The Problems with the 'Live Action' Disney Remakes | The Backdrop

[@DrySushi]

Cultural fracking, fuck me that's a perfect analogy

[@MrHalapino13]

So spot on for pinpointing that feeling of increasing fatigue and apathy towards the growing onslaught of 'content' the likes of Disney continues to spew out with wanton abandon

[@Ireallylikeeggs]

Yo it really is

[@Rob-gp6yb]

It's fracking spot on

[@wakeangel2001]

I really hate "live action" adaptations. First of all it implies that animation is a lesser medium, which is BS, then of course is the fact that they aren't live action, just a different animation style. Most of those movies have human actors interacting with more animation that Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Third of all is that this photo-realistic animation has a tendency to age like milk, in a few years people will look at the Lion King "live action" movie as if it was animated on an N-64.

[@yourself1210]

Another thing is that they remove what made the original movie memorable like songs

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

​@@yourself1210It's a worse version of "the thing you liked" in every possible way. And it's not even as if they're trying to hide it. That's the sales speech!

[@kisfekete]

Animator here. Couldn't agree more. Disney is doing what bad clients do. 'Make it like XYZ, just 100% better.' The only difference that they are ripping off their own IPs. It's soul crushing for the animators working on these films, too, 'cos they know that no matter how good their take will be, it will always be regarded as the 'lesser' version when compared to the original 2D animation.

[@stuartmorley6894]

It's IP farming in the most creatively bankrupt kind of way. Instead of trying to iterate on anything they are playing straight to nostalgia with the idea that Disney Adults will take their kids and make a new generation. But why would they grow up and remember these fondly? Answer they won't so instead it's a short term hit to juice the share price, especially now Marvel has fallen off a creative and box office cliff.

[@15thCrypt]

I agree that they can age badly but I never thought of it implying it is superior to animation but most of the time just another way for different studios to take a movie or series from years ago and treat it like a brand new thing for the sake of making money. The same way how some movies used to always have a game or [Movie Title]: The Animated Series. I doubt they are thinking of anything other than how much more money they can make adapting it into another product.

[@LordSusaga]

"Mr Mouse, the data shows that people love Unique Thing for it's uniqueness, but hate Unique Thing 2 for some reason we haven't been able to figure out. Projections for Unique Thing: Reckoning don't look good either. We'll try rebooting it and see if the uniqueness comes back." "Excellent. And the chewing gum?" "Still no flavour, sir. Don't worry, we'll keep chewing it until it comes back."

[@thebluehero7319]

this comment is pure gold. Did you pull this from somewhere or make it up yourself?

[@LordSusaga]

@@thebluehero7319 It was indeed Unique Thing.

[@thebluehero7319]

@@LordSusaga I can't wait for Unique Thing: Reckoning!

[@LocalSlasher]

Sounds like a job for... Man Carrying Thing!

[@TehPwnographer]

Disney is no longer even pretending to be working in the realm of art, they just make content now.

[@nohbuddy1]

Literally have always been that way lol

[@NYKevin100]

Eh... I would argue that the early rubber hose cartoons they started out with (MIckey Mouse and friends) were already "content." Sure, there was artistic merit to them, and they have an important place in the history of animation, but they were primarily created to make money. At the time, nobody would have described them as "art." They were "just cartoons." In retrospect, that's a remarkably short-sighted way of looking at things, but that's beside the point. They were not trying to make art. They were trying to make money.

[@Soul-Burn]

🌍🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀

[@MrProthall]

@@nohbuddy1 Hasn't always been that way, but considering the cultural wasteland that especially the US has become, it's no wonder people want exactly the same but with different colors and lots of bling.

[@nohbuddy1]

@@MrProthall Literally it has. Every corporation is about profit. That is their duty to their shareholders. Disney himself was a piece of shit. Movie studios put out endless westerns because that's what people wanted. Disney wouldn't do remakes if they didn't make a billion like Lion King did

[@babbaganush9659]

Its hard to explain to people why animation isn’t an art form wishing it was live action but you’ve done it perfectly.

[@Desqaw]

"We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective." - Michael Eisner

[@Mentyr]

"But to make money, it is often important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant statement. We must always make entertaining movies, and, if we make entertaining movies, at times, we will reliably make history, art, a statement or all three", as the quote continues. People forget that part. The studios do, too.

[@nohbuddy1]

Yes, they're a corporation

[@edmg7]

@@Mentyrhuh, that does make the sentiment seem a little less cynical and more just pragmatic.

[@Mustafa_AhmedPGH]

Walt Disney would be disappointed.

[@nohbuddy1]

@@Mustafa_AhmedPGH Walt Disney? The famously anti union guy? He was all about profits

[@Zeb364]

The cut from “we get the world we deserve” to the stupid looking lion face really got me lol.

[@Darren_Mooney]

That was maybe the first image that came to me when Nick greenlit the premise.

[@This-Was-Sparta]

Hit the nail on the head, I'd say. I remember seeing a video discussion the Cruella movie and being genuinely confused as to why anyone would care about why she hates Dalmations, as if the original story was somehow worse for omitting that detail. Framing it as an artifact of the original story being stretched to achieve a longer run time makes a lot of sense.

