I honestly did not know what to expect, especially given the uneven performance of Disney’s previous live action releases, but the live action Lilo & Stitch remake actually looks good.
Gone is the usual major flex in the interpretation of the orginal animated film on its way to its live action counterpart. It’s replaced by another major flex, which has been almost utterly missing from Disney’s dogged conversion to live action of all of the classic animations the studio has built its reputation on:
Imagination.
Even just watching the trailer, with all its callbacks to the original film mixed with new moments between Stitch (voiced by the original actor Chris Sanders) and Lilo (voiced by the astonishingly well cast Maia Kealoha), we get moment after moment of that incredible emotional rush we get when we encounter something truly magical.
Maia Kealoha in particular is the practical embodiment of Lilo. She is truly deeply Hawaiian, cute, smart and empathetic, and truly enjoys her heritage. She could not be more perfect for the role.
It’s one thing to go to all the effort to take the characters of The Lion King and then make photorealistic versions of them so convincingly real that the production stills of the movie look like a David Attenborough nature film. When you freezeframe that, you’ve stripped all the magic away. Everything that makes it wonderful is completely lost. It’s another entirely to understand that the magic in what you’re doing must be the first and last consideration in every single shot in the film, and it looks like that’s what Disney has done here.
Mikros Animation was one of the studios who worked on the animation for the film, and is currently in shutdown mode after finishing their work on this film, along with all the other studios under the Technicolor Creative Services umbrella.
Ironically,
Lilo & Stitch stars Chris Sanders as Stitch, Maia Kealoha as Lilo, Sydney Agudong as Nani, Billy Magnussen as Pleakley, Zach Galifianakis as Jumba, Courtney B. Vance as Cobra Bubbles, Hannah Waddingham as the Grand Councilwoman, Jason Scott Lee in an unnamed role (whom we strongly suspect is Captain Gantu) and David Hekili Kenui Bell as the Shave Ice Dude — you know the guy. He’s the running gag in the film, the guy who keeps getting shave ice and never manages to take a bite of it before some accident forces it out of his hand onto the beach sand.
The whole thing kicks off in theaters on May 23, 2025.
I can’t remember when I’ve been this excited about a remake. See you in line.
