Iâm tired of seeing everyone repeat the same four points: â1) Nani gives Lilo to the state! 2) Hawaii has a better marine biology program than San Fransisco! 3) Jumba doesnât get redeemed! 4) Pleakleyâs not wearing a dress!â
Those are not the only things that were bad about this remake. You could easily tell it was going to be all that and more beforehand, but most peopleâs reaction to the trailer was âitâs surprisingly good!â and now theyâre acting all surprised. If you didnât see this coming, enough to purchase a ticket, youâre part of the problem and you donât get the original movie any more than the people who made this remake did.
So Iâm done being quiet, this is the Lilo & Stitch 2025 Takedown Post.
And as usual the only good thing about an attempted-remake is that it gives people a reason to think about what made the original so good.
Letâs go in order. But just scroll down to the Heading you Care About if you donât want to read all this.
In this movie, Cobra Bubbles is a secret agent hunting for aliens and they have a new character take his place as the state social worker.
The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With this Change: âWe shouldnât have a black man or a government worker feel like an insensitive antagonist to Liloâs family.â
Thatâs a stupid surface-level one-dimensional misread of the character from the originalâŚand it wouldnât have been hard, at all, for a child to explain to the 2025 filmmakers that Cobra is not an insensitive antagonist in the original.
Cobra Bubbles is not insensitive and he is not in any way portrayed as a bad guy in the original. Nani sees him that way, Nani sees him as antagonistic, because heâs the representation of Lilo being taken away.
But Nani is wrong about him and learns that she is wrong about him by the end of the movie.
Can we please make a list?
Cobraâs first interaction with the caretaker of the child he was being sent to protect was that she ran out into the road, yelled at a complete stranger, and dented his car.
Then he found her locked out of the home and threatening the child inside with a hammer in her hand.
Then he found out the stove was on while she was out, and sheâd left a 7 year-old alone.
The 7 year-old made comments about being disciplined with bricks and a pillow case.
The 7 year-old looks like she might be more than a little emotionally unbalanced because sheâs figuring out how to put voodoo spells on her friends to punish them.
He still gave that pair of sisters three days to straighten the ship. When in actuality, in 2002, under HRS §587-73, (donât play with me) the social worker wouldâve been well within his rights to remove the child from the home right then. But instead he gives her three days to fix it. THEN
The 18 year-old loses her job.
The family gets a âdogâ who he is implied to know is an alien, right off the bat.
The alien is violent and wreaks havoc across town.
The 7 year-old almost drowns while they surf instead of find a job.
He lets the child and caretaker have one more night together to say goodbye, but when heâs on the way to get her he gets a call that sheâs being attacked by aliens, hears a chainsaw, and finds the house on fire.
Do you understand what Iâm saying.
Cobra Bubbles had NO BUSINESS being as BIG A SOFTIE AS HE WAS for all of the original movie. He was not only well within his legal rights to take Lilo away from Nani immediately, but he was actually required by law, it was his DUTY, to remove her immediately. But he didnât do that. Why?
Now listen to me very carefully.
Lilo and Stitch is a movie about how âFamily chooses to love and commit to one another selflessly, no matter what the other person can do for them or how hard they make it.â The fancy way they say it is just âOhana means family: family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.â
Did you catch that? âNo matter how hard they make it.â
Cobra Bubbles was a CIA agent before this. A CIA agent who saved the planet, by doing what? Convincing an alien race to leave them alone. Oh, he didnât fight them off? No. How? He âconvincedâ them? He talked it out? Sounds like a pretty compassionate guy, for all his tough exterior. How did he do that?
He couldâve picked any animal thatâs actually endangered. The filmmakers chose to make him the guy who convinced aliens to value mosquitos.
MOSQUITOS. Creatures that give nothing, only take. Ugly little bloodsucking monsters. Thatâs the creature he convinced them to care about enough to save the planet.
NOW do you have any trouble understanding why this is the specific social worker who would give an alien-infested dumpster fire of a dangerous home a chance when two sisters are about to be torn apart?
Do you see that Cobra is just another example of the grace that the movie is always talking about? The love that transforms someone from bad to good simply because it refuses to give up even when it gets nothing out of it? Iâm repeating myself because I want you to see why he was a well-done character who NEEDED NO CHANGE.
