Disney Animation: Live Action Adaptations Collection

[Lebowski]

Ha! I doubt it! It is funny sometimes to think of elements of stories that Disney skips over. Some of the details of Pocahontas, for example, or The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Ive seen a brilliant send up on Beauty and the beast, that not only calls into question the fact that Belle probably has Stockholm syndrome by being imprisoned by the beast. It also points out the fact that the Witch is a massive arse, she has no reason to transforms all the beast servants in to house hold crap, their only crime is being guilty by association.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, it's probably best not to look to deeply into those stories because they usually lead to dark places. A lot of old stories are pretty horrifying too, at least in their early incarnations. Many got sweetened up over the years. I guess some were more relevant to growing up in an age where you'd likely be dead before age 10 and saw heads on pikes on a regular basis.

[Neon Ignition]

This was one of the earliest live action projects to enter development and it's taken a long time to get to this point with it. In its early stages it was courting Chloe Moretz for the role of Ariel and that still caught complaints, many are incredibly precious about the characters and Disney shoulders a fair bit of that by merchandising the life out of the characters over multiple generations. They've been actively promoting the 'Disney' incarnation of these characters for decades, getting fans to raise their children to adore them and in some cases even their childrens childrens. On Era they were rightly quick to call out tweets etc that were objecting to the casting and even then they didn't all come from angry white people.

I'm sure Disney is braced for some level of complaint, it's their own marketing branding they're effectively overriding by making a film that, assuming 're-imagining' means not a remake of the animated version, means it disappoints millions of fans before a single frame is filmed. Even the fairly faithful Aladdin only overcame the pre-release dull buzz towards the last minute.

[Dogg Thang]

Yeah, honestly I think that’s all rubbish. We’ve had loads of these and they aren’t all frame faithful to the cartoons and Disney doesn’t seem to care and they are so protective of their characters and merch that the only reason they don’t care is that they’re pretty certain that it won’t have any long term negative effects. When the one that creates a storm is the one that casts a black kid and we know very little else about it, I think we can all be pretty certain what we’re seeing here.

[Neon Ignition]

I mean, maybe the films objectors will entirely be due to racism but I'd wager it'd be over simplifying it to assume that's the case whilst setting aside the hundreds of millions of children, adults and old people for whom Disney has made these films and characters a cultural cornerstone and a milestone of their own upbringings to the point they spent hundreds of billions on them, name their children after them, travel the world just to see models and rides based on characters that to them are iconic etc. I'd in no way set aside that a vocal racist audience isn't going to make a big deal of this but in terms of Disney output The Little Mermaid is right up there just like Frozen now is to a generation.

[Dogg Thang]

Simple question because maybe I’m missing the info (I haven’t been into any of these Disney remakes so I don’t keep up with them): what else is there currently to object to about this movie?

[Neon Ignition]

From what I can gather, with each film Disney opts to either remake or reimagine one of the animated films. It's a dice roll each time as to which approach is best and in TLM's case it's always been earmarked as a reimagining rather than a remake and fans of TLM don't seem to want that, they want a remake largely like Aladdin has been and I guess how Lion King also seems to be (Beauty and the Beast too broadly bar the poorly received addition of a subplot about Belle's mother dying of the plague).

So there's a baseline already there since I think it was 2015 when this film first surfaced. The decision to cast a black actress has only been mooted since last year when Zendaya was being approached and that did ratchet it up.

Like I say, I agree that Disney remaking this film with a largely black cast is going to drag out all the racist naysayers but negativity existed since before that decision as its a precious property to millions. I think the decision to reimagine Sleeping Beauty worked because Maleficent was always one of the more popular and enduring aspects of that film over the lead. Jungle Book presumably because the original is such a thin film though that same approach failed for Dumbo recently. Fans are fickle on these films, but I guess it all also falls prey to the era they're being made in as Last Jedi and Solo also discovered.

[Dogg Thang]

So nothing then.

[Neon Ignition]

Not if you don't care about the original to a level enough to care no, but millions don't see it that way. I'm not saying they're right, but it's still a thing.

[Dogg Thang]

I’m not sure you understand the question. I’m including people who care about the movie. Right now, with what we know about the movie, what else is there about this remake that people would object to? Like, have they turned Sebastian into a horse with Tourette’s? Or it’s now set in space? What other details do we know that could have people disgruntled?

[prinnysquad]

I’ve a few black friends on social media kicking off over this, saying it all feels patronisingly shoehorned in, and that they want original black characters and stories.

[Dogg Thang]

But... but... you can’t have an original live action adaptation of a Disney Classic...?

[Neon Ignition]

We know it's not a remake of a beloved Disney classic film, that's what people want and they know they're not getting it ergo they're irked. If it's not a remake then for those people this version might as well be one of the many other non-Disney depictions made over the decades including the other two non-Disney movies coming as well.
I'm hesitant to use it as an example but it's somewhat akin to the Ghostbusters 2016 debate. A film that wasn't what fans wanted yet traded itself on the ip and legacy of the beloved version. The lazy argument there has always been the film failed because of the gender nerd war over it, that was a big thing but it wasn't the sole source of people's disagreement with the film just as the race of Ariel wouldn't be here.

[Dogg Thang]

So again the answer is no? In that we know not one single other detail than: black girl. Otherwise you’d have given it to me.

And yes, Ghostbusters is an example in that there was a time when people lost their minds over only one word known about the movie: women. You can’t with hindsight say they were right or it wasn’t actually about women because that’s all there was back then. That was it. It was not an oversimplification to say it was about women at that time. It was all there was. You’re writing long paragraphs trying to make it not about race when that is literally the only thing there is right now. When Sebastian does turn out to be a horse with Tourette’s, when it is set in space, yeah, it will then be an oversimplification to say it’s about race. Right now, it’s all there is and, like with people throwing their toys out of the pram at the mention of women, I think if I was trying to deflect that or make it into something else I’d be asking questions about why I’m doing that.

[prinnysquad]

But... but... you can’t have an original live action adaptation of a Disney Classic...?

Ha ha true!