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    How ‘Colors of the Wind’ Became a Generational Rallying Cry

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    Thirty years after Disney released “Pocahontas,” the film’s Oscar-winning song has taken on a life of its own with millennial and Gen-Z fans.In January, Lanie Pritchett expressed her displeasure with the second inauguration of President Trump by passionately lip-syncing a 30-year-old Disney song.“I had this rage in me,” the 22-year-old theater major at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas said in an interview. “It was a rough day for a lot of people. I thought, I can’t do much, but I can share my thoughts.”Her thoughts were encapsulated in a few lines from “Colors of the Wind,” the power ballad from Disney’s 1995 animated film, “Pocahontas.” Specifically, “You think the only people who are people are the people who look and think like you / But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew you never knew.”She uploaded a TikTok video with the overlay, “me arguing with magas for the next four years” — and a caption explaining that her progressive views partly stem from “Pocahontas” being her “favorite princess movie growing up.” It quickly racked up more than half a million views.Pritchett, who is a lesbian, was raised in a conservative household in East Texas, where she and her sister would give living-room performances of “Colors of the Wind” while the “Pocahontas” DVD played in the background. She now views the song as an important commentary on queer inclusivity, cross-cultural understanding and environmentalism.“Obviously, that movie has its problems,” Pritchett said, “but the music was really good.”In fact, 30 years after Disney released “Pocahontas” in theaters in June 1995, the film’s Oscar- and Grammy-winning track has broken out as a beloved entity with millennial and Gen Z fans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Directed ‘Elio?’ It’s Complicated

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      Three directors are credited for Pixar’s latest film, but not all are listed onscreen at the same time. Here’s the back story.After the emotionally resonant final moment of Pixar’s new outer-space adventure “Elio,” the names of directors Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian pop up onscreen — typical for any feature film. But if you stick around until after the mid-credits tag, you might find something curious. Once the crawl starts, another person is also listed as director: Adrian Molina.The discrepancy hints at some of the behind-the-scenes shake-ups involving the film about an orphaned boy who dreams of being abducted by aliens.Midway through production, Molina, the original director, was replaced by Shi and Sharafian. All of the listed filmmakers have history with the company. Molina was one of the screenwriters and the co-director of the hit “Coco” (2017). Shi directed the red panda puberty story “Turning Red” (2022), while Sharafian was behind the Oscar-nominated short “Burrow” (2020).During an interview with The Wrap last summer, Pixar’s chief creative officer, Pete Docter, said that Molina was moved off “Elio” and onto a “priority project that we’re not ready to talk about yet.” (Molina is reportedly working on a “Coco” sequel due out in 2029, though it’s unclear whether that’s what Docter was referencing.)Docter, in the same interview, explained that Shi and Sharafian were crucial to figuring out story beats involving the awkward Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab), who ultimately gets his wish and is beamed up to an intergalactic summit by kindly extraterrestrials who believe he is Earth’s leader. “I think they’ve made some major discoveries on him that really helped the audience to connect and to move forward with the character into the second act,” Docter said.On animated films, one person often assumes the title of co-director, a role the Pixar veteran Andrew Stanton once described as a “jack of all trades.” That’s the part Molina had on “Coco.” But on “Elio” none of the listed directors have the “co” prefix.“Elio” has had a lengthy journey to the screen. The project was announced at Disney’s D23 conference in 2022 and was originally scheduled for release in 2024. America Ferrera appeared at that event and revealed that she was playing Elio’s mother. That in itself offers some clues as to what changed. In the finished film, Elio’s mother is dead and Zoe Saldaña voices his overwhelmed aunt living on a military base. More

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      ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Review: Singing, Slinging and Slashing

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      Beyond the somewhat silly premise of this Netflix animated film is a charming, funny and artfully punchy original universe.Lest you roll your eyes and think of it as a four-quadrant-friendlier version of “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” “KPop Demon Hunters” immediately establishes its premise, getting any prospective scoffing out of the way.For generations, a voice-over intro explains, girl groups have used their popular songs to secretly trap hordes of demons underground and keep the world safe. The latest group on their trail? Huntrix, a K-pop girl band that, in its fight against the sinister Gwi-ma (Lee Byung-hun) and his demons, is close to completing the Golden Honmoon, a protective barrier that will permanently keep evil forces at bay. But the girl group soon faces its toughest challenge yet: a demon boy band.With that somewhat silly logline behind us, what we’ll find in this Netflix animated film, directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, is an original universe that is charming, funny and artfully punchy.It’s a Sony Pictures Animation film that shares a kind of lineage with the studio’s recent hit “Spider-Verse” franchise that is most apparent in the similar visual style. But otherwise what it borrows mostly is a more holistic and technical sense of the cinematic, a philosophy of approach that is rare in big-budget animation films. The action sequences are fluid and immersive, the art is frequently striking and the music (catchy, if formulaic earworms) is a properly wielded and dynamic storytelling tool.And as for the cheesy girl group vs. boy band story, Kang and Appelhans have a sly sense of humor about it all, too; the movie is funniest when it pokes at pop culture that is highly manufactured, from K-pop to K-dramas to mass-produced singing competitions — the very things the film itself would never stoop to.Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Studio Ghibli’s Majestic Sensibility Is Drawing Imitators

