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10 Disney Classics That Need to Be Remade

By Christopher Campbell posted 8 months ago

Even if you love the original Escape to Witch Mountain, you have to welcome a remake. The 1975 sci-fi Disney film has some very dated special effects — though the visible wires used to “levitate” a handgun and a harmonica give it a campy charm — and it’s not exactly the well-respected classic that The Black Hole or Old Yeller is, anyway. So, better a remake (or “modern re-imagining”) of a slightly beloved movie, which has already been redone once, to give The Rock another fulfillment of his Disney contract and utilize all the “perfect” digital effects now available.

While it seems that eventually all Disney live-action classics will be remade, potentially rendering obsolete the careers of Dean Jones, Kevin Corcoran and those ugly kids from Mary Poppins, there are some that may, like Witch Mountain, deserve to be recycled. Disney has previously erred in reworking films like The Absent-Minded Professor (Robin Williams is no Fred MacMurray) and The Shaggy Dog (Tim Allen is no MacMurray, either, nor even is he Tommy Kirk), and it’s mistakenly producing new versions of Swiss Family Robinson and 20,000 Leauges Under the Sea. But there are so many other films, most forgotten, that would better lend themselves to remakes.

Here we’ve selected 10 such classics, all but one live-action features, and we welcome you to suggest any others you may wish to see updated and/or re-imagined.
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Classics, Lists

WALL•E on DVD: Interview with BURN•E Director Angus MacLean

By Kevin Kelly posted 11 months ago

It’s no secret that I have a soft spot for all things science fiction-related, and when it involves robots of any kind (the odd exception being the actual movie Robots, which I avoided like the plague) then I’m in like Flynn. The more non-human looking the robot, the more I’ll love it. (Which is probably why Disney’s own The Black Hole has some of the coolest movie robots in it. V.I.N.C.E.N.T.? Maximillian? Great stuff. Where’s my Blu-ray, Disney?) One of the movies this past year that actually got me into the theaters more than once was Disney/Pixar’s WALL•E, which comes out on DVD today. They’ve added a ton of special features to the film, especially (of course) if you buy the three-disc special edition, which includes a digital copy of the movie that you can toss on your iPhone, laptop, digital watch, toaster oven, or shaving mirror.

Despite the fact that director Andrew Stanton says WALL•E has “no environmental message” whatsoever, it’s a bit ironic that on the commentary track he starts out by explaining that in the development process they wondered what would happen if so much trash piled up that humans had to leave the earth in order to clean it up. Sounds environmental enough to me. Luckily, the fact that Stanton continues to insist there’s no underlying meaning, and that he never made the connection between WALL•E and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit hasn’t detracted from my enjoyment of the film.

Pixar decided to revisit the WALL•E universe by creating a short film using new animation and some recycled footage. The idea was that it would be a nifty little special feature for the DVD, which it is, but it makes me yearn for a sequel to WALL•E — which is a sign of Disney’s marketing magic at work. The short film is BURN•E, and I got the chance to see a little early and to talk with the director of the short, Angus MacLean. The DVD also includes the short magician vs. rabbit film Presto, and these two shorts alone are worth the price you’ll pay for this robotic wonder. Check out our interview with MacLean below the jump.

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