Cobra Bubblesâ character is not an insensitive monster who doesnât care who his actions hurt as long as he gets the job done. But you know who that does sound like?
Gantu is not in the remake at all.
The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: âItâs going to cost us upwards of 1.5 millions of dollars to design, sculpt, rig, animate, and render a character this big in addition to finding a suitable voice actor to play the part.â
This is a really dumb choice for several reasons.
A. Without Gantu, there is no âstakes-raiserâ to Lilo and Naniâs story. The movie has no climax without him. For the first and second acts of the movie, itâs about a grieving pair of girls trying to prove themselves to a social worker while the story-equivalent of Beethoven the Destructive St. Bernard wacky Jumba & Pleakley antics get in their way. But when a 40-foot tall alien stomps into their lives and abducts Lilo & Stitch in a spaceship that careens around the island during an explosive sky-chase scene, now you have a high-octane, somebody-could-die climax.
B. Without Gantu, Stitch looks weaker. The climax gave Stitch a reason to come out of the wackadoo puppy heâs been posing as and suddenly remind everybody that heâs a lethal weapon who can survive thousand-foot drops, lava, and astronomic explosionsâand a giant alienâs Thanos-dwarfing fist. Take him out and who do we have as a match for Stitch to go up against, even for a moment, and prove how much heâs changed to be willing to risk his freedom and fight?
C. Without Gantu you have no villain to reflect that STITCH is no longer a villain. (So they substituted Jumba.)
But the reason this character is really worth millions is, again, the theme.
I told you Cobra Bubbles was a character who did not put âdutyâ or even âconvenienceâ or âpositionâ over the real lives of Lilo and Nani. He saw that there was love there, and in his own way, he gave it a chance. And even when he chose to take Lilo away, he did it carefully; he gave them time to say goodbye.
GANTU IS THE OPPOSITE OF COBRA BUBBLES.
Gantu is the insensitive, uncaring, unyielding Captain whose commitment to duty turns into rage and cruelty. Not Cobra.
Nani thinks Cobra is walking in a threatening to tear apart their family in a display of government judgement. But thatâs what Gantu literally does.
His first reaction to Stitch is to call for his destruction. Without even waiting to see if âit can be reasoned withâ like the Grand Councilwoman suggests. Heâs merciless. He mocks Stitch when Stitch is captive. And he knows that he caught Lilo, a human, along with him. He doesnât care. He even suggests that Stitch eat her as a snack.
There are only two other characters who laugh at othersâ misfortune in the movie. One is Stitch, the original villain. Then love changes him. The other is Jumba, who made Stitch. Then love changes him. But Gantu never gets changed. Heâs only concerned with his job, and with personally annihilating the flaws he sees in Stitch.
Gantu is unyielding, ungracious, and cruel. And heâs big and powerful enough to be a test for Stitch to prove heâs changed. For the benefits he brings to the story, heâs worth 1.5 million and more. But they cut him anyway.
In the new movie, Jumba is a villain through-and-through with designs on overthrowing the Galactic Council using Stitch, and instead of being redeemed, heâs sentenced to prison.
The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: âWe canât spend money on our real villain so weâll just keep Jumba evil.â
The reason this is dumb is obvious. They created their own problem, and the âfixâ makes the movie weaker, not stronger. But hereâs how.
In the original, Jumba is introduced as trying to self-protect. Heâs on trial, and he lies. But when Stitch is revealed, heâs genuinely passionate about the thing heâs created. And he cares about image. He prefers to be called âevil genius,â and he hates the headlines labelling him âidiot scientist.â
You have to remember heâs part of âGalaxy Defense Industries.â They had him making weapons of destruction anyway. He just got too into it with his genetic Experiments, went a little insane.
Iâm not downplaying the fact that Jumba is evil at the start of the movie. He is. It is evil to be outcasted from society and then respond to that with, âwell, if theyâre going to treat me like an idiot, IâLL SHOW THEM, I wonât care about anything except my passion for mad science!â Thatâs evil.
But it also explains a lot.
I said it in another post. Jumbaâs whole utility as a character is that he knows who and what Stitch really is, better than anyone. He made him to be a monster who canât belong and wreaks havoc on everybody elseâs âplace of belonging.â Jumba is the audienceâs insiderâs perspective on what is going on in Stitchâs head, at first.
