The Lion, the Mouse, and the Remakes
The public consensus on the 21st century Disney Remake craze seems to be “why are we doing this?”, “please stop”, “this is so unnecessary”. And yet, the box office consistently says otherwise. As much as people hate on the 2017 Beauty and the Beast remake, it was the highest-grossing musical film of all time during its initial release. You know what’s the highest grossing now? Yep. The Lion King.
These movies make consistent bank, which is funny, considering that they seem to be so derided by fans. Nostalgia sells, yes, but the numbers don’t lie…people are going to the theater to see these “childhood-ruining” films. Maybe even multiple times. So, as is the case with any strange movie phenomenon, I find this whole thing utterly fascinating. Let’s take a second to figure out how we got here and what we can do about it now.
The Early Age
The 2010s are not when Disney started remaking stuff. This, in fact, was in 1994 when Disney released a live-action remake of their classic The Jungle Book. This was incredibly underseen (I, myself, only remember it as a wobbly, funkily narrated trailer on one of my Disney VHS-es) and starred a human Mowgli and real, trained animals. Disney had more luck with their 1996 remake of One Hundred and One Dalmatians (stylized as 101 Dalmatians) and its 2000 sequel 102 Dalmatians, which also starred real animals and — if nothing else — gave us the gift of Glenn Close devouring the role of Cruella DeVil. Close was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress — Musical or Comedy and, I would argue, was the inspiration for another one of these films to come decades later (more on that soon). Even with the relative success of Dalmatians, it didn’t appear that Disney was trying to create a new format of filmmaking. If anything, they were probably cashing in on the overwhelming amount of animal centric (specifically canine centric) films of the 90s.
The Death of Traditional Animation (and Alvin and the Chipmunks)
While always being at the forefront of full-length animated films (including creating the medium with 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), Disney revolutionized the genre in a major way during the period between 1989 and 1999 known as the Disney Renaissance. These films in this period included The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and other beloved classics that 90s babies will fight someone over. Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, The Lion King reigned as the highest grossing animated film for 20 years, and this period started the Disney Theatrical company, which adapts Disney films to Broadway. The Renaissance was an incredible period of 2D, hand-drawn animation that continued to endure even after the 1995 release of Pixar’s revolutionary debut film Toy Story.
Part of the reason that the Renaissance’s defining years are so clear is because the films following Tarzan (the last film in this period) took such a clear dip in box office. Movies like Lilo and Stitch, Treasure Planet, and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, while beloved by some today, were all marginally less successful than their Renaissance-era counterparts. Even Dreamworks Animation, who had relative success with films like The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado, were dealing with a slump in sales with traditionally animated films, while their 2000 film Shrek revolutionized the computer generated animation era. 2003’s Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas was a huge flop for Dreamworks (opening sixth at the box office), and served as their final film in the traditional animation realm. Disney stopped around this time too, focusing more on the new CG animation style (that prevails to this day) with films like 2005’s Chicken Little and 2007’s Meet the Robinsons.
Disney made one last attempt at their old traditionally animated style in 2009 with The Princess and the Frog. Unlike any film they had released since Tarzan, this was the Renaissance-era to a tee, down to its songwriting by Alan Menken, and casting of a lesser-known-publicly-but-Broadway-revered actress (Anika Noni Rose) in its lead role. The film was, again, beloved, and actually didn’t do badly at the box office (ending 2009 as the sixth highest grossing film of the year), but it had failed to reach 90s-level success. All the while CG animated movies (admittedly cheaper to make), were thriving regardless of which company produced them: Dreamworks had Shrek, Kung-Fu Panda, Madagascar, Pixar (now owned by Disney) had The Incredibles, Cars, Wall-E. The Fox-owned Blue Sky Studios even had Ice Age. From a logical standpoint, it was clear that traditional animated features were not making money and CG was. The hand-drawn nail was planted firmly in the coffin.
A movie not often brought up in the prologue to the Disney Remake Era is 2007’s Alvin and the Chipmunks. But I often bring it up for the reason that, though it had been attempted before with mixed results (i.e. Scooby-Doo), this film succeeded in bringing to life traditionally animated characters with “realistic” CG-animation. This film made a ton of money (44 million in its opening weekend), revealed the sweet profit that comes from nostalgic children’s franchises, and, unfortunately, started a trend of “let’s make cute animated characters look like real animals” that still exists to this day (here’s looking at you Sonic).
