What Are Your Thoughts On Disney Doing Live Action Remakes of Its Animated Films ?

I'm not a huge fan of Disney. I have a few on Blu-Ray but I haven't seen a Disney film in the cinema since a late night showing of the original Dumbo about 25 years ago. And I'm unlikely to go and see any in the cinema in the future. But there again I'm not their target audience.
As I see it Disney are doing two things.
The first is future proofing themselves with new content for streaming, merchandising and for their Parks. The box office of the cinema is of less importance to them, than what they can generate in the longer term.
To that...
The second thing I see, is that the audiences demand different thing from those of 30-40-50 years ago, which is when some here may have watched Disney films for the first time in the cinema.
I love the original Dumbo and my favourite part is "When I see an Elephant fly".
But those Crow singers are straight from Minstrel shows and blackface, one is even called Jim Crow, in case we weren't getting the meaning. They are racist to modern taste [it was racist then but we seemed not to have cared as much]. For me that doesn't stop it being a great scene but it could not and should not be done that way now. The current target audiences expect different. Disney are looking at how things are changing and reacting.
Are they getting right?
I don't know.
I haven't watch the new films and Disney are not looking to my ticket to make their costs back.
As for Snow White in particular, there are so many problematic issues in that film [if you want to treat them as such] that I can't see how a film could now work unless they are using the title as little more of hint than anything else
 
CupofJoe said:
I'm not a huge fan of Disney. I have a few on Blu-Ray but I haven't seen a Disney film in the cinema since a late night showing of the original Dumbo about 25 years ago. And I'm unlikely to go and see any in the cinema in the future. But there again I'm not their target audience.
As I see it Disney are doing two things.
The first is future proofing themselves with new content for streaming, merchandising and for their Parks. The box office of the cinema is of less importance to them, than what they can generate in the longer term.
To that...
The second thing I see, is that the audiences demand different thing from those of 30-40-50 years ago, which is when some here may have watched Disney films for the first time in the cinema.
I love the original Dumbo and my favourite part is "When I see an Elephant fly".
But those Crow singers are straight from Minstrel shows and blackface, one is even called Jim Crow, in case we weren't getting the meaning. They are racist to modern taste [it was racist then but we seemed not to have cared as much]. For me that doesn't stop it being a great scene but it could not and should not be done that way now. The current target audiences expect different. Disney are looking at how things are changing and reacting.
Are they getting right?
I don't know.
I haven't watch the new films and Disney are not looking to my ticket to make their costs back.
As for Snow White in particular, there are so many problematic issues in that film [if you want to treat them as such] that I can't see how a film could now work unless they are using the title as little more of hint than anything else
Click to expand...

The Box iffy results have not been great.
 
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BAYLOR said:
The Box iffy results have not been great.
Click to expand...
And thats my point. Of course they love to do $1B in the theatres, but they are really looking to the $7.99 a month they can get from several million homes for the next 20 years and the sale of theme park holidays. And Lunch Boxes. There seems to be a lot more tie-in merch around at the moment.
 
Blimey, Jim Crow! That's a bit on the nose, even for back then.

Disney will never get it right because there is an entire industry based on getting mad at pop culture. Anger sells. There was no band called Mild Annoyance Against The Machine and no website called Requires Disapproval. People make careers out of this stuff. I'm standing up for the little guys! Now subscribe to my patreon like a good little rugged individualist.

So I think Disney should do whatever suits them best. My hope is that they make things which are artistically good, whatever that means. It's pretty clear that a Jim Crow routine in a kids' cartoon can't stand, so they will have to do something or risk Dumbo being effectively forgotten - which means it will generate no money. Personally, I'd prefer something entirely new, but a good remake could be fine. Sadly, it could also be artistically bad. No matter what, though, it will be hated. Haters gotta hate, otherwise they'd have to work for a living like the rest of us schmucks.
 
