Disney animation vs live-action: The reboots ranked against the originals

The Lion King is roaring its way into cinemas this week, marking the third and final Disney live-action reboot arriving in 2019.

It’s already proving divisive – while nearly every critic has praised the film’s staggering technical achievements, plenty claim the reboot is lacking the original’s emotional depth.

Just like with Dumbo and Aladdin, some critics have gone one step further to question whether or not the new films need to exist at all.

They have a point – after all, when the originals are timeless, funny, moving and hold such a special place in the hearts of film fans, why set yourself up for a fall by trying to replicate them?

One cursory look at the box office receipts gives us the answer: Beauty and the Beast took well over $1 billion at the box office despite lukewarm reviews, and even middling efforts like 2015’s Cinderella took upwards of $500 million. Whatever fans and critics think of them, the live-action reboots are wildly successful and clearly here to stay.

But do they really stack up to their predecessors? The Standard thought we'd set the record straight once and for all by comparing the reboots with the animations below.

One of the first mega-budget remakes since a largely forgotten attempt to re-imagine The Jungle Book in 1994, Cinderella is arguably the film that started off Disney’s obsession with live-action reboots in recent years.

Lily James was – as always – a likeable screen presence, even if she was given little to do in a pretty thinly-drawn central role.

It was still a commercial success, taking $543m worldwide, but even the likes of Cate Blanchett as the Stepmother and Helena Bonham Carter as the Fairy Godmother couldn’t stop the film from falling flat. Kenneth Brannagh’s direction wasn’t the most exciting, laying on the sap with a trowel at times, and it’s one of the least-discussed Disney reboots for a reason. Don’t worry though, there’s another Cinderella adaptation planned with Camila Cabello for 2021.

Which is better? The 1950 version. Let’s just say the reboot is more Prince Charmless, than Prince Charming.

The original Jungle Book featured some of the most compelling, surreal and vividly drawn characterisation in the history of animation, as well as giving us some of the most loved songs of all Disney movies. The 2016 remake, though, is the strongest live-action reboot to date, which gets the closest to capturing the magic of its subject matter.

The film marked director Jon Favreau out as a remarkable cinematic world-builder – something he’s built on in The Lion King – but the real plaudits have to go to Neel Sethi, who gave a fantastic central performance as Mowgli. He’s the only actor with a speaking role who is visible throughout, and the biggest reason why the ‘real-life’ and photorealistic CGI worlds blend so well.

As a cinematic spectacle, there’s no comparison – the 2016 update is stunning to look at, and some of the setpieces are genuinely thrilling. Plus, Bill Murray as Baloo is a casting choice from heaven. The film made a killing at the box office, and there’s a second one on the way too. The original will always be a classic, but in our opinion the reboot is every bit as good.

Which is better? It’s a draw. Both have the bare necessities and we can’t choose between them.

Emma Watson and Dan Stevens starred as the unlikely lovers in 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, even if Stevens spent most of the movie looking like a dashing CGI Chewbacca. It made an obscene amount of cash at the box office, but was largely shunned by critics.

Notably, the film was praised for including Disney’s first openly gay character, when in truth Josh Gad’s LeFou was underused and the first “exclusively gay moment” promised by the studio was gone in the blink of an eye.

Elsewhere, the ensemble song and dance numbers were a little stuffy and by the numbers. Most importantly, though, the reboot brought nothing new to the table. As the Standard’s critic Matthew Norman wrote at the time, the film shows a “preference for nostalgia over daring.” He did, however, praise the casting of Emma Watson, and summed it all up by writing: “If this version is inferior to its predecessor, albeit not by a massive margin, that was inevitable.” All in all, a solid if uninspiring effort.

Which is better? The 1991 version. The reboot was a beast of a hit, but the magic of the original cannot be matched.

The Dumbo remake is everything a Tim Burton film shouldn’t be – deathly dull.

The first Disney rehash of 2019 managed to make the idea of a flying elephant underwhelming, mainly because Burton decided to focus the story not on the lovable creature itself, but on the humans surrounding him – a mistake.

Burton and Disney were mismatched on paper, and it showed on screen. While the reboot removed some of the most problematic elements, like the racial stereotypes perpetuated by the group of crows, Burton’s Dumbo feels the most perfunctory of all the Disney reboots. It reflected in the mediocre box office performance too, making a relatively small $350 million globally.

The Standard’s critic Matthew Norman called it an “instantly forgettable” film, which constituted an “anodyne milking of the archive cash-cow udder”. You can’t say fairer than that.

Which is better? The 1941 version. Even elephants are likely to forget the reboot before long.

Just when you thought Disney had lost its touch after Dumbo, it staged a rescue – of sorts – with the much more successful Aladdin.

Of course, it’s impossible to replicate Robin Williams performance, but Will Smith threw everything but the kitchen sink at the role of the genie – even if he was let down by some slightly dodgy CGI work at times. But when the original was built around Williams’ genie to such an extent, it’s easy to forget that the central relationship between Aladdin and Jasmine was actually pretty dull and unconvincing. Things just didn’t really work when the focus was shifted in the reboot, but it was an admirable effort nonetheless.

Importantly, the movie presented a different take on Jasmine. This time around the Princess was more empowered, given more agency and looking to take over from her sultan father in her own right, rather than just marrying the right person.

Which is better? The 1994 version. The original had the diamond in the rough, but the reboot is just a little rough around the edges.