Disney’s renaissance era was from 1989 to 1999, and the animated movies from those period helped them in becoming the box office titans they are now.

They have done live-action remakes of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, Mulan, and Little Mermaid.

The ones left from that period which they have not done are Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, and Tarzan.

(There is also Rescuers Down Under, but that was a sequel and it bombed, so I don’t count it)

So for those four, how do you think they would each fare with the live-action treatment? Would they perform well in today’s box office climate? I know Pocahontas is very controversial for its historical inaccuracies.

I admit I have a pretty cynical view of live action remakes of animated films. My gut always says "creatively bankrupt cash-grab" and broadly I feel that instinct has been proven right more often than not.

I'm cynical about remakes in general too, but I don't think they always have to be cynical cash grabs. Both versions of The Fly are great, and they're a fun double feature because they're quite different from each other.

The choice to be animated is a creative decision on a pretty structural level of what a film is, it's the aesthetic course everything will flow down, and those aesthetics mean something. I feel like it could be possible to do a live action remake of an animated film that really highlights the meaning of that creative choice, but I haven't actually seen that yet.

Hence this thread, have you ever seen an live action remake of an animated film that really made you feel like you'd seen a fresh angle on an idea, rather than seen an old idea with new clothes? A movie that feels like a separate, yet equally worthy product, from its original?

They feel inferior to the animated originals in nearly every way and rarely even try to offer anything new to the world of the originals or expand on the stories (with some exceptions being Maleficient and Cruella —a mix of a retelling + an origin story, attempting to give some new depth for each villain)

One of my main issues with these is they will take characters that are clearly cartoonized and do uncanny CGI "realistic" versions of them that don't even look that good, making the film look outdated upon arrival. Stitch looks like he isn't even in the scenes in the Lilo & Stitch trailer. The CGI dwarfs in Snow White look creepy and superimposed into every shot.

Don't get me started on the "live action" Lion King which was beat for beat the original's script and had no "live" elements — just CGI animated talking "realistic" animals. Why would I watch this when I can just watch the original?

TLDR: I wish animated films could just be animated films. I'm not into this recent obsession with everything needing a live action remake.

Obviously it makes Disney a lot of money.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this phenomenon.