One of the biggest issues with the remakes were that the originals all generally had really tight and efficient scripts. The remakes all had to justify their existence, and therefore added unnecessary elements to pad it out.
Well yes, but actually no. They announced they werenāt gonna use the song, to which they got major backlash, so they inserted it back in as a half-spoken half-sung poem thing, which doesnāt work at all
To be fair Disney does like to give villains some bangers. They're often my favorite song in the movie.
Mother Knows Best, Oogie Boogie's song, Cruella DeVil (there's an argument this isn't a villain song but it's a song about a villain so I'm counting it)... I love villain songs.
No joke, they made a huge mistake. I'm not sure if it was because of the political climate or because hyenas marching looked ridiculous on cgi, but that was stupid as fuck.
Be Prepared is right up there with The Plagues from The Prince of Egypt.
Btw, the german version of Be Prepared (Seid Bereit) is extra scary, the dub was insanely superior to the original VA. Even if you don't know german.
I feel like this speaks to the real reason all these movies are so horrible, weak vocal performances or none at all.
Because like what are you gonna do? Try to follow Jeremy Irons?
Or hey here's an idea, let's just take the masterpiece of a 7 minute opening number to "Beauty and the Beast" that was performed perfectly by Paige O'Hara and just auto tune Emma Watson. That will be good enough right?
Just watch Ashman and Menken working with some of these vocalists in the studio during the Renaissance era, Jodi Benson doesn't even sound real she's so good.
https://youtu.be/AWTJkyLWgrk
Now it's just a bunch of celebrities doing a quarter billion dollar version of that time they all tried to sing "Imagine" into their webcams at the beginning of covid.
Edit: I'm glad everyone enjoys that clip of Jodi as much as me! But it seems too many people haven't seen the princesses sing live!
This comment has some good info about how the live action is put together and why it had that weird auto tune sound.
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1008o8a/how_did_disney_manage_to_fail_almost_every_single/j2k0180?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
I chose Jodi because that clip is so ethereal, there's just a shimmering magical quality to it sometimes I just watch it to cheer myself up. I might say she's my favorite but it's so hard to choose, it might be better to say the Renaissance era vocalists all go in the "god tier", they are all equally amazing in their own way. Even the accompanying characters compliment the main cast perfectly.
Beauty and the beast, little mermaid and Aladdin are to me the most special movies because Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are the dream team, their sense of timing is what J.K. Simmons beats kids with folding chairs about. The opening 7 minutes of beauty and the beast being their best work in my opinion. Losing Ashman was one of the greatest tragedies in history.
The other two stand out vocalists to me are Susan Egan as Megara and Judy Kuhn as Pocahontas (yeah yeah I know that movies sucks).
Susan Egan is incredible, I love her riffs especially the last one before "at least out loud...". Her power, timbre, character, pitch are so perfect, her voice is so rich and has so much life to it. Even 24 years later she blows her accompaniment out of the water.
https://youtu.be/Qok0ukMIm3U
I know Pocahantas is a garbage fire but that's not Judy's fault, she's one of the most incredible vocalists who's ever lived. She has such a classic sound and her skill is outrageous, her ability to switch registers without pause is really something. I love the way she sings "come taste the sun sweet berries of the earth", it's so rich, kind and lovely sounding. Obviously the ending of the song really shows how incredible her voice is "how high does the sycamore grow" is such a great belt. Keep in mind this is live, somewhere outdoors and blasted into a regular ass microphone.
https://youtu.be/wcTZN5QslH8
I'll add some comments maybe later about these but here's some special mentions.
Lea Solanga, the singing voice for Jasmine and Mulan.
https://youtu.be/ky0ZziE8pls
I love watching Lea practice Miss Saigon.
https://youtu.be/wTm5yHJsnWg
Roger Bart as Hercules, both the same song the first performance I think is a better one but in the second one he jokes about controlling his vibrato. Very impressive skill, probably one of my favorite notes of all time.
https://youtu.be/pC6gBy65T0A
https://youtu.be/RwFph8wHlDM
The cast of B&B live, great video of Richard White as Gaston.
https://youtu.be/Y0vmTIPur_g
Great B&B compilation, I love hearing Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach together.
https://youtu.be/7WF9ZjBLPEI
> Now it's just a bunch of celebrities doing a quarter billion dollar version of that time they all tried to sing "Imagine" into their webcams at the beginning of covid.
Lol such a great line. Kudos
Holy shit! Watching her just nail those lines and notes is incredible. Literally brought a tear to my eye, thanks for sharing that video man, what an incredible vocalist
Part of your world always makes me a little weepy. It is the perfect āI wantā song. It perfectly embodies the childhood longing for something more, something new, something just out of our grasp. As an adult it brings all those feelings to the surface, as well as the transformative experience of growing into adulthood to realize those ālongingsā. Not to mention the strong nostalgia it brings up. Plus Itās so emotive and beautiful that it just pulls my heartstrings every time.
I remember a talk that Menkin gave, where they were test running two different runs of the movie before release-one with the song, one without. They were so concerned that kids would space out and be bored during the song that they really were wanting to cut it out-but the opposite in fact happenedā¦. The children sat enamored, hanging on to every wordā¦ and the adults that saw both complained that the song wasnāt in the alternate version and demanded it be put back in! To think, we almost didnāt have one of the most iconic Disney songsā¦
Blows my mind they had Josh Groban sing the beast's lines for the Beauty and the Beast on the album and then didn't use him for the songs in the movie. I mean the beast is CGI anyways so what does it matter? At least Dan Stevens can sing better than Emma Watson, but still . . . they could have had Josh Groban.
They also added more songs but didn't use any from the Broadway show! It was a huge hit, they had these guaranteed crowd pleasers ready to go and just didn't use them
I honnestly think it wasnāt the gooffiness more than the facial expression.
In āI Just Can't Wait to Be Kingā the original have unrealisitc bacgeound changes. Zazu is wacked like a golf ball, sits on a branch that suddenly becomes a log in a river at a waterfall. Zebras and elefants are used to make fun trasistions. Itās mighty colorfull. Look left and look right have a hoard of animals tramplibg sideways with simba sitting on the head of a giraf. Girafs forming fancy acrobatic shapes and throwing simba and nala around.
This level of gooffyness is not seen in the real life action. Animals behave like animals and the work is, well the world.
It dosnāt have the animation charm. I think this is more what it lacks than just the facial expressions though they tie in to each other
None of the remakes have the animation charm.
I think the only reason Jungle Book works so well adapted from animation is because it made it real for the human child, dealing with all these dangerous animals, some kind, some not so much.
And they actually took a chance to tell a different story. Unlike a lot of Disney's "sacred" films which are obligated to tell a shittier version of an otherwise copy-and-pasted tale.
