Dean's attempts to dismiss criticism for separating Nani and Lilo has a lot of bullshit and ignorant logic to it, but this particular explanation is by far the stupidest.
Nani having no remaining family or trusted neighbours or friends to take Lilo in wasn't a plot hole for the remake to fix. It's the whole fucking reason there's even a conflict about Lilo's custody in the first place.
In the original film, the threat of Cobra possibly taking Lilo away and putting her in the foster system isn't just Nani being sad and sentimental that she can't see her sister anymore (like the remake implies).
It's the very real danger of a vulnerable (and heavily autistic-coded) indigenous little girl being sent against her will to live with complete strangers, who may not understand or accept her individuality, abuse her or God knows what else. And neither Nani or Lilo herself have any say in the matter.
If Nani did have a close friend, neighbour or even another relative that could look after Lilo on behalf, that would have been the first option well before Cobra and child services ever got involved. Which is exactly why the original film includes no such character.
Which is where the issue of Tūtū and the new ending in the remake comes in.
If Tūtū is able to talk to the social worker at the last minute and arrange to become Lilo's guardian, then it can only mean that was able to do so the entire time, yet she inexplicably chose not to, even when knowing full-well what was at stake and seeing for herself how the sisters were struggling. And from Nani's evident surprise in the ending, Tūtū clearly never even entertained this idea to her at any point before springing it on her here.
Even worse, since Nani has been forced to surrender Lilo to the state, rather than giving her custody to Tūtū directly, the state now has full freedom to change their minds and send her where and whenever they want, and neither Nani nor Tūtū would have the power to do anything about it.
Which, again, wouldn't have been an issue if this really nice, caring and loving neighbour, who is definitely a good character that we should like and root for, had stepped in for Lilo and Nani as soon as their parents died. But because the rest of the plot still has to follow the original (despite her presence radically changing the circumstances) she just… didn't do that. So now this new solution is too little, too late, and the film ends with virtually nothing changing for Nani and Lilo's dilemma compared to the start of the film.
Nani surrendering Lilo to the state is already a horrible ending regardless of who she goes to, but the very existence of Tūtū as a character actively undermines the rest of the story, and it ironically creates a major plot hole where they were trying to amend a non-existent one.
Oh, and by the way, Dean. Y'know the whole thing about how an auntie or uncle could have stepped in to help the sisters?
They did get an auntie and uncle in the original, but you made one of them irrelevant and you made the other one the villain for no reason!
