Do we really need another remake of a film that was already perfect? Disney seems to think so. Even though seeing a live-action movie can bring a strong deja vu to the audience, it doesn’t help if the movie is just made with zero effort.
While the original Disney animated films have heart, charm and creativity, their live-action counterparts often feel like imitations and nothing more. They try to make it realistic and over the top, but at the same time, they fail to bring the same magic that the original movies had, which makes them cringe.
What these remakes lack is the heart that the original films had; they focus on realism and the magic is lost. Animals created through CGI are not able to show emotions, and since they are too realistic, it makes their most iconic songs fall flat. The magic has been replaced by emotionless characters and plain spectacle. Either Disney has run out of ideas for new movies, or they are desperate for money. Maybe it’s both?
Disney’s 2023 remake of The Little Mermaid was supposed to be a fresh update, but what we were given was a very flat retelling of the story, with a change that caused a great controversy all over the internet. Even though Halle Bailey delivers a great performance with her vocals, she is not what the original Ariel looked like. They changed her recognizable red hair color to a more ginger-ish look, making her look less like the original Ariel in the animated film. It doesn’t even feel like a Disney movie anymore, and many scenes in the movie are pointless, adding time with great nothingness.
The iconic fork scene in the original movie is made to show that Ariel is the reason that Prince Eric smiles again and that he starts to be happier when she’s around. Meanwhile, in the live-action version, none of this happens. Instead, Ariel is offered a fork by a vendor, and once she realizes that the use of the fork is not what she thought it was for, she awkwardly puts the fork down and leaves it behind. This shows once again how they are just adding new scenes, without knowing the meaning behind them.
Beyond casting, the story itself made changes that felt underdeveloped or inserted for the sake of diversity. In the live-action remake, Prince Eric is adopted by a Black queen and king, yet the film never explores that dynamic or stops to explain how it fits into the world they’ve created. It comes more like a poor excuse to diversify the cast without putting in the narrative work to support this.
At the same time, the hyper-realistic CGI has stripped away the vibrance of the original, which had colorful underwater scenes. But now these scenes are dull and gray, and characters like Sebastian and Flounder have lost all their personality in these newer, realistic forms.
The Snow White remake has made controversy as well, way before its release, and the majority of it went towards the lead actress, Rachel Zegler. Fans were quick to point out that she did not look like the classic character at all. Snow White is famously described as having “skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony.” The meaning of her name derives from the description made about her, but it loses its meaning if the actress chosen is not even close to the original Snow White described.
Beyond physical appearance, many clips and behind-the-scenes footage have left people unimpressed with Zegler’s performance. Many fans are displeased and describe her acting as lacking the charm and innocence that made the original so memorable.
In interviews, Zegler criticized the original film, calling it “weird” that Snow White is saved by a prince. But let’s remember that she’s talking about a film that was made in 1937, and it is a product of its time. She insisted that the new version would be about “a leader who doesn’t dream about love.” This is ironic because the whole focus of the original film, and the book that was first published in 1812, is on the topic of love.
Disney has built its legacy on imagination, and their artists have been putting their heart into the work they do for the past 100 years. These live-action remakes make it feel like the studio is thinking less about the magic and more about the marketing. They rely on nostalgia, without honoring what made the original films loved by audiences worldwide. These movies not only had the magic in them, but the moral of the stories was something completely different from what they are now, captivating the audience with beautiful, colorful scenes that are memorable to this day.
The new live-action movies simply fall flat. Yes, they may be visually and technically impressive, but they are missing the spark that brings it all together. Disney needs to stop recycling and start using its imagination again to make people feel how they did in years past.