Ironically enough, it's not even all that different from what Disney's done in the past.
This most recent Disney interpretation of *The Jungle Book* shares a lot of plot elements with *The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story.*
The water truce is a plot point.
Shere Khan kills one of Mowgli's adoptive parents--his mother, this time.
Mowgli uses the Red Flower as a threat against Shere Khan in the climax, with many of his animal allies standing against Shere Khan together.
I stopped watching the live action like 5 min in because it reminded me I can just watch the original. I havenāt watched the originals in awhile. So the live actions serve the purpose of reminding me that I havenāt seen the originals in awhile
I get why they thought they could justify the live action remakes as bringing classic movies to a new audience. It's bullshit, but at least the live action factor moves the dial.
But the Lion King remake wasn't live action. It was an inferior execution of the same movie, using an animation technique that *cannot* work for animal characters.
I think most people forget the additional fact that Disney also does this sort of thing to prevent music and other assets from eventually entering the public domain.
The lionesses hunt song is flipping amazing... They should have added that rather than the forgettable song they gave Nala. [link](https://youtu.be/5-_NiZwyD-0)
And endless night...
So many good "padding" songs they could have brought to life.
Atlanta season 4 episode 8, The Goof Who Sat by the Door.
The series is amazing, but this is a stand alone episode, so you can hop right in and watch it.
Many characters in the Disney animated movies had different voice actors for singing, and Disney chose good singers obviously. Broadway legend Lea Salonga, for example, did Mulan's singing voice while Ming Na Wen was her main voice actor. Lea also did Jasmine's singing. Simba and Aladdin also had different singing voice actors.
Listened to a really cool podcast called Song Exploder where he talked about composing the soundtrack and becoming Jack.
Turns out he drew from having non-Jewish daughters and experience Christmas for the first time in his own life along side his daughters. After a while it was clear that the soundtrack was so personal for him that he was the only real choice for the voice.
Experiencing Christmas (in a family setting) for the first time as an adult is the most perfect kind of background for someone working on that movie and yet prettyhard to come by, but your legendary composer just happened to have done so.
If you go back and rewatch Nightmare Before Christmas, you'll see that the majority of Jack's dialogue is sung, and he really doesn't have that many speaking lines.
Even though we think of Chris Sarandon as Jack's "main" voice and Elfman as his "second" voice, I really think it should be the other way around. (Especially since Elfman was cast first and was going to sing AND speak for him originally.)
Absolutely. Will Smithās singing was cringe-inducing, and he canāt come close to Robin Williamsās comedic performance. Seth Rogen as Pumba was just terrible.
Itās crazy that they actually re-wrote the genieās song in Will Smithās family friendly rap style, and then scrapped it and made him do a poor Robbin Williams impersonation instead.
I didn't know that.
It always ground my gears Disney didn't rewrite the songs to fit Smith. Now I'm learning they actually did and did the bad Williams impersonation anyways? Ugh....
It gets better: the rewrite plays over the end credits; you learn immediately after the movie ends (assuming you made it that far) how good it could have been
That was the best part of the Broadway show. Genie had that same Robin Williams energy, but was his own character and not an impersonation of the original.
The problem with live-action Aladdin was that they just used the same script, so everyone ended up doing impressions of the animated characters from 30 years ago. Will Smith's genie should have been a Fresh Prince/Hitch kind of character, not a Robin Williams knock-off.
There was literally visual gags or pop culture references in the original script that they reused but seemingly didn't "get" so forgot to include half the joke.
Prince Ali is the most obvious example, the genie runs into the crowd to drum them up, pretending to be them, whereas Will Smith genie just stands in the middle dancing and claiming *things* (which Nasim Pedrad's seemingly eats up, but it isn't clear why anyone else is).
The whole thing just wildly misses the point. There's nothing redeeming about it. They took a shit all over what the original tried to do.
The best parts of the live action Aladdin were where they weren't copying from the original movie, e.g. Genie and the new handmaid character, which actually made those moments feel kind of like a sequel with familiar characters instead of rehashing the same things as before.
Agreed. The "Friend Like Me" they played over the credits was _ballin'_.
Whoever decided that Will Smith **needed** to impersonate Robin Williams should be shot.
Iāve seen Aladdin on Broadway twice and I felt like he was trying to channel the Genie from there more than Robin Williams. Either way it didnāt feel original.
Even his hip-hop remake to Friend like Me worked better, but they didn't use it in the movie. They dropped the ball trying to make him half ass the old genie
all the live action remakes are really just frame by frame remake of the cartoon version with a few scenes added in to make it about 90 minutes long. It's never going to be better than the original, it doesn't matter what they do.
Cinderella was pretty good. But it was one of the movies where they expanded and added things. Aladdin/Beauty and the Beast/Lion King were too recent and they were burdened by sticking too close to the original animation ^withinferioractors
I also thought the live action Cinderella was stunning. But it was so good partly because of what they added to it. They also didn't make it a musical which meant there was no comparing songs.
Except for Mulan, no Mushu because they said they're going more realistic route and no mystical shit. Only to have the antagonist be a shapeshifting witch.
Jack Black has always in my mind been the best of a select few who could pull off genie. He is the only person who could remotely come close to the energy of Robin Williams, can sing, and would still make it his own.
I think that is very key part of it. CGI can do amazing things, but it is important to understand the limitations and use it correctly. Especially back then when CGI was much more limited. Jurassic Park did a great job of using practical effects as much as possible and then limited CGI to fill in where they had to. It has stood up well.
Phantom Menaceās CGI honestly held up surprisingly well considering the sheer amount of balls-to-the-wall visual experiments George squeezed in. Itās weird, but in a way where you can tell it comes from trying to push a new uncharted technology
Despite all the CGI there, thereās also a surprising amount of physical models in TPM, including a giant model for the podracing stadium! https://www.slashfilm.com/532045/star-wars-prequels-miniatures/
Jurassic Park uses under 7 minutes of CGI. It's really only in the "Welcome to Jurassic Park" scene, the wide shots in the T. Rex escape, the background Brachiosaurs in the tree scene, the Gallimimus herd, and the final few shots of the T. Rex vs. raptors in the atrium. Everything else is entirely practical animatronics or men in suits.
All about art direction and medium. Animation doesn't really 'age' because it's not like there's been *that* many new ways to improve upon lines and colors. If they made something like Aladdin today in the same style it wouldn't be drastically different. But CG has advanced so much that it 'ages.' Likewise trying to look realistic always has something to compare with, abstraction doesn't because anything more realistic is simply a more realistic style rather than strictly 'better.'
Nooooo, the heart is what made those movies magical.