[@tz64nk41]

Also in the rest of the movie she isn't even cruel to dogs, in fact she seems to love dogs! So it's incongruent with the movie's own narrative!

[@Darren_Mooney]

She wants to make a fur coat! That’s why she wants to kill the dalmatians! It’s *in* the movie.

[@AdumbroDeus]

​@@devindaniels1634that's an artifact of another anchor on modern movie-making, Joseph Campbell's monomyth, aka his version of "the Hero's journey". Finding out the baroness is her mother is the "atonement with the father" moment and what we're supposed to get from that is that her atonement with the father is reconciliation via adoption of much of the baroness' persona. Which begs the question, who the heck thought that Joseph Campbell's monomyth was an appropriate framework for a movie about Cruella Deville?

[@GlacialScion]

1:20 It's so appropriate to your point here that I had no idea they already remade Lady and the Tramp.

[@l0stndamned]

I was briefly aware of its existence thanks to some weird internet person having a fuss over the voice cast, and then forgot about it until reading your comment.

[@Darren_Mooney]

I think they did too! (I tried to include as many of them as I could.)

[@benl2140]

When he said there was a remake of Pinocchio, I was like "Wait, what?"

[@Azzamacaza]

The Pinocchio remake got overshadowed by Del Toro's Pinocchio

[@brantbowers6368]

'Dead Air' would be a great name for a Second Wind show that talks about old or forgotten movies/books/radio shows

[@Darren_Mooney]

I’m in!

[@DunantheDefender]

"Cultural Fracking" has to be simply the best way of phrasing it that I've ever heard.

[@Darren_Mooney]

Cheers. Quite proud of it. Another comment points out I can’t take credit for it, but I did stumble on it by myself.

[@rafaelbrandao4059]

PH Santos, a critic from Brazil, when asked "what can be considered a 'live action' film," answered: "live action is whatever they can sell as live action."

[@Darren_Mooney]

I like this.

[@BladeLigerV]

I've been banging the "Animation is freedom" drum for YEARS.

[@well09090]

I think one of the frustrations I have is that the remakes often try to address bad faith critiques people had about the original (Beauty and the Beast comes to mind), remove a certain element of mystery from the original plot, or try to answer questions no one really cared about.

[@TwoPairSA]

Yeah, it's not catering to kids, or even necessarily catering to adults, it's catering to adults who have written or read too many clickbait articles about problems in the originals. And that's not to say the movies are flawless works that should never be touched, but they "correct" non-issues in the clumsiest way possible every time.

[@joshuaanderson4090]

As with all remakes (it seems) they feel the need to retcon it, which is always annoying and pisses me off (lucasfilms with star wars comes heavily to mind). Just leave it alone. We enjoyed it the way it was. You're re-releasing it for nostalgia exploitation. The more you change it the more you undermine your own goal.

[@jorgemontero6384]

Live action as a way to launder content that has some kind of stigma is all around us. See Squid Game: You could write an essay on all of its core influences, like Battle Royale or Legendary Gambler Kaiji, but the mainstream audience that watched Squid Game wouldn't be caught dead watching Kaiji, even if it's telling 90% of the same story, with the same anit-corporatism themes and everything. The animation stops the audience in its tracks.

[@hyperon_ion9423]

And it's almost not by accident either. The Acadamy Awards shoved all animation films into their own category in 2002 due to there being so many animated films coming out. But, the invention of Best Animated Film immediately disqualified all future animation films from competing for Best Picture. The Awards effectively taking the entire medium and shoving it over to the equivalent of the kids' table. Whether or not this was done due to Hollywood Execs fearing animation overtaking them, or the American stigma that animation is for kids is hard to say. Yet, the message was clear: "Animation is lesser than film."

[@araonthedrake4049]

Same goes for the odd stigma anime as a cultural style of animation gets. Studio Ghibli movies are some of the deepest and most serious (and sometimes terrifying) movies I've seen, but 9 out of 10 people will look at the art style and claim that they are children's cartoons (you know, the famous cartoon about a post-apocalyptic world of poisonous nature brought about through nuclear bio-engineered super-weapons that deals with death, decay and war; the one that fits right alongside winnie the pooh's adventures)

[@TARINunit9]

@@hyperon_ion9423 It's almost certainly the "Hollywood Execs fearing animation overtaking them" part, because they tried to do it again for superhero movies. In early 2019 the Oscars was set to introduce a new category "Best Popular Film" solely so they could give it to Black Panther and make everyone shut up about superhero movies. (If you're wondering why they didn't go through with it, someone pointed out you're not allowed to give "separate but equal" to black people anymore)

[@realperson69]

@@araonthedrake4049 Adventure Time was by Studio Ghibli? I never would have guessed.

[@petermann673]

Funny enough I had a converse thought yesterday while watching a Hazbin clip: Broadway musicals should be adapted with animation. Which is a lot of what was the magic of the Disney renaissance. But yeah, the suspended reality of animation and its exaggeration gels incredibly well with the theater of the mind of the stage. Like Cats with the animation of The Aristocats would have been a far, far better film.

[@edmg7]

Musicals and animation tend to go hand in hand because both require the audience to use more imagination than live action does. So our brains just naturally fill in the gaps to see the possibilities rather than look for the inconsistencies.

