For the past few years, Walt Disney Productions has embarked on the difficult task of remaking their classic animated movies to live action features. This is not the first time Disney dipped into live action movies; we saw this in 1996 with the live action version of 101 Dalmatians.
In 2014, Disney began to remake their most classic movies. They began with Maleficent, a new take on the Disney princess movie Sleeping Beauty. In this movie, the protagonist was Maleficent, not Aurora. This allowed us to see a new view of this age old tale. While it followed the main plot of Sleeping Beauty, creators tweaked details, making it a new movie itself not just a live action remake.
In 2015, Disney came out with the live action remake of Cinderella that brought a new perspective on the story. The animated classic of Cinderella came out in 1950, and 65 years later this story returned to screens. This movie did not contain all the same songs, and it introduced a new song to the story, the old English folk song “Lavender Blue.” We saw a beautiful new take on the gorgeous princess dress. When watching this movie, I was overcome with a sense of wonderment, and, most importantly, I did not feel like I was watching the same movie.
Two years after these successful movies were released, Disney came out with the live action Beauty and the Beast. In my opinion, this movie was a huge disappointment. The dress was a horrid, dull yellow and was in no way a ball gown for the time period being portrayed. In other words, it did not do the animated dress justice.
It contained all the same songs and the script was almost exactly the same as the original. I felt I was watching the same movie and preferred the original, animated version. This is no discredit to the actors in this movie; they did a great job. However, I felt that having Emma Watson as “Belle” was a bad decision, because our generation will always see her as the iconic character “Hermione Granger” from the Harry Potter series. It was hard for me to see her as Belle and not a time traveling Hermione Granger. So, I would classify this movie as a remake, and, compared to the original, it was not well done.
There is a reason classics are called classics. Almost everyone knows these movies, making it a very difficult task to remake them. However, it does not look like Disney will be backing down any time soon. A live action version of The Lion King just came out, and Mulan will be coming out this year with many others in the near future. I am not opposed to the idea of remaking a classic, I just warn Disney do their best work because these classics deserve nothing short of the best.