[quote]By Stephanie Sorich
Graphic by Ana Bicolli[/quote]

I will be the first to admit that I’ll still pick a Disney film on Netflix over anything else they have to offer. Award-winning documentary? I’m feeling “Hercules”. Oscar nominated drama? Tonight’s a “Mulan” night. I live and breathe anything that has spawned from Walt Disney. But even I have my limits, and I drew the line at the remakes.

I thought it was a joke that they remade “Alice in Wonderland” with real actors. I laughed at the very thought and said, “Wow, they’re never going to do anything like this again.” It turns out I’m not as smart about the movie business as I think I am. Then came “Maleficent” and “Cinderella”, and I found my love for Disney going down the drain. I was fully boycotting these movies.

However, a few weeks ago it was my mom’s birthday and she decided she wanted all of us to see the remake of “The Jungle Book,” which was a family favorite of ours when I was young. There’s only so much you can complain about what your mom wants to do on her birthday, and so to the movies I went.

And let me tell you, my expectations were met. Passed. With flying colors, even.

The visuals were incredible, seeing as only Mowgli was a real life actor in the film. The jungle looked incredibly real; some
critics even compared it to “Avatar”. The voice actors were great (even though Scarlett Johansson, who was super hyped up, was in the movie for a total of two minutes) and I actually felt myself leaning forward in my seat. Let me repeat: I was at the edge of my seat while watching “The Jungle Book.”

I had made the argument for a long time that the remakes were an excuse to make more money, and that no creativity was coming from any of them. But the Disney remakes are taking what we thought was fun and cute in our childhood, and bringing them to a whole new level of image and wonderment.

Shortly after the success of “The Jungle Book”, Disney announced even more remakes to come: “Dumbo”, “Mary Poppins”, and “A Wrinkle in Time” are just a few to make the list. As someone who didn’t believe that Disney could remake the magic of my childhood, I was wrong. Disney took the magic that we first fell in love with and made it real.