Disney live-action remakes and adaptations of their animated classics started coming out in the ’90s and 2000s. In 2010, Tim Burton was given the reins to completely reimagine Alice in Wonderland in his own twisted image. And in 2014, Maleficent was more of a remix than the Disney live-action remakes that would follow. It told a new story of the villain from 1959’s Sleeping Beauty, the titular Maleficent (Angelina Jolie). Fans and critics lauded the movie. It even earned an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design.
But the true modern era of Disney live-action remakes, and this list, truly begins with 2015’s live-action remake of Cinderella (1950). The movie launched a decade’s worth of true Disney live-action remakes, currently totaling 14 with 2025’s release of Lilo & Stitch (2025).
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
A number of other live-action projects, including a sequel to Maleficent, similar villain movies like Cruella, and original stories based on, or continuing, animated classics like Christopher Robin and Mufasa: The Lion King, have also been brought to the big screen in the past decade.
However, they are not included in this list to keep the criteria for ranking the Disney live-action remakes consistent: how do they compare to the originals, and how do they hold up on their own? Each remake takes different liberties, some replacing outdated concepts or characters, and others changing the number of songs, if any. Nearly all of the movies are directed by auteurs or well-regarded individuals, but many of them do not share a standard of quality with the rest of their oeuvres.
The Disney live-action remakes have been an affront to film-kind.
Most of the Disney live-action remakes herein are deservingly maligned. Where some have true artistic vision and merit, most can’t escape feeling like uncanny cash grabs. CGI can hardly replace the beautiful hand-drawn animation that made their original movies so beautiful. And “updating” certain stories to meet the corporate standard for modern politics often gets in the way of telling heartfelt stories.
Ultimately, most of the Disney live-action remakes are an affront to film-kind. They are hollow reminders of a type of movie that was once magical and, because of a fixation on cash cows like these, are devastatingly rare today.
Nonetheless, this ranking seeks to be fair to every movie on its own merits. With the caveat that nearly none of them, except those described as such, are worthy successors to the grandeur of their originals, some of these movies stand taller in retrospect than others. It also cannot be denied that some have inspired new audiences to discover what made their originals great in the first place, or have kept Disney financially solvent during difficult global financial times. Regardless of how you feel about the Disney live-action remakes, let us recount their merits and demerits individually.
14. Peter Pan & Wendy (2023)
Director: David Lowery
Writers: David Lowery and Toby Halbrooks
The absolute nadir of the Disney live-action remakes is Peter Pan & Wendy (2023). The movie is dark, dire, and mostly displeasing. Its first and greatest sin is that it assumes everyone has already seen the 1953 original or any of the many other versions made since. The movie poses Wendy Darling (Ever Anderson) as a know-it-all who interrupts every character who dares start to monologue some exposition to say that she already knows exactly what they were going to say and explains it out loud herself.
Maybe it was an attempt to make Wendy feel more like the strong, independent type instead of the strictly motherly version she can be mistaken for in the original. But it simply renders Wendy annoying, much like her Peter Pan (Alexander Molony), who hardly has a fun bone in his body. Jude Law’s Captain Hook tries his darndest, but the CGI monstrosity that is his crocodile nemesis is more memorable, and it is one of the worst pieces of CGI in all the Disney live-action remakes. The movie ends on a high note, but getting there is hardly worth the journey.
13. Mulan (2020)
Director: Niki Caro
Writer: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Lauren Hynek, and Elizabeth Martin
Mulan (2020) is one of the more confounding Disney live-action remakes. It removes all of the songs, removes Mushu and Cricket, changes everyone’s names, and adds an entirely new character and element of mystical martial arts to the movie. The removal of Mushu and Cricket is somewhat understandable, in the context of the movie, anyway.
The movie was desperate to seem “darker” and more “adult” than the original, an inescapable Hollywood-wide trend that hurts most Disney live-action remakes. There’s no room for wisecracking sidekicks in a “serious” movie, and if you pretend you never loved them in the original, Mulan (2020) isn’t explicitly missing them.
But the movie is desperately missing its songs. Instead of singing any iconic and emotional songs from the original movie, the film score tags them briefly in each moment they would have been originally sung. They’re horrible reminders of what once was great and, more than most other moments in any Disney live-action remakes, beg the question as to why these movies were ever made in the first place.
