In the past several years Disney has been dropping new releases on Disney’s Golden age in cinema. Disney’s animated classics such as Mulan, Lion King, Cinderella, Beauty and The Beast, have been all been made into live action films over the past decade. But is changing the tone of the original film making the films from our childhood better or worse?
Starting with the most underrated princess, that single handedly made Disney what it is today. Snow White the first princess in the Disney universe live action movie was poorly marketed as 2012, Mirror Mirror staring Julia Roberts and Lilly Collins was complete flop and ignored compared to the rest of Disney’s live action adaptions thus far. Unlike the other film adaptions Snow White was marketed under a different name which took away from its luster and ultimately downplayed the story. With that being said, Disney’s once lovable sweet films have become more intense, especially with scenes when the villains are involved.
Example of that would be the scene in 1999 animated Tarzan, in which Clayton is strangled by tree vines is pretty gruesome and seeing that interpreted in live action wouldn’t be child friendly. Live action has making things much more traumatizing or scary in general. Disney’s rendition of 2016 Jungle Book, created a more dour mood to the film. The once lovable enjoyable music had a completely different feeling, classics such as Bare Necessities and I wanna be like you. The visuals in the film created a barrier that separated the gimmicky nature of the original animated version to something much more surreal. I remember being in the movie theater and hearing children gasping and some even crying upon the Shere Khan attempts to kill Mowgli. The childlike tale of the story is lost in the serious efforts to modernize the beloved fairytales for the modern age.
Recently having watched Aladdin, the story lacked sentiment, though it was funny in its own way, many things needed to be added to make the story work. For example Princess Jasmine sings an empowering feminist song a song about not being silenced by the men in power that surround her, which was okay. Her right hand, Handmaiden played by Nasim Pedrad is who truly helped add on to the comedic moments alongside of Will Smith as Genie. My point again is that the Aladdin rendition lacked emotion. Aladdin played by Mena Massoud, upon discovering the secrets to the most powerful being in the universe lacked bewilderment and wonder. The Disney childlike storytelling is not well communicated through these live action renditions.
With that being said I am afraid to see how the soon to be released Lion king hitting theaters summer 2019. I have high hopes but I just honestly wished things could be sweet and cute like Inside Out, but with more major life risking situations I think these fairytale stories are difficult to maintain childlike when the animation style is made to be seen as more realistic.
