During the five-year period 2015-2019, Walt Disney Pictures pursued remaking previously-animated films in live action with a vengeance. Many of these contained various degrees of computer animation, including computer-animated main characters seen in The Jungle Book and Dumbo. However, an 'animated film' is a very specific term and relates to how a film is made, not how it appears.

The Lion King remake featured only computer-generated characters. Despite this, it is still technically classed as a 'live action' film and not 'animation'. Since the controversy over whether the motion-capture film Happy Feet (2006) should be classed as an animation, and to exclude films such as Avatar (2010) from qualifying, 'animation' is defined by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as 'a motion picture in which movement and characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time'. Like the animal characters in The Jungle Book and Dumbo, The Lion King was made by filming characters against a bluescreen rather than by utilising a frame-by-frame technique and so, though the characters are computer-generated, the film is classed as live action and not animation.

During this era three of the films made over a billion US dollars at the box office.

The Films

The summaries of the films below are concentrating on the live action remakes rather than the animated originals. Recurring characters and actors who appear in more than one live action remake are shown in Bold. Also mentioned is whether the films pass the Bechdel Test. This can be summarised as whether the film involves two or more female characters who have a conversation together that does not focus on men in general or a specific male character or man¹. Also mentioned are the cases where the remake passes the Kevin Smith Reboot test of adding diversity.

Cinderella (1950 / 2015)

A fairly straight-forward fairy tale remake that received both critical and commercial success, paving the way for Disney to remake more of their popular films. Among the locations used for the film were Windsor Castle, one of the Queen's royal residences. Shockingly, the glass slipper didn't actually fit Lily James and was a Swarovski crystal prop - the scene in which she puts her shoe on used computer-generated footwear. At least magic is used to explain why the shoe doesn't fit anyone else nor why Cinderella isn't recognised by her stepfamily.

While not a musical in the same way as the original, it features the traditional song 'Lavender's Blue', which inexplicably won Best Original Song for Disney hybrid (part animation, part live-action) film So Dear to My Heart (1948). One scene, in which Cinderella was seen swinging on a swing, was inspired by a painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard; this painting had previously inspired a similar scene in British Cinderella musical The Slipper and the Rose (1976), which featured songs by the Sherman Brothers who had composed many Disney classics.

Cinderella had a $95 million production budget and made over $540 million at the box office.

The Jungle Book (1967 / 2016)

This, the third of Disney's live-action adaptations of The Jungle Book, was An attempt to combine the magic of the animated original with more realistic animals, created using motion capture. Whether or not the film actually succeeds in this is debatable, containing as it does a Gigantopithecus, an otherwise extinct ape, as well as oversized animals that are at least a third bigger than in real life. Actor Neel Sethi learnt parkour free-running in order to run through the jungle.

King Louie was a character created for the 1967 animation, as orangutans are not native to India. However, Richard M Sherman wrote new lyrics for 'I Wanna Be Like You' to Reference Louie being a Gigantopithecus. Louis Prima, who originally played King Louie, had died in 1978. His widow Gia, who had a reputation for being overly litigious, had sued Disney in 1999. Disney settled out of court in 2001 and agreed never to impersonate Louis Prima's voice, which is why King Louie's voice and appearance is Radically different for this film.

In the film it takes several days for Mowgli to journey from his home to the village, and then virtually no time for him to make the return journey. One of King Louie's treasures is Aladdin's lamp, while the Jungle Book book seen in the closing credits is the book seen in the original Jungle Book's opening credits. Shere Khan's portrayal Was also inspired in part by Scar from The Lion King.

The film was a huge financial success, making $967 million dollars at the box office on a production budget of $175 million, and becoming the fifth-most successful film of the year, behind only Captain America: Civil War, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Finding Dory and Zootropolis (also known as Zootopia). It was briefly the most-successful remake of all time before being overtaken by Beauty and the Beast (2017).

Andy Serkis' Performance Capture studio The Imaginarium had begun an adaptation of The Jungle Book in 2012, only to be forced to postpone their release due to this live action remake,finally renaming it Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle and releasing it two years later.

Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)

The film is virtually all an original story, with the Character of Time briefly mentioned in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland but never seen. Some filming took place at Gloucester's historic dockyard, featuring many ships from the early 20th Century. Alice is briefly seen in an asylum, possibly a reference to the 2000 Computer game Alice.

Alice Through the Looking Glass is dedicated to Alan Rickman, who died before it was released. It was his last Acting role. The Jabberwocky doesn't speak in this film, with Sir Christopher Lee having died in 2015, and the Dodo doesn't appear as Michael Gough had died in 2011 shortly after making Alice In Wonderland.

