“The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Cinderella,” “The Little Mermaid,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” “The Jungle Book,” “Mulan,” “Aladdin” and “Snow White” are all animated films that have a much-less-liked live-action version.
With all these remakes, there is one question worth asking: what are the benefits, if any, to making live-action films of previously animated movies?
Sophomore Aven Handshy likes his position out of the spotlight and on the fence. He says, “Unless you’re going to put a new spin on the movie, [do not make it]. I feel like a lot of the time it’s completely unnecessary.” Handshy asks the question we are all dying to know: “Why mess with a movie that’s already good and just happens to be animated?” he says.
There are no benefits, according to Head of School Don Schawang: “The only argument I have heard is that it reintroduces a subject to a younger audience. Ever since I’ve been a kid, Disney has reissued its movies. Every year another Disney film [like] ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Dumbo,’ [etc.], movies that were made … before I was alive, would be reissued and kids would go to see [them],” he says. Continuing, Schawang says, “The idea that all children, not that animated films are for children, but that all children, must have something new is kinda insulting … I’m hard pressed to think of a single live action remake that was as good as the animated original.”
Faculty member Melissa Johnson has a slightly opposing opinion: “A friend of mine was a rehearsal pianist for ‘The [live-action] Little Mermaid.’ He got to work with all the actors in that and help them with their vocals, … [like] Javier Bardem and all of them. What he would say is that when he was a little kid, like three [years old], he would go around his house singing the songs from ‘The Little Mermaid,’ and it was very cool that he got to work on a version of it. It is nice to think of a new generation and a way to include workers and also audiences in celebrating something in a new way,” she says. Johnson follows up by saying,“It is hard when you really love something, and it can feel like when someone is recreating it, it somehow takes away from the original … I think it’s helpful if you can somehow think of them as separate entities.” In regards to stealing the spotlight from the original, Johnson says, “I think it’s a way to get new generations as fans, and after they see the new one, they might be interested enough to go and visit the old one.”
Junior Tristan Wentling unfolds his seat next to Handshy on the fence by saying, “I don’t typically like the live-action version … I feel like some directors’ whole point of adapting a movie is to change the story with their own [take, but] it creates a new medium for the director and writers to retell the story in their own way … It’s a good thing … It’s retelling the story for a new audience [made] of new people, who may not have heard [the story] before … It’s like recreation or reinterpretation.” Wentling argues that there is a right way to do it, and he says, “With the new ‘Snow White’ movie, it seems like [the directors] aren’t really trying to tell the same story, and [they are] just using the original story as a medium to create something completely different … to put their own ideas into the movie.” He argues that this is not the way to do it, saying, “It just seems a bit unoriginal to leech onto an old [movie] just to put your own stuff into it.”
With all of this back and forth, there is one thing that we can all agree on: “It’s a cash cow. That’s all it is,” says Schawang. “I feel like a lot of the time it’s just a cash-grab,” says Handshy. “It’s just a money grab,” says Johnson.“It can also be a cash-grab,” says Wentling.
Well, if these films are disliked, let us hope they can at least do the one thing they are best at and take our money in exchange for us to complain about the production. You get tickets. I’ll get popcorn. See you all Friday at 7:30!
