The Little Mermaid. One Piece. The Last Airbender. What do these movies have in common (other than all three movies being water-related – wasn’t intentional)? They are all beloved animated movies that got the live-action treatment. Are they good? I would be lying if I said yes. Some things are good the way they are, yet people are always trying to find ways to make more money.
Live-action movie does not quite have the time to capture everything in the source material, whether it be an animation, book or manga. But people won’t stop making those films, nor stop watching them.
Plus, some elements in animation don’t look great in real life, because making anything that is too unrealistic to look authentic is… just terrible. Have you seen Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? They look like Shrek on steroids. Moreover, most animations defy the law of physics. For instance, to make Road Runner run vertically up a cliff from Wile E. Coyote will be hard to translate into live-action screens. And I’m pretty sure coyotes don’t even eat cuckoo birds. Animation wasn’t supposed to be realistic, so making it live-action will cause it to lose its original magic.
Let’s talk about the new show that is popping off right now. One Piece fans love the new live-action show on Netflix. Me, being surrounded by die-hard fans, kept convincing me to watch it, saying it’s better than expected. So I tried it out, and wow, I can’t believe I trusted those idiots. I forgot that they will protect Oda’s legacy till the titular treasure is finally found, which is still a couple of years away. We still don’t even know what One Piece is. But hey, I guess it’s better than expected when you don’t even expect it at all.
Disney, man, they are rebooting everything because they ran out of ideas or something. From Alice In Wonderland to the upcoming Moana and Snow White, they could just save their hefty budget and make a new princess animated movie with a talking animal or something (surprisingly, there is a new one coming out called Wish – it also incorporates 2D animation so I might check it out.) But Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, or should I call it, Non-White Princess and the Seven Magical Beings. After Peter Dinklage commented on Disney’s choice to cast a Latina actress for the role of Snow White but kept the dwarves in a stereotypical setting, The Magical Kingdom changed dwarves to magical “creatures” from German folklore. Not to mention the romance between the Prince and the titular character will be non-existent or one-sided (from the Prince in my speculation, like Ken from Barbie.) Do you see where this is going? It’s proceeding further away from the source to “appease” the modern crowd, but I don’t think it’s working.
But this article doesn’t mean it’s wrong to watch a live-action reboot. All I’m saying is that film companies should leave the masterpieces as they are, not milking them. Original content will always wow people instead of watching the same plot in a different setting.