Rate the LA Remakes Alongside their Animated Films

[PatchofBlue]

We've done a lot of "ranking the remakes from best/worst" or "rate all the animated films," and other similar topics, and it's a generally accepted truism that the remakes are not as good as their source material, but I thought it might be fun to do blend the two modes: display our ratings of the remakes and the films they are born from next to one another, showing off exactly how deeply these remakes fall next to their animated predecessors (or on the rare occasion, how high they might jump).

We can all find our own individual ways to score according to whatever jives with whatever user, but I'm choosing to go down the list in release order of the remakes, starting from the modern wave from Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" on, displaying the remake's score first, and also displaying the difference between the two scores.

Alice in Wonderland: 3/8 -5
Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty): 4/9 -5
Cinderella: 10/9 +1
The Jungle Book: 6/10 -4
Beauty and the Beast: 4/10 -6
Christopher Robin (The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh): 5/9 -4
Dumbo: 4/7 -3
Aladdin: 9/10 -1
The Lion King: 4/10 -6
Lady and The Tramp: 8/8 0
Mulan: 4/7 -3
Cruella (101 Dalmatians): 9/8 +1
Pinocchio: 2/9 -7
Peter Pan and Wendy (Peter Pan): 5/10 -5
The Little Mermaid: 8/10 -2

On average, that's -3.267 for each remake.

So, yeah. Pinocchio was the largest offender in part to the finished product just being cacophonous, but there are lots of others who come close. LA Mulan and Dumbo have a comparatively smaller dip, but they're almost as bad. Their gap is just smaller owing to the fact that while I respect those animated films, they've never really been among my favorites.

Cinderella and Cruella were the only two that I rank slightly higher than their animated films. But even LA Cinderella's reach has a lot to do with the context in which it came out as this rare fairy-tale that isn't ashamed to be a fairy-tale. That's probably never been easy at any point in history, including the post WWII landscape in which animated Cinderella was made, but in this post-Shrek purgatory, that somehow feels like more of an achievement.

Aladdin and The Little Mermaid had relatively small dips, which was sort of inevitable seeing how they are based on some of Disney's best work. But I still appreciate what these projects bring to their animated source material, such that--I'll say again--I don't think these remakes were a total non-starter: I could have happily lived in a universe where all or most of the remakes fell into this class. There were never really going to be remakes with significant gains over their animated movies. Disney's rare bad movies were never going to be the ones that got greenlit for a remake (most of these have come out in like the last twenty years beside the point). Even if we were going to get a remake of The Fox & the Hound (kind of a mid-tier Disney film for me), I somehow don't think it was ever going to be a ten-star film in my book. An average score of like -1.5ish would have been fine. I don't expect perfection, but I do ask for honest effort ... which has apparently been too big an ask.

Anyways, I'd be curious to see everyone else's ratings.

[Disney's Divinity]

I tried not to think about the films too long, just give the first number that I settled on.

Alice in Wonderland (1951) - 6
Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton) - 4
Sleeping Beauty (1959) - 7
Maleficent - 5
Cinderella (1950) - 8
Cinderella (2015) - 4
The Jungle Book (1967) - 8
The Jungle Book (2016) - 8
Beauty and the Beast (1991) - 10
Beauty and the Beast (2017) - 7
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - 9
Christopher Robin - 2
Dumbo (1941) - 8
Dumbo (Tim Burton) - 3
Aladdin (1992) - 9
Aladdin (2019) - 8
The Lion King (1994) - 8
The Lion King (2019) - 6
Lady and the Tramp (1955) - 7
Lady and the Tramp (remake) - 2
Mulan (1998) - 8
Mulan (2021) - 2
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) - 10
Cruella - 6
Pinocchio (1940) - 10
Pinocchio (2022) - 6
Peter Pan (1953) - 6
Peter Pan and Wendy - 4
The Little Mermaid (1989) - 10
The Little Mermaid (2023) - 7
Mary Poppins - 8
Mary Poppins Returns - 5
The Wizard of Oz (not Disney, but I'm including it) - 8
Oz the Great and Powerful - 3

And I haven't seen the original Pete's Dragon in so long, it would be unfair to compare it with the remake. I did like the remake a little better based on my limited memory of the original. Never watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

