Disney Live Action Remake Retreads Familiar Water
DIRECTOR: THOMAS KAIL/2026
Friends, I’ve finally reached my breaking point with these Disney live action remakes.
This moment came years ago for some of you. The dropoff on the bell curve seems to be 2022-2023, when Disney sent Pinocchio and Peter Pan & Wendy straight to Disney+ and when The Little Mermaid earned middling reviews. Though I had some reservations, I still found a few thingamabobs to admire in The Little Mermaid (mostly Halle Bailey). I also appreciated last year’s Snow White was willing to try remixing a classic for a new generation, though it wasn’t successful in any fashion.
Moana commits the sin of not trying anything. Because the 2016 animated feature is one of Disney’s best offerings of the 21st century, the live action version is a perfectly pleasant watch. Once again, we watch Moana (Catherine Lagaʻaia) grow up on Motunui, wish she could be out at sea. Again, she takes off on a boat to find Maui (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, reprising his role from the animated movies) to help her restore the heart of Te Fiti to save her island. They perform the same songs in a journey with the same story beats, and they speak about 70% of the same dialogue with several of the same actors. As a supporter of the theatrical film experience, I have to ask: Why not just stay at home and watch this on Disney+?
Every live action remake of the last decade or so has been created in spite of some version of that question, but most of them had at least one compelling rebuttal for audiences. Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, and Snow White transformed their damsels in destress into active heroines. The Jungle Book, The Lion King, Aladdin, and Mulan worked to correct cultural insensitivities plaguing the reputations of the original films. The Jungle Book and The Lion King experimented with new computer technologies. Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Snow White featured new music. And, of course, all of those titles were meant to introduce older favorites to a new generation, which must be the reason the mediocre Lilo & Stitch made $1 billion last year. Adjacent to these releases, Disney has also taken (very calculated) risks on revisionist villain tales like Maleficent and Cruella.
The animated Moana, released 10 years ago, is the most watched film ever on Disney+, a platform that launched just 3 years later. Moana 2 premiered in theaters less than two years ago. This property doesn’t yet have a new generation to be introduced to, and nothing about the filmmaking or storytelling has had time to age, much less age poorly. While this live action remake looks better than the unpleasant CGI that marred Snow White and Lilo & Stitch, the studio backlot and water tank backdrops aren’t as colorful or imaginative as the animation we saw in 2016. The biggest gimme of win, a new song from The New York Times Greatest Songwriters write-in favorite Lin-Manuel Miranda, doesn’t come till the credits. Again I ask: Why? After a decade of Disney trying to force old dogs to perform the same tricks—or in the case of Moana, a chicken with penchant for squawking—I can’t come up with an answer anymore.