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Pinocchio Dies, Bambi Gets Shot, and Other Changes to Disney Movies (2018)
- Rebelgecko 6y agoAs the Disney+ versions gradually become the canonical releases of all Disney movies, I wouldn't be surprised if they retcon a number of their movies. There's already been blatant examples like adding Hayden Christensen to Return of the Jedi[1], but they've also changed movies like Lilo & Stitch, Toy Story 2, Splash, etc and I think it will only get more prevalent as time goes by (although I'm sure the changes will be similar to the ones mentioned in the article- removing some of the darker aspects of their stories, or ones that might offend more puritan viewers.) [1]: I realize this change was pre-Disney+, but presumably Disney has the rights to previous cuts of Star Wars in addition to the "Special" ones
- offtop5 6y agoI can definitely see many of the Simpson episodes being taken down within the next decade. Physical media will always matter for this reason
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago*piracy will always matter for this reason
- ghaff 6y agoYou're assuming that current content doesn't tend to drive out the older content. Piracy works a lot better for popular new material than for obscure older material. (The Simpsons is popular enough that this may not apply but torrents don't work very well for mostly obscure works.)
- marcosdumay 6y agoI think the GP is just pointing that physical media mostly doesn't exist anymore, and even when it does, DRM means it's not durable.
- ghaff 6y ago>physical media mostly doesn't exist anymore It mostly does. Of course, that will certainly change over time.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago>torrents don't work very well for mostly obscure works You’re not on the right sites :)
- neuralRiot 6y agoPrivate trackers FTW.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoDisney+ is already missing at least one Simpsons episode (the Michael Jackson one). A lot of jokes have also been censored or neutered, although some of those changes were already made to reruns before Disney+
- echelon 6y agoWhen and why did America become so embarrassed of itself? I'm a liberal, but I hate all of the censure going on. I think people have the capacity to understand change and social progress. In other instances, we're actually backsliding into conservatism (wrt sex and nudity). Replacing sex with violence is not a good alternative.
- 082349872349872 6y agoAs a cynic, I'd just guessed that every time they change a work they reset the copyright clock.
- PeterisP 6y agoIt does not reset the clock on the old version (which people might prefer), the changed version is technically a new work. However, the copyright terms are so long that the clock won't run out even for the old versions during my lifetime, so that's probably not the main reason.
- vagrantJin 6y agoIts a lack which manifests through an entire generation. Probably because movies are at the intersection of big money and expressive art. So revision of classics becomes status quo. Theres a good word to describe it : DECLINE. It's fundamentalism. Steven pressfield says it best. We cant find our way into the future so we retreat to the mystical 'golden age'...there are people pitching to remake Bambi - with a straight face. Why? Is there no new story to tell? No new classics to be written?
- Razengan 6y ago> We cant find our way into the future so we retreat to the mystical 'golden age' This is such a perfect quote. Apt for many things.
- tzs 6y agoNot all the changes are because of embarrassment. The Lilo & Stitch change was to one scene, where Lilo tries to hide from her sister by hiding in the clothes dryer. They changed the dryer to a storage cabinet. It turns out that a couple thousand kids a year are injured by getting inside washers and dryers, and a few die. They either get locked in and suffocate, or somehow the machine gets turned on which can cause a lot of trauma.
- raverbashing 6y agoI think the only movie that D+ won't touch is Song of the South (for understandable reasons) though yeah, some other changes might be good ideas or not (though I don't mind so much the "updates" in the Star Wars movies)
- srtjstjsj 6y agoHiding $Song of the South* is silencing Black voices and erasing Black culture. If they cared about racism they'd do a remake that keeps the beautiful art and reframes the context a bit.
- 082349872349872 6y agoBr'er Rabbit, like Rabinovich in soviet jokes, is often worthy of emulation. Was it Br'er Rabbit or a cousin (or maybe even El-ahrairah himself?) who convinced the Greedy Lion to attack his own reflection in the well?