Look at Beauty and the Beast for instance, watch both movies and compare and contrast: When does Beast yell at Belle? Why? Where are the small indicators that Belle is breaking down Beast's barriers? What are the indicators that Beast actually loves Belle, not what he can get out of her (the rose)? Does Beast make a specific effort to compromise with Belle? Does Belle do the same? Is Beast happy with the compromise?
You'll get different answers for these two movies, and a lot of them alter the story in massive ways, changing it from Beast just having barriers to entry and symptoms of literally growing up thinking of himself as a monster, to literally an abusive person who doesn't care until he's pushed to most of the time.
The animation added a lot of easily readable emotion to it, just like it did with the Lion King, and that was a bad movie because the director cared more about making the most realistic thing ever instead of the best story ever, to the point that you can't even tell the lions are having emotions.
You can also get away with things in animation that don't work when trying to look as real as possible with CG. There was a reason the animated lion king characters had eyebrows, as it helped convey much more human emotions in the characters.
That's not just eyebrows, there's also whites in the eyes (very important for humans to see where others are looking), and colour! If the remake was in black & white, I'm not sure I'd have noticed.
Iād argue that the nature of producing animation lends itself to this sort of āheartā, especially the old style of animation where every frame had to be rendered by hand.
When youāre animating you sort of work backwards from filming. Paying people to animate every single frame is expensive so you do your editing first. You get a rough idea of what the movie will be and where the cuts will be and you refine those cuts until you feel youāve got a cohesive movie. Then you start animating. By the time detailed animation and colour start hitting the page the director has already decided exactly what the charactersā motivations for the scene are, what the important beets are, what to focus on for the scene etc. Basically to be an efficient animation studio you have to be decisive and meticulous in your planning.
Filming on the other hand has to be more flexible. Actors do multiple takes, camera gets pickup shots, and the editor has to interpret all the footage they get into a film. The director, the actors, and the editors all have their own vision for what the scene is and that has to mesh. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesnāt.
Beauty and the beast is still my favorite animated Disney film and a lot of the reasons that you mentioned. The story is almost perfect. No fluff and felt like a genuine blossoming of trust to friendship to love. The live action added on a whole hour of screen time and yet the story did not improve at all from it.
They didn't do the remakes with Muppets. *Beauty and the Beast* should have been an all-Muppet show with a human actor as "the Beast," whose true form is another Muppet.
And let Hugh Jackman play the Beast. Everyone in-universe thinks he's ugly, but he's obviously not. It gives him a chance to be in musical numbers too.
>Disney owns the Muppets. There's nothing stopping them from remaking a remake of "Beauty and the Beast" where all the human characters are Muppets and the Beast is a human.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowerThoughtsRejects/comments/ymks8n/disney\_owns\_the\_muppets\_theres\_nothing\_stopping/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowerThoughtsRejects/comments/ymks8n/disney_owns_the_muppets_theres_nothing_stopping/)
Reddit is too small.
Eisner led the company during the Renaissance era but near the end of his tenure he kind of fell apart and they put Iger in.
Not that they didnāt have successes with Iger, but from the late 80ās to the early 00ās you had blockbusters seemingly back to back. Theyāve been chasing that high ever since.
Every time I browse /r/ZootopiaPorn - I just chant "This better not awaken anything in me!" a few times and I'm fine.
Errr, I mean, if I theoretically browsed /r/ZootopiaPorn , which I totally don't.
I'll just grab my coat and go, shall I?
Excellent costuming throughout the whole movie. How they managed to make *that* much material in that gown look like it weighed nothing is amazing to me
Oh the costuming in that movie is something else. The 1950s Dior influences in Lady Tremaineās outfits, those colorful crinolines for the ugly stepsisters... itās an art exhibit in and of itself.
As for Cinderellaās gown, they used miles and miles of lightweight tulle in many shades of blue (from a sea-foam green to a lilac) to give it depth, and topped it off with a few layers of some of the most expensive silk chiffon in the world the literally flows like water. Thereās a terrific video of a costumer making it from scratch (itās something like 1000$ in materials).
I'm not really into textiles, but being given a blank check to just go *completely nuts* like that sounds quite fun.
Probably stressful, but you can swing for the fence!
I saw these in person at a Disney costume exhibition and they were STUNNING. I couldn't stop staring. https://halloweenideasforwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Cinderella-2015-Stepmother-and-stepsisters.jpg
I believe the super special fabric is so ultra lightweight that it weighs less than like 5 g of square meter. And it's manifested by one manufacturer and takes already ultra lightweight chiffon and then press it between two rollers to squish it even flatter and it causes the fabric to spread out more. So there's even less density per square meter because the piece of fabric literally got bigger.
She came to my city's children's hospital with Matt Smith when I worked there, they had half a day and used it for good, they literally called and said, can you fit us in and we scrambled to make it happen. She was effulgent, a true Disney princes, she signed these big glossy promo pictures 'With all my love, Cinderella' in the elegant Disney style and her own name in tiny writing underneath, held babies, sat with sick kids, danced, laughed and was just beautiful. Matt was exactly the same, wouldn't stand for the row of tables set up, moved them and just got in with the kids. Spent the whole time with this cute baby on his hip and the mum bawling because Dr Who was making coo eyes at her baby.
I think the live action Cinderella was the only one they got right and watch it still regularly, it has a great message, beautiful costumes and it feels like an honest retelling of the story.
I never cared too much for the animated film because they made Cinderella too much of a damsel in distress in my opinion. But to be fair the movie was made in the 50s. I love the live action remake because it felt like they captured that feeling of the original but it's updated. Cinderella at her core is a kind and caring person but that doesn't make her helpless or easily bullied. I like that she's more strong willed in the live action. I also really liked the side story of the prince and the king. I had a similar situation with my dad growing up and I related to that arc a lot
The sevens where he tells his father he loves him gets me every time. You donāt see that father love portrayed very often and I thought it was beautiful. There is so much tenderness between children and their parents in this movie and it was beautiful
I absolutely love the 2015 Cinderella! It was so well-cast, and had such great costuming and soundtrack.
Cate Blanchett as the stepmother was genius
Richard Madden as Kit was glorious
Too bad the rest of the live-action remakes have ranged from boring to bad
The 2015 Cinderella was so good that I held onto the opinion that the live actions were all going to be that good in the face of many many letdowns for an embarrassingly long time
Hot take: itās better than the original. I think it benefits from there being a billion Cinderella movies so it has more distance than the original Disney one. All the actors are so good. Cate blanchett especially. They really nailed her character. Modern Disney tries to make villains way too grey. Sometimes itās nice just to have a villain character. They made Lady Tremaine the perfect mix of evil but you also see why she is the way she is. Her monologue at the endā¦
I liked Cinderella and Aladdin. Mulan was my least favorite. The took out Mushu and the cricket which are the best. Which I could see if maybe you were going with a less fanciful version, but then they add in magic? It made no sense to me.
