6 Things Disney's Live-Action Tangled Must Get Right To Avoid Repeating A 2026 Disaster

Published Sep 10, 2026, 3:20 PM EDT

Sky Blanton is a Movie Contributor at ScreenRant with professional experience covering movies, television, and pop culture. Her published work spans news, interviews, features, and opinion pieces, with a focus on film, franchise storytelling, and the entertainment industry.

She earned her bachelor's degree in Communications with a concentration in Professional Writing and a minor in Business Writing from Southern New Hampshire University.

Disney's live-action remakes have a problem that is getting harder to ignore, and the upcoming Tangled adaption runs the same risk. When an original movie is already beloved, recreating it almost exactly can make the new version feel less like a fresh take and more like an expensive copy.

The 2026 live-action Moana is a great example of this. The remake has plenty going for it, including the strong performances, beautifully detailed costumes, and impressive sets, but it also sticks so closely to the 2016 animated movie that some of its original energy and charm get lost along the way. The story is still good because the story was already good, but that does not necessarily make the live-action version feel necessary.

That puts Tangled in a tricky position. The 2010 animated movie is one of Disney's most beloved modern classics, and just recreating it will not be enough. The live-action movie needs to understand what made the original so special and bring that magic into the real world without losing the personality that made audiences fall in love with Rapunzel's story in the first place.

6 Rapunzel Needs To Feel Like More Than A Disney Princess

Rapunzel is not interesting because she is a princess. She is interesting because she is an absolute weirdo who has spent her entire life trapped in a tower and somehow managed to become curious, creative, funny, and completely obsessed with seeing the outside world. That absolutely needs to come through in the live-action movie.

It would be easy to make Rapunzel look the part. She should be awkward when she first leaves the tower, then overwhelmed by everything she sees. She should be excited, terrified, impulsive, and occasionally ridiculous. Most importantly, she needs to feel like the person driving her own story. Flynn doesn't rescue her from the tower. She makes a deal with him, drags him along on her adventure, and basically turns his entire life upside down.

That is also where Moana offers a useful warning. One criticism of the live-action remake was that some of Moana's physical feats didn't feel as convincing as they did in animation. Tangled cannot lose that sense of energy just because Rapunzel is being played by a real person. The frying pan, her hair, the climbing, chaos, and all of Rapunzel’s exaggerated reactions are part of the original films fun. She does not need to become a more "realistic" princess. She needs to feel like Rapunzel.

5 Rapunzel & Flynn's Chemistry Has To Work

Rapunzel and Flynn are an odd pairing on paper, but that is exactly why their relationship is so much fun. She has spent her entire life in one place, while he has made a career out of stealing things and talking his way out of trouble. When they meet, Rapunzel has just knocked him unconscious with a frying pan and hidden his stolen crown. Instead of being rescued by him, she makes a deal with him. He takes her to see the lanterns, and she gives him back what was stolen.

The trip gives them plenty of time to get to know each other. Flynn is initially frustrated by how naive Rapunzel is, when she quickly realizes that the confident thief act is mostly a front. The Snuggly Duckling is an especially important moment because it shows Flynn that Rapunzel can see the good in people he has already written off. Later, when he finally tells her his real name is Eugene Fitzherbert, their relationship has moved beyond the playful attraction that made their first encounter.

The live-action needs to make that progression believable. Rapunzel shouldn't suddenly fall for Flynn because he's handsome, and Flynn shouldn't change just because he's met a princess. Their feelings grow because they challenge each other's world views.

4 The Music Can't Be An Afterthought

There are a lot of songs that the live-action will need to live up to, and simply getting actors who can sing will not be enough. The performances also need to avoid feeling too perfect or overly theatrical. "When Will My Life Begin?" works because it feels like Rapunzel letting her imagination run wild while going through the same routine she's repeated for years. If the live-action version turns it into a big, perfectly choreographed musical number, it could lose the loneliness underneath all the excitement.

