The Biggest Differences Between the Animated' Lilo & Stitch' Film and the Live-Action Remake (Including One Missing Character!)
Disney's live-action reimagining of Lilo & Stitch premiered on May 23, over 20 years after the animated original
The new film was directed by Marcel the Shell with Shoes On filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp
Several key changes and updates were made to the story, including the omission of one major characterThere were plenty of changes for Lilo and Stitch in Disney's latest iteration, but their core friendship remains the heart of the story.
The fluffy blue alien first crash-landed in Hawaii for the 2002 animated film Lilo & Stitch, directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, the latter of whom serves as the voice of Stitch. Now, 23 years later, the live-action reimagining of the classic came to theaters on May 23, this time helmed by Marcel the Shell with Shoes On director Dean Fleischer Camp.
Lilo & Stitch comes after a growing list of Disney's live-action updates, including The Little Mermaid, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and more.
To Camp, Lilo & Stitch felt "perfect" for the live-action treatment since it takes place in a contemporary setting and follows "normal humans going about their lives and striving for happiness."
While still honoring the original, "there's so much opportunity in terms of digging into the emotional realities of those human characters and grounding it in a lived experience," the filmmaker said in notes shared with press.
But what did the director change about Lilo and Stitch's iconic story? Read on for the four biggest changes made to Lilo & Stitch for the live-action remake.
Warning: Spoilers for both versions of ahead!
The main villain of the animated film, Captain Gantu, is absent from the live-action iteration. Voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson, the original harbinger of evil is the towering whale-looking antagonist sent to hunt Stitch on Earth.
In the place of Gantu, the character Jumba instead assumes the primary villain status in the remake.
He was voiced by the late David Ogden Stiers in the original, serving as a lovable, quirky mad scientist responsible for creating Stitch. In the new film, played by Zach Galifianakis, he's still the mastermind behind Experiment 626, but more of a ruthless bad guy.
'What was fun for me, personally, was to play someone villainous, or a villainous creature," Galifianakis said in notes shared with press. "I don't think I really did any of that, and it was kind of fun just to act with your menacing face."
Kevin McDonald voiced the clumsy alien Pleakley in the animated version, while in live-action he takes the form of Billy Magnussen, known for his roles in Aladdin (2019) and Into the Woods (2014).
The cartoon Pleakley opted for women's clothing when going undercover on planet Earth with Jumba. Though the costumes for Magnussen are playfully quirky and off-beat in the live-action remake, Pleakley never appears in drag on-screen, despite director Camp advocating for the disguise.
"I have had people message me, 'Why is Pleakley not wearing a dress?' And I just want to say: 'I tried. I tried,' " Camp said in a TikTok video, showing conceptual sketches that showed live-action Pleakley in a wig and dress.
In a September 2024 interview with Collider, Magnussen said, "I hope [fans] just embrace it as its own story. When they make these live-action films, sometimes I think people hold on to what the other one was, but they're not in competition. That's what I want to clarify. There's no competition here. It's honestly just celebrating. ... I hope people don't compare it."
Tia Carrere brought Lilo's big sister Nani to life in the 2002 original, and in the new iteration, the actress found a fresh role. She plays Mrs. Kekoa, a caring social worker who tries to help Nani (Sydney Agudong) navigate being a guardian to Lilo (Maia Kealoha) after the death of their parents.
"Nani, I couldn't have imagined anybody that they could find to fill these roles, and they fill them beautifully," Carrere told PEOPLE of passing the torch to Agudong. "It was wonderful. But it's her torch. She's so good, and she's so strong."
Agudong, in notes shared with press, described her Nani as "hotheaded." The actress added, "She is type-A, she's a go-getter, and nothing's going to stop her."
Tūtū, the supportive neighbor and grandmother of David (Kaipo Dudoit), is another new addition to the mix. Amy Hill embodies the role after she voiced Mrs. Hasagawa in the animated film.
"It was exciting to come back now with a different role, because I was able to create a character that didn't exist in the original,' Hill said in notes shared with press. 'I did have to go back and rewatch the animated film because it had been such a long time. It is such a warm-hearted, lovely movie."
The endings of both versions involve Stitch being allowed to stay on Earth to live with Lilo and his newfound ohana. But the live-action version gives more focus on Nani's future and responsibilities.
A montage at the conclusion of the animated version shows Lilo, Stitch, Nani and David living happily ever after as a blended family, but in the live-action take, David's grandmother Tūtū takes in 6-year-old Lilo after their house is destroyed.
Then, Lilo encourages Nani to follow her dreams and go to college for marine biology, taking the pressure off the older sister to be both parent and sibling after they were orphaned.
