Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard about Disney's plans to make live-action remakes of their classic films. They've already remade "Alice in Wonderland", "Sleeping Beauty" ("Maleficent"), "Cinderella", and "The Jungle Book". The plan will continue with various remakes like a Tim Burton directed "Dumbo", "Beauty and the Beast", and "Pete's Dragon". This move has been heavily criticized, and not without good reason. Critics say that remakes are lazy and that originality in the movie industry is dying. Some claim that the live-action movies just rehash stories that people have seen time and time again. One of the most common criticisms is that Disney is remaking these simply to rake in some easy money, and while that may be true, it begs the question: why? Why is it that Disney knows they will make enormous amounts of money from these movies? I think that Disney knows what people like me believe; remakes are not lazy or low-quality.

Disney has perfected the art of making money from its films. The remakes have been successful and will probably continue to be successful for a few reasons. A major key to the successes of these movies is that people are nostalgic. We'll see the re-release of "The Lion King" in theaters because we love it, and the same goes for a live-action remake of "Cinderella". No matter how many times I've seen the original Disney version of "Cinderella", you can bet I shelled out the money to see the live-action remake when it hit theaters. There is something that Disney movies tap into when you're raised with them that makes them such an integral part of us, so when we see something coming out by Disney we see it even if we know it's just the same thing we've seen a hundred times before.

Another reason these movies are successful is that they are well done. Disney doesn't decide to make these movies and not put effort into making them. In "Cinderella", for example, Lily James wore eight different versions of the iconic blue Cinderella dress. The dresses easily took hundreds of hours of man-power to create, yet Disney made sure the effort was put in to make them look amazing. Even the story has elements about it that make it different from the original film, and while re-hashing the story seems lazy, it still takes work to make it different and to mold certain choices around the actors and actresses in it.

Something that makes the live-action remakes different, and often times even better than the original films, is the actors and actresses themselves. There is something that is just inherently different about an animated character and a live actor or actress. While we may be attached to an animated character like Belle from "Beauty and the Beast", when we see her portrayed by an actress like Emma Watson, we feel something different entirely. I think this has to do with the attachment we feel to our fellow human being that we can't feel to an animated character, but whether that is the reason or not, there is no denying that live actors change a story. We can watch the animated version of "The Jungle Book" over and over, but when we see Mowgli played by an actual human being surrounded by animals, it creates an entirely different movie-going experience.

Many people will disagree with me, but I really don't think that live-action remakes of classic Disney films are lazy or bad. In the case of "Cinderella", I felt more moved by the live-action than the original. That may just be the fact that Lily James embodied the idea of "have courage and be kind", but I think it has more to do with the live-action making people feel something that animation doesn't make us feel. With Disney, it's pretty difficult to do wrong by films, so I'm confident that their future live-action films will only continue to change the idea that live-action remakes are lazy. I guess we'll have to wait for the next one to see.