Walt Disney Pictures‘ live-action Lilo & Stitch opened over Memorial Day weekend. While it’s making massive numbers for the studio, fans of the original film are shocked by the enormous changes to the animated film in its adaptation.
There’s minor stuff like Pleakley’s distance from drag, but the film’s human version of the character still very much fancies femme wear anyways. There’s also anger at the omission of Gantu, the Galactic Federation’s strongman, who you could argue felt like a random third act villain in the overstuffed animated feature’s ending (famously, the 2002 movie underwent major changes mid-production, since its original ending took place on a hijacked plane). What’s more, the culture has shifted a lot in the past few decades. So it makes sense that the new movie makes some alterations, including offering a more grounded take on the story.
In particular, the ending is stirring up heated discourse on the internet regarding Nani’s (Sydney Agudong) custody of her little sister Lilo (Maia Kealoha). In the 2002 film, Nani overcomes her social worker, former CIA agent Cobra Bubbles (Ving Rhames in the original, Courtney B. Vance in the live action film), in his attempts to get Lilo taken away from her; he ultimately relents after family is placed under the protection of the interstellar Galactic Federation. That’s not at all what happens in the remake. Here, Nani hands over guardianship to their grandmotherly neighbor Tutu (Amy Hill), who throughout the film watches over the sisters as they try to have a parent and child dynamic, so Nani can leave home and attend college.
Nani, who is implied to be just out of high school, really struggles to keep her little family afloat in the new film, especially after Stitch crash-lands into their lives. Tutu, with the help of their case worker Mrs. Kekoa (Tia Carrere, who voiced Nani in the animated film, playing a new character separated entirely from Vance’s version of Bubbles, who remains a CIA agent), facilitates a way for the girls to stay sisters and yet both still have a childhood. And in Nani’s case, that means the opportunity to leave her sister in safe hands while she follows her own goals, and presumably better provide for Lilo and Stitch in the future.
This recontextualization of the story’s themes drive this change, and not everyone is happy about it. The significant thread that ties everything together in both films is the exploration of “Ohana,” the Hawaiian word for “family,” and emphasizes that “no one gets left behind or forgotten.” The original Lilo & Stitch, placed in a broader context of Hawaii’s cultural relationship with the United States and colonial underpinnings between the two nations (touched on in both the original and the remake when Nani sings “Aloha Oe” to her sister, a traditional song often interpreted as lamentation of the loss of Hawaii’s sovereignty under American annexation), has often been considered as critiquing U.S. interests in Hawaii and the historical legacy of colonialism’s separation of families. And so, a lot of the criticism of the new ending argues that Nani has seemingly giving up her sister to the system, in order to follow her own desires to go to college, betrays the idea of Ohana that’s is championed by the original film.
Instead, the live action film comes at this struggle by centering Nani being forced to grow up beyond her years in order to look after Lilo. In the original film, Nani is presented as older than she is in the live-action film (the fact that she is Lilo’s guardian suggests that she’s at least 18, although it’s never explicitly stated), something that always struck me as a commentary on girls having to be treated as more traditionally motherly upon reaching a certain age, pushed into preconceived expectations and roles even in their youths. While Nani’s story is more explicitly about her struggle to balance caring for Lilo with the mania compounded by Stitch’s arrival, the story of young women, especially women of color, being forced by circumstance to grow up too quickly no doubt resonates with the broad audience a film like Lilo & Stitch has.
As a mother now, I can look back at the 2002 film and see that Nani was still a kid herself, and prioritizes her sister over her own potential dreams and aspirations. She leaves herself behind to be her little sister’s guardian after they lost their parents, especially because that version of Nani and Lilo didn’t have a village to look out for them.
Speaking to CinemaBlend, producer Jonathan Eirich shared that Chris Kekaniokalani Bright, who co-scripted the 2025 film, had some insight into how the animated version’s lack of a community around Nani and Lilo didn’t sit right. “Something [Chris] said early on, he was like, ‘I don’t think in Hawai’i, if these two sisters had just lost their parents, I don’t think they would be as isolated.’ [Knowing] the community of Hawaii there would be support for them.’ So, we sort of had this notion of this neighbor character, Tutu, that is actually there for them earlier in the story.”
Community functioning as an extension of family becomes a new reinterpretation of Ohana in the live-action film. Instead of the case worker being Bubbles, trying to foil Nani’s attempts at keeping Lilo (and his ex-CIA background once more explicitly tying him into the U.S.-Hawaii relationship as cultural context) in the animated feature, in the new film the case worker is now a fellow native Hawaiian character who encourages Nani to see if she can make the transition work. It really approaches this idea in a broader sense of Hawaiian culture, where we’re repeatedly reminded that Nani’s “kuleana,” or responsibility, is to give Lilo the best possible future.
In that context, you really feel for Nani as a girl struggling to keep her family afloat while grieving her parents. And this is before Stitch arrives in the picture, which really steers the focus to the sisters needing their childhood reclaimed as they have adventures with their new “dog.” But no matter how the changes to the original were going to be handled, a backlash to Lilo & Stitch would’ve been inevitable regardless, given the broad cynicism towards Disney’s live-action remakes in recent years regardless of their box office successes. Nani doesn’t give up her sister to strangers in a foster system, as many who might not have seen the movie claim. Tutu and Mrs. Kekoa help them navigate toward a solution where they’re still together and with their found family. She sees that she can lean on her extended family that’s always been there, while also getting a chance to experience early adulthood without sacrificing herself or her sister.
Hill herself recently expounded on that idea of found family within the concept of Ohana, prior to the blowback. “It’s not just the family, it’s now the extended family. And I’m part of that extended family. I’m not blood related to them. I live next door. I knew the parents. I knew the kids since they were little. And I just feel so close to them. And it just is, of course, a natural progression to feel like I want to take care of them and also be a little nosy about things. Cause isn’t that what family is?” she said in an interview posted on Stage.
It makes sense for Tutu to play the role of guardian to not just Lilo, but Nani too, in supporting her pursuit of higher education and rediscovering her love of surfing. The movie even provides a more fantastical solution to the issue of Nani leaving her sister and Hawaii behind, which is set up earlier in the film. Remember that portal gun Jumba uses to get to various spots where Stitch was sighted? In the end, it’s revealed that Nani now has it, which means she can come home home after school and still be very much present in Lilo’s life. It sure beats sleeping in a dorm room when you can easily transport to your room at home, and it still keeps the sisters together—a best of both worlds that allows the remake to have its own take on similar themes to the animated original.
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