[@CivilWarMan]

This was literally the stance of Howard Ashman, one of the brains behind the Disney Renaissance. He was the lyricist for The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast (though he died before the latter's release), and before his death he was apparently responsible for the lyrics for Friend Like Me, Prince Ali, and Arabian Nights for Aladdin.

[@troyjardine5850]

Funny enough, Spielberg had plans for a Cats animated musical back in the 90s, only to halt production after the twin bombs of "Fivel goes west" and "We're back a Dinosaur tale"

[@roccolombard965]

...but they already did this! Does nobody remember "Cats Don't Dance?"

[@edmg7]

@@roccolombard965 while it’s a charming enough movie, its almost nothing like the musical Cats beyond the singing cats. It’s not really a good comparison.

[@mikemidwood9661]

This was really top notch. One of those classic "said the things I've thought but couldn't find the words for" videos.

[@Darren_Mooney]

Thanks, that means a lot to me.

[@sovereign9645]

Animation needs to get some more god damn respect, especially in the States. Many of the greatest pieces of television and film ever made have been animated and it’s very tiring seeing so many ignore that fact. Any kind of “live action” remake/adaptation always feels like some kind insult to the medium, even if said remake ends up being good. The whole thing really gets under my skin.

[@CornishCreamtea07]

The saddest part of it, for me, is that the company that pioneered animation throughout the 20th century and strove to make it more than just the thing you saw before your film started or cheap entertainment for your kids on a Saturday morning. Now treats the medium as a lesser form of art, the children's version of the real film.

[@TheVeritas1]

Reminder: former Disney CEO Bob Chapek once openly said that animation was just for kids.

[@CJBooks4]

"Just because something is faithful to the source material doesn't mean it's actually good." Funny, B-Mask just talked about that in his video on the live-action Inspector Gadget movies

[@CivilWarMan]

Another big reason that a lot of the animated features were more economical with their time is because many of them were musicals. Musicals tend to be very tightly plotted because if you can remove a song from a musical and still have the musical make sense, then the song is not doing its job. This problem really became glaring once Disney moved onto the Renaissance films, since while the older animated movies like The Jungle Book had music, they weren't necessarily a core part of the movie the way they were for Aladdin or The Lion King or Mulan. When you start adding or subtracting songs from pre-existing musicals, you need to make a lot of changes everywhere else in the film to either justify the inclusion of the new songs or to replace the absence of the removed songs. This seems to have caused a lot of trouble for Disney, since most of the additions basically have little to no impact on the story other than either padding the runtime or responding to critiques that have been made about the originals. And for movies like Mulan where the music was removed, the changes that were put in its place had very tenuous connections to the original story, so the end product feels like an amalgamation of an abridged version of the original stapled to a different half-finished movie.

[@mewmeister8650]

Gotta love how they had the highest grossing stage musical and just decided not to use any the proven new songs from that.

[@ArykSapien]

I love movies, i love animation, and i love Disney. But I haven’t cared about Disney movies for so long. The last live action Disney movie i saw was Maleficent and i just remembered thinking “i would appreciate this movie so much more if they made it it’s own new fantasy ip.” Just change the name and a couple scenes and it’s so much better because then i’m not comparing it to an incredible Disney movie. I wish cartoon saloon was more successful. They were far from Disney quality, but i still enjoyed the movies so incredibly much.

[@TulilaSalome]

I'm also perhaps a freak for liking it, but it definitely shot itself on the foot by asking us to sympathise with a woman who vents her revenge on a newborn child.it would have been a lot better in many more ways too if it wasnt chained to an existing story.

[@definitelynotapervert5602]

Cartoon Saloon's movies can easily measure up to the best of Disney from any era.

[@RickGladwin]

Maleficent slaps though. I love that the clip he showed was from Angelina Jolie absolutely _crushing_ the despair of that scene.

[@camerondavids2481]

Cartoon Saloon movies being "far from Disney quality" is an incredibly subjective statement. I for one find all of Cartoon Saloon's movies to be an utter delight. In fact, if all they did was try to emulate the Disney approach I doubt that any of their productions would be so stylish and unique. Not to disparage some of Disney's works though, it's not really an easy comparison, both have their own production value and style.

[@MrGriffithsJA]

I was today years old when I realized that Second Wind is also a fart joke. OMG, that's brilliant. Thank you all for your hard work

[@DataSchmuck69]

one of their shows is even called "Windbreakers"

[@dustybunny6716]

Odd, wind breakers I could understand as a fart joke. But I thought second wind was referring to a come back such as "getting your second wind" during a fight. Dead air, that could be a fart euphemism though.

[@Darren_Mooney]

@@dustybunny6716It can be two things!

[@ChenAnPin]

I remember when Disney animation got really confident and better with their tools and workflow that they could even add in "bloopers" as a bonus treat for people who got it on DVDs and such.

[@TheAquilaSamurai]

From what I remember, the bloopers seemed to be mainly a Pixar thing. Only non-pixar Disney 'bloopers' I've seen are Lion King.

