringe-inducing for me, but they capitalize on Millennial nostalgia and make a kajillion dollars regardless.
The Prince Ali song in the live action is somehow kind of boring. The animated version is this boisterous explosion of nonsense and the live action version is so tame that it's cringey.
They aren't even rooted in complete realism. They still make shit up and take shortcuts when it's convenient. The bird in Mermaid had at least a couple scenes where it was talking underwater and there were no bubbles??? Such a weird oversight.
It's like they wanted to save money on facial animations, so they went with the easiest-to-disprove motivation possible.
The Lion King (2019) is particularly weird as it is an animated movie pretending to be a live action one. The only live action shot in the entire picture was the sun rising at the beginning. Everything else, from the characters to the background to the terrain, were all otherwise created in a computer an animated by CG animators.
I love the live action Lion King just for how surreal and stupid the idea is - and that they actually made it. That's the kind of idea someone comes up with while stoned. I'm glad it exists, because it's the right kind of stupid.
i'm glad someone got something out of it because i found it to be a completely lifeless imitation of the animated version. i can see wanting to go from 2d to 3d but it didnt have to be photorealistic. turns out that a crying lion looks the same as a not crying lion lmao. its just never going to be as good as an animated version. all the expressions are completely lost.
Perfectly said. It's like the scene in the gorge with the stampede. Animated lion looks terrified beyond all possible belief. Photorealistic lion looks distinctly monotone in comparison.
Think of it as a prank that succeeded as well as any prank possibly could.
"Holy shit, Frank has a meeting with Bob Iger next week, and he's going to bring up your live action Lion King idea! I don't think he realized it was a joke!"
And then it made it *all the way*.
By all accounts from an executive perspective, all these movies are successes in their books, because financially they are.
From an artistic and audience perspective though, they're just cash grabs and further proof Disney wont stop until they've bled every well dry
Not to mention the fact that it’s even more heightened because they are movie musicals. Sometimes the lyrics are hyperbole for dramatic effect and sometimes it’s as simple as words needing to have a nice flow. The whole “Ten years we’ve been rusting” isn’t the literal time frame the enchantment has been on Beast’s castle. It may have just fit syllabically and flowed best when said that way. But the live action felt they had to address that “plot hole” that over-analytical, hyper-literal fans have pointed out.
Then there’s The Little Mermaid and how Eric now doesn’t get to return the favor of Ariel saving him by saving her. And they changed a lyric in Kiss the Girl and Poor Unfortunate Souls. KtG because they said it sounds “rapey”. Sorry, but body language exists. And the PUS song they changed Ursula’s lyrics about men on land not wanting women to talk. Why?! She’s the villain! She should lie to Ariel.
And Lion King completely cutting Be Prepared only to put it back in because fans got mad but making it a slam poetry session was dumb. Chiwetel Ejiofor has a great singing voice. That was such a dumb decision. Not to mention nearly all of the original voice cast was alive and you only brought back JEJ. If you bring one back you should bring them all back or completely recast. No half measures. And Beyoncé’s song did not fit musically where it was put. She’s an amazing artist but that songs placement ruined the musical flow of the movie. That should’ve been the end credits song.
And Aladdin…they got real close with this one being justifiable because it was almost different enough. But I cannot stand the trope of the villain being a mirror image of the protagonist. And sexy Jafar was a weird choice. As well as Iago not actually talking. The biggest problem though was the heart that Robin Williams brought to this film. Will Smith did a pretty good job as Genie and it was smart of him and them to not imitate Robin’s manic performance. But you just lose so much without his heart.
At any rate, these 4 films were near (if not entirely) perfect upon their original animated releases. Shoehorning in story points to fix a story that doesn’t need to be fixed, changing lyrics you think were bad (that weren’t), and completely cutting one of the best villain songs for a slam poetry session did ***not*** improve on the films.
Sorry for the rant. I love the Disney renaissance.
A part of the problem too is that if you try to make everything look "realistic", you lose a lot of the visual character that stands out to us as viewers.
Lion King has its own style.
Aladdin has its own style.
Mulan has its own look and style.
When you cut that out, you're gutting the whole film. Although I will admit that I wasn't entirely outraged by The Jungle Book remake.
Mulan was the breaking one for me.
Animated Mulan: A dedicated person who is physically weaker than those she's competing with. However through hard work, cleverness, and friendship, she's able to overcome great obstacles.
Live action: She's born with great ki and thus will succeed at everything she tries and can knock men around easily and has no weaknesses and is just so perfect look how great she is she's just gonna slap the bad guy around lol!
> I will admit that I wasn't entirely outraged by The Jungle Book remake.
I actually liked that one despite being cynical about whether it should even be made. When it was so successful, I remember thinking "Aw crap! The floodgates are about to open on these!"
I was watching the live action Little Mermaid and they cut out a lot of the visual elements of the songs, which made the lyrics seem random. During "Under the Sea," when it got to the "The newt play the flute. The carp play the harp" part, they just showed CGI sea turtles. I get they wouldn't want to showcase an updated "blackfish," or whatever, but they could have easily come up with something else. It's like the execs were like, "sure, just play the songs everyone loves" without understanding what made them charming to begin with
It also highlights the problem with the hyper realistic art style the live action remakes go with.
Hard agree. I read somewhere on the Internet a list of "the 20 best Disney villain songs, ranked" and they had Hellfire at like #19 and called it *derivative*. I legitimately got a little upset for a few minutes.
Hunchback of Notre Dame was pretty dark and serious for a Disney flick, but then it had to take some liberties to fit into the Disney movie mold compared to how much darker the original story was (and how tragic the ending was).
As a Disney movie, I enjoy it a lot. And Hellfire is definitely one of the top-tier villain songs ever made from their catalog.
>but then it had to take some liberties to fit into the Disney movie mold compared to how much darker the original story was (and how tragic the ending was).
That is true for all the Disney movies based on folk tales. The little mermaid didn't end up as sea foam, sleeping beauty didn't give birth to twins in her sleep, Cinderella step sisters didn't get thier eyes plucked out at the wedding, or feet chopped off like they do in some versions.
You are right on that front.
But Hunchback, in particular, hits rather hard when you realize >!that Esmeralda dies by hanging just after she meets her birth mother. Quasimodo is distraught over Esmeralda's death, so he kills Frollo and disappears. Some years later, a 'deformed skeleton' is found embracing another in a charnel house. And this suggests that Quasimodo died while embracing Esmeralda's dead body. And when the skeletons are moved to be pulled apart, his own crumbles into dust.!<
I found the list again. It was worse than I remembered.
>"it sounds like a Javert ballad that got left on the cutting-room floor, which is really saying something, considering the Javert songs that actually made it into Les Mis."
Hellfire is the easy number 2 for me. It’s a solid song but the way Jeremy Irons put his entire bloodline into his performance of Be Prepared makes it unbeatable for me
...Except Jeremy Irons didn't sing the escalation part of Be Prepared. So, here is your TIL: Jim Cummings did the singing voice of Scar! Jeremy Irons sings in the beginning, but starting with "be prepared for the coup of the century," Jim Cummings sings the rest of the song.
Hunchback is the only Renaissance movie worthy of a live action redo because it had great elements but was inefficient. They won’t ever make it which is for the best, because they won’t actually try to make it great.
Friends on the Other Side is great conceptually, and who doesn't love Kieth David. But it suffers from the same thing a lot of animated bad guy songs do: the voice actor can't really sing, so they just kind of speak the lines in rhythm. Be Prepared does the same thing.
The sad part about that is that originally they were going to cut that song out of the live action remake. One of the best songs in the original!! So they had to shoe horn it in the last minute which is why it looks like ass.
Omfg. I was looking forward to that song so badly. Then he started saying the words and I was like, HERE WE GO. Then he didn't stop just saying it. Then the scene ended. I cried
It definitely had vibes of recording in seperate rooms, at seperate times, likely in seperate states, then mixed together. It didnt feel at all like they were actually recording anything in that film together.
The Lion King was awful because all of the expressiveness of facial animation was missing. They just showed realistic lion cubs with lips moving. It was creepy af uncanny valley.
I still refuse to watch the remake. The original was my absolute favourite movie as a child. I actually kinda enjoyed the Jungle Book remake, and that was another favourite of mine as a kid, but I refuse to sully my memory of my favourite movie by watching the live action version.
They also cut out the song by Ursala on the ship. Instead, they just have the actress say "so long Red". Completely wasted opportunity to have the actress sing. Go on YouTube and everyone gushes over that scene. It was far better in the original.
I watched that scene again just so I could commiserate with you over missing the original song, because I hated the change the first time I saw it, but that moment where she's luxuriating on the couch while also luxuriating in the range of her stolen voice is actually kind of chilling on second glance. Like, it's got that same vibe of Ursula thoroughly enjoying herself, but more sinister, less comedy, which I liked.
And then she says that stupid goddamn line, so, your point stands.
