The weekend box office results are in, and Alice Through The Looking Glass is the undisputed loser, on track to pull in $35 million domestically against its $170 million production budget, Variety reports. Disney seems baffled by the results, according to executive vice president of distribution Dave Hollis:
It’s disappointing and it’s head scratching to a certain degree. … We’re always striving for higher-quality, branded films. We make these big bets and sometimes they really pay off. We took one here, but it did not do the kind of business we were hoping.
There may not be that much reason for head scratching; by all accounts, the film is unwatchable. But the fact that live-action remakes of beloved Disney films don’t necessarily have a guaranteed audience is terrible news for the studio, because they’ve built their entire strategy around them. According to the Hollywood Reporter, there are at least 14 more live-action remakes in the works, from Pete’s Dragon to Dumbo. The weekend makes clear, though, that brand recognition isn’t enough to carry a film on its own. So to help Disney out, we’ve selected five animated films to add to its schedule. To be clear, these are not good ideas. In fact, they’d all be dreadful. But would they be as dreadful as Alice Through the Looking Glass? Would they be worse than a live-action Winnie the Pooh or an Aladdin franchise? How could they be? So in the hopes of winning a “Most Improved” award, here are some animated films that might level out the studio’s descent.
Clutch Cargo
If you’re spending a fortune turning animated films into live action, why not save money by using a film that was half-live-action to begin with? Ted Gillette’s patented Syncro-Vox technique—superimposing human mouths on static, immobile faces—not only held costs down but would be easy to duplicate in live-action in the age of Botox. Hardly anyone remembers Clutch Cargo, but that’s not necessarily a disadvantage: The people who didn’t go to see Alice Through the Looking Glass all clearly remembered Alice in Wonderland.
The Peanut Vendor
Artist Len Lye was best known for “direct-filmmaking” experiments like Free Radicals, which he scratched and drew on film stock. But his 1933 stop-motion experiment The Peanut Vendor is better suited for the live-action feature treatment, because of its strong central character. You may argue that The Peanut Vendor is kind of horrifying, and you’re not wrong, but consider this: Have you seen Depp’s Mad Hatter?
The Plague Dogs
A generation of children remembers being traumatized by Watership Down, which is getting its own (animated) remake. But not as many people saw director Martin Rosen’s follow-up, which was even more disturbing. Plague Dogs opens with scientists drowning a dog and then somehow goes downhill from there. No one wants to watch a gruesome live-action saga of two dogs on a doomed escape from an animal testing facility, especially not when one of them has an exposed skull. But it’s gotta be better than forced whimsy.
Onward to the Shining Future: Victorious Destination
This 1939 Stalinist short would be dreadful in live-action for all kinds of reasons, from the table of tuxedoed capitalists mocking the five-year plans to the scene of a Russian farmer literally running over a Kulak with a tractor. But is it really a worse bet than Rose Red? Sure, it would be difficult to convince modern audiences to sign on with the Stakhanovites, but if you’re already committed to making unnecessary live-action remakes of animated films, who are you to run from a challenge?
Yellow Submarine
Of all the films Disney could successfully remake, Yellow Submarine would be the easiest. The Apple Bonkers, the terrible flying glove, and the Blue Meanie would all be simple to capture on film, and freed from the constraints of traditional animation, would finally dazzle audiences the way they were always meant to. The challenge would be casting the four unlikable protagonists and doing something to modernize the terrible soundtrack. But as this weekend shows, if anyone’s up to the task, it’s clearly Disney!
