Backlash against Disney’s live-action remakes is nothing new. The movies are widely panned by fans who see them as vapid cash grabs that are almost always inferior to the original animated classics. Despite this, almost all of them have been box-office hits, so there’s no real incentive on Disney’s part to rethink its strategy of dropping artistically bankrupt live-action slop every year or so. That’s probably not going to change with the Lilo & Stitch remake, which premiered in theaters over the Memorial Day weekend and is already a box office success, having brought in over $300 million over the holiday. Disney probably doesn’t care what people are saying about the film because it got its bag, but some longtime fans of the 2002 original are up in arms about certain major changes the new film makes to the story, changes which they feel sanitize Lilo and Stitch’s story until parts of it are unrecognizable.
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The Lilo & Stitch remake was getting flak from fans even before it was out. Somecasting decisions were criticized as whitewashing the story’s Native Hawaiian characters, its removal of Pleakley’s drag disguises was seen as pandering to right-wing transphobic nonsense, and some more subtle changes, like replacing the original white tourist characters with Native Hawaiians, signaled that some of the original film’s commentary on the effect of tourism on Hawaii might be absent from the live-action version. There were already plenty of red flags raised for Lilo & Stitch. Then the movie came out, and it was worse than fans could have anticipated.
Lilo & Stitch’s story is divided between Stitch’s sci-fi alien story and Lilo’s more grounded one of two Hawaiian sisters trying to make it work after their parents’ tragic death in a car accident. The major changes the live-action movie makes to both stories have not sat well with many fans of the original. The easier issues to unpack concern the changes to Stitch’s side of the movie. The not-dog alien is a genetic experiment created by Jumba (Zach Galifianakis), a mad alien scientist who has created hundreds of these little freaks. Once Stitch escapes to Earth and lands in Hawaii, Jumba is sent to our planet to retrieve him. In the original film, Jumba ends up siding with his creation and becoming part of his extended family alongside Lilo, her sister Nani, and others. He becomes the family’s eccentric uncle and is shown to be a caring guy, even though he created some horrific genetic monsters.
The movie, meanwhile, turns him into the villain of the whole thing. In the animated original, the major antagonist is another alien called Captain Gantu, whom the rest of the squabbling cast band together to fight. Director Dean Fleischer Camp defended the change to Cinema Blend, saying that the buff shark-like alien “didn’t work” in live-action.
“We explored it a bit, but ultimately we had to make the decision,” Fleischer Camp said. “And also I do stand by the decision ‘cause I feel like a lot of the things that in trying to ground these characters more and tell a story with a little more emotional depth, especially between the sisters, I feel like you have to free up real estate to allow that breathing room to do those things.”
With Gantu off the table, the live-action remake instead makes a sudden left turn in the final act, turning Jumba into the antagonist. He captures Stitch and plans to erase the critter’s newfound love for his Hawaiian family and turn him into an unfeeling living weapon. It’s a far cry from who the character was 23 years ago, and it robs him of his arc of discarding his selfish scientific ambitions in favor of treating his creations like his children, much to the chagrin of some long-time fans.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Fleischer Camp said that Jumba made more sense to him as the villain than Gantu, who was mostly disconnected from the plot beyond chasing after Stitch.
“You want your main antagonist to also be the representative of the theme of the film,” he said. “It seemed like an opportunity to do that as opposed to just there’s a big bad boss that comes down and is shooting lasers at everyone.”
The changes to Jumba are sad, especially if you’re a fan of the extended franchise, like the sequel movies and the television series in which Jumba’s role in the family makes him a major pillar of the cast. The alterations Disney made to Lilo and Nani’s story, however, are much more damning, and when viewed in a certain light, can be read as sinister. After the death of their parents, Nani is Lilo’s primary caretaker, and much of the elder sister’s story revolves around her trying to maintain custody as social workers threaten to place the younger sister in the foster care system. Nani’s unflinching desire to stay with her sister is rooted in the Hawaiian concept of “ohana,” which refers to family, and underlines that no one gets left behind. The original film illustrates how Nani was able to finally make it work when she had true support from the girls’ found family in Jumba, Pleakley, and others. Against all odds, the sisters can stay together, and Lilo gets to live a normal life surrounded by people who love her.
The live-action movie, however, significantly alters Nani’s arc, and it has fans up in arms. In this version of the story, Nani gave up her dreams of becoming a marine biologist to take care of Lilo, and as she tries to provide for her sister, the social worker on her family’s case gives her a series of goals to help her maintain custody of her sister, including paying off several unpaid bills and getting health insurance set up for the two. When Stitch, with all his destructive tendencies, lands on Earth and throws their lives into chaos, Nani loses her job, and Lilo is put in the hospital without insurance. The only way Nani can pay for her medical care is to give her up to the state.
The movie ends with Nani giving up Lilo to her neighbor, an extended member of her found family, allowing her to pay off the medical debt and also live out her dream of becoming a marine biologist. Lilo & Stitch frames this as an empowering moment for Nani, as she’s able to leave Lilo with her ohana, go to school on the mainland, and visit whenever she wants, thanks to some cool Portal-ass guns the family has. However, given the real-world experiences of Native Hawaiians, fans aren’t buying it.
The original Lilo & Stitch framed the state’s interference in their family dynamic as a disruptive, malicious force. This plays into a larger commentary on the way that mainland American culture and tourists encroach upon the island state. This thread runs through the entire film, like when you see Lilo taking pictures of white tourists to give them a taste of their own medicine. The live-action movie is notably lacking in these elements, and now that it presents giving Lilo to the foster system as a good thing, many feel it’s undermining the original themes and feels disrespectful to the animated movie’s commentary on the Native Hawaiian experience and cultural values. Some are even going as far as to call it colonialist propaganda.
Lilo & Stitch has made a lot of money already, already surpassing the original’s $273 million box-office total in just one weekend. So even with all these criticisms, Disney got what it wanted. As long as people go see these live-action remakes, Disney will keep pumping them out, even if they trample on the themes of the originals. Some of these remakes make changes to modernize the stories, but the distinctly Native Hawaiian issues Lilo & Stitch explored in 2002 are still very much problems the island’s people face to this day. Now, Nani’s story doesn’t feel empowering; it feels out-of-touch, as if the film is just using Hawaiian aesthetics instead of telling a truly Hawaiian tale. Lilo & Stitch has a few references to the sequels and television series, so it’s entirely possible Disney double dips and makes a sequel. If so, we’ll see if the company takes any of this criticism seriously.
