When you remake something and make changes, you’re basically saying that you either want to say something different than what the original said because what it had to say was stupid—

—or what the original said wasn’t already said perfectly, and you could say it better.

I’ll give you an example. Donald Glover, who voiced Simba in the remake of the Lion King, openly said that the message of the new Lion King was different than the old one. And that’s easy to see. The old message was something like “Remember who you are: Don’t run from your responsibility.” The new message is “Don’t be ashamed of who you are.” They communicated that change with subtle smaller changes, because although most of that movie was a less appealing shot-for-shot remake, Simba said little things like “I’m not like you,” instead of saying, “I’m not who I used to be,” to Mufasa’s ghost. Or he replied to Scar’s bullying, “I’m nothing,” rather than the emphasis being placed on him insisting that he’s “not a murderer.”

That’s saying, “yeah the old message was great but we’re going to take the award-winning songs and characters and story and make it say something else.”

Which is like trying to use a recipe for brownies to describe your chicken salad. You might as well just make an original movie, so the characters and pacing and music all fit that message more appealingly.

Here’s a different example.

The new Live Action Little Mermaid has lots of thematic references to understanding and finding one’s own voice, which, on the surface, sound like they’re exactly what the original animated classic was saying.

But they make little changes, like having Ariel make the decision to go to the surface for the first time just before she meets Eric, or big changes, like having her be the one to kill Ursula. The problem is, both of those story elements in the first film were used to drive the main message home: “True love is understanding and sacrifice.” So when you change those elements, but claim you’re still saying the same thing, all you mean is “What you said was good, but watch me say it better.”

That would be fine, if it actually worked. But it doesn’t. The Lion King (2019) is worse than the original because it’s characters are bland and lean more toward annoying or weak than they did in the original, thanks to small changes. Now Simba doesn’t look like the irresponsible runaway who needs to remember that he’s the son of a king and has responsibility. Now he just looks like a sad boi with trauma. Now Ariel doesn’t look like a real, relatable teenager who recklessly goes for the things she’s passionate about. Now she just looks like every other near-perfect heroine who’s circumstances determine her struggles instead of her own character flaws determining her struggles.

I’m tired, but I’m appreciating the originals.

Plus one of the main implicit messages of Lilo and Stitch is how destructive colonization and tourism is to the Hawaiian natives. So Nani's casting alone has already ruined the movie since it seems like they're just gonna make her a Hawaiian islander instead.

What’s Nani’s casting? I don’t know what happened there.

But what I do know is I’m pissed because they removed Cobra bubbles.

Be so fucking for real

Now, I'm not claiming to know what's happening in the writing room in the Lilo and Stitch live-action remake. And while I'm sure colorism is a factor, there's at least native Hawaiian representation (idk about the ethics of saying if someone is visibly "Hawaiian enough" to play a role...)

That being said, watching the casting decisions does have me feeling that Disney is going to remove the fangs from Lilo and Stitch, particularly with the removal of Bubbles.

See, Lilo and Stitch was (for it's time) a rather scathing commentary on the commodification of Hawaiian culture and the issues of tourism and the profitability of exotica. I think Bubbles being a social worker who came from America was part of this. See, America has a tiny (really big) tradition of taking indigenous children from their homes, whether in an attempt at genocide by erasing their culture and breaking up the community or because having an exotic/indigenous baby has always been a lovely way to gain social clout is up in the air (honestly, it's probably both). Bubbles raised the stakes of the series because instead of following ICWA guidelines (or attempting to...where there'd be a high chance of Lilo staying on the island or within visiting distance from Nani) Nani thinks that she's never going to see her sister again.

Bubbles choosing to sponsor the family at the end and leaving them their house and in their neighborhood is kind of a guide. A "if you want to help families with financial problems, don't separate them, sponsor them" sort of message. Help them stay together not by taking money the government would've given you for taking this child but by giving the struggling family financial stability and a support network.

