Why is Disney remaking our favourite animations only to scare the kids?

A Sydney mum has insisted she won't be taking her kids to see the new 'Snow White' film because the remakes of classics are following an unnecessary trend. 

Like every millennial mum, I couldn’t wait to share Disney classics with my kids. But these live-action movies are destroying the once-treasured stories of my childhood.

My first cinema experience was at an old picture theatre in Wagga Wagga in 1994 with my dad and siblings to see The Lion King.

It was the first of many movie masterpieces I grew up with in the 90s and early 2000s – a generation blessed by the Disney Gods.

If you’re a millennial mum, your childhood was sprinkled with the classics still revered today; The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Mulan.

It was these sentimental films, and the scores burned into my subconscious, that I couldn’t wait to relive, snuggled up on the couch with my kids.

But as they’ve grown old enough for a cinema experience, Disney has targeted them with live-action remakes of the iconic animations.

Sitting through the blockbuster films, I’ve noticed they’re painted with a more serious and darker brush, with added jump scares I didn’t expect.

After seeing the teaser trailer for Snow White - the latest cartoon to get the live-action treatment - I fear a CGI makeover will turn the film’s already eerie events into nightmare fuel, especially for little ones.

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Snow White is coming back in a live-remake. Image: Disney

Snow White is coming back, likely scarier

The 1937 classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is being remade with Rachel Zegler as the titular princess and Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot, as the Evil Queen.

From my extensive Disney viewing as a child, there are only two disturbing scenes I can recall.

One is Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island. The other is the haunted forest in Snow White.

I’m not alone in my core memory. Zegler said she was so afraid of Snow White as a child, she never re-watched it until making this film.

“I was scared of the original cartoon,” she said in an Entertainment Weekly interview. “I think I watched it once and never picked it up again.”

Disneyland used to have a ride playing into the movie’s frightening themes, called Snow White’s Scary Adventures, which made the actor’s fear even worse.

“Doesn’t sound like something a kid would like, was terrified, never revisited Snow White again.”

Online, there are others scarred by the kid’s classic. To refresh your memory, one mum on Reddit explained; “I’ve watched it with my kids and there are scary scenes, particularly the queen being transformed to a disfigured old hag, she cackles about the girl being buried alive... it’s wicked twisted.”

Other users commented, “I remember running to my mum crying during the forest scene” and “the evil queen scared the sh*t out of me”.

I’d forgotten about the scary parts, until I saw the trailer and saw a flash of red eyes in a dark wood.

So, it will be a skip for me and my kids, at least until they’ve grown out of the running-into-my-bed-with-nightmares stage.

RELATED: Fans divided over Disney’s live-action remake of Moana

Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot stars as the Evil Queen. Image: Disney

Special effects bring baddies to life

While Disney originals have always had scary content, it can go over a child’s heads in a cartoon, I didn’t pick up as a kid that most of my fave films involved dead parents.

The creepy scenes in 2D animations are balanced with feet-tapping music and characters who spark joy. The villains at worst, look like an excellent drawing.

It’s a different story when darker tones are woven into the plot, and special effects bring baddies to life in your lounge room.

The Lion King’s Scar has always unnerved kids, but it’s a different kind of squeamish watching a CGI lion devour an antelope with blood around his mouth, alongside his spine-tingling hyenas.

Scar was scarier in The Lion King remake. Image: Disney

The Little Mermaid’s Jaws-inspired shark scene, fiery shipwreck, and Ursula’s transformation into a giant possessed sea creature, left little girls in tails, covering their eyes, and jumping into laps at the Sydney premiere.

Tim Burton’s Dumbo, and its depressed characters and creepy clowns, was especially disappointing. Dumbo’s mother chained up on Nightmare Island was terrifying, and there was no sidekick, Timothy Q. Mouse, who added vital comic relief.

Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent, based on Sleeping Beauty’s Evil Queen, was so scary only one of her six kids would go near her in costume. It’s also rated M in Australia, because of the film’s violent scenes.

Other live-actions are so real, your adrenaline spikes in the good vs evil battles.

The photorealistic CG detail makes lightning storms, explosions and gun fights – like the shooting of Beast in Beauty and the Beast - look like an adult’s action movie.

Then there are frightening scenes for no reason - the mermaids in 2003’s Peter Pan, being changed into slimy sea monsters, even sent chills down my spine.

It’s not just the effects, the movies Cinderella, Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland have muted colour palettes, when the originals are a kaleidoscope of colours.

And if the CGI is not scary, it’s offensive, leaving animal characters looking strange and soulless, taking away any emotion we connected with in the classics. (Don’t get the internet started on Mufusa’s death.)

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Who are these remakes for?

It makes me wonder why? Why roll out these treasured stories subpar and scarier than the originals? Besides it being an easy cash grab playing on nostalgia.

Who are these movies really for, if they’re too scary for kids?

The marketing is towards children. My kids will be intrigued by Snow White’s trailer and images of a princess with cute animals on buses and billboards as we get closer to the release date.

But a lot of the content in the Disney live-actions thus far, hasn’t been suitable for preschoolers and early school-aged kids, and most carry a PG rating, meaning children under 15 shouldn’t watch it without an adult.

While the classics have themes that haven’t aged well (I much prefer a kid’s movie without sexism and racism) the magic of the animations have stood the test of time.

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Dumbo was a little darker and scarier than the original. Image: Disney

Animations are more magical than remakes

Walt Disney famously said, ‘for every laugh there needs to be a tear’, but many of the modern takes have little humour and heart and too many tears.

It’s not about shielding kids from difficult topics like grief and loneliness, parents should lean into that. It’s about joy being swallowed up by the spectacle.

My children are yet to prefer a remake over an original. That could change, as Disney has Moana, Lilo & Stitch and Hercules in the works.

But there is one in the pipeline I am begging to be left alone.

The sacred Bambi. If I’m not covering my kids’ eyes, I’ll be covering my own. My heart won’t cope with an Attenborough-style documentary of Bambi’s mum’s death.

Nor the look of a CGI Thumper. That will give everyone nightmares. 

Originally published as Why is Disney remaking our favourite animations only to scare the kids?