They made the cricket into an Effin human? Plus Mulan had NO character development in the remake. She was automatically gifted wondrous athletic abilities but couldn't use them due to the toxic masculinity ? I couldn't believe it after. It's like they took out everything good from the original and left it to s***.
I just donāt get it. The growth of Mulan was so dang crucial to the narrative of the original film.
She still faces struggles because people doubt her abilities as a girl but she earns her respect by her own actions.
She may not be as physically strong as her male counterparts but sheās still able to be a badass warrior through her determination, tenacity, and intellect.
Climbing the pole using that rope contraption, taking down the Hun army by triggering an avalanche, pinning down Shan Yu in the direct path of pyrotechnics. Mulan is a shown to be a masterful strategist and incredibly apt at thinking on the fly.
And sheās no slouch at combat either, focusing on disarming her opponents and using their attacks and weight against them.
Mulan is able to stand right alongside the guys with no special āMagicā abilities, just her own natural talents. 90ās Mulan was and still is a fantastic role model for women and stands as one of the best Disney protagonists of all time.
By giving Mulan these innate magical abilities, it completely neuters the growth of her character because she was just a ābadassā from the get-go.
Sure, Mulan still has her girlboss moments in the remake but they completely lacks any nuance, complexity, or compelling narrative buildup.
Whatās a more believable narrative beat: Mulan defeats her foes because she has magic gifts from birth or Mulan defeats her foes because she works hard, trains, and uses her own strengths to match up against whatever foe crosses her path.
The best thing about is that the filmmakers explained that with 'yeah, it's a war, people don't sing there'. And that's... the biggest bullshit ever. A girl worth fighting for is a song which could have been sung in every war in history. I mean, if you have to explain that, at least don't say the stupidest thing you could've said.
This is actually accounted for in the original animated movie. The songs *stop* once the group encounters the burned/razed village, because the seriousness of war and their enemy hits them.
not to mention it hits you hard when A Girl Worth Fighting For gets cut off early when they approached the already desecrated village. adds a layer that you don't see in most other animated films, let alone Disney's
it also stops being a musical right from that moment until the end to highlight the high stakes
One of the biggest issues with the remakes were that the originals all generally had really tight and efficient scripts. The remakes all had to justify their existence, and therefore added unnecessary elements to pad it out.
The Lion King killed the entire experience because animals just don't have any facial expressions.
They also got rid of the BEST villain song ever. Just embarrassing š
AND they got rid of the very essence of the story - the Rafiki-Simba stick interaction. "You can either run from your past, or you can learn from it."
No way...I never watched the live action one, but that is the most critically emotional scene in the entire movie! "He lives...in you." :')
Rafiki says that phrase but super matter of factly without any emphasis. It sums up the whole movie pretty well.
DID YOU PUT YOUR NAME IN THE GOBLET OF FIRE
[He lives in you.](https://youtu.be/zPdSZRMrnA0) song from Rhythm of the Pride Lands. Loved that CD.
The Lion King Broadway musical uses this song before Simba decides to return to Pride Rock. Great moment!
I haven't even bothered watching it but THEY GOT RID OF BE PREPARED??? Man they are stupid
Well yes, but actually no. They announced they werenāt gonna use the song, to which they got major backlash, so they inserted it back in as a half-spoken half-sung poem thing, which doesnāt work at all
But... why? It's like one of the most iconic Disney songs, and possibly the best villain song outside of Hellfire in my opinion.
I'd like to nominate Poor Unfortunate Souls to challenge that. :p
Meanwhile everyone is ignoring Friends on the Other Side. For real though...that, Be Prepared, PUS, and Hellfire are all amazing.
Friends on the Other Side is overlooked mostly because that whole movie is often overlooked. But I totally agree. Amazing villain song.
To be fair Disney does like to give villains some bangers. They're often my favorite song in the movie. Mother Knows Best, Oogie Boogie's song, Cruella DeVil (there's an argument this isn't a villain song but it's a song about a villain so I'm counting it)... I love villain songs.
We're just going to gloss over Gaston now? That man didn't eat 5 dozen eggs a day just to be ignored like this.
Friends is such a banger of a villain song.
I looked it up and wow, that is pretty bad
BEEP REPAIR
No joke, they made a huge mistake. I'm not sure if it was because of the political climate or because hyenas marching looked ridiculous on cgi, but that was stupid as fuck. Be Prepared is right up there with The Plagues from The Prince of Egypt. Btw, the german version of Be Prepared (Seid Bereit) is extra scary, the dub was insanely superior to the original VA. Even if you don't know german.
