If you’ve kept up with recent movie releases, you’ve probably noticed an increase in the number of animated films, like Snow White, How to Train Your Dragon, and The Lion King, being adapted into live-action remakes. This is an attempt by greedy movie companies to profit off of nostalgia that many feel for classic animated movies, but it is ultimately harmful to both the movie industry and viewers because it leads to a glaring lack of originality and creativity in new releases.

These companies are banking on the fact that people will watch the new movies to revisit fond memories, but the new live action movies are nearly identical to their animated predecessors, making them exceedingly boring to watch. Do you really want to go to the theaters to watch the exact same story over again, albeit in a different medium? Or would you rather see something novel and interesting, and find new favorite movies among new releases? 

Not only are the new releases unoriginal, they’re also bad movies. There’s a reason that the filmmakers chose animation as the medium in the first place: certain fantastical aspects of these movies tend to work better in animation. Talking lions, dwarves, and dragons are hard to depict believably in live action, which often uses CGI in an attempt to do so. Filmmakers for animated movies have more creative freedom, and can rely more on a suspension of disbelief when using animation. Most of the time, that just doesn’t work in live action.

There is an easy way to solve all of these problems—-big movie companies should create new universes and tell new stories instead of reusing old ones. Film is an art, and a central function of art is to explore new ideas in creative and novel ways. They should not forgo this artistic mission to grasp at profit.