[@rhubarbjin]

@@TheAquilaSamurai _Lilo & Stitch_ had some fun teasers where Stitch pops up in other Disney movies and ruins the scene. 😄 (I guess it's not technically a "blooper" but it's in the same spirit IMO)

[@getnohappy]

As an elder Millennial, I feel my future connection to popular culture / sanity is dependent accepting "we're in the age of content, it just is what it is"

[@RAFMnBgaming]

someone's gonna be doing archeology on us and find a weird layer of rock made out of content, and wonder what the hell happened.

[@fix0the0spade]

My mantra is to remember Sturgeon's Law, 90% of everything is crap. As a fellow Millenial I like to pretend the 90s didn't produce mountains of awful pop-culture but it's not true. We Remember The Lion King (I can take you to the cinema I saw it in right now) but The Jungle King or Scooby Doo in Arabian Nights not so much. I was really into Street Sharks, I'm not overly proud of that. There are good animations (and good movies) coming out now, but it takes a few years of distance to really appreciate them.

[@dragonfrog23]

What a treat of a video. I'd completely forgotten some of those "live-action" adaptations even existed!

[@BluePhoenix10]

I think the problem is these are remakes and not just new adaptations. For contrast Disney was involved with 3 different versions of A Christmas Carol and Treasure Island all of them are classics or at least interesting.

[@kkattrap]

"Cultural Fracking" is an amazing term! Looks like it was first coined by Jay Springett and thanks for having it in this video essay. Oh and the Monty Python side by side with the ostrich was actually funny. All the side by sides and overall callbacks in this short video essay were very well thought out. Really I think one thing I like the best about this one is that your voiceover script is as tight as the editing, building from point to point quickly but with excellent sources shown.

[@Darren_Mooney]

Thank you!

[@CJBooks4]

"They become a little less... animated." Great ending point there Darren, one that I completely agree with

[@MyxeQ]

Cultural Fracking. That is a hauntingly evocative description. Ima Use that.

[@Darren_Mooney]

Cheers!

[@CybershamanX]

(7:40) I just watched a behind-the-scenes clip about the storyboards used in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. In it, one of the effects gurus bemoaned the modern day use of computer generated previs when back in the day a tightly storyboarded sequence was all the FX crew needed to get the job done. They said it seemed like a lot more work (and more expensive) to create a rough draft of the scenes rather than just sketching it out in storyboard form. I don't know. That's just what popped into my mind when I watched this part about early animated movies. 😉

[@umarthdc]

Oh boy, seeing those live action to animation comparisons was like seeing a (badly) stuffed animal next to a live one.

[@ThePencilWizard]

To note, it was rumored that Tim Burton’s Alice was less a remake and more of a movie to more closely follow the books

[@rhubarbjin]

I thought that movie was *_very_* explicitly a sequel...? It's late-teenage Alice coming back to a post-apocalyptic Wonderland! Several characters make reference to Alice's previous visit, how she has grown, etc.

[@Unknown-jt1jo]

I've never thought much about "live-action" remakes, but you've made some really interesting points! * Animated movies aren't really respected in the US, so "live-action" remakes launder them into respectability. * It's not even "live-action" anymore, just a different sort of CGI. * Many characters aren't compelling when rendered as "live action," because they're no longer anthropomorphic. * Movies lose a lot of their magic when they have to be photorealistic

[@disposable157]

'cultural fracking' is a brilliant way to refer to this

[@Lastkoss]

This explains why it never grabbed me as some of the originals did. Thank you for the video Daren.

[@syaieya]

Over the last decade I have genuinely worried about what we expect a young person to be able to get attached to in the franchises being pushed. I know that so many people growing up will have push back against the stuff their parents liked, but all of these companies are just trying to repackage/remake/ regurgitate things that were not only made for their parents but in such a way that doesn't stand out from it's original material. Maybe i'm just not big on movies compared to video games but DC, Star Wars, and everything pre Renaissance disney just did not graft itself onto my interests.

[@asodataco]

The Lily James Cinderella shouldn't be roped in with the others. There were major changes and additions to the plot that really improved the story. And the production design was focused on making everything feel magical like it did in the original. There are lots of practical effects rather than just CGI, and all the actors were great. They have the animals personality but didn't try to make them talk. I feel like that movie strikes a perfect balance that the more recent remakes missed.

[@Omnywrench]

I've seen some people cite one of the problems of the live-action remakes being the various decisions to make them more "woke", like making Princess Jasmine's outfit less skimpy, making Ariel and the Blue Fairy black, making LeFou gay, etc. but frankly I feel those are quite literally the least of the films' problems. Aside from the fact that the term "woke" has joined "SJW", "Politically Correct" and "Socialist" in the realm of "Words Rendered Meaningless By Right-Wing Pundits Who Sling Them At Whatever Makes Their Buttholes Clench", these changes to the films are always so inconsequential that if they were reversed, it would neither help nor hinder the movie whatsoever. From what I can tell the only reason they're considered a big deal is because journalists wave them around on social media as drama bait, making some people rant against it, other people rant against the people ranting about it, and others ranting about how the previous two groups are fighting, and so on. It's all cynical engagement fuel, plain and simple.

[@angelnickl]

"Cultural Fracking" is an amazing phrase. I think it has potential to see more use.

