The newest victim of the reboot is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, though we can all name other examples of sequels that maybe did not need to happen. Within just the realm of Halloween movies, we’ve seen a second Haunted Mansion, Hocus Pocus 2, and so much more. Although they sometimes end up being good movies, it often seems these reboots are just reusing a name and exploiting the audience’s love of the original for guaranteed success.
This past summer, Disney released the list of movies that will be coming out from 2024-2027–and the internet had a lot to say. Among the movies they have scheduled are Moana 2, Frozen 3, Zootopia 2, Incredibles 3, Freakier Friday, Mufasa: The Lion King, and even Toy Story 5. We are also getting a long list of live-action remakes, such as the much-anticipated Snow White with Rachel Zegler. This brings up the question of why—why can’t we get something entirely new?
It comes down to the fact that studios are playing on our love for nostalgia. Take Inside Out 2 for example; it had been 10 years since Inside Out, but the sequel just came out and broke box office records. Why? Because people love to re-experience the feelings that the first movie brought. We love nostalgia, so nostalgia makes studios money.
This focus on profitability instead of good content is starting to pose a problem. In a TikTok by creator Stone (Medical Movie Man), he explains his concerns about the upcoming Moana 2 and why he feels it won’t be as good as the first one.
Moana 2 was not initially slated to be a movie, but instead a TV-series with a different cast of voice actors. Because of the 2023 writers’ strike, Disney was not scheduled to have an animated movie coming out in 2024, which would’ve been the first time in several years without an animated film from them. So the team switched productions; Moana 2 became a movie of the combined episodes that were initially planned and the original voice actors replaced the new cast. This seemed fine until fans realized that the rest of the initial creative team would not be returning for the sequel. Lin-Manuel Miranda did not return to work on the music and the original directors, Ron Clements and John Musker, also didn’t join the project. But since the original Moana was the most streamed movie among all streaming services in 2023, this is obviously a great cash-grab; people are going to see it despite the potential flaws in its speedy production.
This reproduction of old stories leads to a bigger question: Have we all lost the ability to be original? With the excess of social media and the overconsumption fueled by micro-trends, maybe we have. You can’t scroll through TikTok without being sold something or watching videos of the same dance trend three times in a row by different people. What happened to creatives being creative?
The pushback to this lack of originality is the silver lining of this dark and stormy cloud. People are starting to resist the constant push of remakes and yearning for days when everything was new and original, when stories were told just to be told instead of as a money grab. So, while we do have several years of remakes to look forward to from Disney, maybe we are being pointed back in the right direction—the direction of original thought.
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