Without singing “Reflection,” “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” or “Honor to Us All,” Mulan’s (Yifei Liu) journey of self-discovery is rendered pale. The remake perhaps thought that toning down the rhetoric these songs highlighted around gender would help modernize it or even depoliticize it somehow. Instead, Mulan (2020) lacks specificity. The new villain, Xianniang (Gong Li), is meant to balance out the gender politics by highlighting gender in its own way, but the girl-power approach simply doesn’t compare to the devastatingly personal struggle Mulan first experienced in 1999.
12. The Lion King (2019)
Director: Jon Favreau
Writer: Jeff Nathanson
When The Lion King (1994) came out, it was the highest-grossing animated movie of all time and the second-highest-grossing movie period. When The Lion King (2019) came around, it outgrossed even the original. But a $1.6 billion box office does not a good movie make. The Lion King (2019) is cheap entertainment. It’s a heartless remake that’s revolutionary CGI doesn’t look the least bit impressive in retrospect.
Even though the remake stars Donald Glover and Beyoncé as Simba and Nala, neither has much screen time, and every musical number is adjusted to make you yearn for the beauty and fun of the originals. For however novel the hyper-realistic CGI may have felt in 2019, it endures as an ugly facsimile of one of animation’s most beautiful original productions that somehow found a way to make Timon (Billy Eichner) and Pumbaa (Seth Rogen) more annoying than fun.
11. Aladdin (2019)
Director: Guy Ritchie
Writers: Guy Ritchie and John August
Aladdin (2019) came at the peak of the Disney live-action remake flurry. Five live-action remakes came out that year as the conglomerate was launching its streaming platform, Disney+, and making its vast catalog of movies available to watch with ease for the first time ever.
Aladdin (2019) has its decent moments. The digital world is often colorful, and Will Smith’s take on the Genie, while nowhere near as impactful as Robbin Williams’ original turn, gives the movie a distinct flair and flavor. But on the whole, the remake commits two cardinal sins: Its new elements are forgettable, and its best parts merely remind you of what made the original so much better.
So many of the Disney live-action remakes shied away from presenting themselves as full musicals, despite the originals thriving specifically because they were. Aladdin (2019) makes the correct choice to be a full-blown musical, making it far more fun than it would have been otherwise. But every version of every song is just less good. They’re not sung as well, they’re not staged as well, and they’re re-orchestrated less well.
Worse, several new songs feel entirely out of place. They’re mostly songs given to Jasmine (Naomi Scott) to help make her character more realized and independent. Sometimes it leans too far into corny girlboss territory, but in the end, the movie does stick the landing for her new core character development.
10. Pinocchio (2022)
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers: Robert Zemeckis and Chris Weitz
Unlike many other Disney live-action remakes that removed beloved songs, Pinocchio (2022) adds a list of original songs to the affair. Unfortunately, not even Cynthia Erivo singing the iconic “When You Wish Upon a Star” as the Blue Fairy makes the music feel right. The animation styles are all over the place, with no two characters looking like they belong in the same movie, and none of them looking like they belong in any movie. The giant whale Monstero is turned into a beast for an aggravating action scene instead of the original’s beautiful, emotionally climactic moment from inside the monster.
It’s not that Pinocchio (2022) is an incoherent movie. It’s mostly a faithful remake with far worse dialogue that expands on scenes with musical numbers and action setpieces rather than rewriting pre-existing characters. However, Tom Hanks is terribly miscast as Geppetto. Even the one new character, Fabiana (Kyanne Lamaya), is actually a nice addition to Pinocchio’s (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) journey. There are just so many better adaptations of the story, including the original, that nostalgia cannot help the movie feel like it has no true raison d’être besides chasing an ill-conceived trend.
9. Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Director: Bill Condon
Writer: Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos
Beauty and the Beast (2017) is the most forgettable of the Disney live-action remakes. This is mostly because it came out so long ago and warrants such little revisitation. The movie doesn’t change Belle’s (Emma Watson) character as dramatically as Jasmine or Snow White to fit supposed modern feminist standards. The main issue with Beauty and the Beast (2017) is that its original is so beloved and spectacular that the remake can hold no candle to it whatsoever.
None of the most iconic scenes, especially the ballroom scene or “Be Our Guest,” has the faintest amount of splendor or grandeur by comparison to the original. Instead, they feel uncanny mimics of greatness. Everything is serviceable, but why ever return to this lesser version of an originally perfect movie?