- curryst 6y agoIt's a movie, made by white people, based on a book written by a white person, which was a re-writing of African American tales he collected on plantations. While at the very core there is a hint of Black culture, I would say that it's viewed through a very, very white lens, to the point that it's more of a statement of white America's views of Black culture than it is a piece of Black culture. > If they cared about racism they'd do a remake that keeps the beautiful art and reframes the context a bit. The controversy is almost core to the current interpretation of the movie. It's the fact that the characters (slaves or not slaves, but free men, if you follow the book which establishes the setting as antebellum) seem happy, or at least unperturbed, by their relationship with their master and their status in society. If you reflect the truth, that they were unhappy and being held down, that seems more like a new movie than it does a remake.
- goto11 6y agoThe article is about how a story changes and evolves during the development of a movie. This happens for every movie and has nothing to do with censorship.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoI think it's interesting how the story can evolve and develop once the movie is already released. I think it's interesting how we perceive movies as being these immutable works, but they're actually being changed to better fit in with modern times (eg the removal of the bit in Toy Story 2 about Harvey Weinstein bit because jokes about his predations are less socially acceptable)
- dagmx 6y agoThe title is a bit misleading because the changes weren't to the movies themselves but to the sources during adaptation. The subtle difference is that none of these were in the films script in pre production so weren't changes to the film in production, with the exception of fantasia. Having worked in the animated film industry for a while, there's so much that does get changed in both pre production and production that people don't hear about. Some of the best received animated films have been stinkers internally until something clicks. Whether that's rewriting a critical character a few months from delivery to throwing out entire sequences. Similarly many poorly received films were great in production but after focus testing and suits getting involved, they get diluted down. Sometimes entire finished sequences get cut leaving the remaining shots from making sense to an audience. Film making is a very organic process, sometimes good and sometimes not. There's this Illusion in public that what the public sees is the directors initial vision. But largely it's the work of hundreds of people, morphing over time to try and find what will be right.
- msla 6y ago> There's this Illusion in public that what the public sees is the directors initial vision. But largely it's the work of hundreds of people, morphing over time to try and find what will be right. Critics can have this illusion, too: Auteur theory posits that films have an author, that author being the director, and you can see that director's style manifest in the films they make. Sometimes, sure, this is obvious: Hitchcock, Kubrick, Tarantino... they all made or make films with a distinctive stamp on them. Where this theory runs aground is where your comment comes in, filmmaking as a collaborative process. Citizen Kane was, for example, definitely a collaboration among at least three people: Welles, Mankiewicz, and Toland, the director, screenwriter, and cinematographer, respectively. They each contributed to the film as a finished product, a thing of words and images. And then there's the failure of the auteur: Ed Wood, Tommy Wiseau, people who had creative control through working outside the Hollywood system and, frankly, blew it. Plan 9 From Outer Space might be the Citizen Kane of laughably bad science fiction films, but it's not the Citizen Kane of films. To make a baseball analogy, Wood tried hard, had plenty of heart, got up there, swung for the fences... and spun around like a top a few times before landing flat on his face, never even whiffing the ball. There's a reason Burton made a sensitive film about him and his efforts.
- DyslexicAtheist 6y agowatching Pinocchio (the series[1]) as a child was always somewhat scary. there were some moments that I remember until today which I was really terrified and that gave me actual nightmares. I'd really love to see a remake of the film (or the series) but for adults and as a fantasy thriller/horror show. It would have lot of potential I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio:_The_Series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio:_The_Series
- gambiting 6y agoSo I don't know if this is real, but what an incredible read explaining the actual story of Pinnochio as written by the author: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/cyuy4c/z/eyv1pe3 https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/cyuy4c/z/eyv1pe3
- 082349872349872 6y agoReal af, that's the Carlo Collodi story I remember. I don't know if Tolstoy's буратино was any more saccharine, but it's doubtful. Fairy tales as recorded by the Grimms are also generally dark (and folk songs generally filthy). Thomas Bowdler, LRCP, FRS (an inspiration for Orwell's crimestop?) was an english bowlderiser who flipped up Antony+Cleopatra, among other plays, which causes one to wonder what that melonfarmer did with lines like: "She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed: He plough'd her, and she cropp'd." Bonus script: https://web.mit.edu/johanna/Public/skinhead.hamlet https://web.mit.edu/johanna/Public/skinhead.hamlet
- goto11 6y agoYou can read the actual book: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/500 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/500
- moray 6y agoThis [1] is a TV series I remember watching when I was a child, I can't remember how faithful is to the original story (at least I remember it having a shark instead of a whale) but I remember too being scary. I am not sure how easy is to find it and if there are any English subs for it though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Pinocchio_(1972_miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Pinocchio_(1...
