Since my last entry way back in 2017, Disney has unleashed the following remakes of/sequels to their beloved properties: Christopher Robin, Dumbo, Aladdin, The Lion King, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, Lady and the Tramp, Mulan, Cruella, and Pinocchio. So, here we are again to discuss if any of these releases have any merit.
And there will eventually be a part three as there are already plans for: Hercules, The Sword in the Stone, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (oh lord...), The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, Lilo & Stitch, sequels to The Lion King, Aladdin, and The Jungle Book, and who knows what else that I may have forgotten. But I digress, and we have got quite a bit of ground to cover.
We begin with 2018’s Christopher Robin, a Winnie the Pooh spin on the Hook formula. Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor) went from spending his days in a pastoral idyll with his imaginary stuffed animal companions to a gloomy, work-obsessed adult in postwar England. The film’s dour color palette for adulthood only starts to brighten as Pooh, Tigger, Piglet, and company appear to the adult Christopher and get him reacquainted with the innocence he has lost.
At least this time around Disney did not merely take their animated film, swallow it whole, then regurgitate it with live actors in lieu of animated figures. They also never bother trying to lampshade the fanciful conceit of these stuffed creatures walking, talking, and interacting with real people and settings. Pooh merely expresses that his presence through a hole in a tree was caused by necessity and nothing more. It is as if the film is asking us to buy into “once upon a time” and all the ensuing implausibility that corresponds with that infamous story opening once more.
Think of it as the story of an adult relearning the power of imagination, the love of family, and trying to maintain work/life balance. This works far better with Christopher Robin as a central character than it ever did with Peter Pan. Robin’s job at a luggage company is easy shorthand for the ways in which life experience only adds to our baggage and compartmentalizes the self. His wife (Hayley Atwell) warns about the fleeting nature of childhood and how his workaholic nature is causing him to miss out on important milestones and bonding time with their daughter (Bronte Carmichael).
Pooh’s eventual awakening from a deep slumber can be seen as Robin’s own slow realization of the perils he is painting himself into. The reappearance of his childhood imaginary friends is but a function of his impending life crisis. Will everything work out in the end with both his work, his wife, and his daughter? Did you miss the crescendo of “When You Wish Upon a Star” while the camera zipped around Cinderella’s castle before the opening credits?
The predestined “happily ever after” is never in doubt, but director Marc Foster consistently undercuts the sense of play and imagination as necessary to life’s enjoyment. Foster’s camera and tone feel too burdensome with studio mandated box checking, a feat that hinders all these live action translations. Christopher Robin can never breathe and enjoy the similar weightlessness and buoyancy of the red balloon Pooh carries around. To be more succinct, Foster is often a bit strident in his approach of A. A. Milne’s world.
Still, not even this sourness can overpower characters as gentle as these. Their Hundred Acre Wood is an amber-coated pastoral land that feels warm and inviting. While many of these adaptations turn into noise and CGI garishness by the time the end credits roll, Christopher Robin keeps its aims smaller and more slapstick. Pooh’s naivete provides some confusion about proper protocol for navigating the adult world, while Eeyore, Tigger, Owl, and Piglet provide amusing moments by leaning into their predominate character traits (melancholy, eagerness, pedantry, and compassion, respectively).
It also helps that the characters have a tactile nature that feels homey and inviting as opposed to the rubbery designs of various other staples of the Disney studio. (I am looking squarely at you, Tim Burton’s Dumbo, but we will get to that very soon.) It may not match the loveliness of the studio’s animated films, but by keeping the tone more soulful and artisanal they ended up with something touching but imperfect. I just wonder what someone like Paul King (Paddington) might have made of the same material.
Oh Tim Burton, you make it so hard to continue to love you lately. 2019 was THE year for a glut of these things for Disney to hork up. First up, Dumbo finds Hot Topic’s former favorite auteur once more returning to the well of live action Disney remakes. (I say this with both snark and love as someone who spent a lot of their teenage years at Hot Topic, and as someone who has long identified as a fan of Burton. Even during this creative drought.)
Two things are immediately evident in watching Dumbo: Burton is largely more concerned with making alternately a circus-themed movie and an attack on his corporate overlords, and said corporate overlords kept him on much tighter leash. The first point leads the film to having fits-and-starts of interest, even visually beautiful and delightful sequences, and the second ensures that any evidence of personality is quickly snuffed out before it has a chance to bloom. I guess they learned their lesson from the best/worst impulses of Burton being allowed free reign on one of their properties last time around.
