By Isabella Diaz
Walt Disney studios has been around for a long time. From their first animated film Snow White and the seven Dwarfs in 1937 to Wish in 2023. Disney’s animated films are popular and well loved by adults and children. The recent live action remakes of these old animated films haven’t been so good, though. They started off strong in 1996 when they made a live action remake of 101 Dalmatians. After that, they made many more great remakes like The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, The Lion King, Aladdin, and Dumbo. Some remakes like Maleficent and Mulan had some story changes and weren’t exactly like the animated versions, but were still amazing movies. After so many remakes, I feel like viewers were hoping for something new but instead we got more remakes which was disappointing to say the least.
Starting off with 2023’s remake of The Little Mermaid, the movie wasn’t as good as it could have been in my opinion. I am confused as to why Disney would choose this movie to remake because of all the underwater visuals it has. The whole movie is practically under water, and that is more work for the visual effects people when making the film; so the movie choice of remake didn’t make sense. Especially after watching Avatar the Way of Water, the visual effects in The Little Mermaid could not compare. After having the main characters casted to look just like the animated versions in their previous movies, I can’t say I wasn’t surprised when they casted Halle Bailey as Arial; but she pleasantly surprised me with how well she fit her role when I watched the movie. She was a great Arial, even though I do still wish they made her hair a brighter red and her tail more teal and less purple. But those are just little costume things that I find myself caring about. Overall, it wasn’t a bad movie, but it was kind of an unnecessary remake.
Next is the upcoming remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs set to release on March 21, 2025. You can’t even get me started on how much I think this movie shouldn’t come out. I can’t say anything about the movie as a whole because it hasn’t even come out yet, but based on what I have seen in the trailer and news I don’t think it will be good. Starting off with the casting I have a problem with the way they used cgi to make the dwarfs instead of casting actors with dwarfism. I think this was a perfect opportunity to cast actors with dwarfism for the roles of the seven dwarfs, but yet again Disney disappoints me by using cgi and not giving these actors a memorable role.
Then, there is the costume design. I can’t get over the fact that the dress looks like something you could get at Spirit Halloween. This is because of the bright yellow skirt and the material it was made out of. They even forgot Snow’s iconic bow at the top of her head which would have made that awful Lord Farquaad hair look a little better. Last but not least is the story change. I have no clue what they are going to do, but I know that the prince isn’t going to be the one to save her. I honestly don’t even know how this is Snow White at this point. If they wanted to make a movie where the “prince doesn’t save the girl and she saves herself,” then they literally could have just made another movie instead of changing the whole story to an original animated film. I think what Disney needs to do is stop remaking their old movies just to change everything about them and just come up with an original idea.
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