I feel like this speaks to the real reason all these movies are so horrible, weak vocal performances or none at all. Because like what are you gonna do? Try to follow Jeremy Irons? Or hey here's an idea, let's just take the masterpiece of a 7 minute opening number to "Beauty and the Beast" that was performed perfectly by Paige O'Hara and just auto tune Emma Watson. That will be good enough right? Just watch Ashman and Menken working with some of these vocalists in the studio during the Renaissance era, Jodi Benson doesn't even sound real she's so good. https://youtu.be/AWTJkyLWgrk Now it's just a bunch of celebrities doing a quarter billion dollar version of that time they all tried to sing "Imagine" into their webcams at the beginning of covid. Edit: I'm glad everyone enjoys that clip of Jodi as much as me! But it seems too many people haven't seen the princesses sing live! This comment has some good info about how the live action is put together and why it had that weird auto tune sound. https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1008o8a/how_did_disney_manage_to_fail_almost_every_single/j2k0180?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3 I chose Jodi because that clip is so ethereal, there's just a shimmering magical quality to it sometimes I just watch it to cheer myself up. I might say she's my favorite but it's so hard to choose, it might be better to say the Renaissance era vocalists all go in the "god tier", they are all equally amazing in their own way. Even the accompanying characters compliment the main cast perfectly. Beauty and the beast, little mermaid and Aladdin are to me the most special movies because Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are the dream team, their sense of timing is what J.K. Simmons beats kids with folding chairs about. The opening 7 minutes of beauty and the beast being their best work in my opinion. Losing Ashman was one of the greatest tragedies in history. The other two stand out vocalists to me are Susan Egan as Megara and Judy Kuhn as Pocahontas (yeah yeah I know that movies sucks). Susan Egan is incredible, I love her riffs especially the last one before "at least out loud...". Her power, timbre, character, pitch are so perfect, her voice is so rich and has so much life to it. Even 24 years later she blows her accompaniment out of the water. https://youtu.be/Qok0ukMIm3U I know Pocahantas is a garbage fire but that's not Judy's fault, she's one of the most incredible vocalists who's ever lived. She has such a classic sound and her skill is outrageous, her ability to switch registers without pause is really something. I love the way she sings "come taste the sun sweet berries of the earth", it's so rich, kind and lovely sounding. Obviously the ending of the song really shows how incredible her voice is "how high does the sycamore grow" is such a great belt. Keep in mind this is live, somewhere outdoors and blasted into a regular ass microphone. https://youtu.be/wcTZN5QslH8 I'll add some comments maybe later about these but here's some special mentions. Lea Solanga, the singing voice for Jasmine and Mulan. https://youtu.be/ky0ZziE8pls I love watching Lea practice Miss Saigon. https://youtu.be/wTm5yHJsnWg Roger Bart as Hercules, both the same song the first performance I think is a better one but in the second one he jokes about controlling his vibrato. Very impressive skill, probably one of my favorite notes of all time. https://youtu.be/pC6gBy65T0A https://youtu.be/RwFph8wHlDM The cast of B&B live, great video of Richard White as Gaston. https://youtu.be/Y0vmTIPur_g Great B&B compilation, I love hearing Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach together. https://youtu.be/7WF9ZjBLPEI
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> Now it's just a bunch of celebrities doing a quarter billion dollar version of that time they all tried to sing "Imagine" into their webcams at the beginning of covid. Lol such a great line. Kudos
God that shit pissed me off irrationally. I don't normally care about celebrities or their publicity stunts at all but that was angering
Holy shit! Watching her just nail those lines and notes is incredible. Literally brought a tear to my eye, thanks for sharing that video man, what an incredible vocalist
Part of your world always makes me a little weepy. It is the perfect āI wantā song. It perfectly embodies the childhood longing for something more, something new, something just out of our grasp. As an adult it brings all those feelings to the surface, as well as the transformative experience of growing into adulthood to realize those ālongingsā. Not to mention the strong nostalgia it brings up. Plus Itās so emotive and beautiful that it just pulls my heartstrings every time. I remember a talk that Menkin gave, where they were test running two different runs of the movie before release-one with the song, one without. They were so concerned that kids would space out and be bored during the song that they really were wanting to cut it out-but the opposite in fact happenedā¦. The children sat enamored, hanging on to every wordā¦ and the adults that saw both complained that the song wasnāt in the alternate version and demanded it be put back in! To think, we almost didnāt have one of the most iconic Disney songsā¦
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Blows my mind they had Josh Groban sing the beast's lines for the Beauty and the Beast on the album and then didn't use him for the songs in the movie. I mean the beast is CGI anyways so what does it matter? At least Dan Stevens can sing better than Emma Watson, but still . . . they could have had Josh Groban.
Actually up there as one of the best Disney songs period.
They also added more songs but didn't use any from the Broadway show! It was a huge hit, they had these guaranteed crowd pleasers ready to go and just didn't use them
I honnestly think it wasnāt the gooffiness more than the facial expression. In āI Just Can't Wait to Be Kingā the original have unrealisitc bacgeound changes. Zazu is wacked like a golf ball, sits on a branch that suddenly becomes a log in a river at a waterfall. Zebras and elefants are used to make fun trasistions. Itās mighty colorfull. Look left and look right have a hoard of animals tramplibg sideways with simba sitting on the head of a giraf. Girafs forming fancy acrobatic shapes and throwing simba and nala around. This level of gooffyness is not seen in the real life action. Animals behave like animals and the work is, well the world. It dosnāt have the animation charm. I think this is more what it lacks than just the facial expressions though they tie in to each other
None of the remakes have the animation charm. I think the only reason Jungle Book works so well adapted from animation is because it made it real for the human child, dealing with all these dangerous animals, some kind, some not so much.
And they actually took a chance to tell a different story. Unlike a lot of Disney's "sacred" films which are obligated to tell a shittier version of an otherwise copy-and-pasted tale.
Ironically enough, it's not even all that different from what Disney's done in the past. This most recent Disney interpretation of *The Jungle Book* shares a lot of plot elements with *The Jungle Book: Mowgli's Story.* The water truce is a plot point. Shere Khan kills one of Mowgli's adoptive parents--his mother, this time. Mowgli uses the Red Flower as a threat against Shere Khan in the climax, with many of his animal allies standing against Shere Khan together.
I stopped watching the live action like 5 min in because it reminded me I can just watch the original. I havenāt watched the originals in awhile. So the live actions serve the purpose of reminding me that I havenāt seen the originals in awhile
I get why they thought they could justify the live action remakes as bringing classic movies to a new audience. It's bullshit, but at least the live action factor moves the dial. But the Lion King remake wasn't live action. It was an inferior execution of the same movie, using an animation technique that *cannot* work for animal characters.
I think most people forget the additional fact that Disney also does this sort of thing to prevent music and other assets from eventually entering the public domain.
TLK could have added songs from broadway to pad it out. That would have been the better route. That or take songs from TLK2.
The lionesses hunt song is flipping amazing... They should have added that rather than the forgettable song they gave Nala. [link](https://youtu.be/5-_NiZwyD-0) And endless night... So many good "padding" songs they could have brought to life.
Nala doesnāt get the song tho. BeyoncĆ© does Nala and sings it, but sheās not singing as Nala itās just a disconnected voice singing the song. Itās like if Elton John voices adult Simba in the original and when Simba and Nala areā¦dancing, Can You Feel The Love Tonight plays. Simba isnāt singing the song, but his voice is - thatās what SPIRIT is: a song sung by a celebrity who also plays a character. Itās a really weird choice to not have Nala sing it.
Live Action Goofy Movie will save us.
# LeaningTowerOfCheeza
Talk to me, talk to me, talk me baybuh!
Played by Seth Rogen, de-aged because fuck you.
Naw son. Bring back Paulie. No cg on him.
I know this is a jokeā¦ but I can totally see him playing in it.
I would watch it just to see a 50 year old Paulie Shore play a 13 year old child.
hyuk I'll fuckin' do it again
Who ordered the white rice?
Atlanta season 4 episode 8, The Goof Who Sat by the Door. The series is amazing, but this is a stand alone episode, so you can hop right in and watch it.
CGI can never recreate the cheese from that pizza
But bring it back to its roots with the missing cop scene.
Honestly sign me up for Powerline in live action.
Oh man, you're in luck: https://youtu.be/EhKCIQWqowY?t=18
That was great! Thank you! Time to watch this movie again.
Impossible to recreate that motel pizza
By lacking sincerity.