But she is never too far away — Nani still manages to visit Lilo and Stitch via the portal gun that allows her to transport between her dorm room and home.
Read the original article on People
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNET
32 minutes ago
- CNET
RedMagic's 10S Pro Is One of the Most Powerful Phones I've Ever Tested
The RedMagic 10S Pro gaming phone, announced Thursday, might be the most powerful Android phone of 2025 so far, and it has quite the power boost over last year's RedMagic 10 Pro. The new device, which starts at $699 (£579, roughly converts to AU$1,230) for 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage, includes a "Leading Edition" of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. My review unit is the midlevel $849 model with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage, while RedMagic's highest-end model is $999 for 24GB of memory and 1TB of storage. But power is clearly the showcase of the 10S Pro, and in my early benchmarks using the graphically demanding 3D Wild Life Extreme test, the phone pulls one of the highest scores I've ever seen. The 10S Pro heartily beats last year's 10 Pro and the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro, which run on the earlier edition of the Elite processor. The 10S Pro even beats the $1,300 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra while costing hundreds of dollars less. RedMagic 10S Pro benchmark tests vs. RedMagic 10 Pro, Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Geekbench 6.0 RedMagic 10S Pro 7,193; 43.07fps Single: 3,050; Multi: 9,586 RedMagic 10 Pro 5,869; 35.15fps Single: 3,123; Multi: 9,756 Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro 5,923; 35.47fps Single: 3,075; Multi: 9,710 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra 6,950; 41.62 fps Single: 3,053; Multi: 9,707 In the more computationally focused Geekbench 6.0, the RedMagic 10S Pro scores comparably with the phones from Asus and Samsung. In real-world use, this means the phone easily handles high frame rates and graphics settings in Android games that provide them. I often test Mortal Kombat Mobile and Dead Cells since both titles include support for high frame rates, and the phone quickly boots them up while running at 120 to 144 frames per second. I similarly had confidence in cranking up the graphics in other titles like Asphalt Legends, in which cars go flying in frequent collisions. And in a test that is less reliant on the processor, I used Xbox Cloud Gaming to play Doom: The Dark Ages, which benefits from the uninterrupted 1.5K-resolution display (2,688x1,216 pixels) that places the front-facing camera behind the display. Playing Doom: The Dark Ages over Xbox Cloud Gaming. Mike Sorrentino/CNET That 6.85-inch display is largely the same as the RedMagic 10 Pro's, which runs at a 144Hz refresh rate and can reach a peak brightness of 2,000 nits. The screen also includes the same 960Hz touch sampling rate, meaning it's very responsive to quick taps in games that rely on that. RedMagic says the 10S Pro also gets an improved cooling system, and its 7,050-mAh battery can recharge at 80W speeds. RedMagic's phones also include a suite of gaming optimization software, which lets you adjust settings such as the power consumption of games, the option to force titles to run in vertical or horizontal orientation, and customizable controls that include using shoulder-button-style sensors or a virtual joypad with buttons. Fans of RedMagic phones who don't already own the RedMagic 10 Pro will likely appreciate the upgrades offered here, especially in terms of performance. RedMagic also improved its software update support with the 10S Pro, with a company representative stating that it will get three years of both major software updates and security support. While that's nowhere near the seven years of support we're seeing from Google and Samsung, it's much better than the RedMagic 10 Pro, which is only receiving one major software update and three years of security updates. The 16-megapixel front-facing camera is underneath the display. Mike Sorrentino/CNET RedMagic's phones are still tougher to recommend outside of the gaming-focused audience who understand that the device's biggest selling point is the powerful specs sheet. When setting up the phone, I still encounter a lot of software enabled by default that interferes with enjoying the phone out of the box. This includes a camera watermark that needs to be turned off to avoid turning every photo you take into an advertisement for RedMagic, a RedMagic-specific news feed that replaces the Google version that's typically seen on Android, and a few apps that cannot be uninstalled, like Daily Wallpaper. This photo at CNET's New York office was taken on the 16-megapixel front-facing camera on the RedMagic 10S Pro. This selfie camera is underneath the display. Mike Sorrentino/CNET The camera is also a much lower priority for a phone like this, especially since the 16-megapixel under-display selfie camera will make you appear a bit fuzzy on video calls. This is the same photo at CNET's New York office, but taken on the 50-megapixel main camera. Mike Sorrentino/CNET The rear camera system includes a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera and a 2-megapixel camera that's said to enhance photo quality in certain modes. The camera's lenses are flush with the phone's body and do not have a bump. While the Asus ROG Phone 9 costs more money at $1,000 and is now -- on a power level -- slower than the 10S Pro, it offers a more balanced experience between being a phone, camera and gaming device. Its software is closer to a stock Android experience, but it does offer lots of gaming optimizations, similar to what RedMagic provides on this phone. But if you're a big Android gamer and want the most powerful specs for less money -- and you understand the tradeoffs RedMagic makes to achieve this -- the 10S Pro is currently the most graphically powerful phone out there until the next wave of gaming phones arrives.