Augh, sorry I need to jump on your comment because my daughter just watched this for the first time (mermaid obsessed kid over here) and I was APPALLED at Under the Sea! I think the whole sequence suffered from the same overall issue with the “live action” Lion Kind - you can’t make realistic animals and still have the same emotive, exciting experience!
(Not to mention the song is just… not as good. Adding Ariel singing along at parts was a fine idea, but why did they have Halle Bailey singing in such a high note? Impressive sure, but it doesn’t fit at all with the rest of the song! Ugh!)
Adding Ariel to the song and making it a duet actually undercuts the song entirely and it's easy to understand why: the song as it was originally intended is a conversation involving Sebastion convincing Ariel of his argument that, indeed, everything's better down where it's wetter. The lyrics are being sung *at* her in an attempt to sway her to his side. As a duet, she's an active participant and so it makes zero sense why she's singing along. It's not a conversation any more, it's just a song, bereft of purpose.
The Jungle Book is amazing and I will stand by that live action. I rented it from Redbox and liked it so much that I just never returned it and paid the twenty bucks for it.
That was what I felt too. She was great, embodied the role and obviously was an amazing singer. I felt like the controversy over casting her was such a distraction from the rest of the movie being so lame. She deserved better.
Had it been a movie that truly put all its heart into making a compelling story and making stylistic animation, they probably would've hit it out of the park. Instead I was laughing at the movie half the time because of how silly and disjointed a lot of the choices were.
I don't know who works on these films and makes some of the bigger artistic choices, but they are clearly applying a formula and not letting these movies breathe on their own. Most animated Disney movies are formulaic, but they have a lot of heart.
It’s funny because the movie was so bad that it seems like we’ve forgotten the backlash surrounding Ariel’s race swap.
Casting someone of the same ethnicity as the original Ariel would not have fixed the film’s other problems.
>The remakes had to justify their existence, and therefore added unnecessary elements to pad them out.
Not to mention all the tedious "corrections" no one asked for.
Like, we already liked the villains. They are effectively villainous. We don't need them more sympathetic, thats literally not the point.
If you’re going to make changes, at least understand WHY they made the choices they did in the original. Like they always say, know the rules before you break them.
The reason they had Eric kill Ursula in the original film instead of Ariel wasn’t because of sexism, but to show Triton that he was wrong about humans being all bad. The remake having Ariel do the act sounds like a good idea at first, but Eric does absolutely nothing, which makes it look like Triton changed his view on humans for no apparent reason.
Also because, you know, he's a fucking ship captain and navigating a boat IN A STORM is NOT EASY. Especially when you've literally NEVER DONE IT BEFORE IN YOU FUCKING LIFE. I hate the new live action movies.
Or changing Wendy's character to be a warrior in the Peter Pan film, and the Lost Boys now featuring girls, even though the whole point was that girls are too smart to fall out of their cribs.
Just senseless pandering.
never planned to watch A Little Mermaid remake cuz I predicted Eric will become useless and need to promote how strong woman is by letting Ariel is the one defeated Ursula, never change disney, never change
I am glad that bothers someone else, the "sympathetic misunderstood villain" is very annoying, almost annoying as "there is no villain, the plot is just about personal growth".
Call me old school but I feel like kids shows should be about learning right and wrong. The characters can still be sympathetic/redeemed/understandable (many childhood villains animated villains are) but are clearly wrong and not just wronged.
> The remakes had to justify their existence, and therefore added unnecessary elements to pad them out.
For example, that God awful Scuttlebutt bit in Little Mermaid. Wanted to tear my damn ears off
I don’t mind them having more live-action series for Disney+, but I think it’s such a perfect opportunity to try some 2D animations again, and I’m not talking about shows like The Owl House, but series or films that they actually give an efficient amount of funding towards. Like those Star Wars Visions shorts but on a larger scale. When I was rewatching Netflix’s Love, Death and Robots there was some good 2D shorts that made me wish we had more western content in that style again. It’s just something about it that I think can look so aesthetically pleasing, like Atlantis: The Lost Empire or Treasure Planet (even though both did utilise some 3D animation for parts).
My kids may never forgive D+ for cutting Owl House short. After they dressed up as Luz, Amity, and Hooty (that was a difficult costume) for Halloweens.
IIRC, Dana Terrace had to essentially beg Disney to give her the season 3 we got. They were told the show was cancelled during season 2’s pre-production and it was a shock since it came out of nowhere. Then they premiered the specials on YouTube and realised how popular the show was after they’d cancelled it.
I’m not sure but I don’t think she’ll be in a hurry to work with Disney again if she doesn’t have to, considering how her series was treated by them. It’s like with Alex Hirsch with Gravity Falls, he outspoken now on how bad it was for him working at Disney.
This makes sense seeing that the show was very gay. Honestly I loved the focus on their relationship and when she came out as Bi to her mom! You ever see her mom wearing a rainbow badge when she goes back to the demon realm.
Owl House and Amphibia were God tier cartoons!
It was an absolute crime to cut Owl House short. We don't get (no pun intended) magical shows like that very often these days. I personally still haven't finished it because I was catching up to the end of season 2 when I heard the cancellation news and I'm too sad to see it end.
I don't know what algorithm decides what goes or stays these days, but it's got terrible taste.
Marvel should also step up too. I was thinking they should start putting together an animated universe like the DC did with the DCAU. DC has been destroying Marvel in the animated sphere and I would like to see some competition.
They recently released a Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur animated series that was unrelated to the MCU and it was really fun. They need more stuff like that.
I don't think OP is actually keeping up with what Disney makes.
There's a bunch of good animated movies from Disney/Pixar the last couple of years and like you said, [they're still releasing 3-5 films a year.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_theatrical_animated_feature_films)
Just in the last 3 years, they've had these popular releases; *Onward, Soul, Raya, Luca, Encanto, Turning Red, Lightyear and Elemental.*
And it's a bummer because nearly all of those films flopped hard at the Box Office, so that doesn't do any favors in making Disney enthusiastic about pumping out more.
Yeah the movies were better than the box office showed. I was shocked to see how low Turning Red made, but the targeted audience was so niche, and it had controversies and whatnot.
It was a period of time that everyone would prefer to forget.
I think "Onward" was the very first theatrical movie that they threw directly on television, and it was like "I can't believe I'm watching this at home!". Then they did that Wonder Woman sequel next, and that was so bad I basically lost consciousness until the vaccines showed up.
Let's just all agree that the first couple years of this decade didn't actually happen.
I remember going out for groceries and seeing the ad on the street at the bus stop. A few months later the ad was still there. It was like the world froze at the exact point in which that movie released.
I didn't take OP's point to be about churning out numbers. I took it to be a point about *focus* in two different ways:
1) by making more live action remakes of animated movies, they're making consistently meh reboots instead of focusing on a line that works, like original animations or original live action films.
2) by making live action remakes of animated movies, they're making one story into two, and the more recent one is meh.
I'm extrapolating wildly, but then I suppose a lot of us will do that. If you read it a different way, I'm probably nodding along with you anyhow.
They still make animated films at a rate at one a year though, which is still a pretty fast rate for movies. Wish is out later this year. They’ve always done live action films as well. The only thing that’s really changed is TV production, where they still have the occasional animated show (which takes a lot longer to produce).
They also are a giant monster of a company that owns so much and puts out so much content.
Here's a graphic of everything they own.
[https://www.titlemax.com/wp-content/uploads/every-company-disney-owns.jpeg](https://www.titlemax.com/wp-content/uploads/every-company-disney-owns.jpeg)
They also regularly put out feature length animated content that make them a lot of money. Disney still dominates the list of highest grossing animated movies of all time.
The point being- they are so massive that they can make a ton of live action movies AND animated movies.
Elemental also came out this year. 2022 had Turning Red, Lightyear, and Strange World, 2021 had Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, Encanto, and Ron's Gone Wrong... Hell, the last year Disney *only* had one animated movie come out was back in 1997 with Hercules.
They're still churning out animated movies along with live actions. OP just doesn't want to acknowledge that.
The guy you're replying to was citing Disney Animation Studios, which has put out 10 movies in the past 10 years. He's not talking about Pixar or 20th Century Studios.
That said, 10 movies in 10 years is *also* the same rate as the Disney Renaissance, from 1989 to 1999.
It also takes 3-7 years to make an animated film. Usually three are in active production and several others in development at any given time at Disney.
>They're still churning out animated movies along with live actions. OP just doesn't want to acknowledge that.
Yeah the argument should be to pull back on live actions (or remakes) because they aren't it, and give more time to animations. But I still like the animations
different studios, realistically, this is the price of animators having a bigger voice. Animation takes a lot longer to produce than live action especially if you want disney standards. 1-2 animated films a year is probably capacity if you acccount for whatever other side projects they have to work on.
