Live Action Or CGI?

Sarah Mull, Writer

For the past few years, Disney has been making a string of new live-action remakes of their old movies. There are currently around 14 upcoming live-action films. With all these new live-action films coming out, Disney fans seem to be conflicted on the topic. Is CGI (computergenerated-imagery) ruining these movies? Is Disney getting lazy? Are they just making these remakes for the money? Due to all these questions, varying opinions have certainly been formed.

Gwen Rozel, an avid Disney fan, says she has seen most of the latest Disney live-action remakes. She does state, however, that she mainly watches them when they become available to her online. “I don’t go out of my way to go see them in the movie theatre,” she responds. “I think if they’re going to make a live-action film they should make an original one, not just remake older movies to make more money,” affirms Rozel. Rozel says she is unsure about the live-action remakes, saying, “I like them because it’s kind of cool to see them have a new take on the story, but visually I don’t anymore because of just how CGI and how fake that they look now. I don’t think they’re running out of ideas I think that they’re just being lazy.” Finally, Rozel stated, “I don’t think they should stop making live-action films because some of their live-action films are actually very fun to watch. Like Enchanted, that’s my favorite live-action film, but that’s because it’s original.”

Bethany Mull, another Disney-crazed fan, says, “on a scale of 1-10 I would give them a 7.” She states her opinion on if Disney is running out of ideas is, “That’s a tough one, I’m 50/50 because I think some of their older movies like Sleeping Beauty were ready to have the Maleficent remake, but at the same time I also think deciding to remake movies is somewhat lazy on the story-telling part.” She claims the direction Disney should be taking for future films is, “more live-action, less CGI, otherwise they need to be called CGI remakes.” She believes Disney should continue to make live-action remakes, “as long as they are able to keep the same standard as Disney quality story-telling and not get distracted by special effects.” Despite some
negative feedback, Mull says she will most likely continue to see future live-action films.

Special effects seem to be a focus on the latest Disney live-action films. From interviews such as the ones above, it can be proven that not everybody likes this new style of film technology. With multiple new live-action films coming out soon, will Disney’s production of the films get better or worse? Is Disney taking a step back instead of moving forward?