But when heâs redeemed, it happens fast. And why? Because thatâs how plain and simple Stitch is, as a character. Jumba knows Stitch is a disgusting little monster with nothing inherently loveable about him, and no âgreater purpose.â So when his disgusting monster is loved by someone? When his disgusting monster is willing to ask him, Jumba, for help? Something totally outside his programming, totally not what Jumba thought heâd ever be capable of?
That proves to Jumba, in an instant, that thereâs love out there that transforms. And creates a place of belonging.
There were already germs of that, a desire to belong, a compassion, in Jumba after he reached earth.
He doesnât try to get Nani fired, he offers an explanation for Pleakleyâs swollen head.
He claims he wonât hit Lilo (why would he care about collateral damage?)
He sounds sorry for Nani when sheâs upset about losing Lilo, and tries to keep Stitch from bothering her.
My point is, Jumbaâs redemption isnât important because itâs cute or because we need to set up the big happy found-family trope everybody loves.
Jumbaâs redemption is important because it is just one more PROOF that whatâs happened to Stitch is so incredible. The love Jumba finds transforming his monster is enough to transform Jumba, too.
But sure, fine, whatever, make him a soulless one-dimensional talking head. Whatever.
In this movie, Stitch is cuter than he is ugly, and heâs half Liloâs size.
The Problem They Were Trying to Solve With This Change: âUgly-cute doesnât come across as well in âlive actionâ animation. And all the Wal-Mart moms remember Stitch as âcute.â Plus weâll save about 15% in rendering the animation.â
This is crippling to the characterization of Stitch.
Stitch is supposed to be an echo of who Lilo could become now that sheâs lost her parents and may be losing Nani. This scene:
Where Jumba points out that Stitch has nothing, and destruction is his only purpose, is the evidence for that. But Chris Sanders, who made this whole story, also point-blank said it. Stitch is a future Lilo, if she loses her family.
So thatâs reason number 1 that he should be her same height. But also, practically, no iconic pair of best friends, yin and yang, have visuals where one is smaller than the other. Especially not if one of them is supposed to be disguised as a pet.
The point is, Stitch is not LILOâs pet. He is her best friend, her other half. But between the muzzle-muscles they worked into his upper lip and the darkened dog nose and the butt-scooting across the floor, the remake is trying to make him more pet-like in relation to Lilo.
I said this in another post. But Stitch is supposed to throw food to the back of his head like a gatorâhis lips are not designed for forming words. His gums and teeth are supposed to look like a sharkâs. His nose is supposed to be too big, stamped into his face. His ears are supposed to be like bat ears, not bunny ears. He hunches forward, instead of bending at the waist like a toddler. His eyes can narrow to lizard slits.
He has to look like he can believably be a disgusting monster. Yes, he can also be cute. But he has to first look like a monster. Because thatâs what he really is, in the story. If he isnât, then LILOâs love for him doesnât look as powerful.
It is easy to love a cat even if it scratches you, because itâs cute. Itâs harder to love a life-sized spider that keeps knocking you down and eating your prized possessions and laughing when you get hurt. Stitch is supposed to be closer to the second one, so that Liloâs love shines brighter.
She canât look him in the eye for emotional shots when heâs that short. Heâll always have to awkwardly be standing on a box or a chair or a bed.
How is he going to scoop her up, hero-style, and leap off of an exploding spaceship with her in his arms, when heâs half her size? He could do it: itâll look stupid, though. So they just donât have that part in the movie.
She can pick him up. That alone is demeaning and again, the visuals are silly. Not what weâre going for.
In this movie, Lilo doesnât like weird stuff, and she screams when she first meets Stitch.
Thereâs no problem that this solves. Itâs just laziness and a lack of care about the characters.
I would like to remind you that the original Lilo:
Made her own doll that looks like a shrunken head and pretended a bug laid eggs in her ears.
Makes up stories about a fish that controls the weather and actively deep-sea dives to bring it peanut butter sandwiches.
Has a knee-jerk reaction of using practical voodoo spells on friends who wrong her.
Listens exclusively to Elvis Presley.
Fills baby bottles with coffee.
Believes Naniâs manager is a vampire.
Has fishing nets and seashells in her room for decoration.
takes safari pictures of overweight bleached tourists.
meets a social worker and her first impulse is to ask if heâs killed someone.