CNET
32 minutes ago
- CNET
I Forgot John Mulaney Was in This Movie in This Week's Netflix Top 10
Every week, Netflix unveils its Top 10 lists for the week before, ranking TV shows and movies by viewership. As someone who covers streaming content (and also just watches a lot of TV), I keep an eye on the titles that come and go, and am always curious what hits and what doesn't. Last week, John Mulaney's Netflix animated series Big Mouth premiered a new season, and his Netflix talk show Everybody's Live with John Mulaney aired its season finale, so I was curious if either would crack the Netflix Top 10. Neither did, but ironically, a third Mulaney-involved title — Puss In Boots: The Last Wish — was in the No. 5 spot on the Netflix movie chart to my surprise, mostly because I forgot that he was even in it. (Sure, Puss In Boots: The Last Wish also stars Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Harvey Guillen and Florence Pugh, but for the sake of argument, today it's a John Mulaney film.) Mulaney has been incredibly busy for the past few years, and it feels like the past two months reached peak Mulaney saturation: the eighth and final season of Big Mouth premiered on May 23, while his talk show Everybody's Live with John Mulaney aired its season finale on May 28 after running for 12 truly weird and unpredictable weeks. (For weeks, the show teased that the finale would feature Mulaney brawling with three 14-year-old boys. And yes, that fight did happen, rest assured no children were harmed.) Between both of his Netflix shows and recent appearances on Peacock's Poker Face and SNL 50, I think that his ubiquity is why I had forgotten all about his role as Jack Horner, the main villain in Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. It's certainly not because the role wasn't memorable, he actually stole every scene he was in as the narcissistic nursery rhyme character with an inferiority complex. Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, which debuted in theaters in 2022, is not actually available on Netflix in the U.S., which makes it even more impressive that it's dominating the Global Top 10 based on its popularity in Central and South America, where it peaked at No. 1 and has remained in the Top 10 film in dozens of countries for five weeks. DreamWorks Once I remembered Mulaney's pivotal role in the movie, I started to wonder, is this guy secretly Netflix's biggest star? He seems to have been given creative carte blanche on his talk shows and stand-up specials and, while his comedy can be niche, he also stars in projects with global appeal, so he very well could be. The streamer has deals with bigger names like Adam Sandler, Tyler Perry and Millie Bobby Brown, but I think Mulaney may be their ringer. He also starred in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which was only just removed from Netflix in April, he has seven comedy specials on the platform, and he pops up in everything from Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee to this month's Conan O'Brien's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor special. He's in so many things that somehow they managed to overshadow The Last Wish in my mind. But the film, which has made almost $500 million globally, is hardly under the radar. Maybe while it remains in the Top 10, it will give him a chance to take a well-deserved break from Netflix and just chill. At least for a little while, before he starts plotting who to grapple on season 2 of Everybody's Live.