8. Snow White (2025)
Director: Marc Webb
Writer: Erin Cressida Wilson
Snow White (2025), like almost every movie on this list, has no truly good reason to exist. It didn’t update the original meaningfully or make any money at the box office. But upon its own merits, purely as a remake, the movie is passable. Snow White (Rachel Zegler) is charming and sings phenomenally, unlike the Evil Witch (Gal Gadot), who may represent one of the worst casting decisions in modern Hollywood with her horrendous acting and singing alike.
Snow White and her “Prince Charming,” Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), are made equals in this remake. She has complete agency, and unlike many of the earlier Disney live-action remakes, she actually uses her agency and goes through a somewhat complete character arc. However, the CGI dwarfs and many of the magical settings look atrocious, and the end of the movie is nearly a complete repeat of Aladdin (2019).
7. The Jungle Book (2016)
Director: Jon Favreau
Writer: Justin Marks
The most impressive part of The Jungle Book (2016) is that the movie is built around one young child actor, Neel Sethi, acting in front of green screens without co-actors. As Mowgli, Sethi is very impressive. For 2016, the movie looks pretty good as well. However, it does begin the dark, desaturated cinematography trend that other fully digital Disney live-action remakes suffer from, namely The Lion King (2019).
The remake also set a bad trend for future Disney live-action remakes with its odd and unpleasant talk-singing approach to the original songs. “The Bear Necessities” lives on fairly similarly to the original, but “I Wan’na Be like You” is totally ruined. It’s transformed into a clumsy talk-singing action setpiece instead of an iconic and memorable song. The movie is also held back by its almost entirely racially insensitive voice casting. As a modern blockbuster, though, The Jungle Book (2016) is impactful and works fine.
6. The Little Mermaid (2023)
Director: Rob Marshall
Writer: David Magee
Halle Bailey sings Ariel’s famous songs well in The Little Mermaid (2023), as does Melissa McCarthy as Ursula. “Kiss the Girl” is fine, but suffers from the talk-singing that beleaguers many of these remakes. But worst of all, the Lin-Manuel Miranda-penned original songs, like in most Disney live-action remakes, just don’t feel like they belong. And neither does live-action Ariel amongst her CGI sea critter friends.
Every minute the movie spends underwater, it feels like Ariel is swimming in front of a green screen. To make it worse, the ocean is dull and completely lacks depth. Iconic scenes are rendered flatter than their 2D originals because the vast ocean feels so empty. The one decent set piece is the final battle with Ursula. While it’s generally aggravating that the Disney live-action remakes think it’s necessary to shove in massive action setpieces to try also appealing to young boys, at least this one doesn’t completely sink.
Sebastian (Daveed Diggs), Flounder (Jacob Tremblay), and Scuttle (Awkwafina) all feel like fish terribly out of water. Awkwafina is terribly miscast and interminably annoying, and Sebastian’s accent and boxy look are also out of place. Flounder, on the other hand, is designed with no personality. He’s just a plain-looking fish stuck in an uncanny valley between too realistic and not realistic enough. It’s one of the worst examples of how the original animations don’t translate well to live action.
5. Cinderella (2015)
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Writer: Chris Weitz
Cinderella (2015) is almost from a simpler time. The movie is straightforward. There are no gimmicks to try to modernize the story. There are no winks at the audience or head nods about the original. It’s merely a straightforward and relatively effective adaptation of the animated classic. Director Branagh is famous for his period pieces and Shakespearean storytelling. Cinderella (2015) falls evenly among his other films, with glorious costumes and rather decent palatial sets.
The King (Derek Jacobi) is kinder, and the Grand Duke (Stellan Skarsgård) is more explicitly evil, plotting with the Stepmother (Cate Blanchett) to keep Cinderella (Lily James) and the Prince (Richard Madden) apart. But unlike in many of the Disney live-action remakes to come, the changes don’t feel out of place or forced. They lend themselves naturally to a perfectly reasonable fairytale.
4. Lady and the Tramp (2019)
Director: Charlie Bean
Writers: Andrew Bujalski and Kari Granlund
The Disney live-action remakes based on movies least commonly remembered seem to be the most successful, perhaps because the creators feel the most free to just create movies rather than adhere to massive fan expectations. Lady and the Tramp (2019) is a great example. It puts such little fanfare behind even recreating the most iconic scene from the original that you could blink and miss the moment. Yet, it actually benefits the movie. Instead of flashing lights and giant arrows pointing to that “one moment you surely remember and love,” the movie is just a nice kids’ movie about talking dogs.