This film's box office was thought disappointing – it made almost $300 million on a budget of $170 million, which was considered a let-down following the $1 billion made by Alice in Wonderland.

Pete's Dragon (1977 / 2016)

This is the only live action remake to date (2021) to be shorter than the original film and also the only one to be adapted from being a musical to a straight drama. Other than the title, the character names Pete and Elliott, and both films being slow and ponderous, the two films have nothing in common. In fact, the remake seems desperate to be a remake of The Jungle Book, particularly making the relationship between Pete and Elliott so like that of Mowgli and Baloo that you expect the two to start singing 'The Bare Necessities' at any moment.

This was Disney's least successful live action remake of the decade, making $140 million on a production budget of $65 million.

Beauty and the Beast (1991 / 2017)

A Beauty and the Beast remake had been proposed several times and it had been greenlit to be made as a non-musical film to be titled simply Beast. Before the film went into production, the director argued that this story had the strongest Disney songs and it would be a waste to make a film that excluded them. Four new superfluous songs were written for the film to extend the runtime. Also lyrics that had been written by Howard Ashman but cut out of the song 'Gaston' in the animated version were reinstated.

Many of the characters appear based on, but renamed from, characters from the Beauty and the Beast animated sequels. This includes Maestro Cadenza replacing Forte, and Plumette is based on Fifi. Similarly The wardrobe is now named Madame Garderobe, potentially meaning 'Mrs Toilet'.

Making over $1,265 million dollars at the box office, this was the second-most successful film of the year behind only Star Wars: The Last Jedi. With a production budget of $160 million and marketing budget of a further $140 million, this film became the most expensive musical film ever made. It was also, briefly, the most successful remake of all time.

Unlike other live-action remakes this is a sequel to the original film, which in itself was a compilation of three short films⁶. The Hundred Acre Wood scenes were largely filmed at Ashdown Forest, the real-life inspiration for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. The look of the characters was also closely inspired by Ernest Shepard's original illustrations rather than the appearance popularised by earlier Disney films. A more realistic portrayal of the story of Christopher Robin Milne and how he was haunted by Winnie-the-Pooh all his life can be seen in Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017), a film released the year before.

Richard M Sherman wrote three new songs for this film, which was released six years after the death of his brother. He cameos as the pianist in the mid-credits sequence.

The film made $198 million on a production budget of $75 million. All films featuring Winnie-the-Pooh are banned in China, the country with the world's largest cinema audience, because Chinese president Xi Jinping has been nicknamed Winnie-the-Pooh.

Dumbo (1941 / 2019)

In the remake the animals cannot talk and Timothy Q Mouse only appears as a cameo. Locomotive Casey Jnr⁸ cannot talk either, but has the number 41 in reference to the year the original film was made. The ringmaster Medici hums the 'Casey Jnr' song. Other cameos include a stork sitting on the roof of the carriage when elephant Mrs Jumbo is in labour, and the Dreamland colosseum has a show involving pink bubbles making elephant shapes like the 'Pink Elephants on Parade' song. This film is more about what happens to Dumbo after becoming famous, with the Dreamland theme park being closely inspired by a darker Disneyland.

Dumbo was a box office disappointment, only making $355 million on a $170 million production budget. Twice as long as its predecessor, it lacked the original's heart but at least avoids its most dated sections.

Aladdin (1992 / 2019)

The filmmakers were well aware that without casting a diverse cast they would be accused of 'whitewashing'. Naomi Scott, an actress of English and Ugandan-Indian descent was criticised for not being of Middle Eastern origin.

There are various cameos and nods to earlier films, as well as references to Will Smith's The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. One of the best is that the magic carpet makes a sandcastle in the desert that is identical to the Disney Logo while later one of Princess Jasmine's maps shows the lands of Disneyland.

The first time the phrase 'diamond-in-the-rough' is used in a Disney film is in Mary Poppins and is used to describe Bert, as played by Dick van Dyke⁹. Frank Welker reprises his minor roles as the voice of Rajah the tiger, Abu the monkey and the Cave of Wonders - the first time in a live-action adaptation that an actor played the same role as in the original animation. It would not be until the following film that a main role was reprised.

The film made over a billion dollars at the box office, briefly becoming Disney's second-most successful remake to date before the release of The Lion King. It was the ninth-most successful film of the year.

