Let’s Discuss: Live Action Remakes

So lately there has been a rise in remaking animated movies or TV shows into live action for example Disney. And more often then not the live action remake just makes you realize how good the original was. Today I will be discussing: Why a live action remake should be made and my personal opinions. I would love to hear your personal opinions in the comments.

Why would you remake a live action?

• It can increase the fan base ( if is a movie based off a book people will go read the book more often then not)
• You can expand on existing character and thicken the plot.
• You can also make it more mature or darker then the source material (which can be a good thing or bad thing)
• Improve the quality whether that’s the cinematography or special effects for example.
• Banks on nostalgia, these remakes often do very well because people who are familiar with the source material will want to check it out.
• Addition of diversity which is amazing and we need more representation in Hollywood!

Why most of these live actions are bad in my opinion:

• Why remake an existing movie that still holds up to today’s standard into another movie. For example the original Lion King is still loved by many the animation still holds up today, therefore in my opinion it didn’t need a “live action”.(well its still animation just photo realistic)
• The animation stigma, yes animation is commonly used for children shows however there is this stigma that just because something is animated its for kids and therefore it is bad. Animation is a great media form and shouldn’t have to be remade into a “live action” to be taken more seriously. Also animation is used in most live action moves in the form of CGI (computer generated imagery).
• Nothing new is added, why remake something identically in another media platform if you are not going to add a twist we then might as well watch the original. However sometimes the new additions to the story are unnecessary and often interfere with the already established lore or logic of the world.
• Just like how a good adaptation can bring more attention to the original source material. A bad adaptation can bring negative attention to the original, when I say negative attention I am not referring to criticism as that can be helpful for improvements, I am referring to when people only watch the bad adaption and then proceed to think that the original is bad.
• The creators of the adaption forget what was so beloved about the original, it wasn’t just the amazing fight scenes or lore it was the characters and their depth.
• Watering down of characters, what this means is that they take one aspect of the characters personality for example character A is mean, which they are but just like onions they have layers. There is more to them then anger however most of the time in adaptions they don’t show those layers. However it is completely possible that the original may not have much depth so I wont just completely blame the adaptions.
• Addition of more gore and violence doesn’t make for more of an interesting story. I am not saying that if it has gore its bad absolutely not, however once again going back to a previous point on the stigma that something enjoyed my kids is bad, so creators of adaptions add violence to make it more mature to a story that was good without it.

Let me know what your thoughts on the live action remakes are, I am actually inspired to write an article on why I love animation as a form of story telling. Just clarifying there are many great adaptions out there and I am in no way saying that a bad adaption can’t be enjoyed.

Thumbnail: Lion King belongs to Disney, Avatar the Last Airbender belongs to Nickelodeon.

~Stay Curious~