Only One Disney Remake is Better On Rotten Tomatoes Than the Original

Disney's original animated movies all have better Rotten Tomatoes scores than their more recent live-action remakes, except for one. Walt Disney Animation Studios made many of the most iconic animated movies in the 20th century, but the more recent live-action adaptations of those stories haven't reached the same heights in Rotten Tomatoes.

While some of Disney's live-action adaptations have been more spiritual remakes or successors, like Christopher Robin or Maleficent, but when it comes to the 11 movies that received direct live-action remakes, including Pinocchio, Dumbo, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Cinderella, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book, Lady and the Tramp, The Lion King, Mulan, and Alice in Wonderland, with more live-action Disney remakes on the way including Hercules, The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Bambi, and more. While most of these movies received positive reviews, there's a stark difference in the Rotten Tomatoes scores earned by the animated movies and the live-action remakes.

Disney's Animated Movies Have Way Higher Rotten Tomatoes Scores Than Live-Action Adaptations

Disney's animated stories have far better Rotten Tomatoes scores with an excellent average score of 94 percent, beating the 60 percent average of the live-action adaptations by 34 points. The split is even wider when it comes to Rotten Tomatoes' Top Critics, where the 11 Disney animated movies averaged 91 percent, 37 points more than the live-action remake average of 54 percent. Audiences like the live-action adaptations a lot better than critics, giving them an average Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 62 percent, but they still prefer the animated originals, giving them a 19 point higher average score of 81 percent.

The 94 percent average is even more impressive when compared to other modern Disney movies in Rotten Tomatoes, particularly the recent 3D Walt Disney Animated Studios movies (84 percent), Pixar (89 percent), or the MCU (83 percent). Granted, this selection only includes the Disney animated movies that have received live-action remakes, and Disney's selection of movies to remake in live-action is going to be biased towards movies with strong critical session, meaning a larger slice is guaranteed to bring the average score down, but that doesn't make this particular slice of Disney animated movies any less impressive.

Only One Disney Live-Action Adaptation Has a Better Rotten Tomatoes Score Than the Original

Disney; Live Action; Johnny Depp; Neel Sethi

Obviously most of Disney's original animated movies have higher scores than the live-action remakes, but there's only one live-action remake with a better Rotten tomatoes score than the original animated version. The animated version of The Jungle Book, released in 1967, has an 88 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, but the Jon Favreau-directed live-action remake from 2016 scored 6 points higher with 94 percent. The Jungle Book is the only exception, though, as every other Disney animated movie has a better score than every other live-action remake.

This doesn't just mean every animated version has a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than its live-action counterpart, but a higher score than any of the live-action versions, other than The Jungle Book. The Disney animated movie (of the Disney movies to receive a live-action remake) with the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score is Alice in Wonderland, which earned an 84 percent, and the highest Rotten Tomatoes score from the live-action remakes (other than The Jungle Book's 94 percent) is Cinderella with an 83 percent score. Here's the full comparison for each movie:

Pinocchio (1940): 100% | Pinocchio (2022): 27%

Dumbo (1941): 98% | Dumbo (2019) - 45%

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961): 98% | 101 Dalmatians (1996): 41%

Cinderella (1950): 97% | Cinderella (2015): 83%

Aladdin (1992): 95% | Aladdin (2019): 57%

Beauty and the Beast (1991): 94% | Beauty and the Beast (2017): 71%

The Jungle Book (1967): 88% | The Jungle Book (2016): 94%

Lady and the Tramp (1955): 93% | Lady and the Tramp (2019): 65%

The Lion King (1994): 93% | The Lion King (2019): 52%

Mulan (1998): 86% | Mulan (2020): 73%

Alice in Wonderland (1951): 84% | Alice in Wonderland (2010): 51%

Disney's Live-Action Adaptation Rotten Tomatoes Scores Are Getting Worse

Disney's live-action remakes don't only have worse reviews than the original live-action versions, but their scores are getting progressively worse (on average) with each additional release. After the release of the live-action The Jungle Book in 2016, the rolling average of the live-action Rotten Tomatoes scores was 67.25 percent. The release of the live-action Beauty and the Beast brought the rolling average up to 68 percent, but every release since (other than Mulan) has brought the rolling average down slightly until the newest release Pinocchio, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 27 percent (the lowest yet) brought the live-action rolling average down to 59.91 percent, barely below the Fresh mark if it's not rounded up.

This trend certainly doesn't bode well for the next batch of Disney live-action remakes, including movies like Hercules, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Bambi, The Sword in the Stone, Robin Hood, and Lilo & Stitch; however, one of the chief complaints with the adaptations so far has been the fact that most of them hew too close to the original, and a fresh approach to some of the remakes may help break the cycle. Hercules, produced by the Russo Bros. and directed by Guy Ritchie, is one such example, with Joe Russo teasing that it'll be “a little bit more experimental in tone, a little bit more experimental in execution," adding that they hope to make the movie "in a way that isn’t just a reinterpretation of the animated film.”

At the end of the day, reviews are all subjective, meaning Rotten Tomatoes scores are also subjective, especially when comparing the scores of live-action movies made in the past decade to animated movies made as long as 80 years ago, although the live-action remake habit of sticking so close to the animated version also begs for that comparison. Hopefully future Disney live-action remakes will offer something more unique, resulting in better reviews, although with the original animated versions averaging 94 percent, there's a reason they'll always be considered iconic pieces of movie history.

Next: Disney's Live-Action Remakes Should Focus On Its Bad Animated Movies