Disney has made one of the biggest legacies in cinema and has reached the hearts of students around the world. They have created what would be considered legendary movies such as the “Lion King”, “Pinocchio”, “Aladdin”, “Snow White” and so much more. Even with the grand size of this enterprise, there is an undeniable drop in quality of the project the company produced in the last 10 to 20 years. Disney has resorted to making live action remakes and sequels of successful projects. They also forced their hand into different companies, purchasing Pinewood studios (the creators of “Star Wars”), Marvel, even news stations like ABC and ESPN. 

Lady and the Tramp 

The movie “Lady and the Tramp,” was considered a legendary performance at the box office.. The film was released in 1955 and was one of the first movies Disney produced that had monumental profits. The Lady and the Tramp made about $93.6 million in its release which is about $1.1 billion today. Almost 70 years after the initial release of the movie, Disney decided it was time for another remake, releasing the live action version in 2019. It received mixed reviews from people mostly saying it was just the old film but with Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) instead of the use of animation.

  Pinocchio 

The film “Pinocchio” in its original form wasn’t as successful as most of the classic Disney films at first, having a box office performance of $1.4 to $1.9 million which is $2.1 million today. This was due to the events of World War 2 occuring when the movie was released in 1940. Although the movie had a slow start, it started to ramp up in popularity after the war concluded. By the 1900s, it was the classic all Disney fans know and love. In classic Disney fashion, the studio was eager to make the money off of the Intellectual Property (IP). In 2022, the live action remake of Pinocchio released to the platform Disney+. The film followed in its predecessor’s footsteps with negative reviews surrounding the movie. 

 Aladdin  

Another classic that has been put in the equivalent of the Disney hall of fame is the film “Aladdin.” Set in a mix between a South Asian and Middle Eastern setting, “Aladdin” was almost revolutionary in its role of skyrocketing the popularity of the franchise as a whole. Aladdin had a performance of $504 million on its release date of 1992 which is about $1.1 billion today. Disney then made the live action remake of the movie. Although the movie was released 27 years after the original, the project still kept pace with its counterpart, making about $1.1 million dollars in the box office. 

  Lion King 

One of the most successful Disney movies of all time, the movie “Lion King,” accomplished a large effort in skyrocketing the popularity of Disney as a company. The project was awarded the highest grossing film of 1994 and the second highest grossing film behind “Jurassic Park” with a performance of $763 million at the box office which is $1.6 billion today. Rather than letting the legendary performance remain in history, Disney decided that it wasn’t enough. In 2019, the live action remake of Lion King was released in theaters. The classic animation of the film was replaced with cgi, effectively an almost one to one of the movie. It grossed about the equivalent of the original. 

Snow White 

The first Disney movie ever made, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” will always be a classic in the memories of Disney viewers everywhere. This is what started the road of success after making Disney as what it is known today in entertainment. The film had a record breaking performance of $187 million which is about $4.1 billion today. Disney has started production and has released the trailer about the new live action remake of the movie. This release had started a sort of controversy addressing the making of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” into CGI instead of hiring actual dwarf actors for the role. This has caused a great amount of discourse between the fans of Disney. This would be between the portion who believes that having real dwarf actors would be more accurate to the original film, while the other portion says that it doesn’t matter all that much and the CGI looks palatable. 

General Disagreeing Between Disney Fans 

The constant remaking of films from the Disney franchise has created a schism between people who might enjoy Disney movies. 

“I feel like Disney back in the 90s was at their peak, like Renaissance era, as people like to call it,” junior Alex Mireles said. ”They were coming out with new ideas, new stories, [and] amazing films with amazing stories. But over time, it feels like that creativity has been sort of lost.” 

Fans could also blame this lost creativity on the loss of animators. 

“They couldn’t really come up with original stories because most animators and storyboard artists and all the creative people at Disney back in the 90s left and then just went off to do their own things,” Mireles said.

They also say that Disney is simply making these movies because of how well they did in the market, not wanting to forge any new stories by their own merit, but by just remaking what already was. 

The other portion of Disney fans don’t see this as exactly a bad thing, saying that Disney is a corporation at the end of the day and they do have to do what is best for making money. 

“Disney is a company and they need to make money,” Theater coordinator Mr. Kevin Holly said. “It’s not easy to make a movie like that, but it’s [a] way to make money.” 

 Marvel  

When the Marvel cinematic universe was initially created, the project was a massive presence to the world of cinema. The initial “Avengers” movie grossed over $1.5 billion worldwide, making the film the highest grossing movie in 2012. This was actually because of Disney since the purchase of Marvel was in 2009. The MCU then became one of the largest industries of all time, making over $31.1 billion in the box office. Some fans argue that in recent years Disney has tanked marvels quality with appealing to certain audiences above others. This does have a certain amount of merit since the recent marvel movies have made a considerable amount less than the classic movies of the 2010s.

 Star Wars

Another case of an incredibly successful company, Star Wars revolutionized the idea of science fiction with the release of “A New Hope” in 1977. The project made a total of 770,000 dollars which is $3.5 billion today. Then, after the first six movies were released, in 2012, Disney bought the franchise and made their own trilogy following the timeline of the previous ones. The film “Star Wars The Last Jedi” had an astonishing rating of 2.2 stars on audience reviews. A large number of fans say the trilogy broke a myriad of the previous films rules and had a general dip in the quality of writing.