“Princess and the Frog” will most likely be Disneys next Live Action Remake

This movie should be buried in a pit and never see the light of day again. Disney's worse animated "princess" movie times infinity. She spends most of the movie as a frog. Then, the "hero" is a whit-ish guy, although she is clearly African American, and her competition for him is a white southern blond girl. The original folk tale upon which this movie is based did not translate successfully at all to the early 20th C. New Orleans milieu, and the characterizations were utter failures. Just a disaster all around.

R1 Naveen isn’t white. He is biracial.

Stop with these terrible soulless remakes and create new classics!

Naveen looks like some type of Caribbean Creole mix. Like Guyanese or Trinidadian. His father looked mulatto and his mother looked Indian. I assumed he was of African, Euro and Indian descent.

Naveen was made ambiguous intentionally. And who cares if his love interest was a white woman?

Is this where he kisses her and she turns into a frog, which is much better than a loathsome stereotype of ignorant fantasy aimed at the historical victims of colonialization?

DISGUSTING DISNEY TRASH AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE IT.

I liked the story and the music until she was turned into a frog. I can't see this successfully made into a live action remake. CGI frogs and lightening bugs? I hope Disney is putting a lot of thought and effort into Hunchback and Hercules. Those two, of all the films they remade into live action, could be excellent with the right people calling the shots.

R1 Got lost on her way to LSA.

This movie is what? 15 years old? Too soon for a live action remake.

Is there nothing else to remake live action?

Tiana was refreshing for a Disney protagonist. Mature and womanly and worked hard to achieve her dream. I loved she was dark skinned with unambiguous features. Not a big-eyed Barbie doll dipped in chocolate. The message though that some people miss is Tiana learns it's okay to ask for help and work with others to achieve her goals. She was very singleminded, neglected her social life and put on too way too many burdens on herself. Naveen learned the importance of hard work and sacrifice and gained a purpose in his life rather than being an idle playboy. Charlotte learned there's more important things than seeking a Prince Charming and that's friendship. It felt more written for adults than a typical Disney fare, so one of the reasons it may have underperformed. That and Disney didn't promote it and put it up against Harry Potter.

Treasure Planet, Brother Bear and Atlantis were also more mature films that didn't get too much love either. Disney had a rough time in the 2000s competing against Pixar and DreamWorks but the post-Renaissance era was far from terrible and in many ways much better than their current era of Pixar clone films.

This cartoon was barely promoted. Disney fucked up.

So Tiana will be white?

Belle stayed white, Cinderella stayed white, Sleeping Beauty stayed white, Maleficent stayed white, Mulan stayed Chinese etc. They only race-changed Ariel who is a mermaid and it's implied Atlantica is in the Caribbean (the calypso songs by Sebastian and Prince Eric's kingdom looking very Mediterranean).

And also Jasmine and Aladdin had no set ethnicity. Agrabah is a fictional kingdom that mixed Arab, Turkish, Persian and Indian elements into some hodgepodge of an Orientalist fantasy. Jasmine in the original dressed more like an Indian princess from Punjab and she even had a pet tiger named Rajah and the palace looked like the Taj Mahal. The creators did admit Agrabah was going to be Baghdad before the Gulf War controversies made them rename it. But still nothing looked authentically Arabic about it. The live-action remake set in a more Bollywood setting because that would make more sense than the Islamic world and it was less offensive.

So why would they make Tiana white when they stayed consistent with almost every character except Ariel (who's not even a human originally)? I swear you "anti-woke" trolls try so hard and fail.

R13 And to think all this time I thought Hans Christian Andersen was from Denmark!

You can be from Denmark and write a story not set in Denmark

R15 Or you can respect the culture and heritage of the creator.

[quote] And to think all this time I thought Hans Christian Andersen was from Denmark!

[quote] Or you can respect the culture and heritage of the creator.

And what does the original author's nationality have to do with the story? The original story nor the Disney version wasn't explicitly set in any specific place and there's no obligation to keep it that way. Are you also offended by Peter Pan and Winnie-the-Pooh being Americans? That the Lion King is also net set in Denmark despite also being based on Hamlet?. Are you offended by Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet being set in LA or by Black Orpheus being set in Brazil? What about all those Biblical paintings with the figures wearing Renaissance Italian, French, German or British clothing? Stop picking and choosing.

R17 No, and I also don’t care that this version of the Little Mermaid is Black. But all the reasons you gave are stupid and made up. Calypso Music? Prince Erik’s castle looks Caribbean? Just admit Disney wanted to Black wash the character for woke points and get on with it.

R18 I do think they're pandering too. Sure. But I find the fake outrage over the race-change ridiculous considering it's a fairy tale for little kids and it's grown-ass adults getting mad over it (when they don't normally give a crap about Disney movies). Yeah, Disney is a phony company that is trying to revise their racist history (I mean look at Dumbo, Fantasia, Song of the South, Aladdin and Pocahontas). Plus in the original from 1989, it was ridiculous the kingdom of Atlantica was so white given it was underwater and merfolk could be purple, blue, grey and etc. Yet they had a Trinidadian crab and jazz-singing fish who were clearly voiced by black people and served a servile role to the white merfolk royalty.

[quote] I hope Disney is putting a lot of thought and effort into Hunchback and Hercules. Those two, of all the films they remade into live action, could be excellent with the right people calling the shots.

I'm glad Disney is finally acknowledging these two movies after almost three decades of ignoring them. Hercules is getting a theatre adaptation since it became a cult classic over the years. And Hunchback is still respected by animation fans because despite taking deviations from Victor Hugo's story, it was a seriously well-written and surprisingly adult animated film.

I thought DL was completely anti-Disney. Stop picking and choosing. /s

R21 Fantasia is a beautiful film. The Walt Disney era is a completely different animal from modern-day greedy corporation Disney. Walt was focused on pushing the limits of animation and wanted to make films for a high-brow adult audience, not just kid fare. Most of the films under his reign flopped at the box office though, Fantasia, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi were flops (the former two due to the stigma of animation as kid stuff and the latter two due to WW2) and the most expensive film he produced Sleeping Beauty was a colossal flop as well. He had to make WW2 propaganda films just to make it through the 1940s. Luckily Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were huge marketing machines, as well as the success of his theme park Disneyland and his TV series The Mickey Mouse Club and the Wonderful World of Disney. All of those other ventures kept his studio from going bankrupt.

Disney since the 1980s has been a big corporation focused on acquiring every other company in their vicinity and absorbing talent from its competitors. While Walt Disney was the brains behind Disney between 1928 to 1967, everything after has been reliant on individual animators, directors, songwriters and producers that barely get any credit. For example, without Ron Clements and John Musker, Glen Keane, Andreas Dejas, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken were some of the biggest brains behind Disney's success in the late 80s and 90s. In the late 2000s and 2010s, it was John Lassetter that revived Disney animation as well as Glen Keane, Ron Clements and John Musker returning in the late 2000s. Many of the Pixar staff went to work with Disney animation and that led to a revival that peaked with Frozen and ended with Moana.

After 2017, many of the key people have left Disney animation again, either going to work for different studios or creating their own. Disney is again, a shell of its former self relying on live-action remakes of their older films or continuing their Pixar/DreamWorks rip-offs without the soul or talent to pull if off.