The Trailer to “Lilo & Stitch” (2025) Was Better Than Expected

(This is the poster for Lilo & Stitch (2025), the live action remake to Lilo & Stitch (2002).)

Finally, I’m able to talk about this trailer. Sorry, it’s been so long since my last post. I caught a pretty nasty cold 🤧 last week from my dad (he got us all sick 🤧), and I just didn’t have the energy or the drive to write during that time. I just wanted to get better because if I did continue writing, it wouldn’t turn out that good because I was sick, and you’re always in the right state of mind when you’re sick. I just barely had enough energy and creativity to finish the Wylde Pak post, and then I was done. I couldn’t write anymore because my cold 🦠 had taken too much of a hold. Then, I wrote an update to that post when I was feeling a little bit better, but not a hundred percent. But, I am feeling better now, and now I’m in the mood to write something, and what better to write about as my first post back than a post talking about the trailer for Lilo & Stitch (2025)? It’s fitting that I’m writing this while wearing a Stitch t-shirt, I wore specifically so I could write this. Maybe, I’ll post a picture of me wearing it and add it to this post. 

 

 

 

(This is a photo of me wearing that Stitch shirt I was talking about in the paragraph above. I took it in a way that you could see the entire shirt and what it said. I also flipped the image so that the text would appear forwards instead of backwards since I took this picture in front of a mirror 🪞.)

 

 

 

 

I was originally going to talk about this trailer closer to when it actually came out, but because I got sick 🤧, I had put it off until after I got better. The same went for the other posts I had planned for March, like a review of Venom: The Last Dance and a post about Huey Li, a Chinese political YouTuber 🇨🇳 who I am currently subscribed. He’s not pro-China 🇨🇳, he’s anti-China 🇨🇳, or I guess anti-CCP ☭ and anti-authoritarian and pro-democratic. I call him a Chinese YouTuber 🇨🇳 because he’s from China 🇨🇳, and now lives outside of it, critiquing the regime and all other authoritarian regimes around the globe 🌎. My cold 🦠 completely threw off my schedule for March, now I am only have a week to finish all of the posts that I had planned for this month, and if I can’t get to them by the 31st, on Monday next week, then I’ll have to move them over to April, which will probably be the case with the Man of Steel review I had planned. Thanks, dad 😒. 

Now, I’ve made no real secret that I’m not the biggest fan of Disney, or at least the current iteration of Disney that’s monopolizing the film industry, snatching up all of these IPs (intellectual properties) and making them worse. They’ve done it with Marvel and they’ve done it with Star Wars, almost everything that they’ve touched has gotten worse. I’d even throw Pixar into that because I think Pixar has gotten a lot worse in recent years, their current movies for the part haven’t been anywhere near as good as their older movies during their golden age, which was really around the 2001-2010 timeframe. But, even then, I’m kind of starting to think their older movies are overrated, except for WALL•E, that movie’s still a banger no matter what. I know that they had a recent success with Inside Out 2 last year, that movie was a huge hit, the highest grossing movie of 2024, and a lot of people loved it 😍, but it was unnecessary sequel, it didn’t exist and was only made to cash in 🤑 on the first Inside Out because Pixar was in desperate need of a hit 😖 after the failure that was Lightyear. Maybe, that’s just the contrarian in me saying that. 

 

Whenever something gets too popular or gets too much praise, then I’m more inclined to dislike it or not like it as much as everyone else. The same thing happened to me with Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Crow 🐦‍⬛ (1994), and Avatar: The Last Airbender 💨, I can’t stand Avatar: The Last Airbender 💨 ever since it got really popular. It should’ve stayed an obscure and niche thing that only a few people watched or heard of. Now, it’s too popular, it’s too mainstream, and it lost all of its charm to me, and I kind of resent it. I’m tired of people naming Avatar as a example of brilliant storytelling and character development. It’s the not only example of good storytelling or good character development, and it’s not even the best example of those things. 

 

People only like Avatar because it was the only action cartoon on Nickelodeon, it was the only serialized cartoon on Nickelodeon with a story that continued on from episode-to-episode and season-to-season, it’s one of the few action cartoons that did any of those things like storytelling and character development and did them well in a way that resonated with people, and it makes them feel mature while watching because the show is somewhat edgy, it’s about war, and sometimes people die. It was baby’s first serialized TV show, and because of that, I refuse to let it go and prop it up as one of the greatest cartoon shows of all time, maybe even as one of the greatest TV shows of all time. It’s not that good guys, calm down. It’s not a show “secretly for adults,” it’s still a kid’s show at the end of the day, it was made for kids, and it has a lot of flaws that people ignore because of nostalgia and because the competition is so much worse. 

 

They also do it because they don’t want to anger the Avatar fans who will attack you for saying anything bad about the show even if it is legitimate. They attack you for not even watching it, just like they did Emily from Emirichu. Her fans gave her all kinds of shit for not watching Avatar, so much so that she decided to watch it just to appease them and shut them up so that they’d get off her back about it. It’s also that kind of behavior from the fans that drives me away from Avatar and makes me not like it or want to watch it. I mean, I have shows that I’m nostalgic for and that I still watch even though I’m a grown adult, but even then I don’t talk about them the way people talk about Avatar. I’m more realistic in my assessment of the shows that I watch that were from my childhood, or at least I like to think so. 