[@user-xsn5ozskwg]

This was super good. Your love for the medium of animation is so vibrant and you weave together all the factors that got us here brilliantly.

[@smallbar2012]

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've been proclaiming my frustrations with Disney as a film studio for nearly a decade but am repeatedly met by remarks like, "I thought Cinderella was pretty good." I just wish I could figure out why general moviegoers are so hoodwinked by this creative bankruptcy.

[@NickersonGeneral]

I feel like there's this unspoken consensus among the viewing public that live action film/tv is the pinnacle of how a story can be told, and all other forms are what we resort to when we don't have the budget/special effect capabilities to tell the story in live action. I mean think about it, how many classic Live Action disney films are getting overhyped animated remakes of them? When was the last time you saw a huge marketing campaign about a book adaptation of Inception ? Oh sure, those exist, but no one is going to blow millions of dollars advertising them in the hopes they rake in live action bucks. No one views them as an upgrade, or even what they are: a chance to explore the artistic possibilities of re-telling a story with a new medium that has it's own upsides and downsides. I feel like the backlash to the disney live action remakes are driven by people getting tired of them and them not being very good, not because anyone is realizing this is an incredibly lame way of looking at the nature of storytelling.

[@jcohasset23]

The backlash is likely more due to cynicism that these movies are just being made to make Disney more money from people that grew up with the animated films taking their children or grandchildren to see the live-action version and then, regardless of whether they liked or didn't like the live-action version, the original version which they likely have nostalgia for. The live-action films that have tended to be better received were the animated movies that didn't do so well originally- The Jungle Book, Dumbo, Pete's Dragon or were complete adaptations like Maleficent, but those didn't make the kind of money that live-action versions of Aladdin, The Lion King, and Beauty and the Beast did.

[@rhubarbjin]

There's even a name for this: "Animation Age Ghetto", because cartoons are supposedly immature trivialities that can only be enjoyed by children. Which is nonsense, as demonstrated by the extraordinary variety of Japanese animation.

[@yracpontiferous4846]

Watching Spirited Away was what made me realize animation was capable of telling a compelling story that live-action would never be able to do justice.

[@EnigmaticGentleman]

Those 2 adult animations shown at 7:16 are Scavengers Reign and Blue Eye Samurai by the way. Both are absolute masterpieces if you ask me

[@Darren_Mooney]

Yep, sorry! A lot old people asking about “Perfect Blue” and “Waltz with Bashir” on the other side of that bit.

[@creekandseminole]

I'm guessing it's one of those things where if he films this then the studio will allow him to make a personal project afterwards

[@CornishCreamtea07]

The most sure-fire way of getting a blank cheque.

[@malicekerendu3574]

It's insane that most people think 3d animetion is "live action"

[@gaberiando]

I was waiting for you talking about this for so long now. THANK YOU!!!! that hit the spot.

[@Darren_Mooney]

Cheers!

[@thedullahan9437]

My first BackDrop watch and wow, I’m a fan! I have some catching up to do! The cultural fracking analogy, the “animated” word play and the second wind fart joke/nod to the channel, well done!! And of course, the expertly crafted and delivered opinions on this “live action” trend.

[@twojuiceman]

I have a tremendous respect for Disney Creatives, and a proportionately tremendous disdain for Disney Executives. They are a blight on the industry

[@dorongrossman-naples9207]

I feel like three-dimensional photorealistic animation is being short-sold by the way we choose to use it. Every big example I can think of is an attempt to recreate some more expressive medium like animation or comics. (From the big studios, at least; but it's too expensive for most smaller studios or independent filmmakers to use it.) There has to be something more interesting to be done with this kind of CGI, if only it were financially viable.

[@ArifRWinandar]

8:03 "many of these animated movies are perfectly proportioned" *shows Mulan being squeezed into a dress*

[@Darren_Mooney]

Yes. And then Alice swelling to a size that she no longer fits within the framework of the house around her.

[@Qalamari]

Describing this phenomenon as "cultural fracking" is such a perfect metaphor. To hell with the thought these remakes might tarnish the brand, there's profit to be extracted right now.

[@rooster_key]

God, that last Beauty and the Beast shot. Animated is dancing around, while live-action just stands still and looks into the camera

[@CottageDreams23]

And also their expression when they're dancing was like this "😐" its like they being forced..

[@soldier257]

People just dont get that certain mediums of media have their own strengths and they cant really be transferred from one to another without seriously changing or harming the experience

[@therabak5803]

By Zeus do I fear the inevitable Hercules remake... That was my favourite childhood movie and I just know that that's the next one on the chopping block.

[@deebzscrub]

Always great to listen to Darren talk about movies

[@Darren_Mooney]

Always great to get to talk about movies!

[@AlexLoveLizard]

Really hoping there's a new podcast coming soon

[@FranciscoAreasGuimaraes]

Animated discussion, eh? Love your puns. I also love how a lot of critics would just bang on Disney's money grabbing schemes and call it a day. You however, go deeper and actually shows solid arguments why these adaptations do not work. Brilliant as always. Thirdly, "cultural fracking" is a term as exact as it is cruel. I will try to use this in the future

[@andycyca]

Great essay Darren. It's been hard due me to articulate why these films feel so hollow to me (and at the same time, the frustration of why they make so much money). I wish more people would actually sit down to criticize their own taste beyond the like/dislike polar opinion. We, The audiences in general would demand much more

[@Darren_Mooney]

Thank you!