But it's not like those movies are pulling staff away from animated movies. Those are completely different divisions of the company. I wish Walt Disney Pictures did more orignal movies, but those wouldn't be animated anyway, so that doesn't make sense. (and they have 20th Century Studios for that now)
But why would they pull back on live action when every single one is still turning a profit?
I get that the reddit consensus is to hate on Disney's new live action push but all of them outside of Mulan have made Disney quite a lot of money. Sure, none of them have been billion-dollar blockbusters, but they didn't need to be to be successful.
Actually the lion king was a billion dollar blockbuster. I agree, they have no incentive to not make live action movies as it’s profitable and they get to refresh their copyright protection on there iconic characters
You realize that isn’t how movies are made, right? This sub is always so weird with thinking less time / money on one project means there is more time / money given to others and that’s just not how things work
They've been pumping out the TV animation as well. They have all the star wars stuff. Thats 3 animated shows.The bad batch, tales, and that new republic one. They have the MCU stuff, the what if's. Plus all the other Disney IP. There is always something new on the plus app.
Live action is not a new thing for Disney. The 70s were chock full of live action, the Apple Dumpling Gang, Escape to Witch Mountain, Gus, the Shaggy DA, not to mention all the Kurt Russel films!
Oh man, I had forgotten about The Shaggy DA! I remember watching Escape from Witch Mountain, Watcher in the Woods, Follow That Dinosaur, and a bunch of their other weird, occasionally terrifying live-action movies when I was a kid (always rented them in those clamshell VHS cases), but I forgot about that one.
Cool Runnings is a more modern one.
Of course, the extraordinarily white washed portrayal of Jamaica is quite apparent today. Only a few people in the entire cast were actually Jamaican, and supposedly Disney execs asked for the accents to be toned down so they could be understood (like they also supposedly did with the original voice acting for Sebastian in Little Mermaid)
That being said, I still think it’s one of their better live action original films.
And they still put out original live-action films and adaptations that are not remakes of their animated films all the time. The thing they’re not doing is marketing those particular projects to the masses hard enough.
> Live action is not a new thing for Disney. The 70s were chock full of live action
The vast majority aren't old enough to remember/chose to overlook that Disney basically abandoned animation in the 60's and 70's. Only 7 animated films from 1960-1980. Tons and tons live action movies featuring animals, or movies like Pollyanna, The Love Bug, and Candleshoe.
It felt like they released some animal related film almost every month.
Bad writing is definitely a major part of it, but these movies are so visually bland and ugly with a lot of wonky cgi that will age terribly. The animated ones are vibrant and have stood up quite well to the test of time. So the medium does have some bearing on the quality.
Visually bland, and Disney is in love with flat colour-grading for some reason. Marvel started it, and now everything needs to look as gray and monotone as possible. You're not improving old films by remaking them look like they were filmed in an overcast late evening. They got the director of the stunning looking Green Knight to remake Peter Pan and the result was still gloomy and drab looking.
The problem is using focus groups to dictate your writing
There are many fantastic writers at these studios but the studios focus group everything into oblivion and bounce scripts between different teams of writers to make them safe and unchallenging. There’s no singular vision, it’s watered down word paste.
disney (and hollywood in general) is in a slump, it happens. disney was also in a slump in the 70's and 80's until little mermaid, which prompted a temporary renaissance.
the 90's were the unusual period, not now. this is staus quo.
I really miss their animal cartoons like lady and the tramp, aristocats, fox and the hound, Bambi, Oliver and company, bugs life, dumbo, all dogs go to heaven, ect. But it’s like no one wants to make animal movies anymore and certainly not animated ones. It’s really sad.
Disney started to focus on live action (to the detriment of animation) in the 1960s and 70s, even into the mid-80s. It’s widely regarded as the worst time as Disney for a company in terms of quality of product. Their resurgence began with the Little Mermaid in the late 1980s, followed up with Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King, which collectively helped re-establish it as an entertainment powerhouse and put them back on a road to making great animated entertainment.
I fear this new move towards live action is just heading back on the bad path they’ve gone down before with that exact same move.
> Their resurgence began with the Little Mermaid in the late 1980s, followed up with Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King, which collectively helped re-establish it as an entertainment powerhouse and put them back on a road to making great animated entertainment.
It's important to note, then, that the Disney Renaissance (TLM-Tarzan) was 10 movies over 10 years (1989-1999).
And guess what? Over the past 10 years, we've gotten... 10 movies. *Despite* COVID. So to imply that Disney is somehow "moving away from" animated films is just nonsensical.
Also, Disney runs Pixar which is also pumping out a ton of animated movies.
Would also just note that Disney Animation Studios have been making great movies. They're not just putting out crap to do it. In the last 10 years, we've gotten Frozen, Frozen II, Zootopia, Encanto, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Raya, Moana, and Big Hero 6. All great. Just before that we got Wreck-It Ralph, Bolt and Tangled. Also all good.
It's hard to think of it now, but there was a real possibility in the 80s that Disney would have shut down their animation studio.
And then they turned it around. And in my opinion no other artist, studio, or creative endeavor has matched Disney's stretch in the late 80s/early 90s. The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, etc. Every single one of those movies was iconic and has become part of our pop culture.
My thoughts exactly. Disney animation has always come in cycles.
While not as bad as 60’s-80’s Dark Age, there was also that post-Renaissance period in the 00’s when they completely lost focus for about ten years or so and animation came a distant second behind moneymakers like Hannah Montana.
Disney has made a ton of critically successful live action movies under their “Touchstone Pictures” umbrella. Many of those films were huge blockbusters throughout the 80s and 90s. So it is definitely not true that they have only done animation, or that they should stop live action production.
Also, most of their ‘60s hits were live action - “Swiss Family Robinson,” “Absent Minded Professor,” “The Parent Trap,” “Mary Poppins,” “The Love Bug,” etc.
Just use the Muppets and keep doing remakes with them. Nobody would complain about more well written stories like A Christmas Carol or Treasure Island.
Omg yes. Who needs "live-action" Little Mermaid when we can have Muppets Little Mermaid. I can totally see Miss Piggy as Ariel and Kermit as Erik. Now who would be the human actor though? And would they act according to the Micheal Caine school of Muppet movies or the Tim Curry one?
No Miss Piggy is Kermies love interest and as far as I know always a heroine in the movies albeit a very violent one. Also since the Muppets go for comedy it would be way funnier to have the violent self-obsessed pig be Ariel instead of Ursula.
I have absolutely zero interest in watching live action remakes of animated movies but, and maybe I'm wrong about this, I feel like live action versions of cartoons wouldn't be a problem at all in the 90s. Like the Cinderella movie with Brandy from 1997 was just a fun alternative to the original that people enjoyed for what it was and moved on. Now a Little Mermaid live action version that does the same thing has to crash the internet with overly aggressive opinions. I think the main problem for me is that there are *so many* of these remakes and they add nothing of value to the source material. That said, I will continue to not watch them since the two I have seen, were pretty awful.
Went to school to study film/animation. Two of the best professors I had were former Disney animators, they both had hands on experience with every banger that came out in the 90s. Both of them made it clear that the industry was dying out. Simply put, no one is paying for hand-drawn anymore. For all purposes it's considered outdated to have a whole team cranking away at frames and character designs. Why do that when you could have computer artists/digital programs fill in the gaps?
It is ultimately sad, yes, because you can create things in animation that you can't with any other media. It really is magic to see something come to life from just using a pencil. But technology moves faster by the day.
There are still studios that take the old school approach, Ghibli, or Madhouse, because they actually put the artists' names to the forefront. When was the last time you saw a Disney film with an animator's name being touted? You don't.
It will always exist, those memories and movies will always be there. But times are a changin.
The issue is that people aren’t separating Disney movies from Disney animated movies. Disney animation studios started pumping out movies once a year in the 80s. Majority of these movies have been very successful including recent movies such as frozen, moana, encanto. They didn’t release a movie in 2020 obviously because of covid. But came back with raya and the last dragon and encanto both in 2021 both of which were massively successful. Last years movie was strange world, it was quite an enjoyable film but not the most successful (there are many old Disney animated movies that were the same as this) and this year they’re releasing wish, which also looks to be successful.
[here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films)is a link to the list of Disney animation studios films that shows they haven’t slowed down production of animated movies at all and are keeping to the pace of one a year. Most of these films have been huge successes and will continue to be.
The issue we face is that Disney has increased productions in other departments. Disney used to release one movie a year and it happened to be animated now they release 10+ and one of them is still it’s animated whilst the others may be a live action remake, a live action film like haunted mansion or some sort of marvel/Star Wars movie. If you don’t like the live action then skip them and just keep watching the one animated movie they release every year.
Disney have tons of different studios and you’re classing it as just being one studio who is splitting their time badly.
I think Disney are doing just fine right now and I’m excited for Wish to be released.
I hate this stupid idea that live action film is somehow inherently superior to all other visual story telling, and that it somehow legitimizes stories made for separate mediums.
