Disney live-action reboots really can’t win. Despite being hailed by some as its best cash grab, that is, remake to date, Lilo & Stitch is caught up in controversy. Of course, it has nothing on the Snow White reboot, but a significant change to the end of the movie has infuriated fans on the Right and Left.
In the 2002 cartoon, the film’s major conflict centers on older sister Nani’s struggle to maintain custody over her younger sister, Lilo, after their parents’ deaths. Despite, and then perhaps because of, the interventions of a fluffy extraterrestrial interloper, the family ultimately stays together, encapsulating the movie’s iconic message: “‘Ohana’ means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.”
The original movie, which is sweet and easily digestible for young viewers, doesn’t suggest that Nani has goals other than caring for Lilo (and encouraging the 6-year-old to stop nailing the windows shut, letting pots boil over, and other precocious activities). In the reboot, we see a different Nani, one who was the top of her high school class, had dreams of pursuing marine biology, and no longer even has time to surf, a hobby she loves. We learn that her full-time caretaker role has come with sacrifices.
The reboot resolves this conflict by offering Nani an out: She entrusts Lilo’s care to the elderly neighbor (a character not in the original), who has encouraged Nani to go to college and has already spent time looking after Lilo.
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