Remake Rants: Disney
A trend usually starts with the success of one film. There is nothing particularly wrong with trends. A trend can still allow creativity continuously. 40 years ago, ‘Star Wars’ rejuvenated the sci-fi genre and is partly responsible for other sci-fi hits to come. 1999’s ‘The Matrix’ gave a new perspective to the action genre, inspiring studios to add some depth or styles to action films afterwards. A trend unlike these I do not like are the current live-action Disney remakes. This trend is not necessarily based on a genre like what ‘Star Wars’ for sci-fi but instead the trend of these remakes are based on a format, the format of redoing their classic animated films but instead of animation, it is filming actors recreating the moments with a lot of CGI. It all began with 2010’s remake of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ directed by Tim Burton. After that divisive but billion dollar grossing hit, Disney realised what to devote to in the market. Disney is not entirely greedy. While their primary concern is to make money, they still aim to make quality films and television overtime. But this filmography of theirs to me is a cash-grabber. The current line-up includes the aforementioned ‘Alice’, ‘Maleficent’, ‘Cinderella’, ‘The Jungle Book’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and even a sequel to ‘Alice’. If you skim through news articles about upcoming Hollywood blockbusters, you will find something about a remake of ‘Mulan’, ‘The Little Mermaid’, ‘Dumbo’, ‘101 Dalmatians’, ‘The Lion King’ and more. There are even sequels in development for the current remakes. It makes sense, they are commercially successful and critically praised to some extent. This trend is significant because they share similar characteristics and flaws other than the fact they are remakes. Reasons why they are in summary unsatisfying depend on adapting their source material or problems the remakes have themselves. So, here is a list explaining why.
1: Excessive: What is the usual running time for the 20th century versions of ‘Alice’, ‘Beauty’, ‘Jungle Book’ and others? Around 80 or 90 minutes. It makes sense, films mainly geared to children are around this time running but can still appeal to older audiences. The remakes, on the other hand, are longer, which is fair for live-action blockbusters. If you average the lengths of the remakes since ‘Alice’, it is 110 minutes. To clarify, just because they are longer than their animated source material does not provide a superior or inferior product. However, it is a symptom of a problem; adding more than it needed to be. Whether it is new characters or plot points, these remakes loses focus as a result of adding more story out of a supposed incompleteness or it is apparently more complex. 1951’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ has a basic objective for the character Alice. She encounters the colourful and eccentric characters while developing a range of emotions like confusion, sadness to uptight. This kind of simplicity overall produces an appealing film. The remake on the other hand, chucked in overt themes of politics, a vague historical context for Alice’s world, unexplored relationships and little foreshadowing to character decisions like the Mad Hatter’s break-dancing or Alice’s exploration to China in the end. Disney, this is ‘Alice in Wonderland’, not ‘Game of Thrones’. And don’t get me started on ‘Maleficent’. 1959’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is not perfect. It had basic heroes and villains with Maleficent serving the latter. The original provided no clear motivation for Maleficent cursing the baby but she was enjoyably austere, stern, devious and craving the moment. In Angelina Jolie’s version, the writers gave her a backstory to make her the hero but it did not add up. If you are adding something new, add something relevant, refreshing and reminding of what made the original a classic.
2. Style: Another issue is all the scenery or effects chewing up the scene too much. These movies no doubt have impressive visuals. ‘Beauty’ has a great design of the castle. The costumes in ‘Cinderella’ are lovely to loo at. ‘Jungle Book’ had backgrounds of the jungle you would be convinced they are real but are actually computer generated. While they are praised and filled with accolades, but personally they do not fit the films well. They always seem to show off, like General Tarkin in ‘Rogue One’. It is impressive with the effort and how much they recreated the original actor, but it is still an CGI effect to the audience. I share the sentiment for the remakes. ‘The Jungle Book’ won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and for good reason. The backgrounds mentioned earlier and the animals. While at times they move awkwardly or the lip movements were off-putting, they were still a highlight. The problem, however, is communication. The acting from Mowgli is not bad neither are the voice actors but the effects get in the way of effective interaction. The original was 100% 2D animated and even though it was not Disney’s best animation, partly because of how sketchy the characters were designed, it was convincing that Mowgli was communicating with Baloo, Shere Khan or other characters. In the Jon Faverau-directed remake, while the CGI is good, the animals are not realistic enough to engage with a real-life human actor, so this results into partly awkward acting from Mowgli and animals looking too lifeless at times. This also applies for Alice with the Wonderland characters like Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and for Belle with the household appliances. These movies are not the only ones to do this. What about for example, K2-SO in ‘Rogue One’? It talks or physically interacts with the human actors, but that was a robot with an abstract design that includes minimal facial features and no lip movement so it was convincing that a robot was communicating with the main characters. The CGI characters have more human features and complex designs. CGI is everywhere now, but its merits depends on how it fits in the scene.