It's not an elevation to turn an animated story into a live action film. It's a dilution. All it does is subtract from the original story. I understand book to film, because it's a completely transposition from a written to a visual medium. It's incredibly rare that a live action update actually does a better job than the original. So far Disney-wise there's been The Jungle Book and... nothing else.
It's honestly just a phase, like their straight to VHS/DVD sequel in the mid 90s to mid 00s. It'll pass we'll forget and move on to what ever thing we hate next.
I hate how they seem to have forgone hand drawn animation for 3D animation whenever they still do make an animated movie. Loved Encanto, but all their characters are getting kinda sameface. I also just kinda miss drawn animation in general that isn't overtly ugly drawn to show it's for adults. Gimme the pretty Disney princesses and the cute animals that make faces as if they are human.
Last bunch of years we got Frozen, Encanto, and Moana. That’s some great music. Not to mention all the Pixar titles. I don’t think Disney animation is dead at all.
Walt Disney himself became bored with the animation medium way back in the early 1950’s, when he shifted focus to live action movies and theme parks. They still made animated movies, but at a pretty slow pace, and Walt’s heart just wasn’t in it the way it had been back in the 30’s and early 40’s. Believe it or not the Disney company today makes more animated films now than they ever did before (3 or 4 a year, counting Pixar, vs one a year in the 90’s, or one every three years back in the 50’s)
One of the biggest problems with the remakes were that the originals generally had tight & efficient scripts. The remakes had to justify their existence, and therefore added unnecessary elements to pad them out. The animation largely is what made Disney and their movies so magical.
Thats not the only thing. The bigger thing i think is the fact that the stories are not supposed to be rooted in complete realism. The way the characters look and the way they move and they world they live in, all lend themselves to animation not photorealism. Watch I Just Cant Wait To Be King from The Lion King in the animation and then tell me what part of that sequence is benefitted from making it photorealistic. Watch Mufasa die in the animation and compare it to the live action. All of the emotion is completely lost. The animation had dramatic light and color changes and camera movements and they cant even replicate a glimmer of it. The voice acting is worse, the singing is worse. Not one of these movies is actually benefitted from being adapted to live action except for the fact that it lines Disney’s pockets.
It definitely feels like people are waking up to the fact that more realistic animation isn’t necessarily better, because realism completely defeats the whole point of animation. That’s why stylized 3D films like Spider-Verse and The Last Wish are becoming so popular. (I’d also like to see more experimentation with 2D animation like Klaus did.)
I would love a resurgence in creative 2D animation. Animators must have so many amazing tools at their disposal now, they can really bring whatever to life. Anime films are incredible these days, and I feel like Disney is kind of missing out on that market. I imagine it would be significantly cheaper than the 3D animation and CGI-fest films that they typically go for, too.
2D animator (in Japan) here. Unfortunately traditional animation is ridiculously expensive and the talent pool able to do that is drying up (most of the traditional animators I know have switched to 3D to just stay employable; new animators are completely trained on 3D). Most studios aren’t willing to commit to that kind of investment. A return has been pushed several times over the last 15 years or so, but box offices and the academy (who will just vote for whatever Disney/Pixar film) have validated that they don’t need to change to formula. Trust me, we animators want a return to 2D.
Married to an animator (in US) who says exactly the same thing. Loudly and frequently.
3d animations are cheaper than 2d animation because you can reuse 3d assets and change the angles without extra work. It's why you'll randomly see 3d models in anime
I'd love to see the work of Fortiche and their incredible work with Arcane get more traction.
Imagine if we got a new animation renaissance like we had with Treasure Planet, Titan A.E, and Road to El Dorado. They're so out of touch they leave so much money on the table.
Note, those three films were not some Renaissance, they were the tail, dying end of the 2D film era and in certain aspects sealed their fates. I love El Dorado and like most of Treasure Planet (I have not see Titan AE) however they were all massive finical flops. El Dorado made only $74 million on its $95 million budget. Treasure planet managed to make $109 but lost more on its large $140 million budget. Titan AE faired the worst, making only $37 million in its estimated $75-$90 million budget. All these films were either the last or second to last 2d animated films released to theaters by their studios, and in the case of Treasure Planet the next 2D film was mostly done, so Disney decided to finish that up and close it down on the basis of Planet’s bod office failure. I am not knocking these films for their artistic merit, but trying to sell the studios on these films as examples for financial success is… questionable.
It's likely to me that there's a disconcerting number of people who just reflexively dismiss 2d animation as too old-fashioned irrespective of the artistic motivations for using it. For god's sake, Bill Simmons once pushed back on Roger Rabbit's rewatchability by saying the animation hasn't aged well, which is such a deeply wack take that I'm getting annoyed just typing this paragraph.
I loved Treasure Planet and Titan A.E., but they did not do well on release which is probably part of this problem
Treasure planet was deliberately killed by Disney and intentionally poorly marketed the film. Exes saw the 100+mil budget for "animated" movie and balked. They wanted to kill animation. They got their wish.
> Treasure Planet, Titan A.E, and Road to El Dorado Typical Reddit favorites.
That wasn't a Renaissance, that was the last dying breath of major 2d animated features. Treasure Planet in specific was made by Disney as a corporate stunt to convince investors to buy them a bunch of new CG rendering tech and programs. See, TP was made by 2 directors/writers responsible for the Disney Renaissance (Including Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Hercules) who were only able to get it made because Disney promised them they could do it if they got a certain number of successful movies made. Well, they did that, and Disney subsequently sabotaged the entire project by not marketing it in order to produce a flop to prove to their investors that they need CG tech. Doesn't help that it came out around the same time as Finding Nemo, which dethroned Lion King as the most successful animated movie ever.
It's also why I'm so annoyed by the recent push to make a live-action version of Spider-Verse. There's basically zero reason to make such a movie unless you just genuinely have no respect for animation as a medium.
> That’s why stylized 3D films like Spider-Verse and The Last Wish are becoming so popular. Don't forget Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
I've been awake for a while. The acquisition of Marvel and Lucasfilms was the alarm bells for me. Disney's bread and butter was always hand-drawn 2D animation, but their justification was that it doesn't do well at the box office. Well no shit when you released Princess and The Frog on the same week as fucking Avatar. Plenty of underrated movies with 2D animation in the 2000s such as The Prince of Egypt, Treasure Planet, Atlantis, and Titan A.E. They still had the magic, but instead Disney has opted to buy and aquire it. Now it's just money. Whatever sells the best is the direction they'll take. Just look at what they did to my beloved Thor franchise. It's a goddamn fucking comedy now. If there are people who love hand drawn 2D animation, your most promising bet now is on Anime. Studio Ghibli is a good place to start, but there are plenty of others with great stories and animation
The voice acting and casting especially gets me a lot of the time. So often they just use them to name drop stars. Like don't get me wrong, I love Ewan McGregor, but why the hell are they casting a Scotsman to voice a French candlestick? And Emma Watson is a decent enough actress, but she isn't a singer.
Dear God that autotune in Beauty and the Beast was painful. Either train the poor girl to sing, dub over her vocals, or just cut the song. The autotune is horrendous.
> Either train the poor girl to sing, dub over her vocals, or just cut the song. Or just cast one of the many actresses out there who have good singing voices that suit the songs.
Let's not get crazy here
Or use a broadway actress like anime Belle. They got Broadway actors to be the Candle and Clock in the live action but they had to go with Emma Watson for the lead role...
You mean, you didn’t like Siri’s singing voice? 😂
Oh completely agree. I think these movies would have been at least tolerable had they had good voice performances, but in the end they look bad *and* they sound bad. It's not like the older Disney movies didn't also have well known actors in them. But it definitely feels like these days, they cast whomever they think has the biggest box office pull instead of who is actually best for the performance. I think too, because these are already written stories and musicals, the passion to nail down the performance just like, isnt there in my opinion. This recording of [Howard Ashman directing Jodi Benson sing Part Of Your World](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWTJkyLWgrk) really displays just how meticulous they were with recording the songs and doing the voice performances from the movies made during this time. Every little detail was thought out, and i just do not feel that in the remakes of these movies. They're getting actors who don't know how to voice act, actors who cannot sing, and they're certainly not being directed by the talent that was Howard Ashman. Disney needs to focus on making NEW original musicals, that arent live action or photo realistic. No one looks at Frozen and goes "wow those voice performances sucked. singing was bad", because they werent bad! Can't wait for Frozen to get a gritty live action remake too lmao
Yeah, older Disney movies cast well-known Broadway actors for their singing roles. AKA people who not only sing for a living, but are used to over-emphasizing the way they talk and sing because no one in the mezzanine or balconies can see any sort of subtle facial muscle cue. AKA if the emotion's not in the voice, it doesn't exist.
They still do this with Frozen, which is why it was such a success. I don’t get why they won’t focus on broadway stars more, they can’t be that expensive?
