Donzerly Light: Live Action Disney

There are some things I want to get off my chest. But since I can’t write an entire essay about how I think Instagram allowing people to add 20 photos to a post was the worst thing to happen to social media since extended family members and former high school classmates, I’m going to focus on something with a more robust chokehold on society: live action remakes of Disney cartoons.

I know these movies make a lot of money for Disney and that’s why they keep making them. But the American people need to understand that we’re the reason that they keep making money. We’re part of the problem. We’re allowing this to continue to happen. Paying money to see a live action remake of a Disney cartoon is tantamount to dropping your child off at the kidnapper’s house so they don’t have to go out in the rain and/or have someone recognize them from a wanted poster hanging on a bulletin board in the post office.

Did you realize that this has been going on for over 30 years? The very first live action remake of a Disney cartoon was The Jungle Book and it was released on Christmas Day in 1994. The film received mixed reviews from critics, much like what I would expect the Virgin Mary’s Yelp review would have been after they made her pop out our lord and savior in a barn. “There was more hay and camels than I was expecting, and the bed was the floor, but it did have a roof. The check-in process wasn’t ideal. The shepherds stared a lot, but the wise men’s gifts were lovely.” But then they made ANOTHER live action version of The Jungle Book in 2016. Aren’t there child labor laws about making Mowgli work that hard?

101 Dalmatians with Glenn Close as Cruella de Vil came out a couple years later and after its sequel was embraced with the level of joy and enthusiasm normally reserved for a can of soup, Disney took a break from thrusting these remakes on the public. It felt a lot like when someone gives a gym membership as a gift three birthdays in a row and then they finally stop. Disney waited 10 years before they put out another one. So we know they can exercise restraint, but they’ve just chosen not to do so for the last 15 years. Neat.

Counting the recent release of Snow White, that makes 20(!) live action Disney remakes that have been released since 2010. There were five released in 2019 alone! Was that the catalyst for the COVID-19 pandemic? Did Disney place the blame on that bat in China just to keep people from asking what the fuck they were thinking when they decided to do a live action version of Lady and the Tramp? No one wants to see real life dogs eating spaghetti! You see a dog eating spaghetti in real life and you tell it to knock it off. You don’t hope it leads to a dog make out sesh that you can watch alone in the dark. Weirdos.

So which Disney live action remakes really left their mark on my soul? Not many, because I’ve only seen four of them. But I will complain about them anyway! Someone needs to stand up to Disney and I’m probably not that person because they don’t know me from a can of paint, but I’m going to tell the internet about this problem and let them run with it. That’s never gone wrong in the past and I don’t know why it would now.

• The Lion King (2019) – It’s wild that this is considered a live action remake when all of the animals in the film are CGI. I feel like that’s the same thing as saying a spreadsheet is alive. I know people put a lot of work into creating the CGI animals, but people put a lot of work into making spreadsheets too. I once went on a vacation with my husband and the families of several people that used to work with him at a language immersion camp (don’t ask) and someone made a spreadsheet so people would know what food to bring to the Airbnb. That person spent a lot of time on that spreadsheet and I kind of hated it, but I also know that it wasn’t the spreadsheet’s fault. My primary memory of this film is that we saw it at a drive-in movie theater. I guess that’s my whole review of the movie. I have not seen Mufasa: The Lion King because I don’t need to know every damn thing about these lions' lives. Have the lions ever asked any questions about my life? I’ve got stories, lions! And a lot of them are about vacationing with the families of people that used to work at a language immersion camp.

  
  

• Mulan (2020) – As much as you try, you’re never going to top the sheer lunacy of hearing Donny Osmond sing “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” to a cartoon female who got into the Chinese army by wearing boy drag, but Disney forged ahead anyway. I’m not sure I would have remade Mulan today, just because it seems like it would be really easy to piss off lots of different people. Maybe they were trying to make up for casting a white man (Donny Osmond) as the voice of a Chinese character. How much more time would all of us have if we didn’t have to work to make up for Donny Osmond’s mistakes? My math comes out to three hours a week. They put this on Disney+ instead of in theaters because of the pandemic and it was controversial because you had to pay extra to watch it. I would have thought it was controversial for the “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” -ness of it all and the lack of Chinese talent behind the camera, but you throw a premium surcharge at a Disney adult and you better gird your loins because You. Will. Hear. About. It.

  
  

• Maleficent (2014) – At first I thought it was bullshit that Sleeping Beauty was passed over for the starring role in the live action version of her own story, but I guess she did sleep through a healthy chunk of the original movie. That is something I was jealous of when I watched this because a nap would have been better than trying to duck and weave to avoid Angie Jolie’s cheek bone prosthetics. This movie answers the age old question, “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s the patriarchy that turned her into an a-hole.” I think I would have been good to go without a sympathetic take on one of Disney’s cuntiest villains (that is a compliment). I think Disney underestimated how much people like Maleficent just because she was unapologetically evil. And she can turn into a dragon. I’d like to see Donny Osmond try that.

  
  

• Beauty and the Beast (2017) – Again, why are we making a live action remake when one of the title characters is CGI throughout the entire movie? And this isn’t the first time I’ll say this (frankly, it’s not even the first time I’ve said it today), but it’s very evident that Angela Lansbury is not in our midst. But I guess if you can’t get Angie Lansbury, Emma Thompson is a suitable substitute. Recently, Josh Gad said that he “never once” played LeFou (Gaston’s…um…companion) as gay in this movie. Josh Gad sounds like me talking about myself in high school. Also, if I want to think LeFou is gay, what’s the big deal? LeFou isn’t real! It’s like if someone outed one of those Russian bots who are always fucking with the elderly on Facebook. Also, between Maleficent and the Beast, I think Disney needs to rethink their approach to giving their villains horns. The horned person community is already marginalized and this isn’t helping.

  
  

• The Little Mermaid (2023) – Speaking of people losing their shit over something that’s not real, do you remember when half the internet blew their own tits off when they found out that Ariel in the live action version of The Little Mermaid was going to be black? Again, not real! Mermaids can be any ethnicity that we want them to be. You know those billboards that keep track of the national debt, or people who have died in car accidents in real time? I think we should have something like those, but it’s for whenever someone complains about the race of a fictional character on the internet, their picture, home address and phone number is posted to the billboard. Let’s give our Class A dipshits the attention they deserve! You know how AI has trouble generating hands? I think whatever CGI they used for this movie had the same kind of troubles with generating wet hair. If those who can’t do teach, then this CGI should be in an English classroom at a middle school somewhere. A fate worse than losing your voice for a man!

Takeaway Quote of the Week

"Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things.” -Walt Disney, gaslighting us.

Heath Smith is co-host of Fuzzy Memories, the podcast that celebrates the good, the rad and the fugly of the 80s and 90s. He was once asked by a cast member of MTV’s Road Rules if he was from Puerto Rico. In his free time, he enjoys Mariah Carey a normal and healthy amount. For a good time, follow him on Instagram.

Why "Donzerly Light"? Heath says: In elementary school, I thought "donzerly light" was part of the lyrics of the national anthem. I didn't realize that the actual words were "dawn's early light." I just assumed "donzerly" was an old-timey word that meant "majestic" or something like that. My middle school social studies teacher, who thought I was trying to make a joke with “donzerly,” would be 100% irritated by naming my column this way, and that makes it even better.