When taking a look at Disney’s latest films, it doesn’t take a magic mirror to notice the disappointing turn Disney has taken. After a series of too many prequels, sequels and live action adaptations, Disney’s creative direction has taken a nosedive.
Disney started the year off strong with yet another live action adaptation. The reimagined Snow White, while arguably entertaining, marked Disney’s 23rd live action adaptation. After bombarding viewers with so many films with such little creative edge, Disney’s latest trend of reproducing live action adaptations of Disney classics is past its peak.
While cute at first, possibly even nostalgic, it’s hard to say why some twentieth century classics were ever redesigned in the first place.
For example, who asked for a real life visual of Pinocchio? He was creepy enough to look at, yet in the 2022 live action remake, Director Robert Demeckis made the transition from the 1940 hand drawn animated wooden puppet to a modern day CGI disfigure.
Optimizing today’s CGI potential has arguably proven to drain the life and color out of beloved characters like Sebastian and Flounder in the 2023 remake of The Little Mermaid. Despite appreciative performances by actors Halle Bailey (Ariel) and Melissa McCarthy (Ursula), the underwater CGI sidekicks did not live up to the humor and emotion of the 1989 classic.
The same goes with the 2019 remake of The Lion King directed by Jon Favreau. The live action adaptation attempted to make an emotional comeback after the 1994 original masterpiece but lacked just that. It recalls only a more realistic, computer generated version of the animals, completely missing the humor and soul of them all. The outcome was far off from its goal and lacked any and all creative initiative; it epitomizes Disney’s current trajectory.
The reality is, many modern remakes of golden age Disney classics walk a thin line of innovative plot twists and end up distorting classic stories entirely; however, let the record show, quite a couple were consistently praised by viewers. Modern remakes like Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (2015), Christopher Robin (2018) and Mulan (2020) arguably pictured clever twists on childhood nostalgia, iconic narratives, and inspiring characters that still preserve these admired stories.
Marvel is a beast of its own. Peaking in 2019 at the conclusion of Phase Four with Avengers: Endgame (2019), Marvel just doesn’t seem to know when to stop. Since the dawn of this multiverse saga following Endgame, Marvel has released 12 movies and nine television series and counting. After successful premieres of Marvel’s first television series like WandaVision and Loki, Marvel’s pockets inflated. Attempting to recreate these series’ success, Marvel released countless more like Hawkeye (2021), She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022) and Ms. Marvel (2022), all of which dipped in popularity. Marvel exploited fan approval in the name of money, turning the company into a cash cow and new comic book characters into failed experiments.
Marvel’s latest film, Captain America: Brave New World (2025), tried to incorporate nostalgic effects by relating the plot to peak Marvel movies, specifically Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), but fans weren’t having it. Old is always better. While so many storylines and characters exist within the original comic books, not everyone needs their own movie or television series.
Another problem with so many films is that to understand one, viewers have to see them all. For a new fan starting from scratch, watching all 35 movies and 13 television series is a daunting process. Old fans can’t appreciate the new storyline, and new fans can’t understand the old one. Both the fanbase and storyline are entirely different than they were ten years ago. Marvel has got to stop somewhere.
Star Wars has proven to have the same problem as Marvel, possibly to an even greater degree. Elongating the storyline, Star Wars released 7 live action TV shows; another cash cow.
The Mandalorian (2019), the first modern Star Wars television series since the 2008 Clone Wars, I’d argue was a hit, although not all fans consistently agreed. Instead of preserving the culture of the story, Star Wars made the same mistake of abusing its hit films by attempting to recreate more. Both Marvel and Star Wars’ current trajectories are not sustainable platforms to maintain their current fanbases.
Despite not every film making it big with the fans, across all of Disney, almost all have made it big in the box office. So long as these films rake in a profit, the culture of prioritizing the cash cow over long established storylines can only be prolonged.
