MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Lilo and Stitch's ending had to be dramatically altered following the tragic terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.
Lilo & Stitch was a delightful Disney animated film that came out in June 2002. The movie was about an alien created as a machine of destruction getting loose and crash landing on Earth, where he is taken in and adopted as the "dog" of an adorable Hawaiian girl name Lilo. She names the alien "Stitch."
The alien government that lost Stitch send Stitch's creator (Dr. Jumba Jookiba) after the alien, but when he and his ally, Pleakley, continue to fail, the government eventually sends a much more dangerous hunter named Captain Gantu to get Stitch. Gantu kidnaps both Lilo and Stitch, but Stitch escapes.
Lilo's older sister, Nani, convinces Jumba and Pleakley to help her and Stitch rescue Lilo. They agree, and they're an awesome aerial chase with the good guys in Jumba's space ship and Gantu in his own ship. Eventually, Lilo is rescued and the government is convinced that Stitch can be more than just the destructive beast that he was created to be.
Adorable stuff.
In his tenth anniversary retrospective of the film in 2012, however, the Entertainment Nut revealed some shocking changes to the end of the film.
Another change was the slamming on the brakes of an action set-piece in the wake of the events of 9/11. Originally, to get Lilo back from Captain Gantu, Jumba, Pleakley, Stitch, and Nani hijack an airplane, including flying it through a commercial district on the island.
This was a key sequence in the film, and much of the scene had already been animated and finalized.
The solution? Restructure the 747 so that it looked like an alien spaceship (after all, Jumba and Pleakley had to get to Earth somehow!), and change the commercial district to a mountainous canyon area.
Here are some examples of the original versus the edited film...
And here is a Vox video showing ALL of the edits...
Wow, that's shocking. Can you imagine, in the middle of the horrors of 9/11, to be the animators and know that not only are you watching an awful tragedy, but now the end of your movie looks ghastly.
They really did an amazing job fixing it with dutiful edits.
The legend is...
STATUS: True
Thanks to the Entertainment Nut and Vox for the information and that great video!
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