 

I know I’ve made a lot of hot takes about Avatar in this post and others that will probably get me a lot of heat 🤬 from a lot of people who may or may not read this, but I don’t care. That’s how I genuinely feel about Avatar: The Last Airbender 💨, I used to really like it, but ever since it became popular and became more mainstream, I started to like it a lot less. I even sort of hate it now. Surprisingly, I haven’t had this sort of contrarian aversion for other popular movies like Spider-Man 2, Shrek 2, and Akira. Maybe, it’s because I personally enjoy those movies no amount of mainstreaming or over praising will make me not like them. In the case of Spider-Man 2, that movie is so endearing and sincere, partially because of the memes, that it’s hard to dislike it, even in a purely contrarian sense. I also haven’t really seen Spider-Man 2 in full, so I don’t have an emotional attachment to it one way or the other. 

 

But, this sort of contrarianism has kept me away from watching certain movies and shows that became popular and mainstream, too popular and mainstream for their own good, like Parasite (2019), Squid Game 🦑, Frozen ❄️, Big Hero Six (which is kind of a Marvel movie, it’s based on a Marvel property, but it’s not tied into the Marvel Cinematic Universe), Moana, Encanto, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Deadpool 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Dune Part Two (I didn’t even like Dune Part One, so I’m definitely not watching Dune Part Two), Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and Godzilla Minus One. It even almost of kept me away from Wednesday, and the only reason I decided to watch Wednesday is that my sister was watching it, and I figured that if my sister was watching it, I might as well give it a chance and watch it. 

I’ve also made no secret that I’m not the biggest fan of Disney’s live action remakes. Like a lot of people, I’ve felt that their live action remakes are unnecessary, they didn’t need to exist, and they’re ultimately inferior to the original animated films that they’re remaking. The only reason that they do exist is for Disney to cash-in 🤑 on an old IP. They are a symbol of Disney’s lack of creativity as of late. Instead of creating anything new, they’d rather just rely on what worked before, even if they fundamentally misunderstand what made these movies work in the first place and end up making something that’s inferior in every way to what they made before. 

 

I’m of the opinion that if you’re going to remake something, you have to put a new spin on it and try something new with it instead of trying to replicate the original because you’re always going to come up short. So, it’s better to just do something or put a unique twist on a concept whenever you’re remaking a movie. At least then, it’ll truly be your own and can judged on its own merits and won’t constantly be compared to the original. But, unfortunately, most of the Disney remakes (all of them in fact) haven’t been that. They’re not new or unique takes on the material, they’re just pale imitations of the animated films. Just the most bland, milquetoast, forgettable, and disposable movies imaginable. Disney just churns them out, and then they’re easily consumed and forgotten years after they’ve been released. 

 

 

 

(This is the poster for Lilo & Stitch (2002).)

 

 

 

So, when I heard that there was going to be a live action remake of Lilo & Stitch, a movie that I grew up with and adore, I had no interest in watching it. I was kind of upset that they were doing this, but it was to be expected that they’d eventually touch the post-Disney Renaissance animated films once they ran out of Disney Renaissance animated films to remake, and Lilo & Stitch was the most successful one. I didn’t want to support it and encourage and enable Disney to keep doing this sort of thing. In fact, I was thinking of watching and reviewing the original 2002 animated Lilo & Stitch in protest of this upcoming live action remake 🪧. Like, I was going to watch (and reviewing) the original instead of watching the remake. Just like I’m going to do with Man of Steel and Superman (2025), I’m going to watch and review Man of Steel instead of watching and reviewing Superman (2025) because I am that against that movie’s mere existence. But then, I watched the trailer, and my feelings about this film have kind of shifted. 

I wasn’t even going to watch the trailer at all because I was so against this movie’s existence, and the Super Bowl spot really did nothing for me (even if it was one of the better Super Bowl spots this year). I only decided to watch the trailer after I was looking through Double Toasted’s recent uploads, and saw that they did a video on the trailer and the thumbnail said “Can’t Believe I’m Saying This…” implying that they liked the trailer, or at least Korey did. Korey’s usually the more positive one of the group while Martin is usually the Negative Nelly. So, against my own better judgement, I decided to watch the trailer to Lilo & Stitch (2025), and it was better than expected. Just like my title said, it wasn’t false advertising, I don’t lie in my titles for clickbait or any of that nonsense. Does it hurt my SEO (search engine optimization)? Sure, maybe, it’s the most honest way to title blog posts. 

It actually looks kind of decent, despite being so close to the original, and it give that nostalgic feeling especially when I heard that music at the end, the Hawaiian song that plays during the scene in the original where Stitch is surfing with Lilo, David, and Nani. They got me with that one. It looks like it was shot on real locations rather than just in front of a green screen, unless the green screen work is just that good that you can’t tell the difference, but looks they did some location shooting in Hawaii, which they should do. The movie takes place in Hawaii and features Native Hawaiians as the main characters. If you’re going to do a live action version of that, it should be filmed in Hawaii itself. A lot of movies are filmed in Hawaii, and yet are not actually set there, so you have a rare opportunity to shoot there and have the movie itself take place there. 

 

Disney has the money 💵 to do it, they’re a multibillion dollar company 💵, and they poured about $150 million 💵 into the movie’s budget (which is more than what the original cost), so I don’t want to hear the excuse that it would be too expensive to film in Hawaii for real. Money 💵 shouldn’t be an issue when you have a $150 million budget 💵. If Jurassic Park could do it with a $63 million budget 💵 (unadjusted for inflation), then this movie can do it too with a $150 million budget 💵. People who use the “it’s too expensive” argument when it comes to location shooting are just being cheapskates as far as I’m concerned. So, it is admirable that they shot at least parts of this movie on location in Hawaii (or at least that’s how it looks). Shooting movies on location always makes them feel more authentic and real.

 

 

 

 

(This is the flag of Hawaii.) 