[@griztorc]

Mulan didn't bomb because it was a shot for shot remake. Mulan bombed because they changed everything to a much worse story.

[@nicholasdruce5346]

We should've watched Godmothered instead of Mulan (2020).

[@tracesosebee5485]

This is something gaming had to learn through the years of CoD and Battlefield. Being realistic isn't necessarily something to strive for its own sake. I felt this way about basically every live action remake of IP that was previously a cartoon (ATLA, Disney remakes, etc)

[@AssaulteedOne]

It would be nice to see more discussion around these kinds of "content factories" - between TV, movies, and video games - it seems like companies in general have pit greater focus on padding & "content" / longer runtimes over trying to tell stories with any sort of authorial intent. I wonder what a cross-examination of these themes across the 3 mediums would look like given collaboration between the different Second Wind teams... Either way, great video! Really gets you thinking...

[@Darren_Mooney]

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed!

[@ekimmak]

"If it takes more time, we can charge more money for it!"

[@richardhunter9779]

Disney jumped the shark too early by remaking a once-in-a-lifetime movie - The Lion King. It is extremely hard to imagine matching its quality, let alone exceeding it. Everyone I know was not the slightest bit interested in it, so it probably never even got a chance. Heck, it might even be good! But why would you watch it?

[@adamn7777]

This made me do a bit of an experiment. I went back and watched both versions of Friend Like Me. I liked the live action version of Aladdin and the original animated one is my favorite old disney movie so this seemed like as fair a way as possible to see if the thesis of this video held up and it absolutely did. Will Smith is a fantastic performer but the live action one lacked the energy of the animated one because there was simply no way to recreate the crazy animations of the original in live action.

[@LordSvzklx]

It’s amazing how much the “live action” remakes seem to be lacking in life

[@CivilWarMan]

There is a channel called Sideways that has a bunch of videos about movie music, including several dissecting the problems with the Disney remakes. When talking about Aladdin, he pointed out that a big problem that hurt Friend Like Me in the remake is that they had Will Smith try to do his best Robin Williams impression, even though Will Smith does not have Robin Williams' talents with improv and impressions. Will Smith started out as a rapper, so with Will Smith as the Genie, Friend Like Me should have been redone as a rap. And, in fact, they did have Will Smith do a rap cover of Friend Like Me. For the end credits.

[@BoomaOwl]

This is the sequel to "Every Frame A Painting" I've been looking for.

[@KingGurke98]

"Cultural Fracking" is one hell of a term, I'm going to use that!

[@shinigamidad]

That "Holy Grail" shoutout was

[@Darren_Mooney]

I couldn’t get it out of my head while doing research for the video.

[@PikaLink91]

I gave Disney exactly 3 chances to hook me on these remakes; Cinderella, hated it. Junglebook, hated it. Beauty and the Beast, hated it. Every single on since I haven't watched. So don't come here and accuse me of falling victim to nostalgia.

[@TulilaSalome]

Did someone blame you? :)

[@PikaLink91]

@@TulilaSalome This video did. It sounds generalizing and makes it sound like us old Disney fans are all equally to blame for letting nostalgia control us and are therefore all to blame for this continuing. So I just felt it necessary to chime in and say "Please don't lump me in with the rest". That I am not a sheep who keeps coming back for more trash.

[@EGRJ]

Funny. I liked Jungle Book '16. But I'm a bigger fan of the original books than the original animated movie, and I felt the movie's direction was more accurate to the books. Which was apparently intended. And both are still better than the last live-action Jungle Book, from the 90s, where the animals didn't even talk. I hate the idea that JB16's success made Disney decide to throw Favreau at The Lion King, a movie without a single pixel of live-action footage, and no human character to anchor the audience. Even Avatar 2 was more compelling than what I've seen of TLK190.

[@PikaLink91]

@@EGRJ I just disliked that Mowgli ended up back with the wolves in the movie instead of settling with the humans. It felt like nothing was learned or gained.

[@nicholasdruce5346]

​@@PikaLink91You should've seen McFarland USA and Tomorrowland instead of Cinderella (2015), The Finest Hours instead of The Jungle Book (2016).

[@revzsaz9418]

I like the idea of the world at large finally coming around to animation as an accepted medium for storytelling for more than just children. I also think I finally get why I quit watching Disney products, though this may have more to do with not enjoying watching my memory degrade in front of me... Thanks Darren for this coffee replacement of the day 🙏🏻😋 Cheers man and hope you're well 🍻

[@kraetyz]

Shoutout to the Waltz With Bashir clip in discussing animation as a respected medium. Apt choice.

[@Darren_Mooney]

Thank you!

[@jcace13]

I'd completely forgotten half these remakes even existed, maybe because I haven't watched any of them but still...

[@Darren_Mooney]

Oh, I wish I could forget.

