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Disney's Canon Remakes is a Thematic Series of remakes of Disney Animated Canon films. While they're not the first time Disney has dipped its toes into making remakes of their older films, the trend as it's understood to exist first started in 2010 with a remake of Alice in Wonderland followed by Maleficent. With both films convincing Disney that there was a market there, the remakes began in earnest with 2015's Cinderella.
The movies in the series are:
- Alice in Wonderland (2010)
- Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)
- Maleficent (2014)
- Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)
- Cinderella (2015)
- The Jungle Book (2016)
- Beauty and the Beast (2017)
- Christopher Robin (2018)
- Dumbo (2019)
- Aladdin (2019)
- The Lion King (2019)
- Mufasa: The Lion King (2024)
- Lady and the Tramp (2019)
- Mulan (2020)
- Cruella (2021)
- Pinocchio (2022)
- Peter Pan and Wendy (2023)
- The Little Mermaid (2023)
- Snow White (2025)
- Lilo & Stitch (2025)
- Moana (2026)
Tropes used in Disney's Canon Remakes include:
- Black Vikings: Provides the trope image. In addition to the below-mentioned rich black woman in the 1910s in Lady and the Tramp, we have a black woman in 18th century Denmark in The Little Mermaid, and a Latina as the princess of a Medieval German kingdom in Snow White.
- Darker and Edgier: Compared to their animated counterparts, the films are a lot more grounded and explore emotional issues more seriously, usually resulting in an Adaptational Angst Upgrade. They also have a darker colour palette.
- Denser and Wackier: Inverted. The films are a lot more grounded than their animated counterparts, often resulting in Non-Human Sidekicks being Demoted to Extra.
- Early Installment Weirdness: Starting in The Jungle Book, the remakes began to stick very close to the animated films that inspired them. Alice in Wonderland was a Stealth Sequel to the 1951 film, Maleficent was an Alternate Continuity Perspective Flip and Cinderella was a rather loose remake. Though this is by no means a hard and fast rule as Christopher Robin was also a Stealth Sequel, Cruella was another Perspective Flip and Mufasa: The Lion King was an original story (though amalgamated from various EU inspirations).
- Human-Focused Adaptation: The Dumbo remake focuses on human Canon Foreigners rather than the animal cast from the original.
- Lighter and Softer: Pinocchio among the pure remakes, hewing much closer to the original's lighthearted tone. It's still darker than the film from 1940 but lighter than its peers.
- Oddball in the Series: The Lion King, and its prequel Mufasa: The Lion King, are all CGI and have no humans.
- Politically-Correct History: Zig-zagged. The Race Lifts can be just as likely to make a setting more historically accurate just as they can raise a few eyebrows (most notably the Big Bad of Lady and the Tramp now being a rich black woman in a time and place that did not allow either woman or African-Americans to be rich).
- Race Lift: Many Caucasian characters from the original Animated Canon movies becoming differing ethnicities in the Remakes. This is especially notable with Snow White, who was said to have "skin as white as snow" being portrayed by a half-Colombian actor.
- Remake Cameo: Remakes of those films produced in the 1980s or later are liable to have one.
- Take That: When The Lion King came out in 1994, it was accused of being a rip-off of Kimba the White Lion. Naturally then the Big Bad of Mufasa: The Lion King is a white lion who greatly resembles Kimba's adult design with a similar name.
- Truer to the Text: Compared to their original counterparts, many have much more fidelity to the original fairy tales.