 

 

 

 

It’s also admirable that they cast actual Native Hawaiian actors for these roles, I was really wondering how they were going to cast this movie considering that they doesn’t seem to a lot of Native Hawaiian actors working in the industry. Certainly, there aren’t any Native Hawaiian actors who are huge bankable stars. But, they did cast Native Hawaiian actors in the Native Hawaiian roles. The actress who they picked to play Lilo in this movie looks very good, she fits the role perfectly, and she’s very cute 😊, which is what you want Lilo to be. Apparently, there were rumors that Dwayne Johnson was going to be in this movie as Cobra Bubbles, the scary looking social worker who’s keeping tabs on Lilo and Nani and is always critiquing the way Nani takes care of Lilo. And given how much the Internet 🛜 and the IRL (in real life) public has completely turned against him, people were concerned about that and probably would’ve been turned off to the movie entirely if he were in it. Well, good news, he’s not in it. Instead, they got the guy ♂︎ who played the US Army colonel 🇺🇸 in The Mummy (2017), Courtney B. Vance. He’s playing Cobra Bubbles in this movie. 

 

I’m glad Dwayne Johnson isn’t in this movie, I don’t mean to dogpile him or anything and jump on the hate bandwagon against him, but I don’t think he would fit the role at all. He can’t play intimidating. You’d think he would, considering his physique, but he can’t, he just doesn’t have the personality or the acting ability to pull off intimidating. He just kind of plays himself in every movie he’s in (which is a huge contributing factor to why people don’t like him anymore), and base Dwayne Johnson is not very intimidating. And you need someone can look and act intimidating to play Cobra Bubbles because it’s apart of his character. 

 

The whole joke with him is that even though he looks scary and even though he’s tough on Nani and her guardianship over Lilo, he’s actually a compassionate and empathetic person. That’s why he’s tough on Nani, because he wants to make sure Lilo is taken care of, and that Nani is able to raise to the occasion to take care of her little sister and be the guardian she needs. Of course, at the end, we learn that he isn’t just a social worker, and in fact a member for a secret government agency that deals with aliens, but for most of the movie, all we know about him is that he’s a social worker. If Michael Clarke Duncan were still alive, he would’ve been the perfect Cobra Bubbles. But, I think Courtney B. Vance will do an okay job, he may not be able to pull off the physicality, but he can pull off the intimidation factor. 

 

I have no idea who’s playing Jumba or Pleakley in this, I don’t know if they got the same voice actors to voice them when they’re in their alien forms or who’s playing them when they’re disguised as humans. Because they are fully disguised as humans in this version, they’re not just wearing human clothes while still looking like aliens like in the original, and Pleakley doesn’t seem to be a crossdresser in this. They really doubled down on that in the sequels and the animated series to the original, and made it a key part of his character that he likes to wear women ♀︎’s clothing and he likes wearing women’s wigs, but it seems like they’re probably going to downplay that aspect of his character in this live action remake. 

 

 

 

 

(This is the Genderfluidity pride flag.) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can’t have a gender fluidity or any other kind of gender expression besides the narrow binary, this has to work overseas, and in other countries, they don’t quite fancy the gays 🏳️‍🌈. In fact, this country, in its current state, doesn’t quite fancy the gays 🏳️‍🌈. Disney has always been cowardly when it comes to LGBT representation 🏳️‍🌈, so it’d make sense they’d downplay or remove the gender fluidity of Pleakley in the live action remake. I mean, they allegedly canceled Moon Girl 🌙♀︎ and Devil Dinosaur because it had a transgender character 🏳️‍⚧️ in one episode that was never aired. The whole episode was about trans issues 🏳️‍⚧️ in fact, specifically, the trans athlete issue 🏳️‍⚧️. What chance did crossdressing Pleakley have? 

 

I do like that they brought Chris Sanders back to voice Stitch. Even though he was the co-director of the original, he also voiced Stitch, so it’s cool that he brought back to reprise the role. Having him voice Stitch again goes a long way in making this feel like Stitch. Stitch is probably the best part of this trailer. Not only is his personality on point, but the CGI on him looks pretty decent. We’re so used to these Disney live action remakes having terrible or just mediocre CGI, that it’s nice to see one with actually good CGI. He’s so expressive and looks pretty photorealistic in some parts. 

 

Maybe the fact that they actually shot this movie on location and on real set instead of just against a green screen, makes the CGI look better, but it does. And if there was any movie that needed to have good CGI, it had to be the live action Lilo & Stitch because Stitch interacts with humans most of the time, and you have to believe that he’s really there, interacting with these actors. And luckily, they pulled it off for the most part. I do wonder though, since they brought him on to voice Stitch again, I wonder if Chris Sanders had any creative control or input on this movie, or if he was just a voice actor this time around. If he did, that’d go a long way in explaining why this looks a lot better than any of the other Disney live action remakes.

Not everyone was impressed with this trailer, namely the YouTube channel, TwoDream. They made a TikTok video, which they then reposted as a YouTube Short where criticized the casting of the fan favorite character, the snow cone guy 🍧♂︎. Okay, well in the original, he was eating an ice cream cone 🍦, it kind of looked like mint chocolate chip (it’s a green ice cream with chocolate chips), but here, they changed it to a snow cone 🍧. I don’t know why they changed it to a snow cone 🍧, but it whatever, it’s not a big deal. It’s purely surface level cosmetic change hardly anyone will notice except hardcore fans of the original or detail oriented people like myself who notice little things like that and remember them even when they aren’t the most important. 

 

 

 

(This is the Native Hawaiian flag, also known as the Kanka Maoli flag.) 

