By Matt Kyle | Staff Writer
Reboots, remakes and sequels are Hollywood’s bread and butter. Forty years ago, most of the movies topping the box office were originals, but now, most of the films on top every year are related to some already existing property or franchise.
Leading this trend are Disney’s live-action/CGI remakes of some of its classic animated films. Starting in 2016 with “The Jungle Book,” we have seen remakes of classics like “The Lion King” and “Aladdin,” with a remake of “The Little Mermaid” coming in 2023.
Netflix has also played a role in this trend, releasing a few live-action adaptations of animated series. A “Death Note” adaptation was released in 2017, and Netflix recently revealed the cast for its upcoming live-action remake of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” as well as set photos from its upcoming live-action “Cowboy Bebop” series.
If done right, a remake can be good. There are many great movies that are remakes of older classics. However, in the case of the Disney remakes, as well as adaptations of animated properties, they are just lazy, soulless cash grabs that prey upon viewer’s nostalgia and connection to the original work.
Take 2019’s “The Lion King.” The film is essentially a shot-for-shot remake of the original. It brings nothing new to the table apart from a new voice cast. If you’ve already seen the original, there is pretty much no reason to watch the new one because it is the exact same film. However, despite the unoriginality of the film, it effectively capitalized on consumers’ nostalgia for the original film and brought in $1.6 billion at the box office.
Seeing as Disney’s remakes make a significant amount of money — both “The Jungle Book” and “Aladdin” made about a billion dollars each — Disney is going to continue to pump them out, and people will likely continue to go see them. Because audiences are already familiar with the original property, it is ridiculously easy to market the remake to them. It makes it an easy choice for studios to pick what movie to produce. A new, original film has no previous numbers to go off of to determine how successful it will be, while a remake, reboot or sequel has an existing fan base and box office numbers to see how a new film in the series would fare.
Live-action adaptations of animated properties fall under this same wing of laziness. While the “Death Note” adaptation on Netflix isn’t a shot-for-shot remake, it is very bad. It retains nothing good or interesting from the original anime series and makes many questionable changes to the characters and story of the original series. What makes it worse is that the original anime series is available to be streamed, also on Netflix. Why would anyone want to watch a bad live-action version of an anime when they can just go watch the original anime instead?
The same goes for Netflix’s live-action “Avatar” and “Cowboy Bebop.” While they haven’t been released yet, I have little hope for these series to be good. The creators of the original “Avatar” series left the live-action production due to creative differences with Netflix, and while I like the casting of the “Cowboy Bebop” series, I just don’t know what new things live-action would bring to the series.
For a remake to be good, it should take somewhat of a new angle to the original source material. But with the case of live-action adaptations of animated series, the trend has always been that it is either a shot-for-shot remake or it changes too much from the source material and it isn’t good.
Stop wasting your time watching bad remakes of animated movies, and just go watch the original instead. Instead of watching a terrible movie adapted from a fantastic anime, go watch the anime. Many of these franchises that are being adapted or remade aren’t even that old. Animation is such a beautiful form of media, yet it’s often disregarded in favor of live-action movies and TV shows.
Do yourself a favor, and go check out some awesome animated series and movies.
