The Lilo & Stitch Remake Makes A Big (And Welcome) Change To An Original Character

Spoilers for the new "Lilo & Stitch" follow.

Here comes yet another live-action Disney remake. This time, the wonderful 2002 animated feature "Lilo & Stitch" gets the live-action treatment, and in all honesty, the results aren't half-bad. As always, the original animated version is superior, but as far as these remakes go, the 2025 "Lilo & Stitch" is pretty charming, even if it plays things a little too safe. One thing this remake has going for it is an attempt to not tell the same exact story beat for beat. More often than not, live-action remakes seem to be adopting a shot-for-shot remake style that feels rather pointless — why do the same exact thing when we already have that in animated form?

To be clear, the new "Lilo & Stitch" does recreate the majority of the original film, right down to the dialogue. The story is once again about a lonely girl named Lilo (played quite well by Maia Kealoha) who befriends a havoc-causing alien critter she names Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders, who co-wrote and directed the original film and voiced Stitch there, too). Just as in the original film, the new "Lilo & Stitch" is all about how Stitch learns the true meaning of family, and just like the original film, the new "Lilo & Stitch" will probably make you cry by the time it's over (Did I tear-up a little bit in the theater when I saw it this week? You better believe I did).

But again, the new "Lilo & Stitch" makes some changes, adding new characters, removing others, and altering some details (there's a lot less focus on Elvis in this movie, for instance). One of the biggest changes involves Lilo's protective older sister Nani, played here by Sydney Agudong. As in the original film, Lilo and Nani's parents have recently died, leaving the teenage Nani as Lilo's guardian. While Nani's age is never specified in either film (she's obviously older than 18 to be granted guardianship, but that's all we really know), she's still clearly very young, and suddenly being tasked with taking care of her little sister is understandably a bit of a burden for Nani, who struggles to do the right thing and make enough money to support herself and her sister.

In the original film, we don't get much info about Nani. The movie is primarily focused on Lilo (and Stitch), and Nani's entire arc in that film revolves around taking care of Lilo. In the new movie, the script gives Nani a different backstory. We learn that she was granted a full scholarship to go to college to become a marine biologist, but those dreams were dashed when her parents died.

Both films involve Nani struggling to maintain guardianship of Lilo — a task that becomes difficult after Nani loses her job thanks to Stitch's antics. But the new film's finale changes things up for Nani's future. In the original film, Nani gets to maintain guardianship of Lilo and they all live happily ever after, with Stitch staying on Earth. In the new film, however, Nani is given a chance to go back to college when helpful neighbor Tūtū (Amy Hill), a new character added for this film, agrees to watch over Lilo.

There are two ways of looking at this change. One is positive, in that it gives Nani a chance to live the life she always wanted while still staying in Lilo's life (a post-credit scene reveals Nani uses a sci-fi portal gun to transport home from college to hang out with Lilo and Stitch whenever she wants). However, there's also a negative way of looking at this: in the end, after all her struggles, Nani simply hands Lilo over to be cared for by someone else. Shouldn't the sisters stay together?

Ultimately, I think this change works. Sure, it's nicer to have Nani and Lilo stay together as one big family (with Stitch). But it's more hopeful to give Nani a chance to live her dreams. But as I said above, the original movie (and it's original ending) is still better. But I can still appreciate what the filmmakers were going for here.

"Lilo & Stitch" is now in theaters.