Vaiana 2 – The Great Adventure
If I had to describe Disney’s live-action remakes of the studio’s beloved classics in just one word, it would be lackluster. The House of Mouse has rebooted a number of its old cartoons and began rebooting them in earnest in 2010. Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton, although the current project was effectively running at full speed in 2015 Cinderella (Maleficent appeared the year before, but was more of a spin-off than a remake of Sleeping Beauty).
Previous films like 101 Dalmatians came out before Disney had any real organized effort to remake everything. In total, there have been over 20 remakes, the last of which –The Little Mermaid—will be released in theaters in 2023. It was actually better than I expected, but still felt lifeless and monotonous compared to its animated counterpart. And good luck humming the new tunes. As much as the live-action adaptation falls short of the original animation, the music was an even bigger disappointment.
This is the theme of Disney’s live-action remakes. Even the better ones fail to capture the magic of the animated classics. Beauty and the Beast is one of the better remakes, but stands in the shadow of perhaps the best of all Disney animated princess films. Others, like Mulan, are really embarrassing. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch it Peter Pan and Wendy.
Here is the incredible new trailer for Vaiana 2 – The Great Adventure:
I liked Vaiana – The wonderful world of love quite a lot, although it is far from my favorite Disney Princess movie. I still rank Rapunzel – Tangled Again as the best of the “new” Disney Princess cartoons, although I like Vaiana – The wonderful world of love better than the completely overrated Frozen Movies.
That’s all beside the point, because animation is where Disney excels. This looks better than any of the live-action remakes simply because it actually uses color and (perhaps ironically) looks so much more alive. The Little Mermaid replaced all those colorful singing and dancing fish with fish that basically looked like real fish, and the results were pretty awful. All the joy that poured out of the screen during the original film Under the Sea was missing in the live-action version.
Dear God, why?
I suppose Disney is starting to realize this to some extent, which is why the first trailer for Snow White is so much more saturated and animated looking, but then why not just a new animated Snow White instead? I would be much more pleased with animated remakes of these films, even though I am generally quite happy with the originals. An animated Peter Pan could get rid of the “why is the red man red” stuff. Snow White was one of the weaker animated films, so a really great remake of it would be great. Others, like Robin Hood, are just perfect as they are – but they would still make better animated remakes than live-action. And why The Lion King “real” when you could use modern technology to create a new animated version that was just as colorful and vibrant as the original?
Disney is one of the most confusing studios ever. I don’t understand many of their business decisions, including practically their entire plan with Star Wars, it’s just such a mess. Marvel was a great success, but in recent years that success has slipped. The company has to rely on its strengths: The MCU and star Wars are most popular with boys – focus on this target audience when creating your projects. Disney princess stuff is most popular with girls and families and is most successful when animated (although it is not a princess movie, the huge success of Inside Out 2 should remind Disney that the quality of storytelling is more important than any other consideration).
Anyway, here I am just swimming against the wind. That is the fate of the lonely critic. Write on my tombstone: “Old man shook his fist at the clouds.”
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