The Little Mermaid remake is just about to swim to the surface — although, by the looks of it, maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s floating to the surface upside-down. In a tale as old as time (or, at least, about 10 years ago, when these live-action reboots started happening), Disney die-hards were initially excited about this new take on the 1989 animated original before the trailers arrived and introduced us to terrifying new versions of all your underwater favorites from the classic film.
It’s too soon to say how much the bad publicity surrounding its wayward VFX will affect the new Little Mermaid, but the review-bombing Peter Pan & Wendy has received in recent days, as well as unspectacular box-office projections, don’t bode well for it. It’s entirely possible that Rob Marshall’s film will be the latest of the Mouse House’s reimaginings to underperform on both the critical and financial fronts. All this is to say that Disney needs to take on board the right lessons from TLM and make sure it doesn’t repeat the same mistakes with the next remake on the production line: Lilo & Stitch.
Filming began in April on a live-action iteration of the 2002 franchise starter, and already it’s courted enough controversy that Disney should be careful not to spark anymore. One way to do that would be to handle the CGI treatment of Stitch himself with the utmost care. I’m begging you, Disney: no more photorealistic renderings of cute cartoon characters. Look at The Lion King and The Little Mermaid — it only ends in tears and/or nightmares. Thanks to some misleading bits of A.I. artwork that have gone viral, we already know what a more “realistic” version of Stitch would look like, so please take the collective shrieks of the entire internet as cast-iron proof no one wants that.
It’s sadly too late to fix the dead-eyed disaster that is 2023’s Flounder, but there’s plenty of time to avoid Stitch getting pulled down to the depths of Atlantica alongside him. If Disney adapts the adorable alien well, Lilo & Stitch may just be able to surf those Hawaiian waves to high success.
