Throughout the years, Disney has pumped out over 20 live-action remakes of their classic films. From “Lilo and Stitch” to “Cinderella”, the reception of these movies has been mixed at best, with Snow White (2025) getting a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes and Mulan (2020) sitting at a 46% audience score. Though the market is oversaturated with these movies, the real issues come down to two factors: a fundamental misunderstanding of the stories they are adapting and a lack of care in adapting them.
Disney’s stories are beloved by many, with one of the most well-known of these being the movie “Lilo and Stitch”. The film is a touching story about an older sister struggling to keep custody of her younger sister after their parents die, and realizing that family is always connected, even if that family includes a small blue alien.
The original movie dives deep into portraying Hawaiian culture accurately. Audiences see Lilo doing traditional Hula dancing, the characters speaking in Hawaiian, but darker topics are also present, such as the separation of native families in Hawai’i by the US government. This is handled with sensitivity, providing a sense of cultural catharsis for those watching.
The live action rendition, however, is devoid of these positives, and audiences see this in how the original ends compared to the live action. In the animated film viewers see the family staying together, showing how the concept of Ohana, or no one getting left behind, is important to Hawaiians. It also helps to cement the care that was taken in the production of the film, paying attention to the long history of the U.S. Government colonizing Hawai’i and appropriating its culture.
This is starkly different from the live action, which ends with the state separating Lilo and Nani, having Nani moving to the U.S. for college, and receiving a portal gun so she can visit Lilo at any time. What the producers of the live action failed to see, is despite giving Nani a cheap plot device in the form of the portal gun, audiences still see Lilo being taken by the state. This upholds and enforces years of government propaganda saying that indigenous people were unfit to be parents, which led to their kids being forcibly taken from loving families.
In this version of Lilo and Stitch, and particularly this ending, audiences see one of two main problems with many of the live action remakes, a lack of understanding towards what made the original movie so beloved. When movies are given the live action treatment, but take out or change large plot points, it breaks down the original messages that viewers resonated with, clearly highlighting the shortcuts taken for these remakes, but this isn’t the only problem viewers have.
The live action “Little Mermaid” in 2023 is a good example of the second issue that plagues these remakes, which is a lack of color and life. The original 1989 movie was filled with a variety of bright fish, vibrant sealife, and characters with distinct and bright color palettes. The world of this movie felt alive and fully fleshed out from the shimmering golden palace of Atlantica to Ariel’s red hair and Ursula’s bright blue eyeshadow.
The 2023 remake fails to capture this life because its world feels empty and dull, and none of the sets or CGI captures the viewer’s eye. The ocean is no longer filled with a rainbow of different fish or brilliantly colored flora, instead feeling like a gray filter has been placed over the movie, dulling any bit of color which may appear, like Ariel’s blue village dress or her vibrant hair.
Most of the live action remakes suffer from one of these two issues, if not both of them, such as 2020’s “Mulan,” which has beautiful visuals and stunning costume design, but gives Mulan ‘chi magic’ which weakens her character and the fact that her natural cleverness and determination are what led to her saving the day. Another example is 2025’s “Snow White” and how it has both a bland story and an oversaturated color palette that fails to capture the dreamy quality the original movie has, while diluting the core principles of who Snow White is as a character.
One movie which stands out for its quality is 2015’s “Cinderella”, which adapted the core properties of the original story well, and had visuals that stood out and captivated audiences. The costumes in the original movie are simple thanks to the fact that each frame had to be drawn by hand, and small details would have made animating very challenging, but this movie uses its medium well, giving their costumes depth and detail that traditional hand drawn animation cannot capture.
‘“Cinderella” proves that Disney can create good remakes that feature things audiences like, and its ratings prove this, with “Cinderella” (2015) sitting at an 84% Rotten Tomatoes and a 78% audience score, which is significantly higher than most of the other live action remakes. Viewers are willing to watch these movies, if they can see Disney is putting effort into them, but they lose interest when it becomes clear that it is nothing more than a cash grab for the company’s bottom line.