 

 

 

 

They didn’t like that they cast a Native Hawaiian in the role as the snow cone guy 🍧♂︎, and the reason why they say they dislike it is they that it completely undoes the anti-colonialist message that the original was going for. The ice cream cone guy 🍦♂︎ in the original was a white person, a tourist, and it was supposed to be this whole commentary on how the US 🇺🇸 colonized Hawaii, it used to be an independent country called the Hawaiian Kingdom until the US 🇺🇸 overthrew the monarchy and then annexed the entire country, and how most Americans 🇺🇸 (especially white Americans 🇺🇸) only see Hawaii as a tourist destination and are completely ignorant to the history of the archipelago and its people. 

 

They have no idea that Hawaii used to be an independent country before it was ever a US territory 🇺🇸 or a US state 🇺🇸, and that it only became apart of the US 🇺🇸 because its government was overthrown by the very American settlers 🇺🇸 who were exploiting the islands for their natural resources (Hawaii was used a sugar plantation prior to the US 🇺🇸’s annexation and even after it was annexed). They also don’t know anything about the Native Hawaiian people or their culture, and are ignorant of their suffering and oppression. 

 

A lot of Native Hawaiians are still pretty upset about the US annexation 🇺🇸, the very unscrupulous way their country became apart of the US 🇺🇸, and want the US 🇺🇸 to answer for its crimes and to stop using the islands for military purposes. Native Hawaiians have always opposed the military presence on the islands, as they see it as a symbol of the colonization of their homeland, the lasting legacy of colonialism and exploitation the Native Hawaiian people have faced at the hands of the American government 🇺🇸, and feel that it harms the environment of their homeland. Several environmental disasters have happened there in connection to the military, though the military of course denies that it had anything to do with these environmental disasters. 

 

Well, the ice cream cone guy 🍦♂︎ in the original was going to be a symbol or an allegory to represent this colonial exploitation, that dark stain on America 🇺🇸’s history, and to represent the ignorance most Americans 🇺🇸 have about the history of Hawaii. Because he’s a tourist, he’s just there for a vacation, and he’s completely clueless about what’s happening around him, just as most Americans 🇺🇸 who travel to Hawaii for a vacation are clueless about the dark history of the State of Hawaii and how it became a state in the first place, and are clueless about their role in perpetuating the continued exploitation and oppression of the Native Hawaiian people. The more geographically illiterate among us don’t even know that Hawaii is a state, and think that it’s another country, including our current president 😒. He had to be told that Hawaii was already apart of the US 🇺🇸 and was already a state, when he said he wanted to annex it and made a US state 🇺🇸 🤦‍♂️. 

 

It was also going to be an integral part of Lilo’s character, the fact that she took pictures of tourists. There was going to be this whole thing where the tourists would act racist towards Lilo by dehumanizing her, taking pictures of her, asking if she spoke English, and just treating her as if she was an alien on an alien planet, something to gawk at rather than as a person to be respected and treated with dignity. They don’t even treat her as a fellow American 🇺🇸 even though she is, Hawaii is apart of America 🇺🇸 and Native Hawaiians are American citizens 🇺🇸. That, along with the fact that Mertle (a white girl ♀︎) was performing traditional Hawaiian dances and doing better than she could, made her feel like an outsider in her homeland, the place where she should feel the most at home. Which is why it makes sense why she befriends an alien because she herself felt like an alien in her own native homeland. And her taking pictures of the tourists was supposed to be her taking back control over her own narrative and her own identity from them, by doing to them what they did her, treating them as the outsiders that they actually are. 

 

It was some pretty smart and mature sociopolitical commentary for an animated family film like this, and it also enhanced the characters and gave them even more depth. Lilo is one of the most complex and almost tragic Disney protagonists. But, by making the ice cream cone guy ♂︎, or snow cone guy 🍧♂︎ in this case, a Native Hawaiian instead of a white man, you lose some of that sharp and poignant political and social commentary, and you unintentionally perpetuate the racist and colonialist attitudes the original movie was critiquing and poking fun at by portraying Native Hawaiians as clueless and kind of dumb. Or at least, that’s how TwoDream saw it. I do agree with them, it is an unnecessary change, it does take away from the anti-colonialist message of the original (what was left of it that is), and is kind of an unintentionally racist. But look, the anti-colonialist message was already gutted in the original. 

 

Most of that stuff was left on the cutting room floor, all of the nuance and sharp critique and satire was removed to make the movie was palatable and inoffensive as possible. Disney wanted that movie to succeed, and they didn’t want to offend anyone, especially after the backlash they faced with Pocahontas. Even if the backlash against Pocahontas was from Native Americans, rather than white people, and what they were afraid of with Lilo & Stitch (2002) was backlash from white people, since the anti-colonialist message implicates and indicts not just the federal government but pretty much every American 🇺🇸 who visited Hawaii after 1898. 

 

But, it probably wouldn’t have happened, even if they did leave all that stuff in. That was before everything was a culture war issue, even if there was a white backlash, it wouldn’t be for at least two decades. Or maybe, I’m just naïve that political pundits and political commentators of the 2000s wouldn’t have made a big issue out of this. This was post-9/11 after all, when America 🇺🇸 was becoming more politically fractured and shifting further and further to the Right. Speaking of post-9/11, the anti-colonialism stuff wasn’t the only thing that was removed or altered in the original Lilo & Stitch. 

 

They also removed the scene where they explained why Lilo feeds that fish 🐠, Pudge peanut butter sandwiches every morning because she thinks it controls the weather and is connected to her dead parents. Like her parents died in a hurricane 🌀 or typhoon 🌀 (whatever the term is for that type of storm in Hawaii is), and she wants to keep feeding this fish 🐠 so that what happened to her parents won’t happen to anyone else. It’s also a coping mechanism for her to come to terms with the death of her parents. They also heavily altered the scene where Jumba confronts Stitch in the Pelekai household to make it less violent (though it really wasn’t that bad). And then they changed the ending chasing scene where Jumba, Pleakley, Stitch, and Nani are trying to rescue Lilo from Captain Gantu. 

