Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures released a live action rendition of “Lilo & Stitch” on May 23, and its feedback has been nothing short of complicated. While some audiences say that the movie was a perfect family film, most reviewers state that the movie was an extreme step-down from its original and that way too many themes changed throughout the movie. The film also altered important scenes and characters that were crucial to developing central themes, making the movie a bust.
While a copy-and-paste movie may have left some fans disappointed and wanting something deeper, changes within the movie didn’t add sustenance and deprived the film of its core points and messages.
With my bar low on the ground for a Disney live action movie, I was sincerely disappointed with the changes they made and how they ruined “Lilo & Stitch” original points of emphasis, like family. Disney Studios took everything that made the original animation memorable, like what Ohana means and which characters were influential, and threw it out the window.
Certain characters were extremely misguided in the live action. David, Nani’s love interest, who was a genuine, good guy in the animation and understood Nani, was turned into a punching bag for the surrounding characters to use for the sake of the live action. Nani, Lilo’s sister, cherished their family structure in the animation and did everything in her power to keep Lilo under her custody and out of foster care. In the live action, they did just about the opposite, painting Nani as an older sister who only cared for going to college and leaving Lilo in foster care. In the original, Nani was involved in her native Hawaiian culture and, with the new release, her whole identity was erased for her to leave her home and give up her sister.
Additionally, Bubbles, who was an extremely important character as a former CIA agent who became a social worker, failed as a character. Bubbles was painted as a rude person in the live action, whereas in the animation he was undercover and genuinely trying to do right by Nani. In this new release, he endangers Nani’s chances of keeping Lilo just for the sake of a mission, which is never even revealed in the film.
Stitch was also extremely dumbed down in the film in order to make the movie work. Animated Stitch would have been ashamed. Some would argue that Stitch’s mischievous and chaotic personality was less pronounced, making him seem dull.
If Disney continues to make live action versions of original animated movies, they need to learn from their lessons from “Lilo & Stitch” since the movie did no sort of justice to its original and failed to properly express the true meaning of the animated film’s messages of family and acceptance. The live action was ultimately not a well put-together rendition of the original animated film, changing the personalities of the original characters, removing pieces necessary to the plot and more.