The Experimental Age
Disney didn’t return to the live-action remake idea, in any big way, until 2010 when they let famed writer/director Tim Burton put his spooky, haunted fingers on Alice in Wonderland. This idea was actually pretty cool at the time. For one, Alice was a story that always had an edge of creepiness to it and enlisting an iconic director with a signature style to tackle an old animated classic was exciting. Most importantly, at least when comparing this film to where we are now, the original film was released 60 years prior, meaning that there were many audiences who maybe had never seen it, or knew enough to appreciate the new take without getting upset about any changes and omissions. This is also a weird place to consider the start of the live-action remakes, since the movie really isn’t a remake at all, it’s a sequel. Tim Burton’s Wonderland follows a newly adult Alice who has forgotten her previous adventures and falls down the rabbit hole again, reuniting with her old friends and old enemies, and fulfilling her role in an ancient prophecy. The movie was ok, and kind of marked the moment that Tim Burton lost his edge (he hasn’t really released a critically-acclaimed live-action film since), as well as the moment that every Johnny Depp performance became “Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow as _______”, but guess what? The movie made a crap ton of money (it’s current gross is past the 1 billion mark), and became one of the biggest hits of that year, no thanks in part to 3D which — thanks to Avatar the previous year — became Hollywood’s shiny new toy.
The next couple years were similarly experimental. The second movie in this “remake” series is, again, not really a remake and is, instead, Sleeping Beauty told from the perspective of its iconic villain. Maleficent was released in 2014 and starred the inspired casting choice of Angelina Jolie. This film, like 101 Dalmatians before it, was centered around a prestige actress relishing in a sinister part but was also surprising, in that it actually explains moments of the character’s backstory and off-screen antics in the original film that leave you with a sense that she wasn’t actually the villain we all know her to be. Now some people like that take, and some people don’t, and some musical theatre fans may find it incredibly familiar…but Maleficent was also a critically-mixed box office success, not quite reaching the heights of Alice but definitely showing its parent company that this could be a “thing”.
The first real remake was 2015’s Cinderella, an adaptation of the maybe the most classic fairy tale of all time starring rising Hollywood star Lily James in the title role and two time Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett as Lady Tremaine, her evil stepmother. This film did well at the box office but was also the first of these to be critically lauded and with good reason. The film somehow finds a way to breathe new life into one of the most well-known stories of all time, adding welcome (but not extensive) backstory to Ella’s mother and father, as well as an earnest explanation of why she puts up with the abuse that she does. Lily James is also so perfectly cast that you root for her every step of the way and, yes, it also addresses the Prince’s baffling, unnecessary shoe plan. It’s these wonderful story additions and modernizations that Disney would try (and fail) to replicate in the coming years.
Then Jungle Book Happened
The hurricane of remakes, of which we are currently in the eye, started with 2016’s The Jungle Book. Iron Man director Jon Favreau helmed this one, the second Disney remake of this story, and it succeeded by all accounts. It was the 6th highest grossing movie of the year, has a 94% on critical aggregate Rotten Tomatoes, and was beloved by fans. Its groundbreaking visual effects earned the film an Academy Award nomination, the film’s incredible voice cast included Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, and an idea was born. Based on the announcements that came after, it was very clear that The Jungle Book struck a chord in Disney. Suddenly Favreau was signed on to direct a similar remake of The Lion King, and others, like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid entered the conversation.
This draws a clear line in the Disney Remake series, because now Disney gets cocky and decides to tackle films that are not only beloved, but are — relatively speaking — recent. The 90s only ended about 20 years ago, and the viewers of these original films don’t think of them as beautiful “back in my day” films, they think of them as films that are still referenced in pop culture all the time. This also started the pattern of remaking films that were, quite intrinsically, musicals. The Jungle Book has a couple of songs (awkwardly recreated in the 2016 film) as does Cinderella (which opted to save them for the end credits), but the Disney Renaissance films are musicals through and through, which meant that new ground was being broken with these adaptations. So while Disney was also quietly remaking classics like Pete’s Dragon and Dumbo, and failing to produce a profitable Wonderland sequel, all eyes were on these Renaissance films.
Remaking the Renaissance
2017’s Beauty and the Beast received mixed reviews and, as mentioned before, a MAMMOTH box office but Disney fans generally hate it. The film’s lead Belle was played by Emma Watson, who was a perfect choice on paper, but whose singing voice I still can’t tell if I’ve actually heard or not. Joining her T-Pain-level-autotuned voice was Dan Stevens, whose Beast was much more, shall we say, tame (?) than we’re used to. The supporting cast was an excellent collection of prestige actors like Kevin Kline, Ewan McGregor, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Emma Thompson, and Queen of Broadway Audra McDonald. Alan Menken again returned to create new songs for the film, which was a strange choice, considering the Broadway adaptation of the film already had an extra song for quite literally each moment that got a new tune in the remake.
The film also attempted to do what Cinderella did, adding to and modernizing the story, but it pretty much failed. It tried to make Belle a more modern woman, and — again, like Cinderella — added a plot thread about her mother that went pretty much nowhere. The remake also attempted to answer plot holes about the original film (like the Beast’s age when he was transformed) which, depending on who you asked, worked or didn’t.
But again, highest-grossing live-action musical film of all time, so what was Disney gonna do? Stop?
