Originally published at: Disney's live-action Lilo & Stitch movie has found its lead | Boing Boing
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They’ve been pulling this nonsense since the mid-90s (remember the first live-action remake of The Jungle Book?) and one of the most amazing things about this trend is how little success any of the live-action films have had capturing the popular imagination.
If you ask an average child to picture Belle or Baloo or Simba or the Genie from Aladdin they’ll almost invariably think of the cartoon versions even though those films hit theaters decades before any of today’s children were born.
There’s something especially sad about adapting Lilo & Stitch this way since that was the film that (at least temporarily) breathed life back into Disney’s 2D Animated feature film division at a time when the studio was ready to can it entirely and go full CG.
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Here is how I would do it (nobody asked but)…
Zach would wear a costume (dirty broadway Elmo for-tourist-picture-quality), with his full face with beard in view for the whole movie.
Mic drop.
(Profit?)
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Live action remakes will continue until morale improves!
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Why is it almost never a 2D animated remake of a classic live-action Disney film? I mean, I’m not saying an animated version of The Cat from Outer Space or The Million Dollar Duck would be good, but they almost certainly wouldn’t be any worse.
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Scratch all that… Here is a list of Disney Live action films:
Can we consider the animated Robin Hood as a remake?
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That’s actually an awesome idea. If they got good writers and artists they could do some cool stuff with those characters. Someone needs to make some exec at Disney think they came up with this idea.
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They’ve remade them but I don’t think they’ve made animated versions of them. I think that could be cool if they didn’t do it half assed. Some of those live action films had creative ideas but were just limited by the special effects of the time and the campy old school acting in the disney studios. There have been awful animated versions of live action films in general for tv… I’m thinking bill and Ted… not great. But the ghostbusters series was pretty popular… neither of those were Disney or features… but maybe the closest to this idea…
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I corrected my comment to better reflect what @Brainspore was asking! I figured maybe there is one possible one (see above now).
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I bet Gene Siskel wouldn’t have walked out of The Million Dollar Duck if it was rewritten as a cartoon featuring Professor Ludwig Von Drake.
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Of all the Disney cartoons features, Lilo & Stitch is one that least needs a live action remake, because it’s a perfect movie just the way it is. I love it to death—it’s one of my top 10 movies of the 21st century. All movies, not just cartoons.
I was a huge fan of Chris Sanders singular illustration style long before it was announced he’d direct L&S. He was supposed to follow it up with Bolt, but they took that away from him and made it the typical 3D/CGI follow-the-leaders visual pablum all the other Disney cartoons were becoming in the aughts. (I refused to ever watch it, in solidarity). And even though he went on to make How to Train Your Dragon in 3D, I couldn’t resist how his character designs still won through.
Now what might be interesting, instead of a straight up remake, is a prequel story where we see how Dr. Jumba got from Experiment #1 through #625.
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As a child, my mom thought it would be a good idea to take my brother and me to see “The Horse In the Gray Flannel Suit.” It was such a stinker I made enough fuss that my mom took us out. Good riddance!
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There was a good stretch of the 1960s and 1970s when someone at Disney decided they needed to make a shit-ton of mediocre comedies and Dean Jones was going to get drafted into every last one of them.
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I’m more disappointed about the lack of reporting online about this, which i’m actually pretty excited about because Questlove rocks
Also i’ve mentioned before that one of the likely reasons why Disney is making these live action remakes, beyond dipping into nostalgia is that they’re likely trying to refresh their copyrights into certain properties and characters.
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That’s not how copyright works
Trademarks maybe …
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So what if the Disney live-action updates aren’t good? The only way to get better is to keep doing it. You can ask if it’s worthwhile to get better at this. The answer is clearly no. But they’re going to keep on doing this until they can deliver the best live-action Brave Little Toaster possible.
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For the copyright they can refresh it in the sense that they have an updated version of these characters. Like when Mickey mouse enters public domain, it’ll be a specific version of that character.
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Nowhere in any of that press stuff does it say Zack Galifinakas is playing Stitch. Just that he’s signed on for a role. Because heaven help us if he does. He’s more likely to be playing one of the two incompetent aliens sent to recapture Stitch.
Also, this sucks. Lilo & Stitch is one of my favorite all time Disney 2D animations. Such a wonderful blending of so many strange things that shouldn’t go together. Hawaiian culture; alien beasts; Elvis Presley; family.
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On one hand I think it’s better to see them ripping off their own stories rather than ripping off everyone else’s. On the other hand, this feels very much like the Disney of the 80’s all over again, with all the bad live action movies.
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