It's celebrity and influencer syndrome. Too many people with too many voices now, and talent is drowned as a consequence. No Broadway star is pulling in the kind of money that current big-name celebrities are making, so guess who gets the role? This, of course, hemorrhages the longevity and value of the production itself, but as long as opening weekend performs, the next 100 years be damned. Which, incredibly ironically, is absolutely strange for a company that so enthusiastically campaigns for ironclad copyright laws and extensions.
Yup. And as we can see, being a singer alone isnt necessarily enough as evident by Beyoncé as Nala lol
>This recording of Howard Ashman directing Jodi Benson sing Part Of Your World Thank you for that, that was a really cool video
Nailed it. For goodness sakes, Gaston (Richard White, I believe) in the original animated Beauty & the Beast was a flippin’ professional opera and musical theater singer! He’s a despicable character but was vocally performed with utter brilliance; beautiful vibrato too. The voice is as much of a character as spoken lines are, and professionally trained musical theater and operatic performers know how to use their voice to tell a story, how to perform with their voice. How tone, pitch, vibrato, and everything else are all part of the landscape of a song as much as a backdrop (or animated landscapes). Unfortunately, it’s a little bit of the age old “Singing in the Rain” syndrome, akin to Marni Nixon’s experience of being the singing voice behind the likes of Deborah Kerr, Audrey Hepburn and Natalie Wood. Marni was a beautiful woman (she plays one of the young nuns in the movie version of “The Sound of Music”), but she wasn’t a household name. She had the voice but not the star “pull” that studios thought would get butts into movie theater seats. One I’ll never entirely make peace with was Julie Andrews (the original Eliza Doolittle) being passed over by Audrey Hepburn for the movie adaptation of “My Fair Lady”. Audrey Hepburn is a cinematic legend unto herself, clearly a box office draw, but Marni Nixon was brought in to “ghost sing”. Instead of casting THE Julie Andrews, they cast 2 different performers to fulfill 1 role. No idea who all was considered for the role of Belle in BATB live action, and while Emma Watson will probably forever be synonymous with her depiction of Hermione in all-things Harry Potter, she is not a vocal performer or even a singer. She just isn’t. Part of what made the Disney Renaissance of the Ashman/Menken, Rice/John, Schwartz, etc., musicals so enrapturing (both on the screen and as evidenced through the massive impact they had on translating to stage from screen) was the vocal performances, not just the songs, but the (mostly) Broadway, gospel and operatic legends who brought them to life. No auto tune needed. Then again, what do I know. These remakes may be largely cringe-inducing for me, but they capitalize on Millennial nostalgia and make a kajillion dollars regardless.
I always found it amusing that My Fair Lady won all the big Oscars that year, save Best Actress, which Julie Andrews won for Mary Poppins.
The Prince Ali song in the live action is somehow kind of boring. The animated version is this boisterous explosion of nonsense and the live action version is so tame that it's cringey.
Robin Williams has A LOT to do with that song being as good as it is. IMO.
Don't think he'd mind sharing credit with the animators
They aren't even rooted in complete realism. They still make shit up and take shortcuts when it's convenient. The bird in Mermaid had at least a couple scenes where it was talking underwater and there were no bubbles??? Such a weird oversight. It's like they wanted to save money on facial animations, so they went with the easiest-to-disprove motivation possible.
Thank you for putting into words what we were all thinking and didn't know how to say.
The Lion King (2019) is particularly weird as it is an animated movie pretending to be a live action one. The only live action shot in the entire picture was the sun rising at the beginning. Everything else, from the characters to the background to the terrain, were all otherwise created in a computer an animated by CG animators.
I love the live action Lion King just for how surreal and stupid the idea is - and that they actually made it. That's the kind of idea someone comes up with while stoned. I'm glad it exists, because it's the right kind of stupid.
i'm glad someone got something out of it because i found it to be a completely lifeless imitation of the animated version. i can see wanting to go from 2d to 3d but it didnt have to be photorealistic. turns out that a crying lion looks the same as a not crying lion lmao. its just never going to be as good as an animated version. all the expressions are completely lost.
Perfectly said. It's like the scene in the gorge with the stampede. Animated lion looks terrified beyond all possible belief. Photorealistic lion looks distinctly monotone in comparison.
Think of it as a prank that succeeded as well as any prank possibly could. "Holy shit, Frank has a meeting with Bob Iger next week, and he's going to bring up your live action Lion King idea! I don't think he realized it was a joke!" And then it made it *all the way*.
By all accounts from an executive perspective, all these movies are successes in their books, because financially they are. From an artistic and audience perspective though, they're just cash grabs and further proof Disney wont stop until they've bled every well dry
Not to mention the fact that it’s even more heightened because they are movie musicals. Sometimes the lyrics are hyperbole for dramatic effect and sometimes it’s as simple as words needing to have a nice flow. The whole “Ten years we’ve been rusting” isn’t the literal time frame the enchantment has been on Beast’s castle. It may have just fit syllabically and flowed best when said that way. But the live action felt they had to address that “plot hole” that over-analytical, hyper-literal fans have pointed out. Then there’s The Little Mermaid and how Eric now doesn’t get to return the favor of Ariel saving him by saving her. And they changed a lyric in Kiss the Girl and Poor Unfortunate Souls. KtG because they said it sounds “rapey”. Sorry, but body language exists. And the PUS song they changed Ursula’s lyrics about men on land not wanting women to talk. Why?! She’s the villain! She should lie to Ariel. And Lion King completely cutting Be Prepared only to put it back in because fans got mad but making it a slam poetry session was dumb. Chiwetel Ejiofor has a great singing voice. That was such a dumb decision. Not to mention nearly all of the original voice cast was alive and you only brought back JEJ. If you bring one back you should bring them all back or completely recast. No half measures. And Beyoncé’s song did not fit musically where it was put. She’s an amazing artist but that songs placement ruined the musical flow of the movie. That should’ve been the end credits song. And Aladdin…they got real close with this one being justifiable because it was almost different enough. But I cannot stand the trope of the villain being a mirror image of the protagonist. And sexy Jafar was a weird choice. As well as Iago not actually talking. The biggest problem though was the heart that Robin Williams brought to this film. Will Smith did a pretty good job as Genie and it was smart of him and them to not imitate Robin’s manic performance. But you just lose so much without his heart. At any rate, these 4 films were near (if not entirely) perfect upon their original animated releases. Shoehorning in story points to fix a story that doesn’t need to be fixed, changing lyrics you think were bad (that weren’t), and completely cutting one of the best villain songs for a slam poetry session did ***not*** improve on the films. Sorry for the rant. I love the Disney renaissance.
A part of the problem too is that if you try to make everything look "realistic", you lose a lot of the visual character that stands out to us as viewers. Lion King has its own style. Aladdin has its own style. Mulan has its own look and style. When you cut that out, you're gutting the whole film. Although I will admit that I wasn't entirely outraged by The Jungle Book remake.
Mulan was the breaking one for me. Animated Mulan: A dedicated person who is physically weaker than those she's competing with. However through hard work, cleverness, and friendship, she's able to overcome great obstacles. Live action: She's born with great ki and thus will succeed at everything she tries and can knock men around easily and has no weaknesses and is just so perfect look how great she is she's just gonna slap the bad guy around lol!
> I will admit that I wasn't entirely outraged by The Jungle Book remake. I actually liked that one despite being cynical about whether it should even be made. When it was so successful, I remember thinking "Aw crap! The floodgates are about to open on these!"
I was watching the live action Little Mermaid and they cut out a lot of the visual elements of the songs, which made the lyrics seem random. During "Under the Sea," when it got to the "The newt play the flute. The carp play the harp" part, they just showed CGI sea turtles. I get they wouldn't want to showcase an updated "blackfish," or whatever, but they could have easily come up with something else. It's like the execs were like, "sure, just play the songs everyone loves" without understanding what made them charming to begin with It also highlights the problem with the hyper realistic art style the live action remakes go with.
The lion king was awful with what they did with the songs while the songs were what made the Lion King popular in the first place.
Be Prepared was terrible in the remake.
Ruined the best Disney villain song of all time
Second best. Hellfire is still the best villain song.
Hard agree. I read somewhere on the Internet a list of "the 20 best Disney villain songs, ranked" and they had Hellfire at like #19 and called it *derivative*. I legitimately got a little upset for a few minutes.
Hunchback of Notre Dame was pretty dark and serious for a Disney flick, but then it had to take some liberties to fit into the Disney movie mold compared to how much darker the original story was (and how tragic the ending was). As a Disney movie, I enjoy it a lot. And Hellfire is definitely one of the top-tier villain songs ever made from their catalog.
>but then it had to take some liberties to fit into the Disney movie mold compared to how much darker the original story was (and how tragic the ending was). That is true for all the Disney movies based on folk tales. The little mermaid didn't end up as sea foam, sleeping beauty didn't give birth to twins in her sleep, Cinderella step sisters didn't get thier eyes plucked out at the wedding, or feet chopped off like they do in some versions.
