Lilo & Stitch director Dean Fleischer Camp has explained the reasons behind key differences in the live-action remake and the original animated film.
“The real trick,” he told Entertainment Weekly, “is to try to make a movie that rhymes really well with what people remember of the original without just doing a one-to-one exact mirror.”
Explaining Stitch’s penchant for violence, he said, “His whole thing is destruction, and so much of the comedy of the character comes from that impulse.”
“Violence actually is very difficult to do; it just lands very differently. In an animated film, you could have a really goofy 10-car pile-up on the freeway, but I would challenge any live-action director to make a 10-car pile-up really funny,” he remarked.
“We had to figure out ways to soften the things that didn’t work in live action, but also find new things that we could do that the animated movie couldn’t,” he added.
The live-action movie goes deeper into Lilo and her elder sister Nina’s relationship.
“In a live-action movie,” Camp said, “if we’re going to depict a 6-year-old getting torn from her sister by social services, you have to really believe that relationship. You can’t cheat on it or gloss it over. You really have to dig deep, make those things land, and feel like you’re depicting a real lived experience.”
Another major difference, which some fans may not like, is that Galactic Federation-sent aliens Jumba Jookiba and Agent Pleakley (Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen) now dress in human “skins” in the form of actors Zach and Billy rather than human clothes as in the animated version.
“The humor of them walking around Hawaii dressed in these terrible disguises where Pleakley still has one eyeball, it’s a little harder to buy in live action,” explained Camp.
“You definitely see Jumba and Pleakley in their alien forms through a lot of the movie, but they are in human skin suits for part of it,” he added.
Live-action Lilo & Stitch stars Maia Kealoha as Lilo and Sydney Agudong as her sister Nani, whereas original Stitch voice actor Chris Sanders reprises the role.
