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It’s sort of like beating a dead horse (mouse?), but it really can’t be stressed enough how genuinely awful Disney’s disastrous infatuation with live-action remakes is.
Instead of doing the thing that made Disney a force — love them or hate them, the Walt Disney Co. is massive — like creating new and beloved original characters, the company instead keeps vomiting up these remakes based on their catalog of classic movies.
And just like regurgitation in real life, that thing you end up with will just never look as good as the original.
Look, there’s a reason that tales like “The Little Mermaid” or “Beauty and the Beast” often come with the term “timeless” preceding it.
Classic films earn their classic status with longevity, and standing the test of time is only possible with quality.
Trying to microwave that process by taking “classics” and throwing a modern coat of paint on them has yielded awful results, mainly because modern sensibilities, by definition, aren’t timeless. It’s the whole square peg-round hole thing.
Enter: “Lilo & Stitch.”
Not a soul who’s been paying attention was surprised when Disney inevitably announced a live-action remake of the seminal 2002 animated film that focused on the theme of family.
But unlike some of the past announcements, where the woke mind virus could easily replicate, “Lilo & Stitch” almost seemed leftism-proofed.
The original story focuses on a pair of newly orphaned sisters from Hawaii (for those who whine about those intersectional checkboxes, that’s woman, non-white, and parentless right off the bat for you), as the elder sister, Nani, tries to prove to local authorities that she can be an able guardian for her little sister Lilo, who must otherwise be given up to the state. During this arduous process, a mischievous alien from outer space, Stitch, ends up in their lives.
Hilarity and hijinks ensue before you get that classic Disney ending with a bow on top. The state ends up loving Nani and Lilo (despite rough early impressions), while the sisters have their new modern family after losing their parents but gaining an extraterrestrial pet.
Everything works out for the characters as Disney bludgeons you with the messaging of that original film: “Ohana means family, and family means nobody is left behind or forgotten.”
(“Ohana,” the Hawaiian term for family, is a load-bearing theme of the 2002 original.)
Again, it all seemed pretty straightforward, with very little in the source material that Disney would need to change to appease its leftist base. That thinking likely played at least a small part in the movie’s big success over the weekend. According to Rotten Tomatoes, “Lilo & Stitch” made over $325 million by the end of the four-day Memorial Day weekend.
Oh, how naive that thought was.
Disney did change the ending of this film, and it’s about as antithetical to the theme of the original movie as you can imagine, all in service of destructive, leftist feminism (or, hilariously, in the name of white colonialism, but more on that shortly).
WARNING: The rest of this article will discuss plot spoilers for 2025’s “Lilo & Stitch” remake.
Uh, so yeah… You know all those themes about ohana and “nobody is left behind”? You know, the mana, to borrow another Hawaiian term, of the original film?
The 2025 remake basically chucks it out the window.
Nani, who in the original movie gets that modern blended family at the end, decides to give Lilo up to the state at the end of the 2025 iteration.
Seriously.
The movie goes to great lengths to paint this as a wonderful moment, by the way. Yeah, sure, your recently orphaned baby sister needs government-assisted living (Lilo would live with her elderly neighbor), while you go pursue a career in marine biology because something-something girl power.
(And to be clear, if it’s not obvious, this writer is vehemently against toxic feminism. It’s a genuine scourge on this world and flies in the face of biblical teachings.)
It’s all nauseating stuff and thinly veiled misandry, but I almost don’t even want to get into the political or ideological aspect of it.
Because at the end of the day, it turns out that Disney can ruin even the most rote, basic, fundamental endings with its leftist nonsense.
Oh, and about that white colonialism…
Perhaps the most hilarious part of the backlash that Disney is facing is that it’s not just coming from the company’s usual conservative critics.
It’s also irking the progressives, who seem to think the idea of a woman getting an education and pursuing a career instead of a family (a decidedly liberal tenet) is somehow a conservative theme.
One X post with over 125,000 likes as of Tuesday afternoon showed that a number of people agreed with that:
WARNING: The following X post quotes another post that uses language some readers may find offensive.
When I talk about Hollywood interjecting more white centered conservative politics into their films, this is what I’m talking about: Nani denigrating Hawai’ian beliefs and turning Lilo over to the gov’t so she can study outside of Hawai’i is colonial anti-indigenous messaging. https://t.co/G5pgzJis4Y
— Carolyn Hinds ???????? #FreePalestine #CongoInCrisis (@CarrieCnh12) May 26, 2025
“When I talk about Hollywood interjecting more white centered conservative politics into their films, this is what I’m talking about: Nani denigrating Hawai’ian beliefs and turning Lilo over to the gov’t so she can study outside of Hawai’i is colonial anti-indigenous messaging,” film critic Carolyn Hinds posted in a certifiably viral X post.
I could not agree less with Ms. Hinds, but she actually proves a great point.
Disney, look at that viral tweet again. Get it through your thick, collective skulls that no matter what you do to try and appease leftists, you will never, ever catch those wandering goalposts.
It’s a fool’s errand to chase those leftist ideals because it’ll never be enough for them and the rest of their perpetually aggrieved ilk. For every party satisfied, another three will find some issue to whine over.
So instead of giving a rip about that, why not focus on making sure things are entertaining first, educational second, and never preachy?
Believe it or not, Disney used to excel with that stuff.
You know, before they threw it all away to chase leftist glory…
… Wait, was 2025 Nani just an allegory for 2025 Disney?
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