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      Hayao Miyazaki and his colleagues at Studio Ghibli craft pictures that are so delicately drawn and convincingly textured that it seems as if we should be able to step right into them. Think of the bustling bathhouse of “Spirited Away” or the bucolic Japanese countryside of “My Neighbor Totoro.”But as viewers, we are never able to actually enter these worlds of tender emotions, whimsical characters and, perhaps above all, vivid locations that set the imagination ablaze. Movies are made from flat 2-D images; they remain tantalizingly out of reach.Studio Ghibli characters like Satsuki in “My Neighbor Totoro” busy themselves with distinctly video game undertakings: looking, exploring, hiding, delivering, flying.Studio GhibliThe most committed Ghibli fans can travel to Ghibli Park in Nagoya, Japan, and Ghibli Museum in Tokyo for a tactile experience of their beloved animated films. But most of us are not making that globe-trotting journey.Enter video games, which allow players to explore immersive 3-D environments and satisfy many fantasies: the sword-wielding savior, the slayer of fantastical beasts, the fleet-footed time traveler.The influence of Studio Ghibli — which turned 40 this week — can be seen throughout the industry, notably in recent additions to the Legend of Zelda franchise. Breath of the Wild (2017) and Tears of the Kingdom (2023) each offer pastoral experiences tinged with menace, similar to many Ghibli pictures; their cel-shaded graphics also evoke the studio’s exquisite painterly style. In Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda’s devoted knight Link moves between floating land masses that evoke those in “Castle in the Sky.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      David Hekili Kenui Bell, an Actor in ‘Lilo & Stitch,’ Dies at 46

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      Mr. Bell’s first role in a feature film was providing comic relief in the Disney hit.In Disney’s latest live-action remake, “Lilo & Stitch,” David Hekili Kenui Bell has a short but memorable role in which he is so bewildered to see aliens that he lets his shaved ice plop to the ground. The appearance was his first in a feature film.Mr. Bell, who had played minor roles in a few productions, died on Thursday. He was 46.His sister, Jalene Bell, confirmed his death on social media on Sunday and in a family statement that did not provide a cause of death.He was credited simply as Big Hawaiian Dude on his IMDb page, but on TikTok he referred to himself as the Shave Ice Guy.“Lilo & Stitch,” which is based on the 2002 film and the animated franchise, was released on May 23 and became one of the most profitable recent films as it raked in more than $800 million in sales.His role was part of a running gag in the franchise. In those moments, a sunburned character who is relaxing somewhere drops his ice cream when the aliens arrive.In one of two movie scenes where he appeared, the aliens startle him while he sits at the beach in a sleeveless shirt, with a towel on one shoulder and sunglasses atop his head. Predictably, he drops his shaved ice.“These damn aliens owe me a shave ice,” he captioned the scene on TikTok.In the original “Lilo & Stitch,” the man dropping the ice cream is bald and is often not wearing a shirt.Mr. Bell had also appeared in two episodes of a “Magnum P.I.” remake in 2018 and 2019, as well as in one episode of a “Hawaii Five-0” remake in 2014, according to IMDb. He was involved in the upcoming film “The Wrecking Crew,” about two half brothers solving their father’s murder in Hawaii, his page on the site said.He appeared in the “One Life, Right?” commercials for the Kona Brewing Company. The ads won a 2025 Pele Award, according to his sister and the organization’s website. The Pele Awards honor excellence in advertising and design in Hawaii.Outside of acting, Mr. Bell worked at the Kona International Airport near Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, according to the social media statement from his sister.Complete information on survivors was not available.To celebrate her brother’s life and express their grief, Ms. Bell said that she and her grandson went to get shaved ice.“David loved being an actor,” doing voice-overs and traveling as part of his work, his sister said. “The film industry and entertainment was so exciting to him.” More

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      Inside Universal’s Big Bet on ‘How to Train Your Dragon’

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      In an era of skepticism around live-action remakes, Universal believes audiences will take flight with Hiccup and Toothless again.In 2020, Dean DeBlois publicly blasted live-action remakes of animated films as “lazy” studio endeavors.The director who, along with Chris Sanders, had made the 2002 Disney animated “Lilo & Stitch” and the 2010 DreamWorks Animation release “How to Train Your Dragon,” said that he viewed such remakes as “a missed opportunity to put something original into the world.”Then, two years later, DeBlois received a call from the Universal Pictures president, Peter Cramer, asking if he’d be interested in directing a live-action version of “How to Train Your Dragon.”“At the expense of seeming like a hypocrite, I thought, well, I’m either going to sit here and pout and watch somebody else do it,” DeBlois said in a video interview with The Times, “or I could jump in and shoulder the blame or help to change the narrative.”Now, as the live-action “Dragon” arrives in theaters on Friday, DeBlois is enthusiastically attached to the type of movie he formerly criticized.A lot could have gone wrong: DeBlois had never made a live-action feature before Universal put him in charge of the $150 million remake, and the genre as a whole is facing increased skepticism from audiences and studios alike. (Disney reportedly put its “Tangled” remake on hold indefinitely in the wake of underwhelming box office for “Snow White” this spring.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Cast Discuss What Lured Them to the Live-Action Remake

