Whilst producing solid-enough numbers at the box office, Disney’s readaptations of their original classics are failing artistically. Through the lens of Dumbo, it will be revealed that Disney’s readaptation trend is being blighted by a host of pervasive problems that are tainting the image of Disney’s once-timeless classics.
The Disney readaptation trend is not going away anytime soon. New projects are on the way, and the recent The Little Mermaid (2023) remake produced solid-enough numbers at the box office to suggest there’ll be plenty more to come. The readaptation trend has its origins with 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, and ever since then has headed towards the more straightforward remakes of Cinderella (2015) and those in the vain of Wicked, such as Cruella (2021). While for the most part, these films have returned decent numbers, critically they have been poorly received—viewed rather negatively by the film community as being cynical cash-grabs that simply fail as films. It’s about time we investigate why these movies often fail artistically.
The 2019 remake of Dumbo (1941), directed by Tim Burton, serves as an ideal case study for understanding how and why these films often fall down. Despite being considered one of the better of the Disney remakes, placed in the same bracket as the likes of Pete’s Dragon (2016), the movie still falls short of the mark. Whilst Dumbo comes close to being a decent watch, it fails to work as a stand-alone film for all the same reasons that other Disney readaptations appear to fail.
Creative Decision-making
Firstly, the film struggles to work as a stand-alone film, despite producing some highlights. This is mainly down to misplaced focus, and as the Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus puts it, a “crowded canvas”. The film focuses on the family, which consists of a recently-widowed war veteran and his two children. Despite the filmmakers best intentions however, the characters come across as dull and vapid. The film would have served itself better had it focused and developed on the far more interesting characters of the circus performers. Consequently, the main emotional core of the film felt lacklustre and hollow.
The “overcrowded canvas” dig meanwhile refers to the film feeling bloated and overstuffed. The original Dumbo is only an hour-long and tells its story in simple yet highly-developed ways. The remake is twice as long and has too many characters (the main villain is only introduced halfway through the runtime). This gives less development-time for each of the characters, who remain bland and uninteresting.
Tim Burton’s propensity to go on autopilot with the overuse of CGI—especially in the opening train sequence—also makes the film feel like a photorealistic, animated movie, when it’s supposed to convince you it’s live-action. There are some redeeming qualities, such as the casting; Danny DeVito was excellent as the circus owner (basically Frank Reynolds with a heart), whilst visually the style of the film was also pretty cool, as in most Tim Burton films. Nevertheless, the movie still failed to live-up to its ambitions.
This inability to succeed as a stand-alone film is a consequence of Dumbo’s over-reliance on the mould-cast of the original. By adhering too close to the source material, the film loses any sense of originality. No doubt the worst offender of these out of the Disney remakes is The Lion King (2019), which was not just a beat-for-beat remake, but at times even a shot-for-shot copy of the original. The film has no identity of its own, amounting to a hollow imitation of the original to an almost insulting degree given the amount of money that financed it.
Similarly in Dumbo, the original is invoked through awkward and tedious references. For example, the housefly joke, which is stated by a circus performer instead of the crows, is on the surface innocent enough, but a joke that was intended to mock dumbo alongside the racist caricatures that the crows arguably represent comes across as awkward.
Another is the call-back to the pink elephants scene. Instead of Dumbo unintentionally getting drunk with character Timothy after drinking from a water bucket, in the remake Dumbo simply sees a projected version of pink elephants in a trance. Consequently, the scene is not as effective as it was in the original. The original pink elephants scene is legitimately scary, but in the remake it loses all sense of magic. This encapsulates Disney’s recurring problem of adhering too closely to the original with their remakes, as they have neither the impact of the classics nor the originality to give the films any real identity of their own.
Misunderstandings
Misunderstanding the original source material is also another factor that has contributed to this apparent failure. All too often the morals and emotional messages of the originals are lost in translation, as though producers had forgotten what made these films so endearing and relatable to audiences in the first place. Take the Aladdin (2019) and The Lion King remakes. In the original Aladdin (1992), there was an overall moral of being honest with yourself, which is never fully developed in the remake. Despite being fairly entertaining, the film lacks a core emotional arc. Meanwhile, The Lion King remake was highly neglectful of the emotive power of the original when the famous “the past can hurt” speech from character Rafiki was shockingly omitted. With this, a crucial part of the development of the original film disappears and the emotional arc of the film collapses.
In a similar vein, the Dumbo remake seems to forget its original moral of self-worth and overarching anti-bullying messages that made the original so heart-warming. The remake especially in the second-half of the film surprisingly opts to critique corporate entertainment (ironic given the massive conglomerate that is Disney) whilst never fully touching upon the emotive themes of the original. As a result, the emotional arc of the film simply doesn’t work, and consequently there is as much a misunderstanding of the original as there is ironically an attempt to copy it like-for-like. Herein lies the thoroughly contradictory nature of Disney’s readaptations: they attempt to reproduce the original beat-for-beat whilst simultaneously abandoning all that which made the originals such classics.
Animation Versus Live-Action
The effect of implementing a different medium has also proven a problem for Disney, as sequences that work so well in animation simply fail to translate to the realm of live-action. Whether it’s the character design in The Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Little Mermaid, or the comedy of the Aladdin remake which tries to imitate the genie’s manic physical body movements, live-action fails to emulate the spellbinding nature of animation. Animation allows characters to move and interact with each-other in lightning-quick fashion, which has a mesmerizing and comical effect. But when this is translated across to the sphere of live action, it looks clunky and awkward. This can be seen in the “one jump ahead” sequence in Aladdin, which attempts to recreate the tight and fast-paced nature of the original, but only comes across as a lesser imitation.
There is also a strong element of CGI-animation falling significantly short of the mark when contrasted with hand-drawn animation. The sacrifice of one medium’s strength—the spellbinding and mesmerising nature of hand-drawn animation—for the sake of CGI-likeness, only produces a film that feels tonally awkward when compared to its original counterpart.
The Way Ahead
By all accounts, the Dumbo remake is not a terrible movie. At worst it’s a missed opportunity, and at best it makes for a mildly entertaining kids movie that at least tries to be more original than other readaptations. But it still fails as a film for many for the same core reasons that Disney’s other modern readaptations appear to fail. This includes poor creative decision-making, misunderstandings of the original, a plain lack of originality, and medium changes.
More room for discussion ought to be allowed to these problems if Disney wishes to address the serious and pervasive shortcomings that are blighting its readaptation trend. If so, it could lead to more successful remakes and more importantly, more original content than can win the approval of disappointed fans, cinema-goers, and critics alike. Fail to do this, and Disney’s very reputation as a filmmaking conglomerate may fall into permanent disrepair.
Words by Kökényesy Balázs