This Dumbo leaves the adorable little baby elephant as a mere supporting player. Make no mistake, while his name may be above the title, the film really belongs to Colin Farrell and his children reestablishing their frayed bonds after he returns from WWI. Clearly trying to emulate the bruised heart of the original film, this one only allows for flashes and bits of genuine emotion to poke through before Disney’s flattening tendencies. They are seemingly working against their auteur’s empathy for the misfit(s).
The original Dumbo remains one of my favorite films, not just in the Disney canon but in general, for its ability to pour enough emotion, whimsy, and psychedelia in 60-some odd minutes than most films pack into their entire (much longer) running times. This version makes some vague notions to the original sequences that are best remembered, including Dumbo-as-clown putting out a controlled fire in a circus, but does not generate the same connection with its audience. These blips only exist to fire up the nostalgia pleasure centers then evaporate shortly thereafter.
Think of the “Pink Elephants on Parade” scene, one of the most daring, original, and memorable pieces of animation to ever come out of the studio. It somewhat exists here as a scene where circus performers blow bubbles that form the pink elephants, and despite Burton’s careful staging, lighting, and framing of the sequence to inspire awe and wonder, it never quite takes off. It is a compromised vision, like so much else in the film. The Mouse must be appeased above all!
By the time Michael Keaton wanders into the film as a combination of P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney things get deeply strange. Keaton exists to not only buy up the dog-and-pony circus that starred Dumbo, but to function as Burton’s punching bag for the studio that is shackling him. By the time DisneyLand, sorry… Dreamland is a towering inferno, one gets the sense that Burton is working through some late-career frustrations in a very public manner. It is fascinating and flawed, but also a reminder that when he wants to, Burton can dazzle the imagination with wondrous sights. Dreamland is an Art Deco paradise, an imaginative place to witness that is framed as both utopian Americana and a towering achievement to capitalistic greed. (Again, this is a compromised and confused film to the bone.)
But the best parts of this Dumbo are the ones where Burton flexes his weird. The earliest scenes of the dingy circus made me long for the non-Disney IP version of this film where Burton could make the Freaks, He Who Gets Slapped, The Unknown, Roger Corman, Ray Harryhausen referencing circus film of his dreams. I would like to watch that movie. This film is obviously not that, but I would love to see the scaled back version of its earliest scenes in all its tacky, gothic, weird glory.
Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin is an incredibly dismal affair. At once a personality-free retread of the original that obsessively hits the same beats but drained of life, and a hodge-podge of Arabic cliches colliding into Bollywood-style dance numbers that slogs around for over two hours. I still struggle to understand why this was over two hours long even after watching it. It wasn’t like they expanded out the characterizations or provided more depth, if anything some of them lost a lot of defining characteristics in the translation from drawings to flesh.
Aladdin’s translation clearly decided that the problem was the gender dynamics in the original and not its overall questionable depiction of Middle Eastern culture(s). So, Agrabah in this instance feels like a backlot set instead of an actual vibrant and bustling kingdom. There is also the problem of Disney’s recent and persistent decision to cheapen out on paying unionized departments and instead CGI in things like sets, so something like the Cave of Wonders has no tactile reality. Aladdin seems apart and indifferent to his surroundings. Kingdom Hearts had a more imaginative and engrossing Cave of Wonders and better immersion, frankly.
But getting back to the gender dynamics at play. Did anyone ever watch the original Aladdin and find Jasmine a shrinking violet? She was known for speaking her mind and calling out the situations around her frequently, so why is she now given a power ballad all about how she won’t be silent or speechless? (Side bar: it is hilarious to me when characters in musicals belt out how they will not be silenced.) It is an unnecessary addition, a lame capitulation to the whole #girlboss mindset that does not mesh with both the source material and the surrounding story. Jasmine was already given agency. This is just lazy virtue signaling that means nothing.
But maybe the two shining spots of the original could save this version: the Genie and the soundtrack. Well, no, not really. Will Smith’s comedic rhythms are entirely different to the mania of Robin Williams, which is fine, but his performance is one of hedged bets. Instead of truly reimagining the Genie for a new persona to inhabit, they do it in a half-measure so that Smith is tasked with repeating some of Williams’ comedic beats but not as well and bringing his own brand of sarcasm to the part. It doesn’t help that he seems bored vocally in the songs, which brings us to the other problem with this film musical.
