Now I won’t lie, I have never been and will never be a fan of Live Action Remakes of animated films. I’m putting my bias out there right now. With that said, I will now try and convince any of you on the other side of this matter or on the fence about it that animated remakes are redundant, unnecessary, and disrespectful to the original work.
Before I get into how I thing Live action remakes of animated films are bad, I will start off by presenting how I tend to view remakes in general and whether or not they can be considered a good film. I judge them based on three categories, Quality, Originality, and Accuracy. Quality is pretty self explanatory, is it a well made film. Originality as to if it brings anything new to the table. Accuracy is how accurate it is to the original source material. Now with that said, I’ll move on to what I think are the good, the bad, and the ugly side of live action remakes.
I will acknowledge the good that comes from these types of movies. They will oftentimes draw new eyes to a series or franchise that may not have had all that much attention before. This can be good for the original, as it could result in people who enjoyed the movie to go back and try and find the original movie to watch and enjoy. Media companies may also use Live action remakes as sure fire ways to ensure reaching a large audience of people so they can make money. This can help fund studios to make more risky ventures that may not make a lot of money. I by no means think all remakes are by nature bad. Sometimes a movie is a bad movie and a remake can give it the second chance it needs to be successful.
As much good as a remake has the potential to do, I feel as though they more often than not do more damage to the original movie then do it good. When I mentioned the remakes having the potential to draw new eyes to the movie as a good thing, this is very much a perfect scenario deal. If the remake that is produced is well made and accurate to the original, then when people go back to watch the original they will be able to experience the thing that they love again but in its original medium. However, if the movie that they saw was far inaccurate to the source material, when the audience member goes back to watch the original they will not find the movie they love but something else. Worst case scenario say I had a friend that I rant and rave about how good Ghost in the Shell is and they decide “hey I’ll go watch it” but they watch the live action movie. If they find that they hate the live action and think it’s bad, they may assume the animated movie is the same, because why wouldn’t they. It’s a remake right, it should be the same. But often times it’s not, the changes may sometimes be small like removing a plot element, or sometimes may be big like changing the race of the protagonist. All of this has to do with the perception of the audience member to the work itself, however i believe that their is a much bigger issue with Live action remakes.
When an animated movie is remade into a live action film to perpetuates the stereotype that animation is an inferior form of media. It gives off this feeling that the animated movie wasn’t good enough and for people to enjoy it, it has to be live action. Even when something isn’t even live action they will still toat it as live action for fear that people won’t go see an animated film. The new “live action” animated Lion King movie is going to be made with CGI, and yet they are still advertising it as live action. Some people may say, “oh well of course they are remaking it, the original movie came out so long ago”. This is often not the case, Kimi no na wa (Your Name) came out this year and is already slotted to have a live action remake to be directed by J.J. Abrams. Kimi no na wa is the highest grossing anime and despite the world wide reception of it, it is going to be remade into live action. It’s as if to say “ya that movie was good, but you know what would make it better… real people.” It’s disrespectful to the artists who created the movie, and the medium itself. Animation is not a genre, it’s a medium. The lack of respect animation has in hollywood can be seen by how the movies Shaun the Sheep and Anomalisa were both put in the same category in the oscars under Animation. The two films couldn’t be more different, but because they are animated they are viewed in the same light. Animation deserves better than this.
Is there anything that we can do however. Us little movie goers. YES we can decide to not see these movies. When we see that Disney is putting out another Live action remake of one of its classic movies we can choose to not go see it. When we see that another anime is being given a westernised adaptation we can put our foot down and say no. These movies already exist and they wont be improved by simply making it live action.