Money over Magic | Teen Ink

Money over Magic

May 25, 2023
By MattA52 BRONZE, Manchester, Connecticut
MattA52 BRONZE, Manchester, Connecticut
3 articles 0 photos 0 comments

What started as a magical world of imagination and adventure for children and even adults of all ages has turned into a lazy and money-hungry monopoly. While this appears to be a very blunt statement especially when talking about the creators of the most magical place on earth, Disney, in recent years the magic seems to have been lost. Over the last decade, a more prominent part of Disney releases has been live action remakes 0f past masterpieces as opposed to creating new and original ideas. 

Nothing beats the first time you watched your favorite Disney movie in theaters or maybe on DVD in the living room. You were most likely a kid and everything about the movie was astonishing, from the music to the characters, it was all so unbelievably incredible. My favorite movie growing up was Toy Story, and I remember it being so captivating because it was so interesting to think that someone actually thought of toys coming to life. While watching the live action remakes of our favorite childhood movies may be thrilling and nostalgic, it isn’t some new and outside of the box thinking that we know Disney is capable of.

The reason for this is that Disney has realized they landed on a goldmine with their remakes, making billions of dollars and not using any creative work. The live action releases date back to 1994’s remake of “The Jungle Book” but then returned in 2014 with “Maleficent.” In his opinion article “The Pandemic of Live-Action Remakes,” Danny William emphasizes that Disney has released thirteen live-action remakes in the decade with five of them being in 2019 alone. Disney has been milking these remakes dry and they do not plan on stopping anytime soon with films like The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Peter Pan and Wendy, and a possible sequel to The Lion King in the making. 

It’s no wonder why Disney would continue to keep producing these movies that we have already seen before. Kyle Kruske revealed in his article, “The Loss of Magic in Disney’s Live-Action Remakes” that four of their live-action remakes (Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King) have made over 1 billion dollars worldwide. It is almost as if when Disney creators are sitting at the round table and get stuck, one of them says, “Screw it let's just make another live-action remake, what's next on the list,” these remakes are starting to get boring and played out.

As well as just being lazy when it comes to creativity, Disney is now solely relying on feelings of nostalgia from an older audience in order to make their money which just does not sound right when talking about Disney. I thought Disney was supposed to be a place where you can think of the wildest things imaginable and make it come to life in order to bring happiness to children and people of all ages. Disney is not supposed to just continue to hope and pray that the idea of nostalgia will pay their bills. 

While Disney plans on just continuing to regurgitate all of their past movies into live action films, many Disney fans are begging for some more new and refreshing ideas. For myself, seeing new films like Encanto and Soul was actually watching what Disney should be, elements of magic and drama, something captivating and new. So to all the Disney executives, stop making remakes, one is good here and there but the frequency of them is boring and exhausting. Find that magic again.


The author's comments:

Hello, My name is Matthew and I am a senior in Connecticut about to graduate, this piece is one of four opinion pieces that I wrote for my Early College Experience English class that I was really proud of. 


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