Maybe Ritchie, known primarily as the British Tarantino knockoff from the late-90s, secretly had the ability to make a successful film musical and we just never knew it. Then again and based entirely on what made it to the screen, maybe not. Whoever mixed these songs does not do them justice as the vocals sound flat and disinterested and the arrangements lack life, despite Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s originals brimming with both life and personality in huge quantities. There is also the problem of the film clearly wanting to ape Bollywood dance techniques, with the occasional hip-hop flourish, but being unable to do so. Which brings me back to the question of why Guy Ritchie for this? Disney has enough money and power that if they really wanted to revamp Aladdin as a Bollywood-esque musical they could have easily just opened the checkbook for a Bollywood director to make a crossover film.
Oh well, at least Mena Massoud was cute and charming as Aladdin, Naomi Scott was a serviceable Jasmine, Nasim Pedrad stole the show out from everyone and should be in more things, and Marwan Kenzari was wasted as Jafar but was so hot. (I didn’t even get into the complete sapping of personality done to Jafar’s queer-coded villainy, the sultan’s buffoonish qualities, or Iago’s wisecracking.) Naturally, this thing made roughly a bajillion dollars at the box office so a live action Return of Jafar is in-development. I mean, I assume that’s what is going to happen. As Disney greedily gobbles up and regurgitates their beloved originals that means it will soon turn around and do the same to their more mixed direct-to-video sequels, right?
Jon Favreau’s The Lion King is such a strange beast. Rightly nominated as an animated film by the Golden Globes, even if that nomination is itself questionable, this foray into photorealistic animals talking and singing recalls the likes of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey for the dissonance it creates. This version of The Lion King exemplifies everything wrong with these remakes. Here is the vision of Favreau digitally puppeteering the taxidermized bodies of Serengeti animals for two hours and it is completely devoid of magic.
The Lion King involves talking/singing animals and the divine right of kings and explores the mythological connection between good and bad kings and their environments. So why does this version look like a nature documentary? The insistence on “realism” robs the characters of personality and expression. Everything is inert and flat. Visually impressive but in service of what?
It is not as if this one aimed to restore aspects from the original fairy tale as The Lion King was one of the few original properties (well, that’s a whole essay for another time) under the Disney banner. It does not explore or add in more of the Shakespearean tragedy, nor does it remove some of the potentially thorny racial elements from the source material either. Instead, it is a near shot-for-shot remake that forsakes the whimsy, majesty, and theatricality of 1994 film for hyper-realistic lions.
This soulless quality carries over into the musical numbers and more mystical/fantastical moments of the story. “Be Prepared” is beyond disappointing, “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” is forgettable, and “Circle of Life” is lifted wholesale from the original with little-to-no noticeable difference. Mufasa’s spirit in the sky, something that inspires awe and is imbued with spiritual resonance in the original, face plants here. No magisterial spirit in the sky, just the occasional lion face illuminating in a thundercloud for about three seconds. Is this how Disney thinks of their beloved property?
The only saving grace of this dispiriting production is the presence of Seth Rogen and Billy Eichner as Pumbaa and Timon who enliven things up by injecting their distinct vocal quirks and personalities into their line readings. The only other voice actor to match their energy is John Oliver as a particularly prissy Zazu. Everyone else sounds frankly bored, although Donald Glover is trying, or in the case of James Earl Jones as though his original vocals were simply recycled. Where is the character work? No one would ever mistake any of the individual and distinct personalities from the original film for these sad imitations.
Of course, this vision of a dog eating its own vomit should have provided the proverbial nail in the coffin of these remakes, but it bewilderingly made $1 billion at the box office. This version is now the highest-grossing animated film, movie musical, and second highest of 2019, but have you met anyone who actually enjoyed it? Money talks, so we can expect a sequel, err… make that a prequel. Mufasa: The Lion King from Barry Jenkins is scheduled for release in 2024. Ok, Jenkins’ involvement gives me a minor glimmer of hope it will not entirely be without artistic merit.
If you think I have been unnecessarily harsh on this, well let’s check-in on Elton John. He disowned the film stating, “The new version of The Lion King was a huge disappointment to me, because I believe they messed the music up. Music was so much a part of the original and the music in the current film didn't have the same impact. The magic and joy were lost.” He is not wrong. The musical numbers and scoring are a large part of the reason the first has endured.
