Ranking Disney’s live-action remakes

How does Disney's new version of The Little Mermaid stack up against reboots of The Lion King, Aladdin, Cinderella, and more?

By AV Club Staff | September 11, 2022 | 12:00pm

Film Features Creative works

Beauty And The Beast, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Aladdin (all images courtesy Disney Enterprises, Inc.) Graphic: The A.V. Club

If you read through The A.V. Club reviews of all the recent Disney remakes, you may see a pattern start to emerge. Although the films are all visually impressive, they tend to be hollow imitations, and more often than not leave us questioning the need for their existence. Despite their uneven history of success, Disney can’t seem to quit these remakes. Why come up with original ideas when you can just keep mining your old catalog of classics and make them all over again? Remember all those direct-to-DVD animated sequels in the ’90s? The Mouse is gonna Mouse.

The latest of these, and possibly the most ambitious to date, is The Little Mermaid, opening in theaters on May 26. How does it stand up against the other remakes, including recent efforts like Peter Pan & Wendy and Pinocchio? For the purposes of this list, we’re only including remakes directly based on previous animated films, which would exclude prequels and spin-offs like Maleficent and Cruella. We’re also not counting literary adaptations like the 1994 version of The Jungle Book, which was more directly inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s writings than the 1967 animated film. That still leaves us with plenty of films to rank, though. Read on to see where they landed and how we reviewed them when they were originally released.

12. Pinocchio (2022)

This direct-to-streaming was one of two high-profile adaptions released in 2022, but don’t be tempted to blame its failure on competition with Guillermo del Toro’s . Despite having big names attached, like director Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks in the role of Geppetto, this one would have been a letdown no matter what. In his review, :Live-action Disney remakes are best seen as the equivalent of Broadway musical versions: they add a few new songs, toss in some contemporary jokes, and throw a ton of money at special effects. Expecting the same kind of timelessness a second time is mostly a futile exercise: the state fair might book a talented cover band, but we’re listening to the original artist in our car or at home. This Pinocchio needed extra money or time, because the animation either looks unfinished or deliberately cartoonish, and the title character’s voice drastically changes from one scene to the next. Meanwhile, new songs by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard lack the snappiness and easy-rhyming wordplay of classics like “I’ve Got No Strings” or “When You Wish Upon A Star.” Far be it from us to actively reveal what scuttles Zemeckis’ film, but let’s just say that it seems like the people who made its biggest creative choices have more wood for brains than the character they brought to life.

80 Comments