The Verge
33 minutes ago
- The Verge
The cursed world of AI kiss and hug apps
Doomscroll on TikTok long enough, and you'll come across an ad for AI video apps. In one ad, a stereotypically nerdy girl puckishly smirks as she uploads a picture of herself and her much more handsome crush. Boom — suddenly, thanks to AI, they're smooching. In another, I'm shown a woman in a blouse and jeans. Do I want to know what she looks like in a blue bikini? Psst. There's an app for that. The ad then shows me the woman in said blue bikini. These apps aren't peddling the digital nudes many people associate with AI deepfakes, which are proliferating in their own right on app stores. Slapped together by opportunistic developers and sprinkled with subscription fees and microtransactions, they're all pitching tools to help you make benign fantasies a bit more tangible — but the results feel more cursed than magical. AI video ads link out to apps with titles like VideoAI, and DreamVid, made by companies you've probably never heard of — a short perusal of Apple's App Store brings up roughly two dozen options. Despite their titillating promotional material, they feature plenty of innocuous video templates. By uploading one or two photos and hitting a 'generate' button, you can change your hair color, hold up a sign, or hug Goku from Dragon Ball Z. But for every one of those, there are several other subtly disturbing or sort of gross ones. In the DreamVid app, there's an Enhance option that lets you give a person bigger breasts. In the preview, a blonde with a B cup is shown getting an automatic boob job, smiling playfully as she jiggles her new DD size. The AI Dancing category in the same app has scantily clad women suggestively swaying their hips. It's a mix that feels calculated. Just when you think there's too many bikinis and breasts, you'll see templates featuring cuddly AI cats, Studio Ghibli-style filters, and wholesome grandmas to hug. At the same time, when you look at DreamVid's AI outfit-of-the-day option, six of 12 outfits are some form of bikini or bathing suit. The rest include skimpy maid outfits, lingerie, a schoolgirl uniform, and gothic lolita cosplay. Only the wedding dress and cheongsam are relatively benign. None of them are aimed at creating pictures of men. In the ads, the videos generated are in that hazy category of 'real enough' to make you uncomfortable yet curious enough to download. Try it yourself and you'll see the telltale AI cracks appear. Kissing looks awkward — like how a toddler imagines kissing, faces and lips rhythmically smooshing together. (The few that attempt French kissing prove AI really doesn't know what to do with tongues yet.) Hugs look stiff, with dubious limb and hand placements. If the photos don't line up, hilarious zoom effects ensue as AI tries to match up bodies. Clothing, hair, accessories, and facial features often morph in and out of existence mid-video. AI systems have a long-standing racial bias issue, and pairing up subjects of different races seems to confuse these apps. My non-Asian celebrity crushes sometimes spontaneously developed Asian features when I joined them in a video. Other times, the app morphed my features into more Eurocentric ones to match my spouse. I don't know whether to laugh or cry that multiple AI apps insist that kissing parties should generally be the same race. I do, however, feel insulted when it generates a video of my spouse proposing to me — but has them turn away and propose to a random, spontaneously appearing white woman instead. None of this comes for free. The majority of apps charge microtransaction fees and subscriptions that range from $2.99 to $7.99 per week or $49.99 to $69.99 annually, providing limited credits that you can spend to generate videos. It's a financial model similar to that of AI nudes apps, even if the content is different. If you're curious about where those funds are going, one deep dive into the Videa: AI Video Maker app traced its origins to a company called Pure Yazlim Limited Sirketi that's based out of Istanbul, Turkey. is run by a company called NineG, which describes itself as 'non-gaming app publishing' on its barebones website. Its app store listing also touts the Mozart AI song generator, art generator Plum AI, an AI font creator, and, randomly, Reel TV — a Quibi-esque app for short dramas. DreamVid is run by Shenzhen iMyFone Technology which also has a suite of what seems to be productivity and utility apps, plus a Studio Ghibi generator. The Verge reached out to both NineG and iMyFone but didn't receive a response. In exchange, you get something infinitely simpler and more permissive than all-purpose video generators like OpenAI's Sora. You can theoretically produce a kiss on Sora, but only after crafting a text prompt describing what you want, uploading photos for the tool to work with, and clicking through pop-ups asking if you're over 18 and have consent to use the material you're uploading — and even then, Sora flagged me smooching Edward Cullen as a potential policy violation. Google's Veo is much the same. I tried the Edward Cullen kiss test, and Veo refused, saying it would reject prompts that are sexually suggestive, nonconsensual acts, or those that promote harmful stereotypes. On these other apps, you don't even need to come up with the idea — just upload a couple of pictures, and the system will deliver what you want. Simple apps for creating deepfaked nudes have produced numerous instances of clear harm, including widespread harassment of women and teen girls. Some of these incidents have led to lawsuits and arrests. There are also legal efforts to crack down on AI-generated nudes and unauthorized 'digital replicas' of real people, including the recently signed Take It Down Act, the No Fakes Act, and a bill passed by the New York State Senate. These apps are unlikely to fall under the purview of anti-deepfake porn laws, though the frequent appearances of celebrities — offered templates that let you make out with both Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen and Timothee Chalamet — make their status under digital replica rules shakier. For now, they sit in a murky zone between app store and platform moderation policies. Major tech companies have lagged on removing even sexually explicit AI generators, and the status of anything milder on their platforms seems nebulous. Google spokesperson Danielle Cohen tells The Verge that the