Years and years of bitter experience has taught us not to expect too much from Disney’s live-action remakes of its old animated features. Since Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella limply beat us all around the head almost a decade ago, we’ve been treated to a litany of disappointing slop. Tim Burton’s Dumbo fused boneheaded storytelling with genuinely nightmarish character design. Jon Favreau’s The Lion King stripped all its characters of personality in favour of dreary photorealistic animation. Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin was Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, for crying out loud.
In fact, the torrent of lukewarm, cynically commissioned remakes has been so endless that people have stopped noticing them altogether. Remember the live action Lady and the Tramp movie from four years ago? The Mulan that burped straight to streaming mid-pandemic? The Pinocchio movie that starred Tom Hanks and only came out eight months ago? No, of course you don’t.
