Let’s paint a picture.

It’s the year 2054 and Disney higher-ups are at a loss for new movie ideas. It seems every sequel has been made and every live-action has been watched. CEO of Disney Bob Iger looks distressed when all of a sudden a man rushes into the conference room and shouts out with a roar.  He proposes a insane idea, the one thing they forgot about:

A Lilo and Stitch live-action remake. The room is uplifted, people are hugging, dancing, and money starts pouring in even before the production of the film even starts.

Although this scenario is satire, many of its elements are true.

Disney keeps on rebooting their beloved franchises expecting that fans old and new will help their company earn money on a lazy cash grab.

Classics such as Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Mulan stand as the most critically acclaimed movies of all time; redoing the films with live popular actors, and state of the art CGI and special effects is Disney’s attempt to hold onto viewers’ love of the originals by remaking them with higher production value.

But why does Disney keep on remaking these films?

Nostalgia, of course.

According to Psychiatrist Heidi Moard on Neurology Times, “Nostalgia is a powerful emotion that can be conjured by events that bear a resemblance to past experiences in a person’s life.”

An example of this could be music that one listened to during childhood. In this case, it’s Disney movies.

Many people will go see a rebooted film because they saw the original movie when they were children. The power of feeling young again in our society is very personal to people as they are able to escape from the harsh stressors of reality. 

However, a few viewers don’t see this as a cash grab but as an opportunity.

Sophomore Ally Martin said, “I only liked some of the Disney remakes, but they are all really good. I feel like some of them are a little too different from the older ones…that’s what makes them special and new, even though it’s still somewhat the same storyline.”

On the other hand, some people may think it is wrong to toy with another’s emotions for the sole purpose of money.

Junior Lily Saxerud said,“ I don’t like the Disney remakes cause it loses the magic of the old animations, which is what made them so great…I remember seeing this when I was a child, so this will be equally as good when it actually isn’t.” 

However, it’s not just on nostalgia it’s also the legal rights to Disney’s characters.

“Company characters have a timeframe; if I owned a character and I made a movie, there would be a point of time that I owned that character’s rights, but later on, the rights would expire–and that’s what Disney is doing. Making new movies refreshes their rights to characters such as Snow White, Simba…and many more,” said aspiring movie director and Air Academy sophomore Rylan Archuleta.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem that Disney will be stopping anytime soon.

With films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pinocchio, and even The Little Mermaid already seeing pre-production in the next decade, it’s no surprise that fans of the popular Disney films will never stop arguing about the ethical choice of retelling a famous story or just leaving it be.