Disney's live-action Lilo & Stitch remake has become a surprise hit with critics and a smash at the box office, even beating Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning in its opening weekend.
While a live-action remake of an animated classic can be hard to get right, Lilo & Stitch has been hailed as Disney's best yet, being able to successfully capture the magic of the original.
But while the movie did manage to successfully adapt fantastical characters such as Stitch, one notable character didn't make the cut - Captain Gantu, the large second-in-command of the Galactic Federation.
Speaking to CinemaBlend, director Dean Fleischer Camp has shared why Gantu didn't make it to the live-action remake.
"Gantu was one of those things that just didn't work so well in live action," he explained. "We explored it a bit, but ultimately we had to make the decision.
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"And also I do stand by the decision 'cause I feel like a lot of the things that in trying to ground these characters more and tell a story with a little more emotional depth, especially between the sisters, I feel like you have to free up real estate to allow that breathing room to do those things."
Camp went on to explain how he navigated the difficulties in transferring something from animation to live action.
"I think my approach to the film is to respect the fact that animation is a very different medium than live action," he said.
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"And I don't think it usually works when – there's a danger in just trying to port it in one-to-one.
"Literally just depict it in photo-real photography because I think you lose a lot of expressiveness and all these things that animation does better than live action. There are a lot of those."
Camp added: "There's ways it can also cheat that live action can't, and live action can also do things better than animation can't, which is what we kind of tried to write a little bit more towards in recalibrating it for a live-action film."
Lilo & Stitch's live-action adaptation is out in cinemas now. The original movie is streaming on Disney+.
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Stephanie is a freelance news writer, who previously covered WWE and AEW for Digital Spy.
After graduating with a degree in history from Queen Mary University, London, she studied journalism at Birkbeck University.
Outside of her work at Digital Spy, she writes about pop culture, with a special focus towards Irish media and how it intersects with politics.
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