 

Originally, Stitch and the gang commandeered an airliner ✈️ that used that to go after Gantu. But after 9/11, that was seen as in bad taste, not just because it depicts an actual plane hijacking ✈️, like Stitch literally hijacked that plane ✈️ (granted his does it before it even took off, and they did evacuate the passengers and crew and told them to get out before they took the plane ✈️ and used it to pursue Gantu), but also the plane ✈️ is shown flying through and weaving in-between buildings, just like the two planes that hit the World Trade Center (American Airlines 🇺🇸 Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175). So, they changed it to being Jumba’s spaceship. Which, yeah, it does plug up a plot hole 🕳️ by explaining how Jumba and Pleakley got to Earth 🌎, what ship they came in, but it does take away from the action scene a little bit. Took away some of its teeth. Had 9/11 not happened, that scene would’ve stayed the same, and no one would’ve thought any of it. It would just be a cool and funny action scene, a plane chase ✈️. 

 

And to top that off, the movie was altered again years later, when it was put on Disney+. In the scene where Lilo hides from Nani after she gets a bad report from Bubbles, they changed the washer to a pizza box because they didn’t kids to emulate that scene and hide inside washing machines. But now, the scene makes no sense because of that. The original Lilo & Stitch is one of the most re-edited and compromised Disney animated movies of all time. It has enough deleted and alternate scenes to rival both The Incredible Hulk (2008) and Iron Man 2. It’s almost to the point where you could almost call it a studio hack job, as the project strayed so far away from the directors’ original vision for the movie. All in service of making it as inoffensive and appealing to a wide audience as possible. This is what Disneyfication truly means. 

 

So, them casting a Native Hawaiian in the role of the snow cone guy 🍧♂︎ doesn’t really bother me as much as it clearly does TwoDream because the anti-colonialist message they were talking about had already been diluted to the point of being nonexistent in the original 2002 movie. What’s one more casting going to do about it? I also think Disney did because they wanted to make the movie as diverse as they could, and cast as many Native Hawaiians in the movie as possible, even if it undercuts the political message and social message the original movie was going for. But, it’s surface level diversity, it’s the type of diversity that doesn’t take into account the source material and what such castings would to do to the material and how it would alter the meaning of it. 

 

It’s the type of diversity that’s only done to appease the people who genuinely care about diversity and want more groups of people to be represented in media, so that Disney can still pretend that they care diversity even though they clearly do not. They don’t care about what diversity means from a sociopolitical standpoint, they don’t care that it gives people representation and more opportunities in the film and TV industries, they just care about money 💵, that’s it. They just see diversity as a way to maximize profits 🤑.  The more people are watching, the more money 💵 they’ll make 🤑. 

 

I might consider watching Lilo & Stitch (2025), but only if the reviews are good, and people I know in my own personal life see it and say that it’s good. If not, if the movie had middling reviews or even straight up bad reviews, and if no one in my personal life watches it, then I won’t bother. I’ll just stick to the 2002 original. I have no idea how it will do, it’ll all just depend on the reviews and word of mouth because Snow White (2025) recently came out and it bombed 💣. Disney is releasing two live action remakes this year, and they’re hoping this one does well as they pretty much gave up on Snow White (2025). They’re fine with that one failing, and they were probably hoping that not a lot of people would see it. 

 

They’re probably glad that it failed, even if it was a huge financial loss for them considering that it cost $240 million 💵 or $270 million 💵 to make. They just want to sweep it under the rug, and move on. They’re hedging their bets on this one, Lilo & Stitch (2025). They’re hoping that it does well so that they don’t have a double loss in the same year, two months apart. But, I guess we’ll see what happens when it comes out. I think people in general are tired of these live action remakes, and they aren’t just going to see one of them just because it has a title that they recognize. It has to be something special, and it has to be uniquely good for them to check it out. And I just don’t know if this movie will be that movie for people. But, we’ll see. 

 

Also, I am aware that there’s a live action How to Train Your Dragon movie coming out this year as well. I only bring that up because that too started out as a Chris Sanders project, the original movie did. One of the main fun facts you’ll hear about that movie is that Toothless was designed to look like Stitch. I have no intention of watching How to Train Your Dragon (2025), I think it’s even more unnecessary than Lilo & Stitch (2025), and the trailer really didn’t impress me at all. It looks even more like a pale imitation of the original animated movie than this does. For shame, shame on you Universal for making that 😑👎. 

(This is the poster for Freaky Friday (2003) and its sequel, Freakier Friday.)

 

Moving on, I promised in my last post that I would also talk about the Freakier Friday trailer since I also saw it, along with the trailer for Lilo & Stitch (2025), so here you go. I don’t have as much to say about this trailer that I did the Lilo & Stitch (2025). I did think it was a good trailer, it was better than I expected it, and I am more cautiously optimistic about it than I was before. I was more ambivalent towards Freakier Friday whereas I was diametrically opposed to Lilo & Stitch (2025) prior to seeing the trailer. I like Freaky Friday (2003), I think it’s a good movie and I do have nostalgia for it (not as much nostalgia for Lilo & Stitch (2002), but still a lot of nostalgia), but I didn’t think it needed a sequel. It’s not a movie that really lends itself to a sequel, and now that it’s been 22 years, it’s even harder to justify a sequel. Especially when all the original actors who were in the first movie are all really old, especially Jamie Lee Curtis, who is in her 60s at this point. 

