Why the Live-Action Lilo & Stitch Remake Has Sparked Controversy

Time​ Magazine

22-05-2025

Months before hitting theaters, the kids movie Lilo & Stitch, about an alien that winds up living with a Hawaiian family, has generated countless negative comments from grownups.
The live-action remake of the hit 2002 movie, in theaters May 23, has drawn some scrutiny over its casting and its decisions to portray characters differently from the animated version.
Here's what to know about the criticisms of the film so far and why Disney has reason to believe it will be a hit regardless.
The casting of Lilo's sister
Both movies follow a little girl named Lilo (Maia Kealoha in the live-action version) lonely and looking for a best friend. She adopts what she thinks is a dog at the pound, Stitch, but he's actually an alien (voiced in the 2025 version by the 2002 film's director Chris Sanders) who escaped from his planet. House-training a dog is hard enough, and though Lilo and her older sister Nani (Sydney Agudong) have their hands full trying to house-train the creature, it brings them closer together.
The 2002 Lilo & Stitch is considered a milestone because Pacific Islanders and Hawaiians have historically not been well represented in Hollywood blockbusters. As BuzzFeed's Morgan Sloss wrote in an article on the film's controversies, 'As a Polynesian woman myself, I can say [ Lilo & Stitch ] was the first mainstream representation I had as a kid.'
Agudong, who plays Nani in the live-action film, is multiracial and was born and raised on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i. But when Disney announced her casting, some critics argued that Agudong looked whiter than her animated character and that Disney should have looked for an actor with darker skin to play Nani.
When Agudong posted a teaser about the movie on Instagram in August 2024, she wrote, 'My heart is exploding! It's happening!! We did it Hawaii!!!' and a user wrote in the comments, 'You, a light skinned & white passing woman, stole this role from a brown-skinned visibly Hawaiian looking woman.'
A controversial actor
Shortly after it was announced that Disney was exploring casting Kahiau Machado as David Kawena, Nani's love interest in the movie, screenshots revealed that the actor had used racist slurs on social media.
Twitter user @ctrlcentered found a Spotify playlist in which Machado appeared to use the N-word.
Disney fan site Inside the Magic also reported that he compared himself to Rosa Parks on Instagram in a now-deleted post.
The role of David ended up going to Kaipo Dudoit, who previously had roles in My Partner (2023) and Magnum Pi (2020). The 2025 Lilo & Stitch marks his first feature film.
A cross-dressing character removed
In the 2002 movie, Agent Pleakley, a representative of Stitch's planet, goes to Earth to look for Stitch, and attempts to blend in by donning women's clothes.
Yet in the 2025 trailer, Pleakley (Billy Magnussen) and his sidekick Jumba (Zach Galifianakis) are just two humans in menswear.
That's disappointing to some fans because, as Mike Reyes writes for film news site Cinema Blend, Pleakley was seen as a 'drag icon.' Other fans questioned whether the cross-dressing Pleakley character was rejected to make the film more appealing to a mainstream audience.
'Pleakley having a human form and not crossdressing is a sign of rising fascism btw,' user 'darzipan' on X said in a tweet that has racked up more than 215,000 likes.
In a post that boasts more than 143,000 likes on X, user @Angel_Valderie wrote: 'Erasing Pleakley's drag and substituting it for human suits is bad because Disney wants to appease transphobes.'
On TikTok, Lilo & Stitch director Dean Fleischer Camp said fans have messaged him asking why Pleakley isn't wearing a dress in the trailer. 'I just want to say, I tried. I tried.' He then holds up a sketch of Pleakley with long flowing red hair, decked out in a skirt and women's sandals.
Camp told Entertainment Weekly that he experimented with special effects that would show aliens in human clothes, but didn't like the results: "The humor of them walking around Hawaii dressed in these terrible disguises where Pleakley still has one eyeball, it's a little harder to buy in live action."
What the criticisms could mean at the box office
Despite the critiques, there's a lot of interest in the live-action movie.
Disney reported that the trailer became the second most watched live-action trailer in its history with 158 million views, following the 2019 trailer for The Lion King.
Disney also reported that a 2025 Super Bowl commercial promoting the film that featured Stitch running on the football field and driving a cart into the goal post racked up more than 173 million views in 24 hours, making it Disney's most viewed spot digitally.
The 2002 Lilo & Stitch came out at a time when sales for Disney animated features were flagging. Richard Corliss, TIME's movie critic back then, called the film 'a bright, engaging bauble,' hailed it for its 'smart story sense,' and declared, 'let's predict that this new Disney film will be an old-fashioned, hand-drawn hit.'
Sure enough, the film grossed more than $273 million worldwide—exceeding Disney estimates—and it was nominated for best animated feature at the Academy Awards.
Given that the animated film was such a box office success, Disney is hoping that the live-action version will be a hit, too.