Every Disney Live-Action Remake Ranked! (w/ The Little Mermaid)

this weekend the latest Disney Live Action remake the little mermaid swims into theaters so today I'm gonna stop and rank all 22 remakes reimagining recalls whatever you want to call them whatever falls into that category from the abysmal to the best [Music] hi my name is Sean and I love to talk about movies and TV way too much with that in mind go ahead and join me down below in the comment section share your ranking of all 22 of these Disney Live Action adaptations my list is not the right list it's just my list and I would love to see yours and let's get started in last place Pinocchio I would call this another cheap low effort attempt to put more content on Disney plus but you can't do that because it cost 150 million dollars it's directed by oscar-winning director Robert zemeckis it's written by oscar-nominated screenwriter Chris Weiss it stars multiple Oscar winner Tom Hanks it has the best in the business it has all the resources in the world but it doesn't have a soul it exists purely to milk a franchise and to remind us of other Disney stuff other better Disney stuff don't ask questions just consume product and then get excited for next products there's literally a scene in this movie where I guess Geppetto is a time traveler or an Incredible Visionary because he owns a bunch of clocks featuring Disney and Pixar characters it's that just desperate to Nostalgia bait that desperate to remind you of better Disney products as you go into the movie it has no balls it has nothing to say it takes the morality tale that was the original film softened off all the harsh edges anything that might offend someone and thus loses the entire message entirely and by the time you get to the final shot it's actually confusing and contradicts itself in whatever it's implying because the movie has nothing to say it wasn't created for the purpose of communicating something exploring something new it exists purely to try and make a little bit more money it's one of the most cynical things Disney has ever done yeah buddy I gotta say that's probably the worst thing I've ever heard number 21 Alice Through the Looking Glass a professionally made misfire it feels like they really wanted to make a new big epic Blockbuster franchise and decided to turn to the works of Lewis Carroll without ever stopping to ask does his material fit with the genre we're trying to squish it into and the answer to that question is no it absolutely does not they want to make the Mad Hatter front and center in the story except he's depressed and we're trying to save Wonderland and so it has all the beats that a big Blockbuster is supposed to have while totally missing the absurdity and the wit that made Alice and Lewis Carroll's Works famous in the first place did you ever wonder why the red and white Queen don't get along ever wonder if the Mad Hatter has a bunch of daddy issues and what his childhood look like no me neither but that's what this movie decides to jump into Lewis Carroll is famous for literally nonsense as Wikipedia says he was noted for his faculty with wordplay logic and fantasy his poems Jabberwocky and the hunting of the snark are classified in the genre of literary nonsense this movie exists to take Lewis Carroll's intentionally absurd creations and give reasons for their behavior why I'm just totally missing the point so you get a terrible adaptation of Lewis Carroll and a very generic Blockbuster next up 102 Dalmatians a shockingly lame sequel to the remake with an unbelievably contrived premise some movies just don't need a sequel and there's nowhere to go that makes any sense to build off the original premise and that's what you get here A bunch of bad ideas in the case of this movie it has Cruella Deville being psychologically treated to respect dogs and thus it's like taking inspiration from A Clockwork Orange wow that's weird so it's a plot point that no adult will be interested in and no child will understand from there it's a movie that feels like it they thought the only thing that people liked about the original remake was Glenn Close as Cruella so they have to keep her promote her and make her even more front and center this time around thus entirely losing the charm of the original there was no story to tell here and you just get these cringe sequences where she's so over the top in her love for dogs whatever they were going for it didn't work 19 Dumbo and this to me was where you could really start to feel Disney just desperately trying to find another one of these movies to remake to turn into a big gigantic Blockbuster without stopping to think about why movies like Beauty and the Beast had become such massive hits so I can respect the fact that this functions as a remake A reimagining and a sequel all at once but I simply don't think it works all that well the original Dumbo is only an hour long and so they have to find some way to just pad this one out expand it build on what the foundation that was there before and I don't think it works in the execution largely because everything here feels phony to me it looks phony the characters ring Hollow and don't feel like real people all of the conflict and drama feels forced and exaggerated it all boils down to the script it repeats certain block beat plot beats over and over again adults constantly make really bad choices simply because the plot demands it so for me this one just did not fly and there's a certain lack of self-awareness for Disney to put out this particular movie with this particular message where the villain is this Rich powerful company trying to build in a amusement park by acquiring shows and different brands to prop themselves up and then exploiting in them and milking them without stopping to think about it you know Disney that's what you've been doing for the last 20 years it's true number 18 Alice in Wonderland on paper Tim Burton seems like a great pick to adapt the Lewis Carroll classic into live action in the 21st century and superficially this movie gets a lot right but at its core it feels like it gets everything wrong