The Trailers Thread III

[Shepherd]

To be absolutely honest, the first couple live-action Disney remakes were really good -- Cinderella and Maleficent in particular, because they incorporated some unexpected deconstruction and offered a different look at their stories.  The next couple weren't bad.  But now it seems like Disney is just churning them out just because it's what they've been doing for a decade or more now, and what was originally an innovative way to put a new spin on some of their classic movies has turned into an endless stream of scene-for-scene remakes that succeed just as well as that Psycho remake a few years ago did -- which is to say not at all.

But still I hold out hope one of the newer films will remember what made the first few really stand out.

I actually saw the recent live action Lilo and Stitch because a family member wanted to watch Mission Impossible, a movie I had even less interest in seeing, so we went to the theater together to watch our respective films. It played like a direct-to-video movie (because it was originally meant to be direct to streaming), but was adequate for what it was, and did in fact change up a bunch of stuff from the original. It wasn't high cinema, but I didn't expect it to be, and it seemed like the sort of thing kids would enjoy.

Other than that, the only live action remake I've bothered to watch was Beauty and the Beast. The production values were higher, since it was meant to be seen in theaters, and there were a few tweaks (most notably a line of voiceover dialogue explaining why the villagers didn't know there was a giant castle a short ride outside of town), but I definitely liked the original animated version better.