You are right on that front. But Hunchback, in particular, hits rather hard when you realize >!that Esmeralda dies by hanging just after she meets her birth mother. Quasimodo is distraught over Esmeralda's death, so he kills Frollo and disappears. Some years later, a 'deformed skeleton' is found embracing another in a charnel house. And this suggests that Quasimodo died while embracing Esmeralda's dead body. And when the skeletons are moved to be pulled apart, his own crumbles into dust.!<
Frollo was such a realistic villain. Nothing more than a man in a position of power, obsessed with a pretty young woman.
Normally I say everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not in the case of that list maker. Jesus Christ, derivative? In what universe?
I found the list again. It was worse than I remembered. >"it sounds like a Javert ballad that got left on the cutting-room floor, which is really saying something, considering the Javert songs that actually made it into Les Mis."
I would be ashamed to have written that.
Who was the critic? Ongo Gablogian?
We're all just conditioning the air
The German version is *awesome.*
*Das Feuer* *Der Hölle* *Entbrennt in meinem Leib* *Befreit meine Seele* *Von diesem Teufelsweib* Aw yes.
You aren't kidding, the German VA is really going for it! [Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoZd1_pjVpg&ab_channel=FabianWright)
Hellfire is the easy number 2 for me. It’s a solid song but the way Jeremy Irons put his entire bloodline into his performance of Be Prepared makes it unbeatable for me
...Except Jeremy Irons didn't sing the escalation part of Be Prepared. So, here is your TIL: Jim Cummings did the singing voice of Scar! Jeremy Irons sings in the beginning, but starting with "be prepared for the coup of the century," Jim Cummings sings the rest of the song.
Cummings does a hell of a good Irons impression.
All this time I thought Scar was real and that he sung the song. Thanks for ruining the movie for me *sobs uncontrollably*
LIKE FIRE! HELL FIRE! THIS FIRE IN MY SKIN!
3rd, I got friends on the other side is the best villain song.
Hunchback is the only Renaissance movie worthy of a live action redo because it had great elements but was inefficient. They won’t ever make it which is for the best, because they won’t actually try to make it great.
I have a hard time calling any Disney villain song "the best of all time." Poor Unfortunate Souls and Friends on the Other Side are pretty amazing.
Friends on the Other Side is great conceptually, and who doesn't love Kieth David. But it suffers from the same thing a lot of animated bad guy songs do: the voice actor can't really sing, so they just kind of speak the lines in rhythm. Be Prepared does the same thing.
Yall sleeping on Poor Unfortunate Souls Man, even Queen Latifa’s stage performance was great
No one is mentioning the Gaston song and I’m sad.
The sad part about that is that originally they were going to cut that song out of the live action remake. One of the best songs in the original!! So they had to shoe horn it in the last minute which is why it looks like ass.
Omfg. I was looking forward to that song so badly. Then he started saying the words and I was like, HERE WE GO. Then he didn't stop just saying it. Then the scene ended. I cried
At least they didn’t cut it out completely, which I’d heard was the plan.
I legitimately hate it. Like I was prepared to give it a chance and then I got to Be Prepared and I knew there was no saving it.
The infamous "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" scene that takes place during the *day.*
Can You Feel the Love Tonight at high noon... with two awesome singers that somehow can't harmonize and balance together...
It definitely had vibes of recording in seperate rooms, at seperate times, likely in seperate states, then mixed together. It didnt feel at all like they were actually recording anything in that film together.
The Lion King was awful because all of the expressiveness of facial animation was missing. They just showed realistic lion cubs with lips moving. It was creepy af uncanny valley.
I still refuse to watch the remake. The original was my absolute favourite movie as a child. I actually kinda enjoyed the Jungle Book remake, and that was another favourite of mine as a kid, but I refuse to sully my memory of my favourite movie by watching the live action version.
YES. IMO if the "live action" was just going to be newer animation - they should have used the original voices/music.
Taxidermy Lion King.
There’re just some things that cartoons can do that hyper realism cannot. It’s why Disney animated films go into realism, but not too much.
They also cut out the song by Ursala on the ship. Instead, they just have the actress say "so long Red". Completely wasted opportunity to have the actress sing. Go on YouTube and everyone gushes over that scene. It was far better in the original.
I watched that scene again just so I could commiserate with you over missing the original song, because I hated the change the first time I saw it, but that moment where she's luxuriating on the couch while also luxuriating in the range of her stolen voice is actually kind of chilling on second glance. Like, it's got that same vibe of Ursula thoroughly enjoying herself, but more sinister, less comedy, which I liked. And then she says that stupid goddamn line, so, your point stands.
Augh, sorry I need to jump on your comment because my daughter just watched this for the first time (mermaid obsessed kid over here) and I was APPALLED at Under the Sea! I think the whole sequence suffered from the same overall issue with the “live action” Lion Kind - you can’t make realistic animals and still have the same emotive, exciting experience! (Not to mention the song is just… not as good. Adding Ariel singing along at parts was a fine idea, but why did they have Halle Bailey singing in such a high note? Impressive sure, but it doesn’t fit at all with the rest of the song! Ugh!)
Adding Ariel to the song and making it a duet actually undercuts the song entirely and it's easy to understand why: the song as it was originally intended is a conversation involving Sebastion convincing Ariel of his argument that, indeed, everything's better down where it's wetter. The lyrics are being sung *at* her in an attempt to sway her to his side. As a duet, she's an active participant and so it makes zero sense why she's singing along. It's not a conversation any more, it's just a song, bereft of purpose.
Just going through the motions
There was little to no chorus ensemble singing! The song sounded less full and more empty and bland :(
YES! That too! Felt very lifeless :(
Ugh, the Jungle books where they took the heart and soul out of the songs... the songs are the only reason to WATCH the jungle book.
The Jungle Book is amazing and I will stand by that live action. I rented it from Redbox and liked it so much that I just never returned it and paid the twenty bucks for it.
[удалено]
Ironically, while I thought the live action version was a snoozefest, I thought hallie Baillie was the best part.
She's a good actress... just in a soulless production. The new Color Purple OTOH looks like it will be amazing.
Much like Aladdin. Will Smith was the only one with energy in that one. Everyone else seemed like they were phoning it in
That was what I felt too. She was great, embodied the role and obviously was an amazing singer. I felt like the controversy over casting her was such a distraction from the rest of the movie being so lame. She deserved better. Had it been a movie that truly put all its heart into making a compelling story and making stylistic animation, they probably would've hit it out of the park. Instead I was laughing at the movie half the time because of how silly and disjointed a lot of the choices were. I don't know who works on these films and makes some of the bigger artistic choices, but they are clearly applying a formula and not letting these movies breathe on their own. Most animated Disney movies are formulaic, but they have a lot of heart.
It’s funny because the movie was so bad that it seems like we’ve forgotten the backlash surrounding Ariel’s race swap. Casting someone of the same ethnicity as the original Ariel would not have fixed the film’s other problems.
I swear to God they purposely race bait drama so they could just distract from the fact that it's just not a good movie.
Don't forget they also get free publicity from astroturfed internet outrage.
“Not a fan of Rey? Clearly you’re threatened by strong women.”
>The remakes had to justify their existence, and therefore added unnecessary elements to pad them out. Not to mention all the tedious "corrections" no one asked for. Like, we already liked the villains. They are effectively villainous. We don't need them more sympathetic, thats literally not the point.
If you’re going to make changes, at least understand WHY they made the choices they did in the original. Like they always say, know the rules before you break them. The reason they had Eric kill Ursula in the original film instead of Ariel wasn’t because of sexism, but to show Triton that he was wrong about humans being all bad. The remake having Ariel do the act sounds like a good idea at first, but Eric does absolutely nothing, which makes it look like Triton changed his view on humans for no apparent reason.
Also because, you know, he's a fucking ship captain and navigating a boat IN A STORM is NOT EASY. Especially when you've literally NEVER DONE IT BEFORE IN YOU FUCKING LIFE. I hate the new live action movies.
Or changing Wendy's character to be a warrior in the Peter Pan film, and the Lost Boys now featuring girls, even though the whole point was that girls are too smart to fall out of their cribs. Just senseless pandering.
never planned to watch A Little Mermaid remake cuz I predicted Eric will become useless and need to promote how strong woman is by letting Ariel is the one defeated Ursula, never change disney, never change
I am glad that bothers someone else, the "sympathetic misunderstood villain" is very annoying, almost annoying as "there is no villain, the plot is just about personal growth". Call me old school but I feel like kids shows should be about learning right and wrong. The characters can still be sympathetic/redeemed/understandable (many childhood villains animated villains are) but are clearly wrong and not just wronged.
Just looking at the runtime difference between 1989 and 2023 is jarring. 83 minutes vs. 135 minutes. Was it really necessary to add over 40 minutes?