instead of focusing in on Lewis Carroll's word play in absurdity this tries to be another generic big gigantic Blockbuster for some reason the Mad Hatter has been promoted to a co-lead of the film and you get instead of the Mad Hatter you get another sad Tim Burton misunderstood weirdo instead of written word play you get big gigantic action set pieces with battles and armies and with Alice she's turned into this character on a hero's journey where she's the chosen one and literally puts on Armor and battles dragons with swords because that's what Heroes do there's a bit of creativity with the production design of course when you get Tim Burton You're gonna get some great visuals and at the same time some of the CGI just looks terrible it doesn't work it just feels artificial in the wrong kind of way so for all the weirdness on display it's remarkably Bland 17 The Lion King and this is a classic example of a one-time watch movie for me first time I watched it was at the best iMac screen in Austin Texas and in that context it was a very cool experience very immersive incredible technological achievement and The Lion King is my favorite animated film of all time so seeing this new rendition in that context was cool so my initial review was very positive and then when it came time to like do I want to show this to my family do I ever want to re-watch it I was like no no there's no reason I would ever want to re-watch that movie at home it was a one-time cool experience in a cool movie theater and everything else is just inferior by comparison to the original simply because it's a bad idea at its core what no the thing that makes a story like The Lion King Charming is that you're seeing all these Lively characters that can emote and sing and smile and be sad and photorealistic Lions do not have human emotions in which case you get this technological Wonder in seeing these incredible images that are devoid of any life whatsoever then we have Maleficent Mistress of evil one of the recurring themes on this list is is that they remake a classic and it turns out to be a big hit therefore they want to do a sequel but the source material doesn't really lay the foundation to tell an additional story that captures the magic of the original and that's where what you get here it was already a little bit of a stretch to reimagine Maleficent as the protagonist of a story and trying to do it a second time while keeping the characteristics that make Maleficent interesting in the first place it just doesn't really work and there's some ideas in here that are kind of interesting about trying to join these kingdoms together and people with varying different alliances and so you kind of get a Disney version A Game of Thrones but the actual execution the actual script just can't pull it together some of that is simply the constraints of a PG rating where they're trying to tell this big gigantic Epic Fantasy story with Mass massive stakes and a huge body count with a PG rating so bold strategy cotton let's see if it pays off for them at a two hour run time it feels like nobody gets explored nobody gets a full Arc it's just jumping between so many locations characters in different plot points that none of them feel fully explored and the biggest victim there is that Maleficent feels like a side character in her own movie She disappears for Gigantic chunks of the film this is one that really was a misfire for me there's some moments that kind of have a little bit of a Sparkle and Angelina Jolie is great in the role movie is a whole pretty boring number 15 Lady and the and this movie is is fine it doesn't do anything to make me mad I don't have any way to like dissect all the things that didn't work or give you an interesting perspective on it it's just a movie that makes absolutely no mark on me whatsoever it doesn't stick out I've seen it three or four times since it came out four years ago and I barely remember much of anything distinct about it you know my kids like dog movies so we've watched it several times and it it's always fine it's a little dog romance cool a little bit of that Underdog Story about him being run off and then being the hero at the end oh nice little moment there but that's it that's all I can remember about it so if a movie leaves no impression at all it can't be particularly high on the list 14. Peter and Wendy and like lady in the this is a movie that I watched just about a month ago when it dropped on Disney plus and when I went to talk about it just a week later I could barely think of anything to say about it it's a movie that simply happens you experience it and then you forget everything about the movie and that's not a good sign when it's Peter Pan this is pretty easy Source material to tell a fun exciting adventure with some humor into it maybe a little bit of romance thrown in there just some nice memorable moments it's Peter Pan for crying out loud but watched it was like okay what like what happened in the movie like Captain Hook used to be one of the Lost Boys And like that's what I remember Jude Law used to be one of the Lost Boys And I remember that it seemed like it kept sidelining Peter to promote Wendy to grow up my the biggest adventure of all once again it's missing even the point of the dynamic of the characters in the story and what role she serves in the source material to try and make her the best fighter in the story and scale what what are we doing here you're turning everything into just the same generic product that makes no impression whatsoever next up Beauty and the Beast and kind of like The Lion King this was a very cool first time watch when it came out I took my oldest daughter to go see it in the theater she wore her Belle dress the only times it was a great memory it was a great experience it was very cool to get to experience this movie of my childhood with her during her childhood but it doesn't have much re-watch value more so than the Lion King I think it's better than the Lion King and there's some stuff here that is nice to see in the live action format but generally speaking if I'm in the mood for Beauty and the Beast