When I heard there was going to be a live-action version of Beauty and the Beast, one of my favorite Disney movies growing up, I was skeptical at first, wondering how on earth the original magic would be replicated in the new movie.
As blown away as I was by the stunning elements in Beauty and the Beast, it simply does not feel the same as its animated counterpart. Seeing the characters as real objects and people take away from the charm of the animated version.
The general setting, especially the castle, appears significantly darker than the original movie. The live-action version does not fully encapsulate the intangible magic of the animated version of Beauty and the Beast.
A few years later, when I watched the live-action of Mulan, I was taken aback and disappointed by the number of changes from the original animated film. Mulan’s dragon companion, Mushu, is nowhere to be seen in the live-action. Mushu plays a key role in the original movie, helping Mulan through adversity, encouraging and comforting her, and most importantly, throwing in some humor within the seriousness of the movie.
Mulan’s love interest, Li-Shang, is also omitted in the live-action version. Instead, his character is replaced by a man named Chen Honghui, who is Mulan’s ally throughout the movie and then is weakly portrayed as her love interest in the end.
The absence of these two iconic characters makes the live-action version bland and less exciting. It takes away the light-hearted aspects of the animated movie and replaces them with a more serious and realistic tone.
No matter how hard movie production companies will try, they will simply not be able to incorporate the same magic and innocence of the original animated films into their live-action counterparts.
Through animation, imagination has no bounds, and whatever it may be, be it a green sky or blue grass, would not strike as unusual or “wrong.” There are no constraints to reality, which helps the audience escape into a world of fiction for two hours. As closely as live-action movies capture these whimsical elements, it is strange to see such landscapes in real life because they clearly look artificial.
Animation gives room for characters to express exaggerated emotion, which enhances the story and helps to understand their personality better. When characters in real life attempt to act and speak the same way, it lacks the magic of the original. Sometimes, the actors do not display enough emotion, taking away from the feeling of that particular scene.
Live-action movies also take away people’s original perception of a character. After I watched the live-action version of Beauty and the Beast, my perception of the Beast changed. It felt strange when I saw him portrayed as actor Dan Stevens. The innocence and affection I associated with the animated Beast is replaced with the image of the real Beast or Prince Adams.
As visually appealing and close character compositions are in real-life films, they simply cannot replace the charm and magic of their original versions.
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