- sjwright 6y agoSemi related: A great YouTube video by Lindsay Ellis about how Disney has further changed aspects of their stories between Disney originals and the live action / CGI remakes / modern sequels, largely in the form of the remakes being woke meta-commentary on the original works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU1ffHa47YY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU1ffHa47YY Topics it covers include: • Dumbo and the attempts to paper over ideas of racism, alcoholism, animal cruelty; • Beauty and the Beast and feminism/female empowerment; • Aladdin adding redundant ideas of female empowerment (that the original arguably didn't lack); • Mary Poppins being a story about not caring about material possessions to the 2018 sequel being centred around concern for material possessions.
- wmeredith 6y agoThe woke Disney remakes have all been worse than their previous counterparts. The pseudo-empowerment of Jasmin in the live action Alladin was particularly egregious. She is a strong character in the original with nuance and agency. In the remake she sings a song about female empowerment where she tells everyone off, but it turns out to be a dream sequence. Sigh. Having said all that, the live action Cinderella remake was really something special. I can’t recommend it enough. After seeing it, I great hopes for the rest. I’ve since been disappointed.
- gridlockd 6y ago> In the remake she sings a song about female empowerment where she tells everyone off, but it turns out to be a dream sequence. Sigh. Any "empowerment narrative" that has "be a princess" as step one is doomed to failure. Might as well drive the point home that it is all a fantasy.
- 082349872349872 6y agoI thought Enchanted did a reasonable job, but may be from an out-of-touch generation. Not all princesses are royal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TQmo5TvZQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TQmo5TvZQY
- moron4hire 6y agoWait, but Babmi does get shot in the Disney movie version.
- mlang23 6y agoAnd disney ruined the star wars franchise like nothing else. The sequels are such a punch in the face of fans of the franchise.
- beagle3 6y agoI've read several traditional variations of the Rapunzel story, and they don't -- in general -- make much sense. (A pregnant woman will refuse to eat anything except Salad from lettuce that grows in a witch's garden; sends husband to steal lettuce. Witch catches him, takes newborn instead. Then there's other stuff about the prince that makes no sense). The Disney version, though quite far, keeps enough main elements to be recognizably related to the original story; and the storyline makes a lot more sense. I made sure my children are aware that it's disneyfication of the original story, but I don't blame them for not caring much. The Little Mermaid, by comparison, is much closer to the (sad, dark) original -- with a notable exception of the end being a happy one. In this case, my children do care about the two very different endings, and like both.
- InfiniteRand 6y agoThere’s a Japanese film adaptation of the little mermaid which is very close to the original, except in the original they make the mermaids death a little nicer by having her become basically an angel, but the Japanese version just has her turned into sea foam and that’s the end of that
- beagle3 6y agoOn the other hand, there's Ponyo - The Ghibli+Myazaki version, which has a disney-style happy ending where she just gives up everything magical to become a person.
- dehrmann 6y agoSurprised it didn't mention "The Little Mermaid." Ariel doesn't get Eric and sorta dies at the end.
- bitwize 6y agoI knew that Big Hero 6 was originally a Marvel comic. Quite frankly, it was lame, and originally intended as a way for Marvel to capture the weeaboo dollar. Disney was looking through the back catalog of their acquisition, Marvel, for properties to adapt into animation, came across BH6, and set it in its own universe which in many ways is even more grounded than the MCU. Sometimes, an adaptation -- even a Disneyfication -- brings out the best elements of the original and leaves behind the junk.
- scotty79 6y agoSometimes really bizzare elements get carried over to movies. Like Black Manta suit in Aquaman movie. It felt like something from power rangers.
- YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago>> Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the author of Faust. Ah, yes, I thought the name sounded familiar.