Speaking of music, the only good thing to come out of this was Beyoncé’s curated album, The Lion King: The Gift. If you really want to watch a fresh, unique spin on the material then watch Black Is King instead. It is a much better, richer, visually dazzling, more rewarding use of your time.
The sequel to Disney’s rape-revenge dark fantasy spin on one of its most prevalent villains, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is at once more conventional filmmaking and thorny folklore. If the first film ended, essentially, where the original animated film did, then what is left for this one? Well, the actual wedding of Aurora and Phillip, mainly. The rest is an additional backstory of Maleficent and a prolonged genocidal quest from our new villain, Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer), Phillip’s scheming mother.
Does anyone really love these? Are kids truly spending hours watching this on Disney+? Did the dolls sell? I have so many questions about who this is for and why and how. I guess someone is not only watching this but enjoying it as it made a half-billion dollars at the box office and there are whispers of a potential third entry.
I would say that this is one is on-par with the first. Once more, the story presented to us is the “real” version of the events that we know minus the historical revisionism. The subtitle has little-to-nothing to do with the narrative and instead is just a bit of Disney tapping into a well-known line from Sleeping Beauty. Of course, in that instance Maleficent described herself as “the mistress of all evil,” and here she is merely a misunderstood defender of the magical realm and environs. (Sidebar: one of my favorite moments in the original is when she tells Phillip that he'll have to deal with her and all the forces of hell.)
Here Aurora (Elle Fanning, a perfect casting decision as she projects a winsome fairy tale princess energy just by existing) gets engaged to Phillip (Harris Dickinson subbing in for Brenton Thwaites), meets her future in-laws, and uncovers a dastardly plot to destroy the fairy realm. Meanwhile, Maleficent gets taken out of commission, discovers her origins, and returns in the finale as an avenging warrior/angel. The whole thing is simple enough to follow along but routinely plagued by an over-familiarity and overpowering design.
Much of Maleficent’s characterization and personality are seemingly defined by her contacts, cheekbone prosthetics, and talon-like fingernails. And the horns, can’t forget the horns. This kind of gorgeous character design is all the forethought put into establishing and developing the personalities on display. It is pretty window dressing for a generic Tolkeinesque retread. The same goes for the three good fairies who demonstrate none of the charm, humor, and distinctiveness of their animated counterparts here and are only decipherable because their faces vaguely resemble AI-generated horrors loosely based on the actresses voicing them.
There is also the underdeveloped nature of the two competing fae ideals about how to deal with the genocidal threats against them perpetrated by Pfeiffer’s Queen Ingrith: bloody revolution and steady moderation. I will let you take a wild guess which one wins out in the end. Of course, there is also a grand reveal about Maleficent and her genealogy that makes her special even among the already special class of faerie creature she exists as. The whole enterprise is mildly entertaining pop movie making that goes down smoothly.
All the radical acts and language about indigenous rebellion becomes CGI-and-algorithm based syrup. There are ideas here, but a corporate entity will never let it express them, instead it will clip its wings and only let it glide when it wants to soar. Ah well, I’m just glad that Michelle Pfeiffer was clearly having fun.
With the launch of their streaming service, the House the Mouse Built needed fresh product to lure in subscribers. But did a semi-live action remake of minor classic Lady and the Tramp really bring them in? Well, I will never know but I cannot imagine it did. After all, did you even remember that this was made?
I do not have much to say about this one. I feel neither a tremendous dislike nor affection for it but merely indifference. It exists. I watched it. And I tempted to end my thoughts about it there and just move onto the next film, but that also feels like a disservice when I have devoted so much other space to the rest of these things.
The most notable change here is that what was told to us through implication is spelled out here. No joke goes without being overly explained. No reference is made without announcing itself as such. Nothing happens without Disney saying it papered over and improved the questionable elements of the original text.
Did the Tramp explicitly need a tragic backstory? The original film left enough breadcrumbs to lead us to that determination. Even as a child I figured that Tramp’s jaundiced view of being a kept pet was forged in something sad having happened to him before we meet him. Kids are smart enough to pick up context clues in narratives if you trust them enough. These remakes do not trust their intended audience(s) enough to grasp implication.
And the laziness with which these live action films port over their musical numbers continues once again. F. Murray Abraham serenading the dogs during the infamous spaghetti dinner lacks the charm and romance of the original. “He’s a Tramp” is almost successful but is still hindered by the insistence on making the animals behave, look, and move as photorealistic as possible.
