Lilo & Stitch director Dean Fleischer Camp has a catchy saying when it comes to making a live-action adaptation of an animated classic. “The real trick,” he tells 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.”
Some Disney purists may be dismayed to hear this, but Fleischer Camp has a lot of experience bringing an entirely animated character into a live-action environment (see Marcel the Shell With Shoes On), and he knows the pros and cons of both mediums. Take Stitch, for example.
“His whole thing is destruction, and so much of the comedy of the character comes from that impulse,” the filmmaker explains. “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. 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.”
Fleischer Camp unpacks some of those key animation-to-live-action changes as part of EW’s exclusive sneak peek at Lilo & Stitch.
Lilo and Nani’s relationship
Matt Kennedy/Disney
Lilo (Maia Kealoha) in Disney’s live-action ‘Lilo & Stitch’
With live-action adaptations, Fleischer Camp emphasizes the opportunity “to go deeper on the relationships, especially the human characters in this movie.” The connection between Lilo (Maia Kealoha) and Nani (Sydney Agudong) became a focal point.
The story of Lilo & Stitch tells of a lonely orphaned girl, Lilo, living in Hawaii with her big sister, Nani, who’s struggling to be her legal guardian. At a time when Lilo wants nothing more than a best friend, a fugitive alien named Stitch (voiced again by original Disney actor Chris Sanders) escapes his handlers and crash-lands on Earth. Initially thinking he’s just an odd-looking dog, Lilo forges an unbreakable bond with Stitch as she teaches him all about family.
“We successfully orient the movie a little bit more around Nani and Lilo’s relationship,” Fleischer Camp says, “but I hope that people don’t realize how much of our movie is new, building on the original.”
“In a live-action movie,” he adds, “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.”
Jumba and Pleakley
When Stitch escapes his confines, the Galactic Federation sends two representatives to scour Earth and retrieve “Experiment 626.” The lucky pair tasked with the job are Jumba Jookiba and Agent Pleakley, played by Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen.
Disney fans had a lot to say about the brief shot we get of this duo in the initial trailer for the live-action movie (shown above). In the animated film, Jumba and Pleakley maintain their alien forms but comically attempt to dress up as humans. Pleakley notably dressed in women’s clothes, though his one eye was blatantly visible behind reading glasses. The live-action movie now sees the CG aliens disguising themselves in human “skins” in the likeness of Galifianakis and Magnussen.
Fleischer Camp reacts to some of that early criticism of these characters, saying, “Disney fans are some of the most obsessive in the world. So I think the fact that they’re like, ‘But wait! They didn’t show much of Pleakley. Is that a bad thing?’ That’s a sign that we nailed Stitch’s design.”
The director confirms his team experimented with “some tests and some character design work” to see if they could render CG aliens wearing human clothes, but the results felt like “a bridge too far.” He explains further, “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.”
There are other more “boring limitations,” like budgets, that contributed to this decision, he adds. “If you have Jumba and Pleakley in alien disguises, then you’re going to have to shortchange how much development work you can do on Stitch and these other elements. It’s not that they’re not aliens in the movie. 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.”
Cameos
Courtesy of Disney
Chris Sanders voices Stitch in the live-action ‘Lilo & Stitch’
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A more obvious change from the animated film is the presence of the original voice actors in various roles. In addition to Sanders voicing Stitch again, Tia Carrere (the original Nani), Jason Scott Lee (David, Nani’s surfer boyfriend), and Amy Hill (fruit vendor Mrs. Hasagawa) all have “full-fledged cameos” in the new movie, Fleischer Camp confirms.
“Jason Scott Lee probably has the smallest role of those four,” he elaborates. “He plays Nani’s manager at the luau, but he still has a few scenes and is definitely in it, if you know who he is.”
As for Carrere’s part, the filmmaker teases how she “really brought an unexpected level of personal stuff into the role in a way that makes it way better.”
“Ohana means family,” Kealoha’s Lilo tells her sister in the movie, “and family means nobody gets left behind.” The original Lilo & Stitch stars and animators are still a part of this ohana, Fleischer Camp remarks. “Everyone who worked on the original still feels very close to the project. It was such a gift that everyone was so excited to help us and to support us.”
Lilo & Stitch will open in theaters on May 23.
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