Hm... don't think I agree with a lot the author says, here.<p>Cartoons are compelling because they're a colorful, heavily abstracted and anthropomorphized, impossibly expressive worlds without the hard and fast limitations of our physical existence. If Excitebike and lazy Hanna-Barbera cartoons are your only animated escapes from the real world, classic style Disney cartoons offer arrestingly compelling visuals and stories.<p>But 7 year olds probably can't remember a time without Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Odyssey and Zelda Breath of The Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. They've not only been watching, but have been interacting with and manipulating environments with that level of flashiness and abstraction for their entire conscious existence. While they obviously will still enjoy cartoons because they're beautiful and entertaining, they just won't impact them like they did us.<p>I also think this author erroneously asserts that Disney's remakes solely prey upon nostalgia. Children, not middle-aged fans of the originals, are still the primary audience for Disney movies, so that's not likely. They also assume that our generation's media hit the magic Goldilocks balance while the ones that came before us were contemptibly outdated and the ones that came after us were either superficial, or mocking useful social mores, or guilty of some other moral transgression. You might recognize this behavior from, you know, every other generation.<p>Kids growing up now will have a level of media sophistication few non-experts in prior generations could ever hope to match.
A lot of similar points are made in The Critical Drinker's most recent video, "ENOUGH with the remakes" [1]. It seems like the latest way to stir up more interest (whether good or bad) is something that I do think they're doing, 'fan-baiting', where they intentionally play up a very small subset of criticisms as being anti-[whatever social issue is hot at the time], and use that as a shield against any real criticism.<p>I liked a lot of the 'Disney Renaissance' animated films, but most of them worked because they were animated (and could really bend reality). The hyper-real look to these remakes throws them straight into uncanny valley, and any additions to the new films tend to be (as the OP article states) pretty mediocre in quality.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU453ZDqTG4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU453ZDqTG4</a>
What's unbelievable is the scale of the ops, the high quality of ppl, and the amount of work that happens behind the scenes and yet the output is garbage. Money making garbage for sure.<p>A large majority of people are just locked into processes of the mega machine without having any say into what the output is.<p>So when someone does this stand up routine or makes a speech, which happens regularly, all you get is pin drop silence.<p>Once these money printing processes start up the chimp troupe looses control over them. And its happening faster and faster.<p>Some ppl still believe we are on a ship where if you cry loud enough the captain gets moved to change heading.<p>But corporations don't resemble ships anymore. They resemble hurricanes. The reason for the pin drop silence is no one can change the heading.<p>So the only worthwhile thing to do, if you have a choice, is to go work on something controllable. Or break the machine.
A lot of good points in here on degrading art for photorealism in the remakes. But we’ve really been loving the originals that keep coming and changing the formula from princesses and villains to families and growth. From Soul to Encanto to Coco, Onward, Turning Red, and Luca, just high quality, good wholesome stories that we can watch as a family and talk about afterwards.
I think the trick with some of these debates is just stepping back from the media cycle. I really noticed this with Captain Marvel where for a few months any criticism was suddenly seized-upon as evidence of the person undermining the future of girls/women worldwide, but now, a few years later, nobody thinks that the movie needs defending so vigorously.<p>As an aside, I noticed a couple days ago that in the live-action Lion King, the person voicing Simba sings, "everywhere you look, I'm standing in the spotlight" in place of just "I'm standing spotlight" in the older version, which is almost a metaphor for the differences since that little verbal error in the animated version feels more humanistic
As a millennial who grew up watching the great Disney movies of the 90s, I just pretend the remakes don't exist.<p>Disney (classic Disney-Princess-Disney, excluding Pixar, Marvel, and all the "properties" they've acquired over the years) has made a great movie once every 3-8 years for the past few decades. In between, they've always made utter garbage to squeeze every dollar out of the great ones. Almost every Disney sequel has been a turd. Doesn't anyone remember how disappointing it was? This is just more of the same.<p>They're still making good ones: Frozen, Moana, Encanto. Just watch those and pretend the rest doesn't exist.
Tangential to the article, I urge the reader to read Andersen's original Little Mermaid, and not settle for Disney's beautifully animated, but watered-down (heh), bowdlerized version. And I don't mean the remake.<p>The same could be said for most of their works.
Wow, this certainly has a… distinctive… turn of phrase. And I think makes several fair points.<p>I’m low-key disappointed they said “Ant-Mans” and not “Ants-Man”, though. ;)
Unfortunately, I feel like Disney has also been unmagicking Pixar. I used to be so excited for each new Pixar movie and felt like Pixar could do no wrong (I’m a weirdo who even liked Cars 2), but the last couple of years have been lackluster from my perspective.
The Critic monologue about bad movies remains perennially relevant: <a href="https://youtu.be/HSWj5_-F9Q4" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/HSWj5_-F9Q4</a>
I learned something and enjoyed this to boot. Excellently written with a sharp writing style and incisive comments. It's quite a trick to make a children's movie that pleases everybody or at least doesn't turn off some group too hard. There's such a wide range of views about what's appropriate for children that I'd think it would darn near impossible.