Everyone else has to contend with these regurgitated products that seem to add nothing more than a need for you to watch the original. There’s no creativity here, I won’t use the member-berries analogy, it’s nostalgia bait for the sake of making money. So then you ask, if this thing isn’t improving or amending or enhancing the original in anyway, then it must exist for the sole purpose of making money. These companies want your money and they don’t want to be original about making something new and different. The live-action Disney films exist for cash, and also to have a newer version of the properties out to probably extend their copyright, it feels like a workaround to their being denied legal exceptions they’ve persistently lobbied for. I don’t think they need it to be critically good, just financially, which they are. But if you’re using these to “fix” errors from the originals, or worse, making a fucking sequel to “fix” what was wrong with the original live action movie (a la the new Lion King “prequel”), then your intention with this new piece is less about creativity and more about pandering. And now I have to ask, are any Disney original movies that aren’t animations classed as live action or are they just “originals” and “live action” only pertains to a remake of the animated versions? Does it matter if it makes money? No. And it’s perfect if it drives people back to the originals if they’re buying them or getting a Disney+ subscription. Which you do at your own risk now they’re making you agree to Faustian-like conditions just to access a fucking free trial. The Mouse is the Devil incarnate. I haven’t seen the apologists defend that yet.
The original Last Airbender show was as close to perfect as any series could be. The trash M Night version was an abomination, so when the original showrunners had a second chance for a TV series on Netflix, people felt hopeful they’d get a good live action version. You got a mediocre one, at best. Saka was amazing. That’s all I had to say. And they still fucked up his character on some level. Ang was irritating, Kiara was meh. I didn’t care for any of it. It made me want to watch the original, which works for Netflix either way, if you subscribed for the new version, you stay for the old one. As a business model it’s been working very well for many franchises. But it hurts fans, it kind of plays with their emotions, and you played with the showrunners so much so they fucking quit. Again. I want to send flowers to them and offer my sympathies for having their beautiful brainchild near-masterpiece tampered with twice. If ever someone would be twice bitten, thrice shy, it’d be those poor bastards.
Disney doesn’t have to worry since they don’t give much credit to any creators outside of the major ones. I could rant and rave about how empty and stupid Aladdin looked, how you cannot simply take an animation that dynamic and full, with so many frames bursting with action, and turn it into an empty shell of itself and hope Will Smith will carry this. You can’t take the beautiful expressions of animal characters and replace them with “live action” lions that can’t emote. And you shouldn’t be able to make up for it by creating a worse sequel where you’ve actually made shit look worse. The trailers drove me insane and I’m not a Disney fan, I appreciate how exceptional that era’s animation was. It’s incredibly creative and expressive, they’re great movies, they don’t need perfecting or remaking. People are getting tired of this, even a “reimagining” is just so pretentious. They spammed our faces with Star Wars now it’s already falling down, this behemoth completely out of control they have to cancel shows that were actually okay because overall, it’s fucking failing. You gave Disney far too much power now they wield it like an unruly toddler with a large samurai sword it’s flaying around while giggling uncontrollably.
I liked Blade Runner 2049, that tried to be different. Dune needed a remake, and it’ll likely be one Lynch film I’ll never see while I don’t consider it entirely his. If you have to change is work, it ceases being his on a different level. I can’t think of anything else I’ve seen, I refuse to touch the Matrix movie, I wish people realised how let down the original is by the acting. It’s so cringe, Keanu isn’t to blame. I think the fan boys loving it also destroyed it for me. You hang out with those guys you either get made to watch that or Lord of the Rings. I’m sorry. I’m not really interested in anything new in any format, I watched the Killer but only got so much from it, I wanted to see Poor Things but Amazon wanted more money and I do not miss my prime account. For what little I had shipped to me in a year, I was still paying more than I wanted, and then they wanted more still to get rid of ads. I don’t get excited about movies anymore, another reason I’m disengaging from groups who do discuss this shit, I have such a negative opinion on a lot of crap I can’t contribute much other than remembering movie titles another person is struggling to recall. And 90% of that knowledge comes from binging movie review channels and not actual content. I’ll spoil movies for myself then maybe watch them later, if I can even get access to it. I denied a chance to watch Paprika because I resented Netflix warning me it was yanking it soon so much I just refused to force myself to see it to avoid FOMO. I’ve stopped looking for shit on there now. I put fucking NewsRadio on the other day to fix my depression, the best thing about 90s shows being they don’t have any references to any franchises I fucking hate and despise being reminded about. If you just put my entire DVD library on a service I’d sit and watch that all day. It’d make up for my copy of American Gothic rotting on me after I only watched it once.