So all together with highest rankings to lowest rankings:

Beauty and the Beast (1991) - 10
Pinocchio (1940) - 10
The Little Mermaid (1989) - 10
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) - 10
Aladdin (1992) - 9
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - 9
Mulan (1998) - 8
Cinderella (1950) - 8
The Lion King (1994) - 8
Aladdin (2019) - 8
Dumbo (1941) - 8
The Jungle Book (1967) - 8
The Jungle Book (2016) - 8
Mary Poppins - 8
The Wizard of Oz - 8
Beauty and the Beast (2017) - 7
Lady and the Tramp (1955) - 7
The Little Mermaid (2023) - 7
Sleeping Beauty (1959) - 7
The Lion King (2019) - 6
Alice in Wonderland (1951) - 6
Pinocchio (2022) - 6
Cruella - 6
Peter Pan (1953) - 6
Maleficent - 5
Mary Poppins Returns - 5
Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton) - 4
Cinderella (2015) - 4
Peter Pan and Wendy - 4
Dumbo (Tim Burton) - 3
Oz the Great and Powerful - 3
Christopher Robin - 2
Lady and the Tramp (remake) - 2
Mulan (2021) - 2

Some of the films I would rank a little higher based on personal preference. For example, on the DAC rankdown, I'd put Cinderella, TLK, and Mulan all above Aladdin even though I think Aladdin is slightly better as a film, but I have a somewhat stronger attachment to those than Aladdin which gives them an edge. But since we're using more of a strict score type system here...

[Vlad]

I will start with the remakes, I will rate the ones I saw so far.

1. Alice in Wonderland - 6
2. Maleficent - 7
3. Cinderella - 10
4. The Jungle Book - 10
5. Pete's Dragon - 8
6. Beauty and the Beast - 9
7. Mary Poppins Returns - 8
8. Dumbo - 7
9. Aladdin - 10
10. The Lion King - 8
11. Mulan - 5
12. Cruella - 7
13. Pinocchio - 2
14. Peter Pan & Wendy - 1
15. The Little Mermaid - 8
16. The Haunted Mansion - 7

And now, the animated films.

1. Alice in Wonderland - 9
2. Sleeping Beauty - 10
3. Cinderella - 10
4. The Jungle Book - 9
5. Pete's Dragon - 8
6. Beauty and the Beast - 10
7. Mary Poppins - 10
8. Aladdin - 9
9. The Lion King - 10
10. Mulan - 9
11. 101 Dalmatians - 9
12. Pinocchio - 10
13. Peter Pan - 9
14. The Little Mermaid - 10
15. The Haunted Mansion - 7

[Mooky]

I don't consider the Oz and Mary Poppins movies to be remakes or reimaginings so I'd exclude those. Same with Christopher Robin. One can argue that Alice in Wonderland is in the same boat, but CR retains the aesthetics and visual cues of the animated Winnie the Pooh media, while AiW is a total Tim Burton fest and more of a movie sequel to the novel(s).

- Alice in Wonderland (1951 - 9; 2010 - 3) -6
- Sleeping Beauty / Maleficent (1959 - 10; 2014 - 3) -7
- Cinderella (1950 - 10; 2015 - 6) -4
- The Jungle Book (1967 - 7; 2016 - 8 ) +1
- Pete's Dragon (1977 - 6; 2016 - 7) +1
- Beauty and the Beast (1991 - 10; 2017 - 4) -6
- Dumbo (1941 - 7, 2019 - 5) -2
- Aladdin (1992 - 10; 2019 - 7) -3
- The Lion King (1994 - 10; 2019 - 4) -6
- Lady and the Tramp (1955 - 9; 2019 - 4) -5
- Mulan (1998 - 10; 2020 - 5) -5
- 101 Dalmatians / Cruella (1961 - 10; 2021 - 6) -4
- Pinocchio (1940 - 8; 2022 - 3) -5
- Peter Pan / Peter Pan and Wendy (1953 - 9; 2023 - 4) -5
- The Little Mermaid (1989 - 10; 2023 - 7) -3

No ties for me, and I find the remakes to be generally inferior to the originals, except in two cases, both coincidentally from 2016.