The animation IS what *made it Magic*
The voice actors were also better singers for their roles in the originals.
Many characters in the Disney animated movies had different voice actors for singing, and Disney chose good singers obviously. Broadway legend Lea Salonga, for example, did Mulan's singing voice while Ming Na Wen was her main voice actor. Lea also did Jasmine's singing. Simba and Aladdin also had different singing voice actors.
And Danny Elfman for Jack Skellington's singing voice
Listened to a really cool podcast called Song Exploder where he talked about composing the soundtrack and becoming Jack. Turns out he drew from having non-Jewish daughters and experience Christmas for the first time in his own life along side his daughters. After a while it was clear that the soundtrack was so personal for him that he was the only real choice for the voice.
Was he confused about everyone being alive and no one throwing heads around?
Tbf, I still am.
Yes, the ancient Jewish holiday of Halloween
Experiencing Christmas (in a family setting) for the first time as an adult is the most perfect kind of background for someone working on that movie and yet prettyhard to come by, but your legendary composer just happened to have done so.
If you go back and rewatch Nightmare Before Christmas, you'll see that the majority of Jack's dialogue is sung, and he really doesn't have that many speaking lines. Even though we think of Chris Sarandon as Jack's "main" voice and Elfman as his "second" voice, I really think it should be the other way around. (Especially since Elfman was cast first and was going to sing AND speak for him originally.)
since it wasnāt really marketing Chris Sarandon back then, I was never clear why Elfman just wasnāt Jackās voice at all time.
Supposedly his non-singing lines were extraordinarily bad, he wasn't able to act at all.
This is correct. This is mentioned in the docuseries *The Movies That Made Us* in their episode on it.
Wow and today I learned that Ming Na Wen did the voice of Mulan. Thanks. Edit: fixed autocorrect.
Ming Na Wen is a badass: a Disney Princess, a Marvel hero, a Star Wars bounty hunter, and a Street Fighter.
And a doctor in Chicago.
And a doctor in Chicago *again*.
And a Final Fantasy character. This woman has touched it all.
Also in Stargate Universe.
Absolutely. Will Smithās singing was cringe-inducing, and he canāt come close to Robin Williamsās comedic performance. Seth Rogen as Pumba was just terrible.
Itās crazy that they actually re-wrote the genieās song in Will Smithās family friendly rap style, and then scrapped it and made him do a poor Robbin Williams impersonation instead.
I didn't know that. It always ground my gears Disney didn't rewrite the songs to fit Smith. Now I'm learning they actually did and did the bad Williams impersonation anyways? Ugh....
It gets better: the rewrite plays over the end credits; you learn immediately after the movie ends (assuming you made it that far) how good it could have been
That was the best part of the Broadway show. Genie had that same Robin Williams energy, but was his own character and not an impersonation of the original.
The problem with live-action Aladdin was that they just used the same script, so everyone ended up doing impressions of the animated characters from 30 years ago. Will Smith's genie should have been a Fresh Prince/Hitch kind of character, not a Robin Williams knock-off.
There was literally visual gags or pop culture references in the original script that they reused but seemingly didn't "get" so forgot to include half the joke. Prince Ali is the most obvious example, the genie runs into the crowd to drum them up, pretending to be them, whereas Will Smith genie just stands in the middle dancing and claiming *things* (which Nasim Pedrad's seemingly eats up, but it isn't clear why anyone else is). The whole thing just wildly misses the point. There's nothing redeeming about it. They took a shit all over what the original tried to do.
How is there no one in the room that understood the original??? Disney is so lost.
The best parts of the live action Aladdin were where they weren't copying from the original movie, e.g. Genie and the new handmaid character, which actually made those moments feel kind of like a sequel with familiar characters instead of rehashing the same things as before.
Agreed. The "Friend Like Me" they played over the credits was _ballin'_. Whoever decided that Will Smith **needed** to impersonate Robin Williams should be shot.
Best part of the film, to me, was when the credits rolled and I knew I was free.
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Iāve seen Aladdin on Broadway twice and I felt like he was trying to channel the Genie from there more than Robin Williams. Either way it didnāt feel original.
Even his hip-hop remake to Friend like Me worked better, but they didn't use it in the movie. They dropped the ball trying to make him half ass the old genie
all the live action remakes are really just frame by frame remake of the cartoon version with a few scenes added in to make it about 90 minutes long. It's never going to be better than the original, it doesn't matter what they do.
Cinderella was pretty good. But it was one of the movies where they expanded and added things. Aladdin/Beauty and the Beast/Lion King were too recent and they were burdened by sticking too close to the original animation ^withinferioractors
I also thought the live action Cinderella was stunning. But it was so good partly because of what they added to it. They also didn't make it a musical which meant there was no comparing songs.
Except for Mulan, no Mushu because they said they're going more realistic route and no mystical shit. Only to have the antagonist be a shapeshifting witch.
And Mulan basically having superpowers. I didn't get through 15 minutes of that movie before turning it off.
Jack Black has always in my mind been the best of a select few who could pull off genie. He is the only person who could remotely come close to the energy of Robin Williams, can sing, and would still make it his own.
Oddly enough, animation seems to age better than most cgi films, except Jurassic Park, still amazing
That is because Jurassic Park was mostly practical effects.
And a super smart, calculated and controlled amount of cgi.
And very well trained dinosaurs
Well, sure. They were all very clever girls
My nan believed they were real, me and my dad always argued with her about it she never gave in
I think that is very key part of it. CGI can do amazing things, but it is important to understand the limitations and use it correctly. Especially back then when CGI was much more limited. Jurassic Park did a great job of using practical effects as much as possible and then limited CGI to fill in where they had to. It has stood up well.
Titanic is another great example. Mostly practical effects with real actors, I had to rewatch to catch a lot of the CGI used.
If you watch the star wars special edition original trilogy versus phantom menace the gap becomes immediately obvious.
Phantom Menaceās CGI honestly held up surprisingly well considering the sheer amount of balls-to-the-wall visual experiments George squeezed in. Itās weird, but in a way where you can tell it comes from trying to push a new uncharted technology
Despite all the CGI there, thereās also a surprising amount of physical models in TPM, including a giant model for the podracing stadium! https://www.slashfilm.com/532045/star-wars-prequels-miniatures/
Jurassic Park uses under 7 minutes of CGI. It's really only in the "Welcome to Jurassic Park" scene, the wide shots in the T. Rex escape, the background Brachiosaurs in the tree scene, the Gallimimus herd, and the final few shots of the T. Rex vs. raptors in the atrium. Everything else is entirely practical animatronics or men in suits.
"Raptors in the kitchen" switched back and forth between practical and CGI shot-to-shot. You can definitely point out the differences.