The removal of the fun episodes from the original – my kingdom for a return of the whistling sibilant beaver at the zoo – and replacing them with “more” that didn’t need to be there is a continual problem for these things. But this adequate version features cute dogs (when they don’t look like AI-generated curiosities), and that is nearly enough to entertain the child within. Nearly but not quite enough. It also wants better than this.
None of these questions find answers in Niki Caro’s aggressively adequate Mulan. They are replaced with a pronounced nationalism and a treatment of the concept of qi as something closer to the Force. What exactly are we doing here?
I do not have any good answers as I mulled the film in my mind. Even as I watched I was confused about its intentions and Hollywood’s continual treatment of Asian cultures and customs as practically interchangeable tokens of “foreignness.” Or a Western overview that takes various influences and shoves them all together without much thought or artistry behind them. Some battle scenes tap into Wuxia-like fight choreography and that would’ve been a unique, fun spin on the legend, but it is only one of many half-measures demonstrated in a film that wants to pay lip service to feminist inclusivity and appealing to a large international market without richly exploring them.
So much of this Mulan feels like wasted potential. All those gorgeous costumes and sets in service of, what? Leaving behind the things that made the 1998 animated film engaging? Why on earth would you think dropping the love interest was the big thing, and its inherent queerness, that many people found risible about film? That is a cherished part of the original film, and its gender-bending made it distinct as its own entry in the Renaissance period’s waning days.
Instead, we get vague gestures towards “girl power” and Gong Li as a sorceress who sees Mulan as a kindred spirit, but this dynamic is sorely lacking in development. As is Gong Li’s transformation from villainous presence to antiheroine. It is yet another good idea that is presented, failed to develop, and paid lip service to wrap up the narrative. (I also loved the various outfits she wore accompanied by dramatic makeup and fingers that resembled a bird of prey’s talons. Frankly, I found her far more engaging than our bland heroine as reinterpreted here.)
Mulan was a property in the Disney vault that felt primed and ready for a remake/fresh adaptation that explored the legend in a more serious manner. Attempts were made as far back as 2010 with Chuck Russell as director and Zhang Ziyi as star, but the project languished in development hell. The original poem, and even the original film, are filled with large-scale battles and sequences of devastation that felt destined for the epic cinematic treatment. We do not get that as a lot of moments feel strangely small-scale or limited in scope.
There was plenty of space to reinterpret here and exhibit some creativity, but what is presented is a gorgeous but bland assembly line product. As muddled and confused about its intentions as so many of these nearly requisite retreads are, Mulan is hollow. Strangely, the whole thing feels like a reverse rotoscope as though the animated characters were seemingly composited over with the fleshy actors. Beautiful but phony, this Mulan made me long for Eddie Murphy’s vocal riffs as counterpoint to one of the best songbooks of the Disney Renaissance more than anything else.
2021’s Cruella is a mixed bag which means it is already on the more positive end of the grading scale for these things. It cannot, and does not, justify its bloated running time, but there are moments of tremendous personality and style that make sticking with it sufficiently entertaining enough. Oh, and beautiful gowns, great gowns.
Instead, we get two-and-a-half hours of Cruella exhibiting a personality crisis and seeking revenge against another haughty, maniacal grand dame. It is a real Jekyll/Hyde situation only instead of a potion that unlocks the latent cruelty of its protagonist its some hair dye and/or a wig that tampers down her arch spirit. Must be some burgundy-colored wig to exact that kind of drastic shift in behavior.
Anyway, when the film isn’t trying to shoehorn in references to 101 Dalmatians, including brief glimpses of Roger and Anita, and focusing on diva bitchery and fashion, it manages to be a lot of fun. Think of Emma Stone’s chalky pallor, broad accent, and loopy, thorny performance as her Disneyfied Joker, For Her. This kind of grandiloquence is almost enough to distract from the fact that Disney is declawing one of their grandest bad girls. A woman practically built for camp appreciation with her Tallulah Bankhead artifice, rolling accent, severe costuming and makeup, and pastel pink cigarettes. This Cruella is still cutting her teeth on shady exclamations and droll readings, but will she ever soar to those drag heights? Probably not.