By making Bubbles Native Hawaiian it's more likely that ICWA protocol will be followed (even if Native Hawaiians don't receive protection I still think she'd try in a story sense of "having power in the community" just reads more disney than "being threatened by this outside and distinctly American force" at best it might mean the "evil force taking Lilo away" might be faceless and nameless and distinctly off screen and "definitely not America (tm)" ) and sort of runs the risk of obscuring or even removing the message that tourism and America is destroying the community.

Now, I'm not saying the script doesn't have a work around but with Disney's live action history I am concerned.

Personal Opinion

There is no justifiable reason for bullying someone just because they do not check all the boxes of what one believes a character should look or act like in an adaptation of the original medium.

Even in vastly different cultures/races/ethnicities/sexualities/religions/etc, there will always be a rainbow of varieties from the same group who are no more or less than who they are, and no amount of hate or idealization can change that.

You like the changes? Fine.

You don’t like the changes? Fine.

Saw the casting for a woman POC to play a childcare services worker in the live action Lilo & Stitch. "There are over 7,275 child welfare caseworkers currently employed in the United States. 83.6% of all child welfare caseworkers are women, while 16.4% are men" I’m going to need everyone to reaaally take off the “placing women in male roles is 100% better 100% of the time” glasses and realize that if they DID replace Bubbles with her OC character they just replaced a POC man in a woman-dominated career with... a POC woman in a woman-dominated career. HE WAS THE DIVERSITY IN THIS CASE.

What are your guys’s thoughts on some of the new casting announcements for the upcoming live action Lilo and Stitch? There’s been some chaos regarding the casting decision of Sydney Elizebeth Agudong as Nani and Kahiau Machado is confirmed to be playing David, along with Billy Magnusson playing an unconfirmed role.

Doverstar Hi anon! Well, first off, I want to reiterate that Arti and I actually don't care very much about the live-action L&S. We're two of those oldies that consider the live-action re-imaginings as totally unnecessary, low-quality, irritating cash grabs that almost never honor or pay proper homage to the original Disney classics they're based on. So. Disclaimer there. I do have some new opinions as of this morning, personally, but feel free to totally disgree with/ignore them! :) Secondly, as far as the casting goes, if we like anything, we like that Chris Sanders is Stitch again. That might be the only good thing we can see so far in it. I personally think the girl they chose to play Lilo is super cute, and as far as looks go, she looks like Lilo so that's a plus. We can't say anything else yet because we haven't seen her act as Lilo, and we don't know if the writers will butcher the story/the characters entirely yet, so no comment there. I hope she has so much fun! We all wanted to be Lilo at some point as children - now she gets to actually do it! Good for her! What a precious-looking lil lucky duck. I bet she'll do great. Now I'm gonna rant, get excited.

Thirdly, here's my most recent opinion on the film and its cast and all that jazz: people online have been very loud and very obnoxious and very rude about the color of the human cast's skin. Even though these human beings are, in fact, of Hawaiian descent, the way their characters are supposed to be, that's apparently not enough because their skin is "too light". So now we've gotten to a place in our culture where it's not sufficient to be cast in a role with a certain nationality or race that you actually are. No. Your physical skin color, which you can't change and were born with, has to be a certain shade or else it's racist that you were cast and the company is intentionally using you to "whitewash" characters with skin colors that were designed as non-white. I personally think that is ridiculous. If the actress for Nani plays a convincing Nani, and is right for the part, and as a bonus she is a female of Hawaiian descent (because the character in the original film was intentionally created as a native Hawaiian woman living on Kauai), then she should play Nani and no one should have a problem with that. The same goes for the men cast to play David. Which brings me to my fourth opinion: I said men, plural. David has recently been recast. For multiple reasons. The biggest reason being that people were yet again obnoxious and loud online (like they always are) and, because they were still salty that Mr. Machado's born skin color was not the shade they wanted it to be, they dug and dug all over his personal social media accounts in order to find anything incriminating they could yell about to force Disney to recast him. They did find out that he seems fine using rude and offensive terms when referring to African-American people - or that, at one point in the past, he was fine using them - never having met with or spoken to the man himself in the present to find out what he's really like, what he actually believes, or why he posted things of that nature in the past. People didn't like Mr. Machado's skin color, so they were loud and rude and obnoxious and did everything they could in their own free time to get him kicked off of the project, and it worked because modern-day corporate Disney is a sleaze-ball company whose higher-ups only care about money, not whatever they say publicly that they care about. I don't think Mr. Machado (or anyone) should use what people call "racial slurs", ever, because it's terrible. But I also think the public was super weird and boundary-crossing and incredibly silly about this whole thing. Do you actively, regularly go to random strangers' Facebook accounts when you met them in a Starbucks line and you didn't like something about the way they physically look? And then look all over that Facebook account for something that would get them fired from their job? A person you don't even know? Fired from a job you have absolutely nothing to do with? No? Then don't do it to an actor. Why do you care? How do you know what they're really like? People ruined an opportunity (a crappy Disney live-action opportunity, but an opportunity nonetheless) for a young undiscovered actor because they were mad his skin color wasn't what they thought it should be. That sounds racist to me. Anyway. Now they've cast another young gentleman as David, and good for him, lucky for him, and he looks fine to me, but who knows. Maybe they'll rise up and get him fired too for having the wrong-shaped earlobes or something. Stupid. ANYWAY. Llike I said, Arti and I don't really have any other strong opinions on the film beyond the ones listed here. We don't have much faith that it will be good, we don't think it even needs to be made, but we're super excited to hear Mr. Sanders as the voice of Stitch again! Unless they recast him because he's not blue. Then we riot.