 

They do point out her age throughout this trailer, and her age is going to be one of the main things they make jokes about in this movie because the plot this time around is that it’s Anna and Tess switching bodies with Anna’s daughter and soon-to-be stepdaughter (it’s a quadruple body swap), and one of them ends up in Tess’s body, and they’re constantly commenting on how old they look and feel while they’re inside her body, and she at point laughs so hard that she ends up peeing or she gets scared and then pees (I don’t remember exactly) because hey, old people can’t hold their pee as well as young people can. 

 

I’m surprised Jamie Lee Curtis was okay with having that many jokes in the movie related to her age. Not only that, but a lot of people still don’t even realize that Freaky Friday (2003) is a remake. It’s a remake of a 1976 movie also called Freaky Friday, and it was based on a novel 📖 from 1972 by an author named Mary Rodgers. All of the Freaky Friday movies are, they’re all adaptations of that same novel 📖. I talked about this in my post about movies that people don’t know are remakes, making this time the second I’ve ever written about Freaky Friday (2003). 

 

I do wonder how they’ll address some of the more “problematic” elements from the first movie. The way that the women ♀︎ switched bodies in the first movie kind of perpetuated Chinese stereotypes, and the movie did kind of portray the Chinese characters in a very stereotypical way. I wonder if this movie will rectify that, and portray the Chinese characters and the body swap in a much less stereotypical way. Also, people said that Tess removing Anna’s door 🚪 in the first movie as punishment was a form of child abuse because it deprives the kid (or teenager) of any privacy, and may damage their self-image because people will be able to see get dressed or undressed if they walk by. 

 

Even though, that does work in context of the film because it shows how dysfunctional their relationship as mother and daughter was prior to the body swap, and why they would need the body swap to improve their relationship and become better people. I wonder if this sequel will avoid anything like that to avoid controversy. Probably. This is the same company that turned a washing machine into a pizza box to avoid controversy, of course they’d do something like that to avoid conspiracy. Censorship is one the things that Disney does best 🙃. 

 

I think this movie can go of two ways. I think it’ll either be the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice of the 2025, where it’s a legacy sequel that people actually like 🙂👍 and is pretty successful, or it could end up going the way of Disenchanted, the legacy sequel to Enchanted, which ended up being a complete disaster that no one liked 😒👎.  People are certainly a lot more optimistic about this movie than I expecting. I saw one comment that said that they were glad to see a live action Disney movie that isn’t just a remake of an animated movie, but is instead a sequel to one of their classic live action movies. Freaky Friday (2003) is a cult classic, people love that movie 😍 to this day, and possibly love it 😍 more now than when it originally came out, flaws and all. I do like that they made the poster for Freakier Friday look almost exactly like the poster for the first movie, I thought that was pretty cool. But, like with Lilo & Stitch (2025), I guess we’ll see what happens when Freakier Friday finally comes out in August, August 8 to be exact. Unless it gets pushed back of course. 

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(This is the trailer for Lilo & Stitch (2025).)

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(This is the trailer for Freakier Friday.)

 

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Update (Tuesday May 27, 2025): 

There is a correction that I must make I am afraid. The budget for Lilo & Stitch (2025) was actually not $150 million 💵, it was actually just $100 million 💵. I don’t know how people who made the Wikipedia page for the movie got $150 million 💵, but the budget is actually $100 million 💵, it’s been confirmed by numerous sources, and the Wikipedia was edited to say $100 million 💵. $100 million 💵 is still a pretty big budget, any indie director would kill to have a $100 million budget 💵 to work with, and it’s more money 💵 than me or my family have ever had, but it’s obviously not as big as $150 million 💵. Because the budget was only $100 million 💵, Disney, being their cheap selves, decided to cut corners and reduce the amount of visual effects on screen. Stitch is apparently the only CG character who on screen for the majority of the movie and is clearly what money of the effects budget was poured into. Other CG characters like Jumba and Pleakley have reduced screen time. 

 

The scene at the beginning where Stitch and Jumba were put on trial was shortened and condensed, to limit the amount of CGI effects on screen. Jumba and Pleakley specifically don’t even spend most of their screen time in their full human disguises, just like the trailer showed. While some people have justified this by saying that it makes more sense in live action for them to have full human disguises like this than for them to just wear wigs, fake sunglasses 🕶️, and wear human clothes 🥸 but still look like aliens 👽, the reason why is that they did it was just to save money 💵. It’s the reason why the 1987 Masters of the Universe movie was set in the “real world” and not in the land of Eternia, and why the new one coming out in 2026 is also just going to be set mostly in our world and not in Eternia. 

 

I don’t why, $100 million 💵 is still a lot of money 💵 for a movie, they could’ve still done a lot with that, they could’ve gotten really creative and used that money 💵 to its fullest extent. That’s what I would do if I was directing a movie and I was given a $100 million 💵 to work with. But no, Disney took the easy route and spent as little on the effects budget as they could, really only forking out the money 💵 for Stitch, the main attraction and the only reason why most of the people going to see this movie are going to see it, while the other alien characters 👽, the characters that need CGI to be portrayed, are left by the wayside. I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie actually came in under budget, and they didn’t actually spent full amount they were given. Gantu was completely removed in the live action remake, and Jumba was made the main villain of the movie. This change did not go over well with fans of the original, as you can imagine, as many of them felt that making Jumba a bad guy took away from his complexity and robbed him his redemption arc. Jumba in the original was a very complex character, a lot of grays, and he redeems himself in the end by agreeing to help Nani save Lilo from Gantu, and then becomes a member of the found family they build for themselves along with Pleakley. 