3. Casting: This issue is not exclusive to the remakes. It happens with Disney’s originals. But the remakes share this problem in nearly all of them compared to the problem occurring in a minority of Disney animated films from ‘Snow White’ in 1937. The animated ones usually did not hired big names to voice their characters. The most famous ones were acclaimed character actors. But since Robin William’s turn as the Genie in 1992 ‘Aladdin’, later films brought a celebrity to voice a character. Some celebrities made a legitimitely good voice performance like James Woods in ‘Hercules’ or the cast of ‘Emperor’s New Groove’. Other celebrities felt like they were hired out of needing a token A-lister like Mel Gibson or Demi Moore in ‘Pocahontas’ and ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’. The remakes copied the bad aspect of celebrity casting. They include Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter because he works with Tim Burton, a too glamorous looking Angelina Jolie as Maleficent and the unfitting voices of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johanson in ‘The Jungle Book’. The most woeful is Emma Watson as Belle. Watson’s singing sounded force as if she was trying to hit the notes required but with no added emotion or character to the singing. She rarely flowed from one note to another compared to Belle’s original actor, the Broadway trained Paige O’Hara. This does not happen for all big names acting in the remakes but the casting in these films are too obsessed with celebrity and not with talent unfortunately.
4. Source material: One question I have while seeing each remake. Are they trying to copy the original films or taking a new direction character or story-wise? When I first saw ‘Alice’, I was under the impression it would follow the original’s plotline. It shares the same title and the marketing resembled it. However, while watching it, I was befuddled whether Alice is the same age as the original because she’s proposed by a man. There was the apparent naming of the world as Underworld, not Wonderland. Is Alice seeing these characters the first or second time? Who is this White Queen? A dragon? China? Is this a sequel to the original or a retelling? Why is this called Alice in Wonderland?! The film is so unsure of itself by the title and the fact that it exists with an older film from the same company. How about ‘Maleficent’? Maleficent does the things like in ‘Sleeping Beauty’ with the cursing of Aurora, and the storyline that Aurora is put into hiding. But why include new aspects in the story like how Aurora’s father is the antagonist, or making the prince less contributory to the plot? Is this like ‘Wicked’ where they really tie into the original ‘Wizard of Oz’ story, or a completely new story? Problems like these make an inconsistent identity for the live action remakes.
5. Character: Except for ‘The Jungle Book’, all of the remakes are led by females. Most of their source materials have a bad reputation for portraying women as stereotypical, too subservient and following the ‘damsel in distress’ trope. And to some degree it is true. For example, Aurora is known for having a very good design and singing voice but that is it. A lot of the characters’ mothers are dead or unexplained, like Belle. The remakes aim to subvert these cliches and keep up with changing attitudes towards women. However, this becomes a problem. Doug Walker of Nostalgia Critic explained in his reviews on ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Alice’, “A good writer focuses on what a character is, not what a character isn’t”. Sure Alice did not show much strength in the original, so what? It was her journey, her emotions and her interactions that build a character. In 2010, she’s given a sword to wield instead. An expedition of China with little context provided. Make a twist on the famous kiss from ‘Sleeping Beauty’ even though ironically that twist was done before with ‘Frozen’ and ‘Wicked’. Give information about Belle’s mother even though her relationship with her father was developed enough. I am not making a critique on these new attitudes, but they are there for the sake of change and not necessarily making a compelling lead.
These live-action remakes to me are like the direct to DVD sequels of the 1990s and 2000s. I do not even hate all these films. They range from bad to decent. But for every filmography of actual good Disney films, whether it is Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars or their own animated films, there is going to be a series of movies where their existence was mainly more money. There will be more to come, with the closest one being ‘Mulan’ in 2018. But this is a fad. It will gradually disappear but unsure when. The most important thing to remember is that the original films of the released ones and even the upcoming ones are still seen as re-watchable classics and are likely to appeal to the next generation as much as the previous one.