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My growing conviction is that movie industry has virtually reached the point (which the exception of a few genuinely brave indies) where it can no longer tell a good story, because the elements that go into a good story are offensive to the people who decide what movies get made. Or put it this way: real life and ideology don't mix.
 
Most people who watch Dumbo aren't even aware of Jim Crow laws--or they realize that parody and caricature are part of cartoon satire.
The crows in Dumbo and Uncle Remus in Song of the South are more important to the story than Sam in Casablanca. The crows show Dumbo how to fly and Remus inspires children to see wonder in Nature. What does Sam do? He sings a banned song and scurries away.

They made a big deal about Barbie and "Bombie" (as I call the nuke movie) getting some audience but that doesn't really change the fact that these were niche market films. The so-called mainstream action fan isn't interested in either one.
And Sound of Freedom is also niche market.
The fact that Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones etc are not doing as well as they expected (I assume)--they were meant to be mass appeal films.

I don't think the owners care actually. For them it is like printing a leaflet. Greasing the wheels of machinery.

And this claim that Sound of Freedom was opposed by Disney.
Who are they kidding?
Disney has the power to torpedo any film from theatrical distribution if it really wanted to.
When they were shutting down FOX films from retro cinemas in 2019--the owners of those theaters were afraid to speak on record.
That's how much they feared the company wrath.

And all three--Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Sound of Freedom have a specific political agenda which they don't hide.
It may suggest that the tentpole has burned out--but what does that leave? Niche market political films?
 
I've read/watched a couple of things recently saying Disney's streaming model is heading for disaster, and they make sense. Disney needs to keep making new contact to keep people on its streaming platform, but because this new content is remoulds of old stuff, it leads to brand dilution and puts audiences off. Plus their movie costs tend to come in way too high, often because of reshoots. The only way out of the mess is to make well-written, lower-budget content using new IPs.

As for Snow White, I hated the cartoon version and can't imagine why anyone would want this new one.
 
CupofJoe said:
This quite an interesting read...
www.bbc.co.uk

Disney's Snow White: Has the fairy tale already gone sour?

The forthcoming remake of the 1937 animation is facing a backlash for its new interpretation.
www.bbc.co.uk
Click to expand...
The problem is--they have no coherent artistic desire to make a new version. There's no passion for that. They don't even like fairy tales. It's a message vehicle, that's all. Their entire incentive seems to be political message, and it just guarantees diminished returns. You can't do good work under those conditions.
The Piers Morgan interview is real fluff because you got someone in the UK complaining about a film made on another continent discriminating against dwarves.
He should really be focused the sorry state of UK film independence and expression, not what global Hollywood is doing.
 
KGeo777 said:
The problem is--they have no coherent artistic desire to make a new version. There's no passion for that. They don't even like fairy tales. It's a message vehicle, that's all. Their entire incentive seems to be political message, and it just guarantees diminished returns. You can't do good work under those conditions.
The Piers Morgan interview is real fluff because you got someone in the UK complaining about a film made on another continent discriminating against dwarves.
He should really be focused the sorry state of UK film independence and expression, not what global Hollywood is doing.
Click to expand...
I don't think Disney are trying to set out a proactive message in their films.
If anything I think Disney is desperately trying to second guess the rapidly change tastes and positions of their target audience [10 -25 yo?] and trying to make a product that fits them.
Disney can't afford to get "cancelled", and can't reshow much of its old product because the audience's expectations have moved on.
And it isn't making product with a [possible] socio-political message, just for the hell of it.
I am a middle age middle class man, Disney is not looking to me for my approval but at the tweens and teens that might pay money to see their films and buy the merch.
Those in the teens and twenties that I know have a very different view on the world to mine.
I guess my parents thought the same about me.
All culture issues aside, from what I've read, some of the recent remakes were just not good films.
Films should not be made because they tick boxes, as you say there should be an "artistic desire".
A "message" may come with that, but the story has to come first.
 
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