Nostalgia comes out as very important to Disney. This year the mouse house celebrates a century of life, and as in all these decades it has had time to release several classics, it wants to squeeze the sentimental memory that surrounds them. Nostalgia is, without a doubt, the fundamental value that explains something like remakes in real action that have abounded in the filmography of The Walt Disney Company for some time now.
The other value is even more questionable, and I would conceive of animation as a limited artistic medium, which would only reach perfection when it embraced hyperrealism. That is the hyperrealism that something like CGI: computer-generated images that have been instrumental in turning cartoons into a movie with real actors, and in driving the play of the remakes.
He lives action names this type of film, being appropriate to insist on “live-action” since its precedent is animated, and a more or less complex operation has been carried out to translate one medium into another. live action points out an opposition: it does not make much sense to distinguish an ordinary film as live action (having filmed with people of flesh and blood), but yes when this live-action It is extracted from a story that we had previously known with cartoons.
This is what happens, more or less, with Peter Pan & Wendy. David Lowery has directed his second film for Disney after achieving some prestige with Peter and the Dragon another review live-action (in this case from a film from the 70s that combined real action with an animated dragon in 2D). his version of Peter Pan aims to stray a little from the homonymous classic of The House of Mouse, and in fact, seems to have more in common with films like Hook by Steven Spielberg or Bread of Joe Wright.
A brief history of live action
But he’s still part of this strategy to breathe new life into his animated classics. It is common to consider that it began in 1994, with The Jungle Book: The Adventure Continues. However, the film stephen sommers was more of a sequel to The Jungle book the label of the remake was more suitable for 101 Dalmatians. Glenn Close played Cruella DeVil in this 1996 film.
And it had a sequel 102 Dalmatians. As a sequel, it was, in itself, the Alice in Wonderland of Tim Burton in 2010. Exceptions that lead us to hold more rigorously than the remakes live-action, as Disney now understands them, began in 2016. before we had Cinderella at the hands of Kenneth Branagh but its kinship with the animated original was not as strong as that of the jungle book.
This film was directed Jon Favreau, with great success that precipitated Disney to limit its strategy to the extreme fidelity that this film kept with respect to that of 1967 (retaining its songs and everything). So these versions live action they are like digital and hyper-realistic copies of great animated classics, and have proven to have the support of the public thanks to the satisfied nostalgia and the opening to new viewers.
After the jungle book came to Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson. The film swept the box office, and the pieces were arranged on the board so that three were released only in 2019 remakes live action: Dumbo, Aladdin, and The Lion King. Dumbo and Aladdin were directed respectively by the aforementioned Burton and Guy Ritchie while of The Lion King Favreau took charge squaring the circle.
The creator of The Mandalorian not only did it do astonishingly at the box office, but it forced so much strategy that the film’s practical entirety was created by CGI. So, in a way, The Lion King It was still animated, just in 3D. The Lion King has been the pinnacle of the movement, followed by several premieres on Disney+ (before Peter Pan & Wendy they came The Lady and the Tramp and Pinocchio).
This 2023, after the failed experience of Mulan and leaks like maleficent and Cruella (which even owers to the animated originals pose too significant changes in the story to be considered remakes), we have both Peter Pan and Wendy as The Little Mermaid. This film by Rob Marshall yes it aims to be a remake pure and hard, and will surely succeed again at the box office. It opens on May 26.
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