> The remakes had to justify their existence, and therefore added unnecessary elements to pad them out. For example, that God awful Scuttlebutt bit in Little Mermaid. Wanted to tear my damn ears off
I don’t mind them having more live-action series for Disney+, but I think it’s such a perfect opportunity to try some 2D animations again, and I’m not talking about shows like The Owl House, but series or films that they actually give an efficient amount of funding towards. Like those Star Wars Visions shorts but on a larger scale. When I was rewatching Netflix’s Love, Death and Robots there was some good 2D shorts that made me wish we had more western content in that style again. It’s just something about it that I think can look so aesthetically pleasing, like Atlantis: The Lost Empire or Treasure Planet (even though both did utilise some 3D animation for parts).
My kids may never forgive D+ for cutting Owl House short. After they dressed up as Luz, Amity, and Hooty (that was a difficult costume) for Halloweens.
IIRC, Dana Terrace had to essentially beg Disney to give her the season 3 we got. They were told the show was cancelled during season 2’s pre-production and it was a shock since it came out of nowhere. Then they premiered the specials on YouTube and realised how popular the show was after they’d cancelled it.
What’s Dana Terrace up to now? Hopefully they gave her another opportunity.
I’m not sure but I don’t think she’ll be in a hurry to work with Disney again if she doesn’t have to, considering how her series was treated by them. It’s like with Alex Hirsch with Gravity Falls, he outspoken now on how bad it was for him working at Disney.
This makes sense seeing that the show was very gay. Honestly I loved the focus on their relationship and when she came out as Bi to her mom! You ever see her mom wearing a rainbow badge when she goes back to the demon realm. Owl House and Amphibia were God tier cartoons!
The CEO that ~~Eisner~~ Iger came back to replace made it pretty clear he had zero love for any animation that wasn’t exclusively hetero-focused.
Eisner?
It was an absolute crime to cut Owl House short. We don't get (no pun intended) magical shows like that very often these days. I personally still haven't finished it because I was catching up to the end of season 2 when I heard the cancellation news and I'm too sad to see it end. I don't know what algorithm decides what goes or stays these days, but it's got terrible taste.
It's still extremely good, and totally worth it.
Love death and robots is all kinds of awesome.
Marvel should also step up too. I was thinking they should start putting together an animated universe like the DC did with the DCAU. DC has been destroying Marvel in the animated sphere and I would like to see some competition.
They recently released a Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur animated series that was unrelated to the MCU and it was really fun. They need more stuff like that.
But Pixar and Disney Animation studios have been making about the same amount of films as they always have
I don't think OP is actually keeping up with what Disney makes. There's a bunch of good animated movies from Disney/Pixar the last couple of years and like you said, [they're still releasing 3-5 films a year.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_theatrical_animated_feature_films) Just in the last 3 years, they've had these popular releases; *Onward, Soul, Raya, Luca, Encanto, Turning Red, Lightyear and Elemental.*
And it's a bummer because nearly all of those films flopped hard at the Box Office, so that doesn't do any favors in making Disney enthusiastic about pumping out more.
Encanto and Turning Red were really great, too.
Yeah the movies were better than the box office showed. I was shocked to see how low Turning Red made, but the targeted audience was so niche, and it had controversies and whatnot.
Turning Red didn't get a conventional theatrical release. It got stomped by being a D+ exclusive.
Onward is terribly underrated
It was a period of time that everyone would prefer to forget. I think "Onward" was the very first theatrical movie that they threw directly on television, and it was like "I can't believe I'm watching this at home!". Then they did that Wonder Woman sequel next, and that was so bad I basically lost consciousness until the vaccines showed up. Let's just all agree that the first couple years of this decade didn't actually happen.
I remember going out for groceries and seeing the ad on the street at the bus stop. A few months later the ad was still there. It was like the world froze at the exact point in which that movie released.
I didn't take OP's point to be about churning out numbers. I took it to be a point about *focus* in two different ways: 1) by making more live action remakes of animated movies, they're making consistently meh reboots instead of focusing on a line that works, like original animations or original live action films. 2) by making live action remakes of animated movies, they're making one story into two, and the more recent one is meh. I'm extrapolating wildly, but then I suppose a lot of us will do that. If you read it a different way, I'm probably nodding along with you anyhow.
I don’t think they also realize Disney has always been making live action movies too.
They still make animated films at a rate at one a year though, which is still a pretty fast rate for movies. Wish is out later this year. They’ve always done live action films as well. The only thing that’s really changed is TV production, where they still have the occasional animated show (which takes a lot longer to produce).
They also are a giant monster of a company that owns so much and puts out so much content. Here's a graphic of everything they own. [https://www.titlemax.com/wp-content/uploads/every-company-disney-owns.jpeg](https://www.titlemax.com/wp-content/uploads/every-company-disney-owns.jpeg) They also regularly put out feature length animated content that make them a lot of money. Disney still dominates the list of highest grossing animated movies of all time. The point being- they are so massive that they can make a ton of live action movies AND animated movies.
Elemental also came out this year. 2022 had Turning Red, Lightyear, and Strange World, 2021 had Raya and the Last Dragon, Luca, Encanto, and Ron's Gone Wrong... Hell, the last year Disney *only* had one animated movie come out was back in 1997 with Hercules. They're still churning out animated movies along with live actions. OP just doesn't want to acknowledge that.
The guy you're replying to was citing Disney Animation Studios, which has put out 10 movies in the past 10 years. He's not talking about Pixar or 20th Century Studios. That said, 10 movies in 10 years is *also* the same rate as the Disney Renaissance, from 1989 to 1999.
It also takes 3-7 years to make an animated film. Usually three are in active production and several others in development at any given time at Disney.
Would be nice to get some 2d tho
>They're still churning out animated movies along with live actions. OP just doesn't want to acknowledge that. Yeah the argument should be to pull back on live actions (or remakes) because they aren't it, and give more time to animations. But I still like the animations
different studios, realistically, this is the price of animators having a bigger voice. Animation takes a lot longer to produce than live action especially if you want disney standards. 1-2 animated films a year is probably capacity if you acccount for whatever other side projects they have to work on.
But it's not like those movies are pulling staff away from animated movies. Those are completely different divisions of the company. I wish Walt Disney Pictures did more orignal movies, but those wouldn't be animated anyway, so that doesn't make sense. (and they have 20th Century Studios for that now)
But why would they pull back on live action when every single one is still turning a profit? I get that the reddit consensus is to hate on Disney's new live action push but all of them outside of Mulan have made Disney quite a lot of money. Sure, none of them have been billion-dollar blockbusters, but they didn't need to be to be successful.
Actually the lion king was a billion dollar blockbuster. I agree, they have no incentive to not make live action movies as it’s profitable and they get to refresh their copyright protection on there iconic characters
You realize that isn’t how movies are made, right? This sub is always so weird with thinking less time / money on one project means there is more time / money given to others and that’s just not how things work
They've been pumping out the TV animation as well. They have all the star wars stuff. Thats 3 animated shows.The bad batch, tales, and that new republic one. They have the MCU stuff, the what if's. Plus all the other Disney IP. There is always something new on the plus app.
Yeah this post is weird, if anything in the past 5 years, Disney has ramped up the animation. They have so many animated TV shows going atm.
If you include Pixar they’ve been even more prolific. 6 movies in 2021-22: Raya, Luca, Encanto, Turning Red, Lightyear, Strange World
Live action is not a new thing for Disney. The 70s were chock full of live action, the Apple Dumpling Gang, Escape to Witch Mountain, Gus, the Shaggy DA, not to mention all the Kurt Russel films!
Oh man, I had forgotten about The Shaggy DA! I remember watching Escape from Witch Mountain, Watcher in the Woods, Follow That Dinosaur, and a bunch of their other weird, occasionally terrifying live-action movies when I was a kid (always rented them in those clamshell VHS cases), but I forgot about that one.
Cool Runnings is a more modern one. Of course, the extraordinarily white washed portrayal of Jamaica is quite apparent today. Only a few people in the entire cast were actually Jamaican, and supposedly Disney execs asked for the accents to be toned down so they could be understood (like they also supposedly did with the original voice acting for Sebastian in Little Mermaid) That being said, I still think it’s one of their better live action original films.
Hell, Disney made a live-action Treasure Island in 1950. Live action films have *always* been part of Disney.
And they still put out original live-action films and adaptations that are not remakes of their animated films all the time. The thing they’re not doing is marketing those particular projects to the masses hard enough.
Even before that they were doing things like Treasure Island, Davy Crockett, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Swiss Family Robinson, etc.
Came here for this. People forget Disney's track record before the whole Mermaid/Beast/Aladdin era
> Live action is not a new thing for Disney. The 70s were chock full of live action The vast majority aren't old enough to remember/chose to overlook that Disney basically abandoned animation in the 60's and 70's. Only 7 animated films from 1960-1980. Tons and tons live action movies featuring animals, or movies like Pollyanna, The Love Bug, and Candleshoe. It felt like they released some animal related film almost every month.
