So when are we going to see any live action from the live-action Lilo & Stitch?

The live-action Lilo & Stitch remake comes out in just three months, and Disney has been rolling out teases for it, but we haven’t seen anything live-action about it yet. I’m starting to wonder if there even is live action in it. And what’s even the point of doing a live-action remake if you’re just going to animate it? (Oh, right, billions of dollars.) 

So far, all the promotional material for the movie has focused on Stitch, the adorable yet destructive blue alien. He crashes the Super Bowl! He kinda intercepts a moment from The Lion King! He smashes a sandcastle, in a scene taken straight from the original 2002 movie!

And while director Dean Fleischer Camp and his effects team definitely nailed Stitch’s design (admittedly, they had a solid blueprint from the original), it’s not Stitch I’m curious about at this point. We get it! We know he’s gonna be cute and rambunctious! 

I try to be cautiously open-minded about Disney live-action remakes, even after they disappoint me time and time again. (Some more than others.) Lilo & Stitch is one of my favorite movies ever, though, so I’m naturally hesitant, and wondering what a remake could add. 

But digging through the character descriptions in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch casting calls, I actually see a lot of potential in the live-action version. There seems to be more focus on the Hawaiian community where the alien Stitch crash-lands. New characters appear to have been added to flesh it out. Those include Tūtū, the grandmother of Lilo and Nani’s friend David, who is described as “a warm, quick-witted woman who speaks with a local Pidgin accent.” And there’s social worker Mrs. Kekoa, played by Tia Carrere, who voiced Nani in the original. (Don’t worry — secret CIA agent Cobra Bubbles is still in the movie; the Ving Rhames character from the original movie is now played by Isle of Dogs narrator and Lovecraft Country co-star Courtney B. Vance.)

But you wouldn’t know about the new characters, or about any renewed focus on the human aspect of the movie, from any of the teasers we’ve seen so far. We also have no clue what the movie’s other aliens look like. It’s easy to sell Stitch — he’s a super-beloved character. Just make him a bit more textured, and bam! You’ve got a solid “live-action” design. 

But what about the original movie’s evil scientist Jumba (David Ogden Stiers), with his big head and four blinking eyes? Or one-eyed, green, mildly rubbery Pleakley (Kevin McDonald)? Or large, lumbering, whale-like Gantu? What are they going to look like? We know that, at the very least, Jumba and Pleakley are in this movie. Jumba is voiced by Zach Galifianakis and Pleakley by Billy Magnussen, who you might remember from that time Disney tried to make a live-action spinoff movie centering on his character from the live-action Aladdin, who appears in that movie for about three minutes. (I don’t know, man.)

It seems like the marketers behind the live-action Lilo & Stitch trailers are trying to emulate the ad campaign leading up to the original movie, which was incredibly light on actual plot: Instead, the whole schtick was Stitch interrupting some classic Disney moments. That marketing campaign came from directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, and it was nothing short of brilliant, a perfect sell in a time when the typical Disney schtick had become a bit oversaturated. 

More than 20 years later, though, seeing a cutesy Stitch disrupt a football game doesn’t really have the same effect. If anything, it just screams corporate synergy. That goes against the ethos of the original Lilo & Stitch, a weird little project about weird little characters, made almost in secrecy. 

In 2020, DeBlois expressed doubt about the live-action Lilo & Stitch during an Annecy panel, saying, “What bothers me the most is that it seems to suggest the animated version of it is lesser. It is a lesser form than the expensive, glossy live action.” Lilo & Stitch is a movie where animation really shines and makes the movie as warm and quirky as it is, from its eclectic character designs to its distinct watercolor backgrounds. Maybe that’s why Disney’s been hiding the live-action bits — out of concern that they simply won’t live up to audience expectations, or the original creators’ visions. 

Then again, DeBlois just directed the new How to Train Your Dragon, which is incidentally also a live-action remake of a project he and Sanders originally worked on, also about a friendship between a lonely outcast and a cute creature perceived as dangerous by larger society. And it’s also out this year. So maybe his feelings have changed — and hey, maybe mine will too. Provided I actually see some live action in the new Lilo & Stitch.

Lilo & Stitch comes out on May 23.