With the trailer released for the live action Moana, it feels like the nail in the coffin for Disney’s originality. We’ve been plagued by these live action remakes for a decade now and whilst at first they felt like a relatively harmless novelty, now, with a remake of a film not even a decade old, they feel like emblematic of a company and industry giving into lazy money-grabs rather than maintaining their legacy of creativity.

Disney’s animated classics are classics for a reason. They captured a certain magic, boasted incredible creativity and broke new ground. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was the first feature length, cel-animated film. Disney built its reputation on the back of these stories and they proved to be an enduring legacy; they haven’t fallen out of fashion and audiences haven’t fallen out of love. Yes, there are certainly some outdated attitudes and aspects that could be corrected through a remake, but they haven’t been so egregious as to turn people off from the original. This begs the question of why a remake is warranted (aside from money). We don’t need a new Snow White or Aladdin to introduce them to a new generation when they’re still enjoying the original film. The animations have been passed down through generations – they are a part of not only to cinematic history but familial history too. They are a commonality across a culture that is increasingly fragmented; a touchstone of shared love and experience for millions across the globe. No one has been crying out for a live-action remake; there is no audience or artistic want or need. Over time, as Disney has gone all-in on these remakes, the films they are adapting have become more and more recent. Moana in particular seems to make the entire concept more laughable, releasing less than a decade after the original animation and less than two years since the sequel to that animation. That throws all ‘updating it for a new generation’ arguments or changing the story (Dwayne Johnson is even reprising his role) fully out the window and only serves the feeling that Disney has become purely a money-making machine.

When the first couple of live-action remakes came out, before it felt like an onslaught, there was a certain novelty to it. Casting announcements and trailers sparked curiosity and sometimes excitement over who would bring beloved characters ‘to life’ and how the new films would differ; what would they bring to the table? This was before we had seen so many that we have come to expect the same thing: a substandard regurgitation of the animation, little innovation and an overarching feel of studio commercialism as opposed to artistic integrity. Even disregarding their lack of originality, these films were often worse than the animations as animation can do things other mediums can’t. Characters that weren’t human – whether they were animals or anthropomorphised objects – had to be rendered in CGI, and with live-action’s only point of difference being its purported realism, were made to look as much like real life as possible. This proved massively detrimental to the stories and characters; where animation can take liberties and use design to make talking objects look cute and expressive, stripping back that magic for the sake of a selling point often took away the compassion for these characters and often landed them somewhere in the creepy uncanny valley. Even worse were the animals, the most egregious example being The Lion King. In an effort to make to look like they really just took a trip down to savanna and filmed the real creatures, they stripped the characters of all of their expressiveness. Where a cartoon lion’s exaggerated facial features can contort to all forms of human facial expressions, a ‘real’-looking lion cannot, thus leaving the film lifeless and dull.

Despite all of this, these films make money. And, yes, in this day and age anything that makes money to keep the cinemas open is a good thing, but just think about what kinds of films used to do that, even from Disney itself. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the heyday of Disney Pixar and animated creativity, where Disney was consistently pumping out new concepts and films that almost instantaneously became modern classics (Disney later wrung all they could out of that with belated sequels) . What has made this live-action trend worse over time is the fact that it seems to be all Disney is focusing on, with its original films coming few and far between, and with a much smaller marketing budget behind them. Disney has been cannibalising itself and we’re all suffering for it. So, why do these films make so much money if they are so critically derided and are so derisive of beloved source material? For one, family films without competition (and there often isn’t much at the cinema) have a leg up; parents are looking for an activity for their kids (often in school holidays, which is when these tend to be released), and it’s an easy sell. Beyond that, the main thing these films trade in is nostalgia, and that currency is growing ever stronger in an online world hell-bent on reminiscing about the past (even if it was that long ago) as a way of dealing with a tumultuous present. Whether these new live-actions have been hailed as half-decent efforts or painful messes, many audience members are going in purely for the familiarity. It may not capture the magic of the original but it can remind you of that magic, and that proves enough. Additionally, in the age of streaming and ‘content’ tailor-made for you to half-watch whilst scrolling, in some instances casual audience expectations have also dropped dramatically. Audiences are so used to streaming slop that a remake can coast by on a sense of nostalgia alone. If that’s what the people want, so be it, but it is coming at the expense of artistic vision and originality.

A remake trailer for a nine-year-old film just hammers home the sad reality that Disney, a company once heralded for its unique creations and magic, has almost given up, and that audiences are ready to lap up whatever is churned out. We deserve better and can only hope as Disney runs out of its own IP to exploit, it will turn back to what it has done best for nearly a century and offer us some new characters to love and dreams to dream. If not for us oldies (I say as someone less than a decade out of school), but for the next generation who deserve their own stories to feel ownership of.