I'm probably gonna watch the version that was nominated for best picture and not the one that copies the movie nominated for the best picture but just adds 45 minutes of extra stuff that we don't need whether that's forgettable songs or the black plague it has a bunch of stuff where you gotta go really what are we doing here like Beauty and the Beast definitely didn't need a dose of the black plague thrown into the mix so I made a decision and it was wrong it was a bad call Ripley it was a bad quad so I don't think it's awful it's an interesting little experience meant that may makes for a fun date night with your daughter but that's what it is and it tries to justify its existence by adding things in but you already had a movie nominated for best picture it was already the best of its category it already worked it was perfect perfect everything down to the last minute details movie at all number numbers is a frustrating one for me because this movie is just oozing style the production design is incredible it has a great aesthetic to it there's it's just filled with iconic memorable images and Emma Stone is fantastic in the lead role she just dominates the screen so there's all sorts of things here that I think are really great but at its core the idea of reimagining the most infamous puppy killer in cinematic history is a misunderstood victim that's a feminist punk rock icon it's just weird and I don't think I'm ever gonna get on board with turning Cruella into the protagonist of the story you made a huge mistake because she's supposed to be a Despicable character and so this is just a weird project for me kind of beyond that I think it's a little bit too long it covers too much time there's too many montages and at a certain point in time it's just kind of repeating itself a little bit of these similar beats followed by the same follow-up afterwards and so a movie that even if I did buy into the premise a little bit more I think it needed a little bit of story editing as well as just editing in the editing process to tighten things up a little bit but man I think this aesthetic to a different character origin original story or something like that could be very cool number 11 The Sorcerer's Apprentice now I don't know that this really counts as a remake or even a reimagining it takes this one segment from Fantasia and makes that one scene in this movie and then tells it all original story that just expands on everything so make of that what you will but this is a movie that I always feel should be better than it actually is you don't like it it re teams Nicholas Cage with the director of the National Treasure movies and gives them this world of wizards and Sorcerers and Magic tells this big vast sweeping adventure story with a bunch of spell binding visual effects and it never quite has the magic that you want it to have it checks all the boxes it's supposed to have but something's just not quite right with the script in the story so so it's fun moment to moment scene for scene but you never fully get invested I think some of that even the way it's structured it always feels like the bad guys right around the corner and he can find the heroes and the heroes can always find him but they never you never have this sense of danger there's never this sense of like we gotta get on the run the sense of urgency because they just keep interacting having these minor little interactions until you get into the finale where we're now it's life or death we gotta save the entire world so a movie that it's fun it's Charming enough without ever being as good as it should be kicking off our top 10 Christopher Robin now I know a lot of you absolutely love this film and are probably shocked it's this low on my list how dare you I think it's good I think it's entertaining but it's just not one that I have much of any interest to re-explore I'm never in the mood to re-watch this film so here we give Winnie the Pooh the hook treatment with Christopher Robin all grown up being pulled back into the world of Winnie the Pooh and in certain ways it captures the magic it has the word play it has the right sense of humor it gets some of the visuals and the setting right and almost to me that's kind of the problem the classic Winnie the Pooh films were like right at an hour long part of the reason that you can move to that slow pace and just have these little adventures is because they're so short and when you make a movie that's an hour and 49 minutes where it's 30 40 minutes longer than what worked before kind of strains my patients a little bit does a lot of things right and for those of you that love it I get it I get why this one would be special for you I've never been a huge Winnie the Pooh person so even for that reason some of the Nostalgia some of the things that would naturally connect with some of you that are bigger Winnie the Pooh fans wouldn't resonate with me so that's kind of where I'm coming from it does what it's trying to do really well number nine Maleficent Angelina Jolie is fantastic in the lead she looks the part she captures the quirks the charm the mischievousness of the title care character and it's kind of fun to take this classic tale tell it from A New Perspective is it true you're Maleficent and some of the reasons that can work is because they find a way to explore this idea of how greed and Vengeance can rot you on the inside and shows two different characters on that path one of them is able to overcome their anger and move forward the other person succumbs to it and it just destroys their life and they become the worst version of themself the ninth little exploration at the same time I I just don't know that I want every villain to be re-explored here we take one of the most iconic villains in the Disney Canon and we explore how actually she's a victim and acted out in a moment of weakness I shall bestow a gift on the child and lift the rest of her life trying to make up for that mistake that moment of weakness I get it it's kind of fun and interesting but sometimes I just want a villain to be a villain not everyone needs to be re-explored and