 

But now, he’s just the full bad guy the whole time and never gets redeemed. He just gets arrested and taken back to prison. I assume the reason why they kept alive and didn’t just kill him was that they plan on bringing him back for a sequel, which will get made, a sequel has already been confirmed since the movie was a box office success 🤑. No after credits scene or mid credits scene involving Hämsterviel though, I predicted that and there doesn’t seem to be one. I don’t even they’ll even bring Hämsterviel into this new live action universe since there’s no Gantu and Jumba’s the only bad guy. Unless they make it so that Jumba and Hämsterviel are in cahoots, but that would kind of take away from the rivalry they had in the animated series and direct-to-DVD sequels 📀. Another interesting character dynamic ruined by the decision to remove Gantu entirely and make Jumba the villain. Unless they decide to bring Gantu into the sequel and have him work with Hämsterviel just like in the animated series and direct-to-DVD sequels 📀, and then give Jumba his redemption arc, but then it’s like, why didn’t you just do that before in this movie? 

It’ll be like with the Mortal Kombat sequel, Mortal Kombat II (2025), they’re doing things that they should’ve already done in the first movie. Wasting everyone’s time and money 💵, their hard earned cash 💵. I didn’t even know that movie was even coming out this year until added this part to the update, I thought it was still in the development stage and still years out. I was under the impression that it was in development hell because there had been so little updates about since the casting of Karl Urban as Johnny Cage was announced. I have seen no advertising this movie whatsoever, and no trailers, nothing. I saw that poster that’s not a poster for the movie but a poster for the fake movie-within-a-movie that Johnny Cage is in, Uncaged Fury, when I accessed the Wikipedia page for the movie. I hadn’t seen it anywhere until I started writing this bit. 

 

Karl Urban looks fine as Johnny Cage from what this poster showed…I guess 🤷‍♂️, he doesn’t look like the Johnny Cage from the games, or the comics, or the animated movies, like he doesn’t have blonde hair, or at least it doesn’t look blonde from how it looks in the poster. I know that Linden Ashby didn’t have blonde hair when he played Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat (1995), neither did Chris Conrad when he played Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, but most depictions of Johnny Cage outside of the live action movies depict him with blonde hair. He just has slicked back hair (lots of hair gel) and a leather jacket, that’s it. I’ll have to see his performance to really see if he’s a good Johnny Cage or not. If only Warner Bros. would actually put out a trailer for that movie, I have no idea when they’re going to do it, the movie’s set to come out in October, October 24, 2025 to be exact, and they still haven’t put out a single trailer for it. Tron: Ares comes out the same month, and they already put out a trailer a month ago. Predator: Badlands comes out in November, and they also put out a trailer for it already last month too, in April, a few weeks after the trailer to Tron: Ares came out. 

 

But, they probably won’t include Hämsterviel at all in the sequel because he was a character mostly restricted to the animated series, direct-to-DVD sequels 📀, and other ancillary material, and Disney won’t let us have nice things. Jumba will likely just be the only villain again, and they’ll just have him create Leroy, like they’ll rush to do Leroy, since they already teased him in this movie. Jumba’s whole plan in this movie was to take Stitch and then use him to create a new experiment, Experiment 627, which is the experiment number for Leroy. I mean, Stitch is already pretty similar to Venom, so why not do his own Carnage and then rush through a sequel like they did with Venom: Let There Be Carnage. I doubt the sequel will have a fun title like that or like Leroy & Stitch, instead it’ll probably just be called Lilo & Stitch 2, which fine I guess, but it doesn’t hit as hard as Leroy & Stitch. An unnecessary sequel to an already unnecessary remake. 

 

I left a comment on a review of Lilo & Stitch (2025), it was a negative review, and in that comment, I said that the idea of making Jumba a villain isn’t an inherently bad idea, there is potential, but they just did it badly. It was a promising idea that was poorly executed, like a lot of things in modern day blockbusters. The fact that they cast Zach Galifianakis as Jumba, and gave him a more nasally voice, as opposed to gruff sounding voice with the Russian accent 🇷🇺 like he had in the original, shows how much they messed up. If they didn’t want to do the Russian accent 🇷🇺, that’s fine, but at least still give him a gruff voice, something that actually fits his design and personality, not that his personality even the same as it is in the original. Zach Galifianakis is some of the worst miscasting this side of Jared Leto being cast as Skeletor in Masters of the Universe (2026). 

 

 

 

 

(This is a screenshot of the comment that I left on Pink King’s review of Lilo & Stitch (2025) titled, “Lilo And Stitch Made Me Depressed.”) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, Pleakley doesn’t wear drag in this movie at all, just as many people suspected. TwoDream was right about that, I’ll give them that. To the director, Ruben Fleischer’s credit, he did try to get Pleakley in drag. There’s a picture that’s been making the rounds on social media showing Fleischer holding up some concept art of Pleakley both naked and in a disguise and it’s actually drag, like Pleakley’s wearing women’s clothing ♀︎ and he’s wearing a female presenting wig ♀︎. Suggesting that it was going to be a lot closer to the original movie and have Jumba and Pleakley just wear wigs, glasses 🥸, and human clothes rather than those bullshit holographic disguises. But, Disney told him not to that, and demanded that he change things. Even if it completely undermines the story and take away what makes the characters special, what makes this particular story special. 

 

 

 

 

(This is the picture I was talking about with Ruben Fleischer holding the concept art of Pleakley in drag with a caption that says “I tried.”)

