The recent D23 expo announced many exciting upcoming events and releases for Disney, however, many of these projects seem oddly familiar. The 2024 expo addressed a whirlwind of new attractions, features, films and series that will be released within the upcoming year in the Disney community. While some of these releases seem new and exciting, many of them are simply reused ideas from past projects.
On August 9-11, 2024, Disney held its bi-annual D23 Exposition in Anaheim, California, where members of the Disney cast announced new attractions and rides that would be coming to Disneyland, Disney California Adventure, and Disneyworld later this year or early next year. These attractions include a Disney Villains land, an Avatar-themed destination in DCA and the update of the Genie passes that could be used at the theme parks. While these updates are great, the biggest announcements were some of the most ridiculous.
More than a dozen of the movies announced at the expo are reboots, sequels, or remakes. Movies like Incredibles 3, Frozen 3, Zootopia 2, Toy Story 5, Snow White, Lilo and Stitch and Mufasa: The Lion King are sequels to longstanding films, live-action remakes or spin-offs of existing series. These titles are not even all of the upcoming movies that will be remakes in some way, shape, or form.
“I personally feel like the remakes are good until a certain point. A remake should capture the same feeling as watching the original for the first time. The sequels get rather annoying when it feels like they are running out of ideas and just throw in anything they can think of,” North junior Aleena Caudillo shares.
The live-action remake started with, most popularly, 101 Dalmatians in 1996 followed by, in more recent years, Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, The Jungle Book, and Beauty and the Beast. While many of these movies were given deserving ratings, Disney has since released eleven other live actions only in the past few years.
North junior, Samara Camacho shares, “[…] I feel like they are just running low on ideas or they think maybe it will draw in the audience that watched the original shows when they were kids.”
Although these classic movies are given a new life through live-action remakes, it almost seems as though Disney creators need more ideas and are simply using old concepts for new revenue. Many of these movies also feature a number of new changes. For example, in the upcoming live-action Snow White, the previous “seven dwarfs” are now simply seven “magical creatures”. Now, these changes are minor and do not have much effect on the plot or theme of the movie, but the fact that the first Disney princess movie is being remade and changed seems unnecessary.
While these upcoming films may be great and a way for new audiences to experience the films in a new light, it still seems unnecessary to remake old classics. Instead, it might just be better to make brand-new movies that incorporate these new ideas into them. Whether or not Disney truly is running out of ideas, it will be interesting to see how these films are received by their audiences and the support, or lack thereof, they earn.