Upcoming Disney movies to expect:

Inside Out 2

Toy Story 5

Zootopia 2

Frozen 3

Frozen 4

Cars 4

Moana 2

Live action Lilo and Stitch

Live action Moana

Live action Snow White

Live action Mufasa prequel

Live action Bambi

Live action Hercules

What the fuck is this??!!

If you actually hate how Rachel Zegler disrespects the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, do not go see or stream the remake.

If you actually hate how Disney has turned the Lilo & Stitch live-action into a bad statement about race, do not go see or stream it.

If you actually believe that the original The Little Mermaid was perfect and needed no adjustments, and Eric was not a bland prince, do not go see or stream the remake.

If you actually thought that Emma Watson misread and mishandled the role of Belle, who, in the original, was expertly characterized, do not go see or stream the remake.

If you actually believe that the Genie wanted to be free, and Aladdin learned to trust, and Jasmine taught them both how, while the Live Action version ruined that, do not go see or stream the remake.

If you actually believe that the original Lion King movie was perfect and needed no bland NatGeoWild embellishment, do not go see or stream the remake.

If you actually believe that the Cinderella (2015) movie was a good remake, go out and buy the DVD—and then don’t go see and stream the other remakes.

Don’t do it. They don’t read our tumblr rants or watch our rage reels, but they count how many of us go see the new stuff. And they count our money as it goes into their bank account to fund the next one. And they count the time we spend on their streaming services. Teach them that we have standards, and the standards aren’t spectacle, and you can’t just buy us with soulless puppets of our favorite movies.

When you’re tempted to go hear the soundtrack play and listen to the dialogue you miss, just go watch the original. That’s what you really love.

#NotMyDisney alienated me with these last few movies, so I’m not playing the games anymore. Make movies for me, as if I’m the smart child you raised on good movies, or else I won’t go see them. If you guys want me, I’ll be waiting for the day that the Live Action Remake comes out, and then immediately streaming the original on Disney+.

Let ‘em measure how many seats are filled in their theaters, versus how many streams of the originals are playing on the same day.

This is different.

thought about what cgi monstrosity disney is going to create for the live action lilo and stitch movie and almost threw up in my mouth

Live actions I wanna watch

(SECOND SEASON)

Twitter and Tumblr about completely changing Ariel's ethnia and race in the live action adaptation : "die mad, fiction is fiction, and her origins don't matter in the storyline anyway, who cares where Ariel is from as long as she sings ? Anyone arguing is a racist because life is literally black and white and so are opinions on adaptations, color washing doesn't exist you're just a bigot"

Twitter and Tumblr now that Disney casted an actress who is more native Hawaiian than they ever will be but is not "dark enough" for playing Nani therefore "not a real Hawaiian and white washing" despite she is not white