In 2019, Disney released two remakes of Renaissance-era films, Aladdin and The Lion King. These films, again, forsook their Broadway counterparts for new (and out-of-place) songs by popular modern songwriters and cast big name actors to fill beloved roles (Will Smith in Aladdin, all of Black Hollywood in The Lion King). Aladdin was a huge success (quickly securing a spot on the fifty highest-grossing films of all time), but amounted to no more than an appetizer for The Lion King, which roared to the top ten of all time in its first month alone. Both films’ critical and public reception point out their inability to capture the magic of their originals (Dumbo, also released in 2019, suffered from this criticism as well), while Lion King specifically finally posed the question: is cool visual technology…enough?
The remake fatigue really started hitting, however, when along with the rollouts of these aforementioned films, Disney decided to keep the money ball rolling with a trailer for Mulan, super well-received casting announcements for The Little Mermaid and a Cruella DeVil spin-off, and rumors about adaptations of everything from Hunchback of Notre Dame to The Sword in the Stone.
AND they just dropped a trailer for their Lady and the Tramp remake opening in November on Disney+, their new streaming platform, with real dogs! Where have we seen that before…
But Is It All About Greed?
A lot of people believe that this new remake culture is about greed and greed alone. Disney knows that they can make money off of properties that we already love. They know that no matter how many times our eyes roll in the lead-up, our curiosity will take over and we WILL be there with our children and friends and families at some point during the theatrical run. The consensus is that Disney’s taking advantage of our nostalgia, and there are no new ideas in Hollywood anymore.
But this is only partially true.
First, the hard truth: Hollywood (movie-making) is a business. If the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich wasn’t selling the way it is, you know what Popeyes would do? Stop selling that damn sandwich. But they instead have an item that is selling better than anything they’ve put out for years, so you know what they’re gonna do? Keep selling that damn sandwich.
Similarly, while Disney also owns Fox, Netflix, Marvel, Pixar, and the world*, they have discovered a product from their original company, that is creating more business than they’ve drummed up in decades (not counting a certain pair of Nordic princesses). It doesn’t make business sense to stop making these when each one climbs higher and higher at the box office.
But, in light defense of the company (and Hollywood as a whole), Disney has in fact released original films and new adaptations in recent years, they just haven’t made a whole ton of money. In 2018 Disney released two: A Wrinkle in Time (a financial let down), as well as The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (a bigger let down). That’s not to say these films were good per se, but they were new properties that didn’t do well financially, at the same time that the remakes were totally dominating. Yes, new stories are important but if you were in charge of greenlighting films, and your job was reliant on how much money you make the company, would you sooner approve a new pitch with unknown potential from a bright-eyed new writer/director or a remake of Disney’s Robin Hood with an already attached, pants-less, fox-version of Timotheé Chalamet? (Please…)
And in creative defense of Disney (which you will not find in very many places), I do find the dismissal of the remakes as factory-processed drivel a little unfair. To create these films, the studio hires Oscar-winning designers, famously talented writers and directors, and casts actors not just based on their “hotness” at the moment, but based on how they fit the role. You may cringe at Will Smith’s “singing” for Aladdin, but in trying to find a replacement for Robin Williams, Disney found a choice who is known for his own brand of humor and charm. They even bring back the original songwriters and pair them with new songwriters in order to modernize and build upon classic tunes.
With The Lion King specifically, audiences are so quick to point out its lack of creativity that they overlook the fact that animators had to create some of the most incredible visual effects ever put to screen, going so far as to build new technology to create the film. The movie may have suffered from the animals being too realistic, but isn’t being too realistic a sign of triumph for the VFX artists who created them?
Conclusion/What Now?
If you hate these remakes, there are a couple of things that you can do. One, is stop going to see them. As comedian Bo Burnham once said “we’ll stop beating this dead horse when it stops spitting out money” and if you keep paying to see these movies, Disney has 90 years of animation to choose from. Another option is to support original work. Part of these films’ omnipresence is the fact that general audiences know that — at the very least — they’ll get to re-experience their favorites, which is much surer enjoyment than something totally new and unknown (especially at 12 dollars a ticket). Make sure that you also put your powerful dollars towards original ideas and new adaptations; you’ll have a shot with Disney in May, when they release their adaptation of Artemis Fowl.
If you can’t do either of these things, then you can still rest assured: your childhood remains intact. It’s nonsensical to claim that these remakes ruin your childhood, if the films that they’re based on are still perfectly available. In fact, due to modern technology, these films are released, revised, and remastered every couple of years. You can watch the originals, and show your children the originals, and you’ll be okay. Think of these films as experiments (“what would Sleeping Beauty be like if it were real people”, “what would The Lion King be like if it were done with real animals”), and decide for yourself whether they failed or succeeded. And if your answer is the former, then heat up some cocoa, pop in that VHS tape, and enjoy that sweet, unprocessed nostalgia straight from the source.
*Citizen Duane cannot confirm that Disney owns the world…but he also refuses to deny it.