reimagined and turns on its head and deconstructed but if you take the movie on just its own terms does it do a good job of what it's trying to do I think it does and it's a solid Adventure number eight Mulan now this is an interesting one because a bunch of you hate this movie because of the context under which Disney created it as well as the changes they made to mulan's character and I totally get all of that I just have a little bit more fun with it if you don't know kind of my history getting started in the movie review space I had a Jackie Chan fan web page back in the late 90s I was watching Jet Li Donnie Yen films way back in the day and so when you get a movie like this where you have Jet Li Donnie Yen that's really cool for me I liked a lot of the action in this movie it's a superficially speaking there's a bunch of stuff here that I just enjoy this type of thing but they screwed up the character Arc in a baffling what are you thinking kind of way where they take this fantastic story of grit determination doing the right thing opposing gender roles and this person just having just the will to succeed for the sake of protecting her father and they change it to she's a Superhero and she's always been awesome and she's just been hiding how awesome she is which is a terrible change that I don't know what they were thinking I don't know how they thought that would be better it goes against it hurts whatever messaging agenda they're supposed to be having about female empowerment the original story does a much better job of that and so I just don't get what they were going for here I don't know why you would change it like that but at the end of the day I like The Superficial stuff I have fun with it I liked it number seven a hundred and one Dalmatians acute mid-90s slapstick comedy my kids love dog movies as I've previously mentioned in this video they love home alone and so when you combine slapstick Home Alone s comedy with dogs you have a winning formula yes yes it's unashamedly campy it's unassuming it's just trying to have a lot of fun and it has a great cast here of course Glenn Close is the big star of the movie as Cruella Deville but you also have Jeff Daniel's phone in there a pre-house Hugh Laurie they're all having a lot of fun they're all highly entertaining and it builds up to this big slam bang goofy finale back when we were watching this several years back when my son was younger one time he goes this is the time where it turns into home alone with dogs apparently that's my son's voice that's not how he sounds at all apparently that's what he sounds like when I'm doing an impression of him and the reason it feels like home alone with dogs is that the script was written by John Hughes who wrote the script for home alone and I think that merging of the two franchises works well enough this isn't trying to be a big classic it's just trying to update a classic film for the 90s and I think it did a good job of that it's a solid piece of family entertainment number six The Little Mermaid an enjoyable but flawed adaptation of the Renaissance classic and I felt like this movie found ways to take certain aspects and I'd say it improves on certain ways by fleshing out some of the romance and the connection between the two characters a little bit while at the same time being not nearly as effective at other elements of the story I thought the lead actress here was great I know the internet is going bananas over the race swapping and if you're mad at Disneyland in the director and the producers about doing that fair enough but judge the actress's performance on her performance I thought she did a great job because she's able to have that naive yeah excitement and just this interest and curiosity and you see it in her eyes whether she can talk or whether it's during the part where she can't talk you know what she's thinking and she captures it so well now all that said some of the stuff underwater looks terrible it just looks bad this is so painful to watch and it's just too long the original was already a classic and they took the same amount of plot and made it 50 longer and if it had been like 10 15 minutes longer with expanding Eric's role in the story expanding some of the romance stuff I think it would have worked but it's like 50 minutes longer it's just too much there's too much new stuff so every seems feels like it plays out a little bit too long so it did a lot of things right it did a few things even better but clearly a flawed adaptation at the same time number five The Jungle Book 1994 this is a movie I grew up watching and I think it's a solid Adventure it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the current remakes with these gigantic budgets and ginormous spectacle but it's good old-fashioned romance and adventure and it has a great cast here with Jason Scott Lee Lena Heady Sam Neal Carrie elwez it's a movie that I'm kind of surprised isn't talked about more given the source material given the studio creating it in this cast the story itself is kind of a blend of Jungle Book with Tarzan a little bit of Latin thrown in there all kind of Blended up with all sorts of animal adventures and kind of a classic Arc and uh with kind of its Jungle Book isms it creates a scenario where like you really hate humans and you love the animals for the most part it's fun to see Carrie elwez kind of played the reverse of his character from The Princess Bride and when you move into the final 30 minutes of the film there's all sorts of fun adventure cool kills exciting adventurous stuff and big payoff because by this point time you hate a bunch of these jerk humans and want to see them pay so for me this is like a solid adventure and I think a movie more people need to check out fourth Pete's Dragon this is another movie that's kind of an odd one to include on the list because it's it's kind of a different thing where the Original Pete's Dragon was a live action film with an animated dragon and this is a total reimagining of the story it's a different story altogether wow that's great you're the most wonderful dragon in the whole world but it's a