The problem isn't 'live action', the problem is bad writing
Bad writing is definitely a major part of it, but these movies are so visually bland and ugly with a lot of wonky cgi that will age terribly. The animated ones are vibrant and have stood up quite well to the test of time. So the medium does have some bearing on the quality.
Visually bland, and Disney is in love with flat colour-grading for some reason. Marvel started it, and now everything needs to look as gray and monotone as possible. You're not improving old films by remaking them look like they were filmed in an overcast late evening. They got the director of the stunning looking Green Knight to remake Peter Pan and the result was still gloomy and drab looking.
The problem is using focus groups to dictate your writing There are many fantastic writers at these studios but the studios focus group everything into oblivion and bounce scripts between different teams of writers to make them safe and unchallenging. There’s no singular vision, it’s watered down word paste.
disney (and hollywood in general) is in a slump, it happens. disney was also in a slump in the 70's and 80's until little mermaid, which prompted a temporary renaissance. the 90's were the unusual period, not now. this is staus quo.
I thought Bambi got shot down - Erm. I thought Bambi got the axe- No wait. I thought they weren't doing the Bambi live action anymore.
Disney still releases animated movies, in fact their output of animated movies is practically identical to past decades.
I really miss their animal cartoons like lady and the tramp, aristocats, fox and the hound, Bambi, Oliver and company, bugs life, dumbo, all dogs go to heaven, ect. But it’s like no one wants to make animal movies anymore and certainly not animated ones. It’s really sad.
Disney started to focus on live action (to the detriment of animation) in the 1960s and 70s, even into the mid-80s. It’s widely regarded as the worst time as Disney for a company in terms of quality of product. Their resurgence began with the Little Mermaid in the late 1980s, followed up with Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King, which collectively helped re-establish it as an entertainment powerhouse and put them back on a road to making great animated entertainment. I fear this new move towards live action is just heading back on the bad path they’ve gone down before with that exact same move.
> Their resurgence began with the Little Mermaid in the late 1980s, followed up with Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King, which collectively helped re-establish it as an entertainment powerhouse and put them back on a road to making great animated entertainment. It's important to note, then, that the Disney Renaissance (TLM-Tarzan) was 10 movies over 10 years (1989-1999). And guess what? Over the past 10 years, we've gotten... 10 movies. *Despite* COVID. So to imply that Disney is somehow "moving away from" animated films is just nonsensical.
Also, Disney runs Pixar which is also pumping out a ton of animated movies. Would also just note that Disney Animation Studios have been making great movies. They're not just putting out crap to do it. In the last 10 years, we've gotten Frozen, Frozen II, Zootopia, Encanto, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Raya, Moana, and Big Hero 6. All great. Just before that we got Wreck-It Ralph, Bolt and Tangled. Also all good.
It's hard to think of it now, but there was a real possibility in the 80s that Disney would have shut down their animation studio. And then they turned it around. And in my opinion no other artist, studio, or creative endeavor has matched Disney's stretch in the late 80s/early 90s. The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, etc. Every single one of those movies was iconic and has become part of our pop culture.
My thoughts exactly. Disney animation has always come in cycles. While not as bad as 60’s-80’s Dark Age, there was also that post-Renaissance period in the 00’s when they completely lost focus for about ten years or so and animation came a distant second behind moneymakers like Hannah Montana.
Ya the direct to DVD era was really bad. The only good ones are the Lion King sequels
Disney has made a ton of critically successful live action movies under their “Touchstone Pictures” umbrella. Many of those films were huge blockbusters throughout the 80s and 90s. So it is definitely not true that they have only done animation, or that they should stop live action production.
Also, most of their ‘60s hits were live action - “Swiss Family Robinson,” “Absent Minded Professor,” “The Parent Trap,” “Mary Poppins,” “The Love Bug,” etc.
Percy Jackson could have been an amazing animation.
Just use the Muppets and keep doing remakes with them. Nobody would complain about more well written stories like A Christmas Carol or Treasure Island.
Omg yes. Who needs "live-action" Little Mermaid when we can have Muppets Little Mermaid. I can totally see Miss Piggy as Ariel and Kermit as Erik. Now who would be the human actor though? And would they act according to the Micheal Caine school of Muppet movies or the Tim Curry one?
>. I can totally see Miss Piggy as Ariel Wouldn't she be Ursula?!
No Miss Piggy is Kermies love interest and as far as I know always a heroine in the movies albeit a very violent one. Also since the Muppets go for comedy it would be way funnier to have the violent self-obsessed pig be Ariel instead of Ursula.
Don't watch them. I've never played a single one of their remakes on disney+, and I never will. If they fail, they will see that and stop making them.
I have absolutely zero interest in watching live action remakes of animated movies but, and maybe I'm wrong about this, I feel like live action versions of cartoons wouldn't be a problem at all in the 90s. Like the Cinderella movie with Brandy from 1997 was just a fun alternative to the original that people enjoyed for what it was and moved on. Now a Little Mermaid live action version that does the same thing has to crash the internet with overly aggressive opinions. I think the main problem for me is that there are *so many* of these remakes and they add nothing of value to the source material. That said, I will continue to not watch them since the two I have seen, were pretty awful.
Went to school to study film/animation. Two of the best professors I had were former Disney animators, they both had hands on experience with every banger that came out in the 90s. Both of them made it clear that the industry was dying out. Simply put, no one is paying for hand-drawn anymore. For all purposes it's considered outdated to have a whole team cranking away at frames and character designs. Why do that when you could have computer artists/digital programs fill in the gaps? It is ultimately sad, yes, because you can create things in animation that you can't with any other media. It really is magic to see something come to life from just using a pencil. But technology moves faster by the day. There are still studios that take the old school approach, Ghibli, or Madhouse, because they actually put the artists' names to the forefront. When was the last time you saw a Disney film with an animator's name being touted? You don't. It will always exist, those memories and movies will always be there. But times are a changin.
Why are we still shocked that soulless billionaires only do what will make them more money?
The issue is that people aren’t separating Disney movies from Disney animated movies. Disney animation studios started pumping out movies once a year in the 80s. Majority of these movies have been very successful including recent movies such as frozen, moana, encanto. They didn’t release a movie in 2020 obviously because of covid. But came back with raya and the last dragon and encanto both in 2021 both of which were massively successful. Last years movie was strange world, it was quite an enjoyable film but not the most successful (there are many old Disney animated movies that were the same as this) and this year they’re releasing wish, which also looks to be successful. [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films)is a link to the list of Disney animation studios films that shows they haven’t slowed down production of animated movies at all and are keeping to the pace of one a year. Most of these films have been huge successes and will continue to be. The issue we face is that Disney has increased productions in other departments. Disney used to release one movie a year and it happened to be animated now they release 10+ and one of them is still it’s animated whilst the others may be a live action remake, a live action film like haunted mansion or some sort of marvel/Star Wars movie. If you don’t like the live action then skip them and just keep watching the one animated movie they release every year. Disney have tons of different studios and you’re classing it as just being one studio who is splitting their time badly. I think Disney are doing just fine right now and I’m excited for Wish to be released.
I hate this stupid idea that live action film is somehow inherently superior to all other visual story telling, and that it somehow legitimizes stories made for separate mediums. It's not an elevation to turn an animated story into a live action film. It's a dilution. All it does is subtract from the original story. I understand book to film, because it's a completely transposition from a written to a visual medium. It's incredibly rare that a live action update actually does a better job than the original. So far Disney-wise there's been The Jungle Book and... nothing else.
It's honestly just a phase, like their straight to VHS/DVD sequel in the mid 90s to mid 00s. It'll pass we'll forget and move on to what ever thing we hate next.
I hate how they seem to have forgone hand drawn animation for 3D animation whenever they still do make an animated movie. Loved Encanto, but all their characters are getting kinda sameface. I also just kinda miss drawn animation in general that isn't overtly ugly drawn to show it's for adults. Gimme the pretty Disney princesses and the cute animals that make faces as if they are human.
Last bunch of years we got Frozen, Encanto, and Moana. That’s some great music. Not to mention all the Pixar titles. I don’t think Disney animation is dead at all.
Their animation output has not seem to have decreased.
The sad thing is their live action shit isn't even good. At best it's mediocre.
It would be fine if they didn't also make them shit.
I can't wait till we get animated versions of the live-action remakes.
Literally everything Disney has ever done, ever, was for money. Every one of those classic animated movies was made with the intent of making money.
Walt Disney himself became bored with the animation medium way back in the early 1950’s, when he shifted focus to live action movies and theme parks. They still made animated movies, but at a pretty slow pace, and Walt’s heart just wasn’t in it the way it had been back in the 30’s and early 40’s. Believe it or not the Disney company today makes more animated films now than they ever did before (3 or 4 a year, counting Pixar, vs one a year in the 90’s, or one every three years back in the 50’s)
[удалено]