🌊🌺 LILO, LEFT BEHIND

This week, Disney’s Lilo & Stitch live-action remake broke records with a $341 million global debut, making it the biggest Memorial Day weekend opening in US history. But alongside commercial success, it’s also sparked one of the biggest backlash cycles yet for a Disney remake.

Early criticism focused on casting, particularly of Nani (Sydney Agudong), who fans argued looked too white-passing to authentically portray a Native Hawaiian character. Others lamented the erasure of queer-coded Pleakley who was once considered a drag icon, now dressed in bland disguise.

But the tipping point came this week, as more viewers watched the film and discovered a major deviation from the original ending. In the 2002 animated classic, Nani fights tooth and nail to keep custody of her younger sister Lilo, embodying the film’s central message of ohana. In the remake, however, Nani ultimately agrees to give Lilo up to the state so she can pursue college in California – an ending framed as empowering, but widely seen as a betrayal of what made the original unforgettable.

💡 OUR TAKE

When director Dean Fleischer Camp explained his vision, he said he wanted to “modernize” the idea of ohana – give it nuance and complexity. But in doing so, he stripped away the very thing that made the original so beloved.

The backlash is less about resisting change, rather it’s about how updating the plot inherently disrupts the emotional memory attached to the IP. Lilo & Stitch wasn’t just a story, it was an emotional landmark crafted in a specific cultural moment, with a specific audience in mind. It belonged to its time. And the power it held came from the emotional truths it represented. 

The phrase “Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten” was a generational catchphrase that quietly shaped how Millennials thought about belonging and gave kids (many of whom felt out of place, unsafe, or unaccepted in their own homes) the emotional permission to seek out love and safety outside of traditional family systems. Later, as this same generation embraced queer culture, non-traditional identities, and chosen families, that line became a kind of emotional shorthand.

The broader issue with today’s remake economy is that when studios revisit beloved IPs, they rewrite the emotional codes of familiar characters and shift foundational storylines – negating what made those stories matter in the first place. It’s like meeting an old friend, only to realize they’ve become an entirely different person. 

Revivals aren’t inherently bad. In fact, when done correctly, they have the power to bring forgotten stories to new generations, reframe old truths in contemporary language, and correct the blind spots of the past. But in 2025, revivals are a creative crutch. It’s a way to delay the risk of new ideas by constantly retouching old ones. 

Y2K isn’t back because people truly believe in the genius of low-rise jeans. It’s back because the familiar is always easier to circulate, easier to merchandise and easier to meme. Reboots offer that same safety net of guaranteed success. 

When recycling becomes the main course rather than part of a broader creative ecosystem, we lose the potential to create future classics that could define our time instead of just reinterpreting someone else’s. And until we create new IPs that feel just as emotionally anchoring and culturally defining as what came before, we’ll keep rebooting the past because recycled stories cost less to market than new ideas. 

So to quote FKA Twigs: Where are all the thinkers? 🤭

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

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