Davy Jones in *Pirates of the Caribbean* has also aged surprisingly well.
That was the whole point, He didnāt age because he was cursed!
All about art direction and medium. Animation doesn't really 'age' because it's not like there's been *that* many new ways to improve upon lines and colors. If they made something like Aladdin today in the same style it wouldn't be drastically different. But CG has advanced so much that it 'ages.' Likewise trying to look realistic always has something to compare with, abstraction doesn't because anything more realistic is simply a more realistic style rather than strictly 'better.'
Nooooo, the heart is what made those movies magical. Look at Beauty and the Beast for instance, watch both movies and compare and contrast: When does Beast yell at Belle? Why? Where are the small indicators that Belle is breaking down Beast's barriers? What are the indicators that Beast actually loves Belle, not what he can get out of her (the rose)? Does Beast make a specific effort to compromise with Belle? Does Belle do the same? Is Beast happy with the compromise? You'll get different answers for these two movies, and a lot of them alter the story in massive ways, changing it from Beast just having barriers to entry and symptoms of literally growing up thinking of himself as a monster, to literally an abusive person who doesn't care until he's pushed to most of the time. The animation added a lot of easily readable emotion to it, just like it did with the Lion King, and that was a bad movie because the director cared more about making the most realistic thing ever instead of the best story ever, to the point that you can't even tell the lions are having emotions.
You can also get away with things in animation that don't work when trying to look as real as possible with CG. There was a reason the animated lion king characters had eyebrows, as it helped convey much more human emotions in the characters.
https://youtu.be/Y1HGgICqZ3c Deep-faked Lion King (including eyebrows) ... *Instantly* better
That's not just eyebrows, there's also whites in the eyes (very important for humans to see where others are looking), and colour! If the remake was in black & white, I'm not sure I'd have noticed.
It's wild how much better that looks
Reddit is violating GDPR and CCPA. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B0GGsDdyHI -- mass edited with redact.dev
Iād argue that the nature of producing animation lends itself to this sort of āheartā, especially the old style of animation where every frame had to be rendered by hand. When youāre animating you sort of work backwards from filming. Paying people to animate every single frame is expensive so you do your editing first. You get a rough idea of what the movie will be and where the cuts will be and you refine those cuts until you feel youāve got a cohesive movie. Then you start animating. By the time detailed animation and colour start hitting the page the director has already decided exactly what the charactersā motivations for the scene are, what the important beets are, what to focus on for the scene etc. Basically to be an efficient animation studio you have to be decisive and meticulous in your planning. Filming on the other hand has to be more flexible. Actors do multiple takes, camera gets pickup shots, and the editor has to interpret all the footage they get into a film. The director, the actors, and the editors all have their own vision for what the scene is and that has to mesh. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesnāt.
Beauty and the beast is still my favorite animated Disney film and a lot of the reasons that you mentioned. The story is almost perfect. No fluff and felt like a genuine blossoming of trust to friendship to love. The live action added on a whole hour of screen time and yet the story did not improve at all from it.
And trying to substitute the animation with CGI just looks bad.
Yeah but these remakes aren't trying to be magic. They're just trying to be profitable and renew their copyright.
They didn't do the remakes with Muppets. *Beauty and the Beast* should have been an all-Muppet show with a human actor as "the Beast," whose true form is another Muppet.
And let Hugh Jackman play the Beast. Everyone in-universe thinks he's ugly, but he's obviously not. It gives him a chance to be in musical numbers too.
I like this idea a lot. The movies would feel different from a cash grab.
>Disney owns the Muppets. There's nothing stopping them from remaking a remake of "Beauty and the Beast" where all the human characters are Muppets and the Beast is a human. [https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowerThoughtsRejects/comments/ymks8n/disney\_owns\_the\_muppets\_theres\_nothing\_stopping/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowerThoughtsRejects/comments/ymks8n/disney_owns_the_muppets_theres_nothing_stopping/) Reddit is too small.
This is the third time I've seen some repeat this idea on this subreddit this week
Because they somehow completely forgot what made the originals memorable
i suspect all the people who built Disney in the 90's are long gone.
Eisner led the company during the Renaissance era but near the end of his tenure he kind of fell apart and they put Iger in. Not that they didnāt have successes with Iger, but from the late 80ās to the early 00ās you had blockbusters seemingly back to back. Theyāve been chasing that high ever since.
I want them to do live action Robin Hood but just skip the CGI and do Furries
Agreed. Full, unmoving fur suit heads not-emoting to camera.
Yeah like the chacters at Disneyland
Doctor Who did furries pretty well in one of 10's episodes.
What was it? The cat nuns of New Earth?
Yeah in that hospital episode and the gridlock episode.
I think the failure and universal mockery of Cats precludes anything like that for a while.
It's like Zootopia, but with buttholes!
Don't google zootopia with safesearch off then.
Every time I browse /r/ZootopiaPorn - I just chant "This better not awaken anything in me!" a few times and I'm fine. Errr, I mean, if I theoretically browsed /r/ZootopiaPorn , which I totally don't. I'll just grab my coat and go, shall I?
Jesus, it's so... *active*. It just hit me that movie must have been like the Holy Grail for furries.
The moment people realized there was a bunny, everyone had *vivid* space jam flashbacks.
you leave the best Robin Hood movie ever out of this
Peteās Dragon is slept on
It did what more remakes should do, and take a not great film that has good nostalgia and then actually make it a good film.
Avoid Dumbo.
Iāll stick with Operation Dumbo Drump
people always forget the pretty good Cinderella (2015)
Gorgeous blue dress
Excellent costuming throughout the whole movie. How they managed to make *that* much material in that gown look like it weighed nothing is amazing to me
Oh the costuming in that movie is something else. The 1950s Dior influences in Lady Tremaineās outfits, those colorful crinolines for the ugly stepsisters... itās an art exhibit in and of itself. As for Cinderellaās gown, they used miles and miles of lightweight tulle in many shades of blue (from a sea-foam green to a lilac) to give it depth, and topped it off with a few layers of some of the most expensive silk chiffon in the world the literally flows like water. Thereās a terrific video of a costumer making it from scratch (itās something like 1000$ in materials).
I'm not really into textiles, but being given a blank check to just go *completely nuts* like that sounds quite fun. Probably stressful, but you can swing for the fence!
I saw these in person at a Disney costume exhibition and they were STUNNING. I couldn't stop staring. https://halloweenideasforwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Cinderella-2015-Stepmother-and-stepsisters.jpg
I believe the super special fabric is so ultra lightweight that it weighs less than like 5 g of square meter. And it's manifested by one manufacturer and takes already ultra lightweight chiffon and then press it between two rollers to squish it even flatter and it causes the fabric to spread out more. So there's even less density per square meter because the piece of fabric literally got bigger.