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      Cast members from the original 2002 animated film and the live-action remake explain what lured them to — or back to — “Lilo & Stitch.”When Maia Kealoha learned that she was going to play Lilo in Disney’s live-action remake of “Lilo & Stitch,” she sobbed big, fat, happy tears.“That might be the first time I was quiet in my whole entire life,” she said of the video call with the film’s director, Dean Fleischer Camp, in 2023, when he asked her to be his Lilo.Kealoha, 8, is a big fan of the original animated film from 2002 about a destructive but adorable alien experiment named Stitch who crash-lands in Hawaii and befriends a young girl named Lilo.The film, which earned more than $273 million (or $484 million when adjusted for inflation) at the global box office, was one of the first Disney animated movies to be driven by a nonromantic story line. It also won praise for its strong female characters and nuanced depictions of Hawaii.“I’ve seen it 1,000 times,” Kealoha, who was born and raised on Hawaii’s Big Island, said in a recent video call. “It’s so good.”Stitch, unsurprisingly, is her favorite character. The rambunctious blue troublemaker also reminds her of someone she knows: Her 1-year-old brother, Micah Kealoha.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Lilo & Stitch’: How a Fuzzy Blue Alien Became a Disney Cash Cow

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      Step aside, Moana, Elsa and Simba. In recent years, Stitch has quietly become one of Disney’s most popular — and most merchandised — characters.Eight-year-old Elle Bauerlein of Wake Forest, N.C., is obsessed with Stitch. “Honestly, I think about him all the time. Like, 10 hours every day.”Her American Girl doll, currently clad in a Stitch onesie complete with alien-eared hood, is technically named Stacy, but Elle prefers to call her “S” in tribute to Stitch. If she had to pick a favorite Disney princess it would be Moana, but only because Moana spends time on beachy activities similar to Stitch. Her pillowcase is Stitch. Her backpack is Stitch. Her Crocs are Stitch.The third grader was born more than a decade after the 2002 Disney animated film “Lilo & Stitch” was released in theaters, and yet, for the past two years, the rambunctious title character has been a fixture in her life.She’s not alone.In an act of belated cultural permeation, Stitch — the destructive but adorable alien experiment who crash-landed in Hawaii and befriended a young girl named Lilo — has become a crucial character in the Walt Disney Company’s modern empire, mainly in the form of a dizzying array of licensed merchandise.At PetSmart, you can find a Stitch squeaker toy for your dog. The discount chain Five Below has Stitch neck pillows, portable power banks and slime. Stitch clothing and accessories line the shelves at Primark. Yoplait offers berry- and cherry-flavored Stitch yogurt. Even Graceland has a tie-in collection of Stitch pompadoured plushies dressed in various Elvis Presley ensembles. If you’re overwhelmed, don’t worry: There’s also a cottage industry of TikTokers who devote their entire accounts to showcasing the latest Stitch-centric items to their legions of followers.While Disney does not release official sales data, the company’s annual financial reports for 2023 and 2024 included “Lilo & Stitch” on a short list of nine examples of its “major” licensed properties, putting it on par with classic titans like Winnie the Pooh and Mickey and Friends, and conglomerates like Star Wars and the collective Disney princesses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What if Making Cartoons Becomes 90% Cheaper?

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      “Fear not! For I shall lead ye to riches beyond your wildest dreams!”Inside a tiny recording booth in downtown Los Angeles, John Peck waited for a verdict from the voice-over engineer: Did the line sound pirate-y enough?Try again, the engineer suggested, perhaps with more throaty emphasis on “wildest.” It might make the animated character Mr. Peck was voicing — a buccaneer with a peg leg — a tiny bit funnier.Mr. Peck, 33, cleared his throat and gave it a whirl, prompting chuckles from the production team. A couple of clicks on a laptop later, and an artificial intelligence tool synced Mr. Peck’s voice with a cartoon pirate’s mouth movements. The character was destined for an episode of “StEvEn & Parker,” a YouTube series about rapscallion brothers that attracts 30 million unique viewers weekly.Just a few years ago, lip-syncing a minute of animation could take up to four hours. An animator would listen to an audio track and laboriously adjust character mouths frame by frame. But Mr. Peck’s one-minute scene took 15 minutes for the A.I. tool to sync, including time spent by an artist to refine a few spots by hand.Toonstar, the start-up behind “StEvEn & Parker,” uses A.I. throughout the production process — from honing story lines to generating imagery to dubbing dialogue for overseas audiences. “By leaning into the technology, we can make full episodes 80 percent faster and 90 percent cheaper than industry norms,” said John Attanasio, a Toonstar founder.“This is how you build the next generation of hot intellectual property,” Mr. Attanasio added excitedly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More