The Lion King (1994/2019)

Following the success of The Jungle Book, both commercially and in recreating the characters, a remake of The Lion King was commissioned. Though every character would be computer-generated, they do not count as being animated as they move through the use of mo-cap rather than a frame-by-frame animation technique. The backgrounds were based on high-definition photographs taken in Africa, while the actors were filmed in a Hollywood studio and their movements replicated on the computer-generated animals. Had this been allowed to be classed as an animation it would have been the most successful animated film of all time. Instead Disney define it as 'photorealistic computer animation'. On release it was the seventh highest-grossing film (unadjusted for inflation)¹¹ and second-most successful film of the year.

Disney made a great deal of fuss about how realistic the animals in this film were. However, that is only true for a limited value of 'realistic'. What is quickly apparent is that the animals do not have realistic bottoms or genitalia, so how they excrete and urinate is unknown¹². Similarly, while Rafiki is now much more a definite mandrill rather than the mandrill/baboon combination of the original, he lacks the coloured bottom of a real male mandrill, which comes from West Africa and not the East African Serengeti where the film is actually set. The lion roars are actually those of tigers, Zazu is a mixture of numerous different types of hornbill, and an Indian rhino from The Jungle Book appears at the start. The disadvantage of the realism is that it limits the range of visible emotions the characters can express. It also affects some of the musical numbers. For instance, in the original version of 'I Just Can't Wait to be King', the climax has a vast pyramid of animals with Simba at the top. In this one, as the aim was to be more realistic, they don't have a pyramid of animals and just have some animals running about instead, which isn't the same.

Despite this, many of the scenes in the remake appear as almost shot-for-shot copies of the original film, particularly the opening sequence, because Favreau felt that it was too iconic to be changed.

The Lion King (1994) remains to date the most successful soundtrack album of all time, with three Oscar-nominated songs, winning with 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight' and also winning the Best Score Oscar. The remake doesn't live up to the same high standard, with the remixed 'Be Prepared (2019)' particularly shredded. As well as tweaking the classics, a couple of new songs were added too. The majestic 'He Lives in You' had been written for the 'Lion King' Broadway show and had previously appeared in The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride. Elton John and Tim Rice co-wrote a new song for the end credits, 'Never Too Late', while Beyoncé's song 'Spirit' is superfluously shoehorned in (reaching the dizzying depths of 98 on the US 'Billboard Hot 100' and 59 on the UK Official Singles Chart, it is by far her least successful single¹³). The song 'Hakuna Matata' makes a big fuss of how in this version they actually sing the word 'farted', while 'Can You Feel the Love Tonight?' is sung during the afternoon.

For the first time ever with Disney's live action remakes a main actor from the original film reprises the same role they played in the original, in this case James Earl Jones as Mufasa. To reflect 21st-Century values the remake's characters were predominantly played by Black American actors. John Kani is South African. Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Scar, is British, making it the second time that Jon Favreau has cast a Black British actor as the baddy in a live-action Disney remake following The Jungle Book.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)

A box office disappointment that didn't really feel connected to the previous Maleficent film. It turns out that there was another kingdom adjacent to the Moors all along, ruled by an expansionist, ambitious queen. After the previous film's emphasis on uniting the Moors with the kingdom that Aurora had been born to be princess of, it seems the human kingdom was simply left to the inhabitants to self-govern without any useful attempt at unification. After all, if peace and harmony had occurred then this film, based on prejudice and suspicion, would be without a plot.

The subtitle 'Mistress of Evil' is deceptive as Maleficent isn't particularly evil. Grumpy, annoyed and disappointed - vengeful even - but never actually evil. Queen Ingrith is the only truly evil character in the film. Brenton Thwaites was unable to reprise his role as Prince Phillip due to playing Dick Grayson aka Nightwing¹⁵ in television series Titans (2018+).

Lady and the Tramp (1955/2019)

This film was made with real dogs, with effects used to give the impression of talking. Filming took place in Savannah in Georgia. It was the first Disney live action remake to be released directly to the Disney+ streaming service. The Siamese cats are Devon Rex cats instead, and other differences to improve the diversity have been made, but with those exceptions the film is very similar to the original. The main differences are that the dogcatcher has a much larger role, as does the rat. While the spaghetti-eating scene is an almost exact recreation, the rat that plans to carry off the baby is hilariously unbelievable. Tramp is also a much more sympathetic character who gains a backstory and loses his womanising past. The film doesn't end with Lady having puppies, but instead has Tramp adopted into the family on Christmas Day, exactly a year after Lady had been.

Disney films have often led to animals being bought as toys and gifts to people who are unable to properly look after them. This film begins with Lady given as a Christmas present despite the widespread Dogs Trust slogan that a dog is for life, not just for Christmas. The film's end credits do contain the message:

Every dog deserves a loving home. If you're ready for the commitment of pet ownership, please consider visiting your local animal rescue to find the right pet for you.