Article on all the Disney live action remakes of animated classics

[ShyViolet]

Pretty comprehensive:


http://www.vulture.com/2017/03/beauty-a ... chine.html

[EricJ]

So, we have the audience-targeted "Video pageants", like B&B and Lion King, and we have the "We don't know why either, but we're trying to be fresh!" ones that have absolutely nothing to do with the original, like Pete's Dragon, and the Tim Burton Dumbo. (Seriously, Google up a few rumors on that one if you want to curl your hair... )
And at the end of the day, they come back to Mulan, and the Alice-fangirl well that Started It All.

In between, there are those that only do a little of both, like Cinderella and Jungle Book--and possibly Ritchie's Aladdin, although I'm having bad Sherlock/King Arthur premonitions--that the audience actually sees as good.
Although, granted, much of Cinderella's BO was our surprise that the director stunt-cast Branagh didn't ruin it, and most of Jungle's March '16 business was as the symbolic Anti-Batman.

[Ben]

Personally, I blame 101 Dalmatians.

[ShyViolet]

Right, the 1996 film with Glenn Close. I remember that. I don't blame you...I guess no one at the time thought they were setting up a well that would be dipped into for ages to come...lol.

[Randall]

And does no one remember the 1994 film The Jungle Book? That was the one the *really* started us down this road, and it's already been remade (more or less) itself!!!

[Ben]

"Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book", as it was fully known, was more an attempt to jump on the literary adaptations that a lot of studios, including Disney, were putting out in the 1990s, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and Disney's own White Fang, Huck Finn, etc.

These were ostensibly attempts to film "true" accounts of the original novels, more faithful than previous versions, hence why a lot of them included the authors' names in the actual titles. I thought about going back as far as that Jungle Book, but it wasn't really a remake of the Disney cartoon and was just a regular live-action release from the studio at that point (if we want to get picky and go back further, the 1973 Robin Hood reversed the current trend and remade the early 1950s live-action Disney film starring Richard Todd!).

But Dalmatians was the first time the whole Disney machine got behind a release in the way the animated films had been marketed, with the merchandise (oddly based on the cartoon, as seen in the videogame in the movie), happy meals and saturation marketing and release date of the kind usually reserved for the big animated event movies.

So although Jungle Book (directed by a pre-Mummy Stephen Sommers after he had already done Huck Finn for Disney) did come before Dalmatians, it wasn't tied to the previous Disney cartoon in the way Dalmatians - which *was* essentially a live remake of the cartoon - did, following the same story beats and having Close basically be the animated Cruella in the exact same way as Jolie was Maleficent, and Watson is a wannabe Belle, etc.

I think it can be looked at both ways, but really it's the '96 Dalmatians that first went the genuine live route of a straight remake of one of Disney's earlier cartoon films.

[Dan]

The funny thing is that Sommers' Jungle Book was more Tarzan than a "literary" adaptation of Kipling's book.

[EricJ]

90's Silver Screen Partners Disney was pumping live-actions out on a sausage grinder (was Martin Short in this one too?), but also had few Renaissance movies yet to fall back on, and still had a foot in their mid-80's Ron Miller mode of
A) pumping their Walt-era hits, of which Jungle Book and 101 Dalmatians were still the last two popularly remembered, and
B) still being needled by those 70's complaints that Disney versions "weren't like the original story".

Sommers' "original Kipling version" of Jungle Book was really more of a first-draft for Jungle Book 2, with Mowgli being the poor picked-on fish-out-of-water in the village, but by the time it was being marketed, the trailers and ads showed clips from the animated version, saying "The story comes to life!" They really didn't know what they wanted.

The Glenn Close 101D came out of their early 90's joy over a bit of corporate book-cooking that allowed them to count the new market for VHS sales as "part" of their theatrical grosses if the tape came out within a year of the revival release (and they got away with it for a while, until someone wondered why they were claiming that Fantasia had "outgrossed Terminator 2" ), and under that mathematics, the original 101D had supposedly "made more money than Lion King" and become the "all-time top grossing".
They promptly exploited the popularity--remember when Dalmatian puppies were everywhere at the Disney Store?--with the help of John Hughes (hoping to make his comeback after his "Edmond Dantes" phase of self-imposed exile writing the first Beethoven comedies), and when they tried to ride the Hughes train with the off-canon Robin Williams "Flubber" remake, that promptly de-railed.
The 90's SSP need to quickie-sequelize everything didn't help Glenn Close and Gerard Depardieu in "102 Dalmatians" at the box office, either.

[ShyViolet]

The five stages of watching a Disney live action remake:

https://youtu.be/LtPKx4nZhUs

[ShyViolet]

Just wanted to comment on the trailer for the Aladdin remake: (wasn’t sure if we had a thread yet or not, plus I kind of wanted to address the subject of formerly animated films in general):

I really wasn’t impressed by it. Sure it looked great, but there was NOTHING novel or even remotely original about any of it. I realize that we haven’t seen Smith’s Genie yet, but judging from the visual look/cinematography/atmosphere, there’s really no reason for this film to exist: except, of course, the reason it was made in the first place: the presence of dollar signes in Iger and co.’s eyes... (Plus the irony of seeing the original Cave of Wonders CGI from 1992 replaced by much worse CGI from 2018 is endless...)


This should not be Disney.

[Randall]

Yeah, these films feel pretty pointless to me. A better idea would be to take a mediocre animated film, and reimagine it into something better, rather than remake a classic.

Cinderella was blah. I hated Beauty and the Beast. 101 Dalmatians was weird and uninteresting. Pete's Dragon was just so-so, but at least it was different than the original.

[Ben]

Personally, I couldn’t get past the awfully cheap sounding synth music. I mean, seriously...there are better sounding samplers out there that can sound quite full. They have Alan Menken on board for goodness sake! He can’t be pleased with that! It sounds like one of his demo tracks...from 1991!

Again, though, these are basically the modern equivalent of reissues. Home video and, specifically, digital files have eradicated the "vault" business, so these films fill the void where a traditional reissue would bring about new interest in a classic property. Jungle Book was dormant until Favreau came along...now Aladdin will get a big push that will see spikes for the stage shows and the original animated film (look for a Signature Edition to drop around the same time?).

If it helps to look at them that way, this is all they are: big, lavish, expensive promotional commercials for older properties. A lot of hoopla surrounding a release like this shines a light on things that might otherwise (whisper it) feel dated or be forgotten. This’ll make Aladdin new again for a year or two's worth of promos and product...before the next "reimagining" comes along...

No, it’s not Disney, but for all his massive success and, let’s be honest and fair here, Iger's smart business moves to ensure the company can survive in the ever-changing content landscape, Disney hasn’t really been Disney since the early 2000s.

[EricJ]

An opposing viewpoint from one of the more disgruntled parties:
https://news.avclub.com/original-aladdi ... 1829734506

Yes, can be passed off as "sour grapes", but also highlights just why Disney bet the studio on such a cottage-industry of making the movies, in a new 10's industry where studios hate screenwriters and only make movies that have already been written before by somebody else.

[ShyViolet]

Just ugh.

Poor Terry.





https://screenrant.com/aladdin-movie-wr ... on-remake/


I actually used to read his blog on the business of writing for animation (and writing screenplays in general) years ago...he’s really awesome. Funny too! . Some of his (and his writing partner Ted Elliot’s) other writing credits are the original Shrek (2001), Pirates: Curse of the Black Pearl, and many others as well.

[ohmahaaha]

I guess as long as the movies make bundles of money, there's no reason to not keep doing it. I wouldn't expect to enjoy something that I felt could not be improved upon … but then I did enjoy the recent "Jungle Book."