I don’t think that it is a surprise to anyone that Walt Disney Pictures has been cashing in on all of their previous works by making “live action” remakes. And to their credit, most of them have been good in recent years. Personally I found “Maleficent” to be a step back for the company, but both 2015’s “Cinderella” and 2016’s “The Jungle Book” really impressed me with how well they were as films and how they improved on their original source material. And it should not be surprising to anyone that Disney is doing this because Disney’s made “live action” remakes of their old films before such as “101 Dalmatians” and “Pete’s Dragon”. But then we get to the big news that Disney has hired Jon Favreau to remake the 1994 masterpiece, “The Lion King”.
You can tell by the tone of my writing that I do not find this news enjoyable in the slightest. My first official complaint is not really a complaint at all, just a nitpick: this remake won’t be “live action” but just extremely photorealistic. We saw with “The Jungle Book” that technology has come a long way when it comes to animation. However, here’s the thing: there are no humans in “The Lion King”, meaning that the remake will be a literal remake of the movie.
Like I said, I am not particularly excited about this news. This is because “The Lion King” is one of my favorite movies of all time, and in all honesty, I was dreading the day when this announcement would be made. I will still go see it in theater on opening weekend and cry my eyes out, there is no question about that. However, when I was talking about “Cinderella” and “The Jungle Book”, I had mentioned that their respective remakes improved upon the flaws of the original. To me and many other people, remakes and retellings are only necessary for older stories that either need an update all-around or better technology to convey their stories. The Lion King does not meet either of that criteria in my mind; it is a nearly perfect movie.
One would think that after a week of letting this news sit, I would finally be at peace. That is where one would be wrong. Going along with the announcement of “The Lion King” remake is the new announcement that Disney will also be making a live-action remake of “Mulan” for its twentieth anniversary in 2018. I could go on and on with the same reasons mentioned above about why this upsets me, but I have to remind myself that Hollywood is at its core, a business. Disney also said that they will have an international casting call for the role of Mulan to make us feel better about the project, but we all know that it’s just crowd-control. It is simply just too soon to be making these films. Why not remake something worth being remade like The Black Cauldron? Remember that snore-fest? Well, maybe THAT would be better in live action!