Google Play Store doesn't allow apps that contain content or services that could be intended as sexually gratifying, and companies aren't allowed to use sexually explicit ads (including AI-generated ones) to direct people to their Play Store listings. Apple's App Store guidelines state apps shouldn't contain content that is 'offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy.' Provided examples include 'mean-spirited' content, as well as 'explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.' There are no rules about ads for these apps. I sent Meta an example of an ad for a kiss and hug AI app I found on Instagram Reels. In response, Meta spokesperson Faith Eischen told The Verge, 'We have clear rules against nudity and sexual exploitation, including non-consensual intimate imagery — both real and AI-generated — and we've removed the shared piece of content for breaking our rules.' Eischen also noted that Meta removes such ads when notified, disables accounts responsible for them, and blocks links to sites hosting such apps. The Verge reached out to TikTok about its policies but didn't receive a response. While it's fraught to create sexually charged images of celebrities, it overlaps with the existing territory of fan art and meme-ification. Many of these apps' functions, though, tread in more uncomfortable territory. While it might not be overly pornographic, it's creepy to deepfake yourself kissing someone. It would be even creepier to do it to a friend or acquaintance who didn't consent to it. But it's also not really clear what the average user is looking for — most reviews are simply complaining about the microtransactions. Moderating this sort of content is kind of like whack-a-mole. had plenty of 'use AI to kiss your crush' ads several weeks ago. Now, all the ones I bookmarked have disappeared from social media. Within the app itself, I can no longer generate any kind of kissing video. Instead, the app moved on to ads of a suburban mom twerking, before they, too, were subsequently removed. Experimenting with AI video apps wasn't always creepy. Few people would object if everyone was using them to generate heartwarming videos of kids hugging their grandparents; you could argue that it's weird to want to do this, but it's not inherently wrong or illegal. But the fun or arguably helpful use cases are mixed in almost inextricably with the creepy stuff. Changing my hair is a pretty unobjectionable process, but it's unsettling to swap my own face onto a model 'dancing' while wearing cat ears, a plunging crop top that shows off her midriff and bra, hot pants, and lacy garters. (Leonardo DiCaprio's face on the model is perhaps less disturbing than simply unhinged.) Conversely, I've had genderqueer friends say they privately used AI templates that let them see what they'd look like as a different gender, and it helped them figure out their feelings. Even the kissing templates could have fairly innocuous uses — you could be a fiction writer seeking inspiration for a romance novel. In that case, what's the difference between drawing your own fan art and using an AI video generator? Perhaps, you're trying to process something and need a little visual help — and that's how I ended up deepfaking my dead parents. In a plot stolen straight from The Farewell, my mom died before my grandmother, and my family decided not to tell her out of fear she'd drop dead from shock. But whereas that film dealt in regular white lies, my family decided to update its deception for the modern era. When my grandma started lamenting that my mom had stopped calling, a cousin asked me if there was any chance that I, a tech reporter, could use AI to create video messages of my mother. That would, my cousin said, give my dementia-addled grandma some sense of peace. At the time, I told her it wasn't possible. Three years later, I finally generated the deepfake she requested while testing these apps. It was eerie how much it looked like my mom, except when she smiled. My real mother was self-conscious of her underbite. AI mom's teeth were perfect. All I could see were the ways that AI had failed to capture my mother's essence. I thought my cousin would feel the same way. Instead, the text I got in response was four hearts interspersed with several exclamation marks and crying face emojis. For her, the horrible deepfake was comforting. My mom would've hated this AI version of herself, and yet in the days after creating it, I found myself replaying it over and over — if only because spotting what the AI got wrong reminded me that I hadn't forgotten the real her. I found myself replaying it over and over — if only because spotting what the AI got wrong reminded me that I hadn't forgotten the real her. After that, I deepfaked my dad hugging me at my wedding. Some little girls dream of their fathers walking them down the aisle. Mine died before that day ever came, and I didn't make it to his deathbed in time for a proper goodbye. I wondered if deepfaking dad would give me a sense of closure. I used the last good photo I had of him, taken a few days before he passed, and a solo photo of me from my wedding. The AI did a horrible job. For one, it interpreted my dad's beanie as a thick shock of black hair. In my family, we teased him for his thin combover and fivehead — which, in his broken English, he insisted was proof he was a true 'egghead.' I tried again and got a slightly better result. Still, the pattern on his sweater changed. His facial features morphed into someone who looked close, but ultimately wasn't my dad. Even so, it made me cry. The AI got so many things wrong, but it was good enough to sketch the shape of my longing. This, too, I sent to my cousin, who replied back with even more crying emoji. AI evangelists tout this as a positive use case for AI. Wouldn't it be nice to reanimate your dead loved ones? Before deepfaking my parents, I'd have scoffed and said this is a dystopian premise that denies the humanity of our mortality. But all I can say now is that grief is a strange beast. I'd be lying if I said that I found comfort in these deepfakes, but I can't deny that a part of me was moved. I'm also no longer inclined to describe this as a bad way to use AI; it's just weird. Perhaps the question isn't whether these apps are inherently harmful or what platforms should do when they appear. Maybe it's a matter of asking what we're hoping to see of ourselves reflected in them.