[@rodrigogirao8344]

If you want Beauty and the Beast in live action -- watch Jean Cocteau's version. If you want Aladdin in live action -- watch The Thief of Bagdad. If you want The Lion King in live action -- watch Hamlet.

[@CJ-hh3gx]

As someone over 30, I am not ashamed to watch the classics. Disney will get none of my money for this "content".

[@subtlewhatssubtle]

As one of your colleagues has pointed out, creativity requires artistry, and corporations are simply not capable of that. It's not their purpose. And as long as directors are tied to the stakeholders' leash, it's inevitable that their output will stagnate.

[@dragonfiremalus]

Gotta throw in that the failure of live action Mulan was probably more about taking a well-told character and turning it into a terribly-told character with no growth or interesting arc.

[@yipyipyipi]

Dude throw up a quick Warnerbrother before you jump scare me with Cheese Theft's "personal attack" clip. That sent me into PTSD territory!

[@DavidRichardson153]

I fully agree with how a "faithful adaptation" does not make something good. Yes, the potential is there, but speaking for myself at least, I cannot think of working example of this. On the other side, my go-to example for an "unfaithful adaptation" being good is _Starship Troopers._ Not too many have read the source material, Heinlein's book, but it is hard to NOT recognize characters, lines, or even whole scenes from Verhoeven's movie. Now, Verhoeven had barely any knowledge of Heinlein's book or what it contained, but what he did know, he did not like, and he saw far too many similarities between Heinlein's messages and those of N^zi Germany, so, in his way of lampooning them both, well, we got what we got in the movie. Sounds good, right? Well, then came the sequels to it, none of which involved Verhoeven. First, there were the numbered live-action sequels, which tried to be more faithful to the book while keeping the superficiality of Verhoeven's style... and they bombed. Then came the fully CGI ones (in the style of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within), which tried to adhere more to the source than any of the live-action ones did, and they not only bombed, but they *_sucked._* I know entertainment, like any art, is a matter of personal taste, but if you ever find and then watch (ideally under medical supervision) these sequels, you will likely see and understand why you did not know of or see them before, especially the CGI ones - and you will probably wish that you had continued to not know of or have seen them.

[@gengisgio]

I like to think about the scene in The Disaster Artist where they make fun of Tommy Wiseau because he builds a set and uses a green screen to shoot stuff easily obtainable in real life by just filming it. Why make something artificial when you might just as well use the real thing? This was met with mockery. This same approach on a bigger scale is the whole business idea of Disney in recent years.

[@Darren_Mooney]

“There’s an alleyway right outside!”

[@quentenburnett7296]

It pisses me off when they call them live action. Live action implies they had real Lions on an actual physical set who were trained to do their own stunts. That isn't what happened. It's CG animation. No real lions were used at all. It isn't live action. Calling it that is a lie. Just because much of the animation looks realistic does not make it live action.

[@mannosan]

That was fantastically insightful. Good job

[@NewExile]

One company that actually learned from their mistakes in clinging to realism was whoever made the Paw Patrol movies for Nickolodeon. Sure they had some straight-to-video releases, but when they finally moved up to a silver screen movie the characters were "high-fidelitied" so far as to be unrecognisable, especially the human characters - Ryder in particular looked Uncanny Valley as hell. So what did they do for the sequel? They kept the bright colours and played to the strengths of CG, but they also dumbed the aesthetic back down so it looked like the cartoon again, so kids could see the Paw Patrol they knew and loved instead of a feature-length "Look I recreated the Paw Patrol in Skyrim" video.

[@TheCozyBearGamer]

You touched on this momentarily, but to me one of the biggest examples of how inferior these remakes are is in the Be Prepared song from Lion King. The original was wild with all the smoke and the little eruptions sending rocks flying while he leaps around the scene. Compare to the "live action" version where he just....stands there singing for the whole damn song. Well, that's unfair, he does at one point saunter from one rock to a slightly higher rock.

[@stevenneiman1554]

The bit about it being a socially acceptable way to re-experience the nostalgia of "movies for children" was what finally made it click for me how these have been profitable for as long as they have. I understood that they were only made because they sold well, but for the longest time I was scratching my head about why they *did* sell well when from my perspective it seems so obvious that they're a strict downgrade from a product that already existed.

[@TheCreepypro]

a film should be greater than the sum of its parts not lesser which animation will always do better than live action, hopefully those in charge will finally realize that, props to Mr Mooney for another great video!

[@sharkkebunni]

Beautiful said Darren, the other thing about the Remake of '"The Lion King" is I would have loved if they went back to the source of the idea, which I was told is Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or even the much debated "The White Lion" animation from japan. There is no soul in this remakes... Alice only worked as the world of Alice can be strange and weird, which was interesting enough for ppl, but Disney "Magic" is no more, Dreamwork understands Movies for entertainment more then Disney, even illumination understand this more; even if they love their fart jokes too much. There is nothing wrong with movies for Kids, the storytelling for a child to Young Adult to Adult should have different styles, as should the movies we see.

[@XX-sp3tt]

Poor Song of the South, it's become Disney's scapegoat. For the record, Uncle Remas is a share cropper.

[@chezpizza3869]

of all the "live-action" movies released, I enjoyed Mulan the best. simply because it was not a shot-by-shot remake and instead its own version of the story.

