Lilo & Stitch co-director Chris Sanders has expressed his frustrations about Frozen's popularity for celebrating sisterhood while ignoring his film.
Since the release of the original Frozen film in 2013, it received widespread praise for breaking the stereotype of having a heroic prince save the day or a romantic love interest for its leading female characters. Instead, the story focuses on the familial love between Anna and Elsa.
However, before Anna and Elsa, there was Lilo and Nani, which Sanders is keen to remind people about.
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Speaking to The New York Times for Lilo & Stitch's 20th anniversary, Sanders discussed how it was sad to see people praise Frozen for its focus on sisterhood as a first for a Disney film.
"To be clear, I think 'Frozen's' great," he said. "But it was a little bit frustrating for me because people were like, 'Finally, a nonromantic relationship with these two girls,' and I thought, 'We did that! That has absolutely been done before'."
Despite the story not being a fairytale, Lilo & Stitch was rare because it didn't give its leading character a romantic interest, instead of making the relationship between the sisters a focal part of the film.
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Sanders also highlighted how the film strove to make its lead characters as realistic as possible.
Lilo and Nani were given a more realistic depiction of female bodies, and Lilo was given a "childlike" personality. "One of the tropes in these movies is that kids are always smarter, better, more tuned in than the adults, who are played as buffoons," he added.
"But we didn't do that. Lilo bites a little girl, she throws a fit, and she says things that are just nonsensical. She's acting like an actual kid."
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Reporter, Digital Spy
Brenna Cooper is a freelance journalist, who currently specialises in entertainment reporting. She joined Digital Spy in 2022, writing TV and movies stories for the site. After graduating with an NCTJ accredited Journalism Masters from the University of Sheffield in 2020 she has since embarked on a freelance career.
Brenna previously produced lifestyle content for Checklists.co.uk and has a specific interest in music, reviewing live acts and interviewing bands such as Confidence Man and Amyl and the Sniffers.