If there are any three things that keep Cruella involving, they are the assortment of montages that accompany her increasingly baroque and ornate fashions, Emma Thompson’s concentrated bitchiness, and costumes that are astounding. Truly, I have not stopped thinking about Cruella’s trash couture since I watched this. I also deeply appreciated, for the sheer insanity of it all, the sequence in which she and her cohorts hold an anarchic, punk fashion show scored to the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Never thought I’d see a Disney movie use that song as a needle drop moment, but here we are.
It also needs to be said that the needle drops are maddeningly literal at times, like the Stooges track being used to reveal a faux dalmatian coat. A menacing song about dangerous sexual impulses used to counterpoint Cruella revealing her latest designer coat. OK, sure, I guess. At least this sequence evinces some originality.
But where Cruella really questioned my level of intelligence was a groaner of a mid-credits sequence in which she gifts dalmatian puppies to Roger and Anita, already named Pongo and Perdita and everything. Then Roger composes “Cruella de Vil” on his piano. Had he even meaningfully interacted with her at this point? (The answer is no. They have about two scenes occupying the same space together where she is in her Estella persona before this.) It is nothing more than an Easter egg included to get audiences to clap at the thing that they’re familiar with and nothing more.
I remember when this was initially announced, and it raised my eyebrow. Cruella reimagined as a punk seamstress ala Vivienne Westwood in 1970s London. We did not end up getting that, although bits and pieces of that film struggle to come to the surface. But man, that sounded like a fun time.
I am deeply tempted to simply post the gif of Marlon Brando saying, “look how they massacred my boy” regarding Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio and leave it at that. But I suppose that isn’t any form of criticism or engagement with this film, is it. With this being the last (of this batch) of regurgitations, I think my will to watch these has largely been broken. There was a reason I avoided so many of these while they were out in theaters and did not watch them until this past month or so.
Here is another exhumation and cadaverous puppeteering. A glimpse of a canonized classic being vomited back-up for no other reason than this is what Disney has decided as a moneymaking endeavor lately. I do not know if these unnecessary remakes are better or worse than the legacy diminishing direct-to-video extensions, but I would be happy if they just stopped.
There is also an incredibly dissonance between Tom Hanks and the other human actors forcibly interacting with the CGI characters. The whole thing feels like an unintentional Roger Rabbit situation. If the entire film had been animated, it would look incredible as the sequences that solely contain the likes of Pinocchio and Honest John, for example, are beautifully rendered. But then they must appear opposite Luke Evans and he appears to be floating through the scenery and barely existing within the same frame as these characters.
While watching this my mind thought about two recent runs through the Pinocchio story that did this material so much better from two different ends of the spectrum. Matteo Garrone’s 2019 version was a faithful retelling that used incredible makeup effects to breathe life into Carlo Collodi’s creation. Garrone tapped into the horrors and epic scope of his heroic journey, and made a beautiful, gorgeous, frightening film that I just adored.
On the opposite side, Guillermo del Toro took Collodi’s creation as a jumping off point and adapted the material to comment upon the present time. His Pinocchio was set during Mussolini’s regime and had smart adaptational choices that kept the heart and spirit of the original text alive. I have also not stopped thinking about some of the creature designs and sequences since I watched this and how these stop-motion figures had more life, vitality, and emotional engagement than this version.
Zemeckis’ Pinocchio is nearly two-hours long, but I struggle to think of anything that was added that justified bloating the original film’s running time as such. It doesn’t do the “Pinocchio is modeled after Geppetto’s dead son” anywhere near as well as del Toro’s version does, nor does it add anything from the source material like Garrone’s did. It exists in a nether realm where it is a carbon copy of Disney’s original and adds extra fluff to the story that causes it to sag. There is no material that builds out the world, expands on the characters, or brings in themes/characters/scenarios from the source material that are missing. It is just more for the sake of more.
Instead of watching this, just watch the original Disney film, Garrone’s superior live action one, or del Toro’s infinitely better fellow 2022 release. This might be the film that puts me eternally off these reskins. As it ended, all I could think was “thanks, I hated it.”
Ok, let me be completely honest. I will probably check out David Lowry’s Peter Pan and Wendy based entirely on how much I have enjoyed his previous films, especially The Green Knight. I do not expect that level of adaptation from a Disney+ original film, but I also really enjoyed his redo of Pete’s Dragon. I will also probably watch The Little Mermaid, trepidations about that bloated running time aside. It will be interesting to see which Rob Marshall we’re getting with that one. Chicago or Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides? Only time will tell.
But as for the deluge of other remakes that have been announced? Count me out. I have changed my mind. I just can’t do these anymore.
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