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not hard to figure out why Disney didn’t want Pleakley to be in drag, it’s because they didn’t want to alienate certain international markets that are not LGBTQ+ friendly 🚫🏳️‍🌈, and they wanted to maximize the movie’s international appeal to make as much money 💵 as possible 🤑 because the movie wasn’t made for artistic reasons, it was made purely for profit 🤑. It’s a cash grab 🤑, pure and simple. Disney isn’t even really trying to hide the fact that these movies were made purely to just make money 💵 or hide the corporate calculations behind their decision making on these movies and what to change and what to keep the same. It does show how completely inauthentic Disney is when it comes to queer representation 🏳️‍🌈 and how they are not true ally of the LGBTQ+ community 🏳️‍🌈. It was all virtue signaling and fluff for them, they didn’t actually mean it. If they meant it, they wouldn’t remove LGBTQ+ characters 🏳️‍🌈 from their movies, they wouldn’t remove scenes confirming a character’s queerness 🏳️‍🌈, and they wouldn’t straight-wash/cis-wash characters like Pleakley. 

 

It is important to note that the original Lilo & Stitch was made almost entirely without studio interference. It was made a completely different studio from the rest of Disney, and thus they were able to make the movie they want to make without any suits breathing down their neck, keeping tabs on them…mostly. They still had to make changes, particularly softening the tourism and anti-colonialist message to where it was barely noticeable, softening the fight scene between Stitch and Jumba in the Pelekai household to make it “less violent,” and changing the climax so it wouldn’t offend audiences still rattled by the events of 9/11. And then they later re-edited the movie to remove the dryer and replace it with a pizza box in one scene, one of the stupidest changes I’ve ever seen for any movie. I don’t care if CinemaWins defends it. Lilo & Stitch (2025) is an example of what happens when a movie is made with studio oversight, like if the original shows what happens when a movie is made with very little studio oversight, then the remake shows what happens when a movie is made with a lot of studio oversight. 

 

Oh, and Cobra Bubbles is not a social worker in this movie, he’s just a CIA agent in this, and he’s actively on the trail of Stitch and the other aliens 👽 and ends not amounting to much. Instead, they created a completely new social worker character who serves pretty much the same purpose as Cobra Bubbles did in the original, and is played by the voice actress of Nani in the original, Tia Carrera. Her and Jason Scott Lee were given cameo roles in this, although Tia Carrera’s role as the social worker in this is more substantial than Jason Scott Lee’s. His is just a cameo. But, because they introduced an entirely new social worker in this, Cobra Bubbles is rendered completely pointless in the movie’s plot. He no longer serves any purpose, and is just there to be there, and he barely even is the same character. He’s Cobra Bubbles in name only. I don’t why they didn’t just remove him entirely considering they already removed Gantu from the movie. 

 

Pretty much everything that I predicted that this movie would do it did, and I’m not surprised that it’s inferior to the original. Most of these Disney live action remakes are. It’s not surprising at all. As I said before, TwoDream were right all along. Them and La’Ron Readus, who actually called for fans of the original to boycott the movie when the first trailer came out. When you’re right, you’re right. The only thing that I didn’t predict was them removing Gantu and making Jumba the main villain. Everyone thought that Pleakley would receive the most amount of character assassination, but it turned out it was Jumba and Nani were the ones who had their characters assassinated, because yeah, they butchered Nani’s character so much in this remake and ruined the core message of the original movie just to push some fake “girl power ♀︎” message which rings hollow because Nani was already a strong female character ♀︎ and a relatable character for young women ♀︎ as well as a positive role for girls ♀︎, a good character with flaws and humanity, plus we know what Disney isn’t really committed to feminism ♀︎ at all. 

 

It’s all about optics with them, not about actually putting in the work to portray a true feminist message ♀︎ or have strong women ♀︎ that feel like real people, real human beings. A lot of people said that the remake version of Nani is very much the “girlboss ♀︎ version of Nani,” and I definitely agree. The actor playing her in the remake isn’t even Native Hawaiian. She’s Filipina 🇵🇭, she has no Hawaiian heritage whatsoever (she just lives in Hawai‘i) and is very light-skinned in real life, though they sort of darkened her skin in the movie to make her look more Hawaiian. For shame 😑 Disney, you should be ashamed of yourselves. A lot of Native Hawaiians actually decided to boycott the movie once the casting of Nani for the live action remake was announced and they saw that the actress that Disney chose did not have actual Hawaiian heritage and was extremely light-skinned (almost to the point of being white passing). I don’t know how many Native Hawaiians actually did end up boycotting this movie when it came out, but I am glad there are enough Native Hawaiians with enough integrity and pride that will not just sit and accept this garbage from Disney, this utter disrespect towards them and their culture. 

 

Apparently, this movie was meant to come out on Disney+, which probably explains why it only had a budget of $100 million 💵 and why Disney was being so cheap and “thrifty” with it, but they decided to push it into theaters instead because they needed a hit, they were in desperate need of a hit, and a surefire one at that. It came out just two months after Snow White (2025), which was a massive bomb 💣. And it was, the movie has made a ton of money 💵 so far in its opening weekend, and will probably make a lot more money 💵 in the weeks to come. So far, it’s made $361.2 million 💵, which is around the same amount of money 💵 the original made. We’ll see if this one makes more. I hope it doesn’t, I hope there’s a steep drop off in its second weekend, but I’m not holding my breath on that one. 

 

It’ll still probably do decently in its second weekend, and might even make a billion 💵, though I doubt even Disney thinks it will make that amount, but you never know. They probably didn’t increase the budget to accommodate the theatrical release for this reason, so that the movie would still profitable, even if it didn’t make a billion dollars 💵. I hope that resort they have in Hawai‘i gets a lot of business because of this movie. Yes, that is true, Disney does indeed have a resort in Hawai‘i, Aulani on the island of O‘ahu. Apparently, it is featured prominently in the film, pretty much fueling the theory held by a lot of opponents of this movie that Disney just made it to promote this resort. Way to miss the whole point of the original. They turned a movie that was critical of tourism into a movie that promotes tourism 🤦‍♂️.