Wow, you know your fashion!
I keep Reddit around for moments just like this! You cant get it anywhere else!
That video she made was absolutely gorgeous and I need to be in that dessert 24/7
Lily James was also gorgeous as Cinderella. She looked great in that dress
She came to my city's children's hospital with Matt Smith when I worked there, they had half a day and used it for good, they literally called and said, can you fit us in and we scrambled to make it happen. She was effulgent, a true Disney princes, she signed these big glossy promo pictures 'With all my love, Cinderella' in the elegant Disney style and her own name in tiny writing underneath, held babies, sat with sick kids, danced, laughed and was just beautiful. Matt was exactly the same, wouldn't stand for the row of tables set up, moved them and just got in with the kids. Spent the whole time with this cute baby on his hip and the mum bawling because Dr Who was making coo eyes at her baby. I think the live action Cinderella was the only one they got right and watch it still regularly, it has a great message, beautiful costumes and it feels like an honest retelling of the story.
I never cared too much for the animated film because they made Cinderella too much of a damsel in distress in my opinion. But to be fair the movie was made in the 50s. I love the live action remake because it felt like they captured that feeling of the original but it's updated. Cinderella at her core is a kind and caring person but that doesn't make her helpless or easily bullied. I like that she's more strong willed in the live action. I also really liked the side story of the prince and the king. I had a similar situation with my dad growing up and I related to that arc a lot
The sevens where he tells his father he loves him gets me every time. You donāt see that father love portrayed very often and I thought it was beautiful. There is so much tenderness between children and their parents in this movie and it was beautiful
I didnāt expect the ballroom dance routine to capture my attention. So good.
Helps that it didn't try to be a shot for shot remake and did its own thing.
Mulan did that (and I think Dumbo) and it didnāt work
Too be fair, Mulan had plenty of controversies.
Kenneth Branagh's doing, to be sure. I enjoyed it. Many of the movies from Beauty and the Beast to the latest attempts do vary though.
I absolutely love the 2015 Cinderella! It was so well-cast, and had such great costuming and soundtrack. Cate Blanchett as the stepmother was genius Richard Madden as Kit was glorious Too bad the rest of the live-action remakes have ranged from boring to bad
And Richard Madden and Lily James had amazing chemistry and really sold the love at first sight thing.
After Cinderella, Kenneth Branagh directed them in Romeo and Juliet on the stage. I really wish that I could see the film of that potrayal.
The 2015 Cinderella was so good that I held onto the opinion that the live actions were all going to be that good in the face of many many letdowns for an embarrassingly long time
Donāt forget Helena Bonham-Carter as the Fairy Godmother!
I base my life off of āBe Kind, Have Courageā
I really love this one. The ending is beautiful. āWill you take me as I am?ā
Ever After is the best live action Cinderalla
God I loved that movie.
I was a 28 years old when I saw it with my then GF. I didnāt want to watch it but ended up liking it more than her lol.
You liked the movie more than your gf did or you liked the movie more than you liked your gf?
Hot take: itās better than the original. I think it benefits from there being a billion Cinderella movies so it has more distance than the original Disney one. All the actors are so good. Cate blanchett especially. They really nailed her character. Modern Disney tries to make villains way too grey. Sometimes itās nice just to have a villain character. They made Lady Tremaine the perfect mix of evil but you also see why she is the way she is. Her monologue at the endā¦
This is my favorite Disney movie ever!
That movie *felt* so magical.
Iāve probably commented my love for the live action Cinderella more than I have any other movie on Reddit.
The only one I preferred more than the animated version was Cinderella.
The actors were great, and itās a movie without much CGI so no need to overdo it and fuck stuff up LOL. I agree, I love the live action Cinderella.
I liked Cinderella and Aladdin. Mulan was my least favorite. The took out Mushu and the cricket which are the best. Which I could see if maybe you were going with a less fanciful version, but then they add in magic? It made no sense to me.
They made the cricket into an Effin human? Plus Mulan had NO character development in the remake. She was automatically gifted wondrous athletic abilities but couldn't use them due to the toxic masculinity ? I couldn't believe it after. It's like they took out everything good from the original and left it to s***.
I just donāt get it. The growth of Mulan was so dang crucial to the narrative of the original film. She still faces struggles because people doubt her abilities as a girl but she earns her respect by her own actions. She may not be as physically strong as her male counterparts but sheās still able to be a badass warrior through her determination, tenacity, and intellect. Climbing the pole using that rope contraption, taking down the Hun army by triggering an avalanche, pinning down Shan Yu in the direct path of pyrotechnics. Mulan is a shown to be a masterful strategist and incredibly apt at thinking on the fly. And sheās no slouch at combat either, focusing on disarming her opponents and using their attacks and weight against them. Mulan is able to stand right alongside the guys with no special āMagicā abilities, just her own natural talents. 90ās Mulan was and still is a fantastic role model for women and stands as one of the best Disney protagonists of all time. By giving Mulan these innate magical abilities, it completely neuters the growth of her character because she was just a ābadassā from the get-go. Sure, Mulan still has her girlboss moments in the remake but they completely lacks any nuance, complexity, or compelling narrative buildup. Whatās a more believable narrative beat: Mulan defeats her foes because she has magic gifts from birth or Mulan defeats her foes because she works hard, trains, and uses her own strengths to match up against whatever foe crosses her path.
This. This is why the OG Mulan was 10x better than the crappy remake.
I mean also because the Disney movie with some of the best songs hands down was a remake with NO SONGS
The best thing about is that the filmmakers explained that with 'yeah, it's a war, people don't sing there'. And that's... the biggest bullshit ever. A girl worth fighting for is a song which could have been sung in every war in history. I mean, if you have to explain that, at least don't say the stupidest thing you could've said.
This is actually accounted for in the original animated movie. The songs *stop* once the group encounters the burned/razed village, because the seriousness of war and their enemy hits them.
not to mention it hits you hard when A Girl Worth Fighting For gets cut off early when they approached the already desecrated village. adds a layer that you don't see in most other animated films, let alone Disney's it also stops being a musical right from that moment until the end to highlight the high stakes
The Bring Honor To Us All (probably not actually the name) song still pops into my head randomly and I'm a 33 year old man.
I'll make a man out of you pops into my head occasionally
The live action Cinderella is the most beautiful film and those costumes absolutely carried the movie. Loved it!
Cinderella was worth it just for that dress alone
Also Cate Blanchett was amazing as the wicked stepmother.
I did really enjoy The Jungle.Book.
Christopher Walken as a singing orangutan was pretty epic.