[@angusng816]

@chezpizza3869 Agreed. But also at least the Asian characters are played by Asian actors. At Liu Yifei was born to play Mulan. Mulan 2020 is still better than The Little Mermaid 2023 and Thor Love and Thunder combined.

[@wearsjorge55]

Video games have pretty much the same issues. It takes you out of the immersion if your photo realistic character in a photorealistic world double jumps or spin kicks or pulls out a weapon you cant see is physically hanging off the character youre playing and in the end all you really get out of the experience is the little details you notice that werent in previous photorealistic games

[@mrfreddorenton]

I'm deeply impressed that you smoothly pronounced "verisimilitudinous". I had to google this word just to make sure you hadn't been uncromulent

[@Darren_Mooney]

Ha! Despite what people on here think, I tend to pronounce words quite well in British English. There are occasional flubs, but a lot of people get up on their high horses because my accent is American but my pronunciation is British.

[@masaufuku1735]

I tried watching the Netflix live action ATLA when it came out and barely made it through the first episode. The entire time I was just asking myself why I'm not watching the vastly better animated show that covers the exact same plot. I've felt the same way any time I've tried watching one of the Disney live-action remakes. There have been plenty of live-action remakes/retellings that have been fine - both Enchanted and Ella Enchanted are different live-action takes on Cinderella for instance and are both perfectly fine movies. Neither of them are just shot for shot retellings of the existing animated movie(s) though - they are telling a new (if somewhat overlapping) story.

[@CJBooks4]

"The result is a lot of dead air." *farts* "And yes, that was a Second Wind joke."😆

[@Ravlar84]

Hear me out, another live action Knuckles but it's just full sized Idris Elba in full Macavity garb

[@Darren_Mooney]

The fourth episode of “Knuckles” was the best episode of “Knuckles.”

[@Ravlar84]

@@Darren_Mooney that reply took me to watch that episode, only episode of the show I've watched. That julian barratt guy has some serious will ferrell vibes... And after writing that out, their surnames have a similar vibe, spooky

[@jonathan198627]

Well put.

[@didiMao]

I love how Every Frame a Painting has left a VERY distinctive mark that everyone making cinema analysis YT videos copies

[@Darren_Mooney]

Interesting. Flattered by the comparison, but not a conscious influence. (I’d cite Patrick Willems and Hbomberguy as more direct influences.) But likely an unconscious influence.

[@AirsickDolphin]

There was a new live action Peter pan and my Disney adult friends didn't even mention it exists. Can't even imagine how awful that one must have been

[@cats4president]

The 10th kingdom (2000) did a MUCH better job of adapting these storybook stories and characters to a 3D "real-life" environment. How Scott Cohen portrayed The Wolf was amazing. Even without CGI he was real and believable. And the few times they did turn to CGI it was to make a great performance even better.

[@Otaking009]

Agree with all of that, but I would argue Disney has been mining nostalgia for decides. In fact, becoming the thing people have nostalgia for (and reminding them of it) is essentially their brand. It just these ones are that impulse taken to 11, with unfortunate results. Thanks as always for your insights! Glad Second Wind seems to be thriving!

[@lukerabon7925]

Yup. The "Disney Vault" was literally "we're gonna stop selling a beloved movie from your childhood. Better buy it now or you'll never see it again" and now every single one of those movies can be watched on Disney+

[@felixdaniels37]

The thing is, before the 2010s their attempts at mining nostalgia usually involved remixing old IPs into something new. Ducktales, Talespin, Rescue Rangers, Kingdom Hearts, the 7D, etc. All of these and more are products that could easily stand alone as quality in their own right. They aren't reliant on the IP as a crutch, rather as a springboard for creatives to take a different direction with them. Of course, it wasn't a perfect system. The Disney Sequels tended to be more misses than hits. But I'd argue even THOSE movies had more artistic merit than the Live Action remakes. They weren't shot for shot recreations, they tried to do new things, and sometimes they even succeeded. Plus they tended to keep animators working.

[@ekimmak]

@@felixdaniels37 I think some of the sequels were also "Well, we were going to make a TV series out of it, but it fell through. But we have all this footage we wouldn't get to use otherwise, better cram it onto a video and sell it to people."

[@jacobscott2473]

I only saw del Toro's Pinocchio and I'm just going to assume you're not talking about that one. I didn't even know Disney did a Pinocchio live action movie I'm that disinterested in disney these days. I think the last Disney movie I really loved was The Princess and the Frog; and would you look at that, it was the last 2D animated Disney movie.

[@Darren_Mooney]

del Toro's "Pinocchio" is a Netflix film, not a Disney one. And is much better than Zemeckis' Disney adaptation.

[@Kroeghe]

Corpo Person: "Dear investors, today I'd like to present you the latest of our soulless corporate cashgrab ideas." Investor A: "But isn't it soulless?" CP: "It very much is." Investor A: "But won't people hate it, then?" CP: "Some will say they do, but look how much cash the previous cashgrab has grabbed" Investors: Investor A: "Wow, I guess they love it after all." CP: "They can't get enough of this shit, Ma'am"

[@optimisticlucio6124]

6:58 YOOOO WALTZ WITH BASHIR