It was not all that long ago that I recall sitting in a movie theater with my mom, watching the trailers and hearing her say “didn’t this come out already?”
The movie was the 2025 live action remake of How to Train Your Dragon and to her mind, as well as mine, the story had been done fairly recently. The original animated film came out in 2010 and in the grand scheme of things 14 years is not a long time. Cinderella had 65 years between the original animated version and the live action remake, The Jungle Book had 49, and Dumbo had 78. Overall, 14 years is merely a drop in the bucket. Moana had even less with only 10 years between animated film and live action remake. This may account for the overall negative reviews and a Rotten Tomatoes score of only 31%.
The issue is that the story is just too fresh in the minds of viewers. Why spend money to watch Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson flex his AI tattooed biceps when the animated version scratches the proverbial itch just the same if not better?
What’s worse is that there is a plethora of older movies out there just waiting in the wings to be rediscovered. Think of the Simpsons meme. Instead of remaking great movies, they should remake bad movies that were based on good stories that did not meet expectations.
There are tons of animated movies primed for live-action remakes, with the right creative teams, of course. The Black Cauldron, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Island, just to name a few.
People on social media have posted at length about wanting a resurgence of these projects only to be greeted by live-action retellings of movies released within the past 15 years. Like previously stated, “a drop in the bucket” in the grand scheme of things.
And while I am eager to see Kathryn Hahn put her stamp on Mother Gothel when the new Tangled is released, I do not believe that newer movies need to be remade so soon. I do not need a live action Frozen that gives Elsa a girlfriend, frankly I believe that would be unfaithful to the independent nature of the character. Not to say that I would be opposed to it come Frozen 3, but that it is a different atmosphere altogether.
We need to remake older movies that never reached their potential, or even better, utilize a mass amount of materials available (books, music, life experiences) to create original projects.
Photos courtesy of social media