"I've Got A Dream" has an entirely different problem. The humor comes from how seriously these intimidating-looking criminals take their ridiculous dreams. A live-action remake could easily make those types of scenes feel awkward if the actors are too stiff or too realistic. The movie has to be willing to look a little silly, because that silliness is the point.

Most importantly, the cast shouldn't try to imitate the original performances note for note. That's part of the problem Moana ran into, with comparisons between Catherine Laga'aia's singing and Auli'i Carvalho’s much more powerful animated performance (via ScreenDaily). Tangled needs its own performances while still having the emotion behind the numbers. "I See The Light" especially shouldn't feel like two actors showing off their vocals. It should feel like Rapunze is experiencing the biggest night of her life, and Flynn is realizing he's falling in love with her.

3 Mother Gothel Needs To Be Genuinely Unsettling

The live-action Tangled should let Mother Gothel get scarier as Rapunzel gets closer to freedom. At the beginning, there should be nothing obviously monstrous about her. She brushes Rapunzel's hair, brings her gifts, calls her 'my flower,' and acts like the only thing standing between her daughter and a dangerous world. The control should be easy to miss because Rapunzel has never known anything else.

When she asks to leave the tower, Gothel can initially laugh it off before turning cruel, attacking Rapunzel's intelligence and making her question whether she could survive without her. By the time Rapunzel finally realizes that Gothel has been manipulating her, the audience should already be dreading what happens when Gothel loses control. Gothel shouldn't suddenly become a completely different person. The sweetness should disappear, the affection should turn possessive, and the woman who spent the entire movie insisting she was protecting Rapunzel should finally make it clear that she never wanted a daughter. She wanted to keep her.

2 The Lantern Scene Has To Live Up To The Original

There is almost no way for the live-action adaption to hide a disappointing lantern scene. It is the moment everyone will be waiting for, and it is also one of the most recognizable images from the animated movie.

Rapunzel has spent her entire life watching the lanterns from her tower without knowing why they appear every year, and now she is finally sitting in the middle of them with Flynn. Her excitement, disbelief, and growing realization that this night means more than she expected are what make the scene so special. The live-action version needs to give those emotions room to breathe instead of rushing toward the next big visual.

Flynn's role matters just as much; is the point where their relationship stops feeling like a temporary partnership and starts becoming something neither of them expected. “I See the Light” needs to feel like the soundtrack to that realization, not just a song playing over pretty CGI. The lanterns can look incredible, but if the audience isn't caught up in what the moment means to Rapunzel and Flynn, it will never have the same impact as the original.

1 Tangled Can't Just Recreate The Animated Movie

Being faithful to the animated movie isn't enough if the new version doesn't give audiences a reason to experience the story again. If Tangled recreates every major scene without adding anything to the characters or world, it could end up feeling like the same movie with a bigger budget.

Live action could make Rapunzel's isolation much more obvious by making the tower and the kingdom feel like two completely different worlds. The tower should feel quiet, enclosed, and almost unnaturally still. Rapunzel knows every corner of it, while the forest outside stretches around her with nothing but trees and empty space. The kingdom should be the exact opposite. It should be crowded, noisy, colorful, and constantly moving, with people talking over each other, musicians playing in the streets, boats passing through the harbor, and something new happening everywhere Rapunzel looks.

That contrast would make her first trip outside feel like more than a change in location. After spending 18 years in a place where she can predict almost everything, Rapunzel would suddenly be surrounded by thousands of things she has never seen or experienced. She could be fascinated by something as simple as a busy market or overwhelmed by having strangers brush past her. The bigger and more alive the kingdom feels, the easier it is to understand why Rapunzel has spent so long dreaming about it.

That is the kind of difference live action can bring to Tangled without changing the story. The tower should show the audience what Rapunzel has been missing, and the kingdom should finally show her just how much of the world was kept from her.