Nails the door shut when sheâs mad at her big sister.
Sheâs not friends with pound dogs in that original movie; when they first get there she acts like sheâs never been in the kennel before, and originally wants a pet lobster.
I know that we all love that little girl they got to play Lilo, but if you were really being objective, youâd acknowledge that sheâs a little girl. Sheâs not Lilo. Sheâs a cute little girl.
They did not write Lilo into the 2025 movie. They wrote any old little girl.
You should have known, from the moment she first sees Stitch and her reaction is to scream in the trailer, that THAT IS NOT LILO.
Lilo had a very specific set of characterizations. She was a character with a personality that exploded out of the screen. Every other character in the movie meets Stitch and reacts with disgust.
But not. LILO. Sheâs the only one to react to him like THIS:
She is literally not like anyone else. Sheâs doesnât care that heâs ugly. Or weird. Or blue. Or even bat an eye when he can talk with all those shark teeth.
From Moment One, Lilo chooses Stitch. She chooses to love him. Regardless of what he can do for her. Regardless of how many times he pushes her over or rips up her house or makes her relationship with Nani harder. That is the number one thing about Lilo.
She is desperate for people to stay, but she chooses to love Stitch even though heâs a monster. And she tries to make him better. And her love succeeds in transforming him when nothing else could.
Liloâs personality traits all mean something in the story. (I.e. she likes Elvis because sheâs clinging to the past, she snaps pictures of tourists like theyâre safari animals because theyâre inherently people who LEAVE and she has issues with LEAVING, etc.) But the thing I think that was so obvious that the moviemakers missed for 2025 is she has to be weird. If sheâs not weird, thereâs no reason for her not to have friends. And if she has friends, what does she need Stitch for?
But also, Liloâs personality in the new movie is just boring. Cute. But boring. Cuteâs not that great of an accomplishment; any 7 year-old is cute.
I donât think you guys need to know this. Itâs not just that Nani leaves. Itâs that âtake care of yourselfâ is the exact opposite of the selfless message of the movie.
In the beginning, Lilo literally argues with Nani after being told sheâs âsuch a pain,â and goes, âwhy donât you SELL ME and buy a RABBIT INSTEAD?â
And then breaks down and cries at the thought of Nani wishing she had a rabbit instead of Lilo, later.
Because Lilo is afraid of people leaving. But Nani wonât leave her. Nani loses her job, her own life, because of Lilo. But sheâs desperate to keep Lilo anyway, because she loves her. Donât you understand? The message of the movie was about self-sacrificial love. A love that doesn't care what I get out of the relationship.
Nani starts it. But you know what, David loves her like that, too. And then Lilo transfers it to Stitch, who shows it off to Jumba. Itâs a chain reaction, but Nani is spearheading it.
You realize that when their parents died, Nani already wouldâve been in high school? With a whole life of her own? Her own friends, her own potential boyfriend, a job she went to, surf competitions (the trophies are in her room.) Lilo wouldâve been well aware that that was the status-quo: Nani has her own life. And even a seven year-old can see that that life is being put on hold, but maybe the big sister wants to go back to it, at every turn.
The fact that Nani never does that, never expresses a desire for that, only ever expresses a desire to keep Lilo with her, is huge. Itâs the core of the movie.
I donât think that needs any more explaining.
We could talk more. Like about how Lilo needs to see that Stitch is an alien, because thatâs the ultimate test: heâs one of the monsters who destroyed her house, heâs been lying to her and using her as a human shield, heâs a criminalâbut she still winds up giving everything up to protect him.
Anyway. My neck hurts and I donât want to type anymore. But we could talk about the music, the social worker, the grand councilwomanâit just doesnât matter.
Yaâll had more than enough details in the trailer to be able to not go see this movie because it was obviously going to ruin everything. But instead you chose to make this twisted corpse âthe highest-grossing movie of any Memorial Day.â You bought tickets because they ruined a perfect movie and slapped together an uglier package for you.
Whatever. It was my favorite movie today, itâll be your Treasure Planet or Tangled tomorrow. Keep riiiight on giving them your money, and keep letting influencers regurgitate the same four obvious facts to you over and over, because they paid Disney to make a talking-point for their content benefit. Whatever.
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