really sweet story about a boy and his dragon that is trying to tell this good natured story leans into kind of the Beauty and the Majesty of the Dragon it's a movie that doesn't need a real villain in the classic sense we have an antagonist someone that's arrogant cocky that's causing trouble for our boy and his dragon and his allies but he's not evil he's a guy that sees a dragon and thinks it's a monster because it's a dragon and he's never seen a dragon before and so you can move to the end of the story and you can have this feel-good conclusion where you don't have to kill someone off you don't need something dramatic to happen you just have characters kind of grow change and that's what I liked about it is that it feels like a story from a different time we don't make as many movies like this anymore it's a throwback film but with the best of modern technology real quick before we dive into the top three remember to share your ranking Down Below in the comment section my list isn't the right list it's just my list and I'd love to see yours also I've done a bunch of other videos about different Disney franchises including I did a ranking of all 60 Disney animated films back when and Kanto came out it was a gigantic project if you like Disney you gotta check it out you can do so right up here as soon as this video is over with in third The Jungle Book 2016 and this movie is a true technological Wonder especially when you realize the whole thing was shy what not in a jungle but in a studio in California somewhere and you just really have this one boy interacting with a bunch of green screens and a bunch of green foam blocks and it's absolutely believable immersive you buy into the world that they were able to create but when you compare this movie to like The Lion King it actually works that's great I think some of that is just having a human character to connect with to relate to that can emote like a human makes a huge difference the other thing is that the original animated Jungle Book was kind of episodic in nature and they were able to take it and just tweak it just enough to give the story more forward momentum more stakes and improve upon this the story and the storytelling in a lot of ways and just make for this big sweeping adventure and it's also the kind of story that if you put it in live action it feels a lot more dangerous when you see a real boy surrounded by fire with big gigantic jungle cats trying to kill him you feel that and so this is one of the rare examples where the live-action remake even though it's just live action person and extraordinarily animation remake improves upon the original in a lot of ways and is better in a lot of ways our runner-up Cinderella a Simply Elegant adaptation of the animated classic it hits all of the same beats as the original film but it's able to add just the right amount of new details flesh out specific plot points just enough that it turns into kind of this Underdog Story with a romance thrown into it at the exact same time and by not being a musical it doesn't feel like it's competing with the original one but it's a companion to it it's two different versions of the same story Kenneth Branagh because of his long history directing Shakespearean films is able to bring that Grandeur to the film here in the production design it's kind of classic idea of romance and you just feel all of it and so it doesn't feel like it's competing or just rehashing the original film it's its own thing but a true reimagining of it in the right sense and so one of the absolute best this isn't like I wouldn't by default to thinking oh yeah Cinderella that's the one that I'm probably gonna like really enjoy and think is a great adaptation but it just is it's a great adaptation so it's our runner-up but coming in at number one Aladdin now this is a film that when I first watched it I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought this is a story that works really well in live action because the original had chases big gigantic action set pieces and characters in Peril those are the sorts of things that work well in this format and there aren't a bunch of characters that are animals or creatures that can be tricky to adapt over into live action but with time I've enjoyed the film even more largely because my kids fell in love with this film so we've watched it roughly one zillion times in the Chandler household and it hasn't driven me crazy some of that is that the cast is charming of course the big standout here is Will Smith who absolutely slaps as the genie oh wow he's kidding I can't say things just it was a bad joke but if you're gonna do a modern day version of Aladdin who can you cast that will capture the energy of Robin Williams without ripping him off without copying him Will Smith is the perfect person that can be just as funny just as charismatic but in an entirely new way and I think he nailed the part it's one of the examples where the extra stuff feels earned and adds to the story rather just feeling like weird stuff like the black plague in Beauty and the Beast [Music] is the best the most rewatchable of the Disney Live Action remakes so it comes in at number one if you enjoyed this video I've got way more just like it you can check out my ranking of animated franchises right over there or you can check out my ranking of all 60 Disney animated films right down there thank you so much for watching and keep talking movies and TV too much bye-bye

Channel: Sean Chandler Talks About

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Keywords: disney live action, disney remake, aladdin, aladdin 2019, jungle book, 101 dalmatians, the sorcerer's apprentice, alice in wonderland, maleficent, cinderella, the jungle book, beauty and the beast, aladdin review, dumbo, sean chandler, sean chandler talks about, mistress of evil, the lion king, pete's dragon, mulan, lady and the tramp, Every Disney Live-Action Remake Ranked, the little mermaid, peter and wendy, pinnochio, pinocchio 2022, All 22 disney live-action remakes ranked

Id: 9lAmS-F4Ff0

Length: 35min 35sec (2135 seconds)

Published: Sun May 28 2023