Lady and the Tramp (2019) is also the only of the Disney live-action remakes to add a new song that works just right. Janelle Monáe’s new song “What a Shame,” which replaced the outdated Siamese cat song from the original, is a certified bop. Adding jazz to the movie’s fusion breathes life into a tale that already stands well on its own. The enemies-to-lovers journey between Lady (Tessa Thompson) and Tramp (Justin Theroux) lands well. It’s one of the few straight-to-Disney+ movies where it feels like a shame that it didn’t get a chance to be enjoyed in theaters.
3. Dumbo (2019)
Director: Tim Burton
Writer: Ehren Kruger
Without question, Dumbo (2019) is the most stylistic Disney live-action remake, for better and worse. Director Tim Burton balances his famous dark, macabre style with something far more grounded than his earlier reimagining of Alice in Wonderland (not included in this list because they are broad adaptations, not remakes of Disney’s 1951 animated feature).
The original Dumbo (1941) was rather short and simple. The remake adds a lot of characters and plot to flesh it out, but unlike lesser remakes that add for lesser reasons, like Aladdin (2019) and Mulan (2020), all of Dumbo (2019)’s additions feel naturally baked into the new movie. The Medici Brothers’ Circus, led by Max Medici (Danny DeVito), provides a great set of new characters and settings to help add emotionality to Dumbo’s story.
The main child character, Milly (Nico Parker), is the one exception. Like Wendy in Peter Pan & Wendy (2023), she is a know-it-all whose every word is excessive exposition. It detracts and distracts at every turn, even as she provides the movie’s emotional heart, alongside the flying elephant himself.
2. Lilo & Stitch (2025)
Director: Dean Fleischer Camp
Writers: Chris Kekaniokalani Bright and Mike Van Waes
Lilo & Stitch (2025) may well be one of the final Disney live-action remakes, but at least the misguided venture may end on a relatively positive note. Lilo & Stitch (2025) makes the wise decision to remain largely faithful to the original movie in character and tone while simplifying it rather than adding dimensions to it, like so many of its counterparts. The remake removes the original’s main villain, Captain Gantu, and instead adds additional human characters, the social worker Mrs. Tekoa (Tia Carrere), and a loving neighbor, Tutu (Amy Hill).
Stitch looks wonderful, at least on the big screen, and blends well with the very real Hawaiian world around him. The other aliens in the movie can’t quite say the same, but fortunately, they don’t overstay their welcome. Instead, the film thrives on its humanity, with a beautiful relationship between its titular and delightful six-year-old Lilo (Maia Kealoha) and her big sister, Nani (Sydney Agudong), who adopts her after their parents die. Their relationship, along with the way Stitch wiggles his way into their lives, grounds the movie’s fantasy and makes the whole thing a relatively lovely time.
1. Pete’s Dragon (2016)
Director: David Lowery
Writers: David Lowery and Toby Halbrooks
Pete’s Dragon (2016) is different from the other Disney live-action remakes because it is a remake of a 1977 live-action movie with the same title. It changes the plot and tone quite a bit, but they are the same stories by and large. Because it was part of the same wave of animated remakes and because it’s just a very good movie, it deserves a place on this list regardless. It also earns a spot on this list because it is the only Disney live-action remake that has a good reason to exist, updating an underseen movie for a modern audience with great success.
Oakes Fegley as the young Pete who becomes lost in the woods after his parents die in a car crash does an admirable job bringing childhood to life, while Bryce Dallas Howard as Grace and, even more so, Robert Redford as Meachum give wonderfully committed performances as the adults who inherently believe and trust Pete when he says he’s been living with a dragon named Eliot all these years.
Pete’s Dragon (2016) soars because it feels real. The CGI is passable, but the human beings are incredible. So often in children’s fantasy stories, there’s an expectation that the children have to prove to the adults that the magic is real. Here, the magic is always real. Eliot the dragon isn’t just a figment of Pete’s imagination, he’s a living being that the adults in the story must reconcile with.
Instead of falling into the trope where adults must learn to find their inner child again, Pete’s Dragon (2016) is entirely about adults remembering what it means to be good people and care about one another and the world around them. It’s intensely refreshing and completely moving.
On their own merits, some of the Disney live-action remakes have redeeming qualities. But nearly all of them are pale comparisons to the movies they remake. If one good thing has come from these affronts to film-kind, it’s that they are stark reminders of how desperately Disney needs to return to investing in original animated stories and the talent necessary to imbue them with true magic again.
All of the Disney live-action remakes and their original movies are streaming now on Disney+.
