Given Disney's huge success with it's practice of simply making shot for shot remakes of it's animated classics with live actors and CGI, it's no shock that they've come for Snow White next. Of course, they've decided to make Snow White Hispanic, and the eliminate the Dwarves, but other then that it's the same movie.
Let's start with the fact that Snow White is based on a Germanic fairy tale, and that the title character is identified by the coloration of her skin. (IE, for some reason it was important that her skin was described as being white as snow. In all honesty, I'm not sure that this makes much of a difference to the plot of the movie, but I also don't see how making this change enhances the story either.
The Dwarves on the other hand, are a bigger issue. As someone who just finished LOTR, I am reminded that in the fairy tale/fantasy/whatever genre of literature, Dwarves are NOT simply humans who are short. They are literally always portrayed as an entirely different "race" from humans. Again, I'm not sure why it's important that these 7 characters are Dwarves (as opposed to Elves, Fairies, Trolls, or any other made up "race" of being), but it's clearly absurd to not portray them as Dwarves are historically portrayed. This is quite obviously a stupid, misguided, attempt to avoid criticism from the woke APL.
In my mind, what's worse is that this decision takes actual, meaningful, acting work away from "little people" (or whatever the PC term currently is), and gives it to people of "normal" height. This seems no different from hiring a sighted actor to play a blind character, hiring a white actor to play a black character, or (the Hollywood horror du jour) hiring a straight actor to play a gay character. I'd be shocked if there weren't 7 "little people" actors currently working who would have killed to get a primary role in a movie expected to do a lot of business.
I suspect that this will be one more in the recent string of Disney movie "failures", and that the "failure" will be chalked up to "white supremacy" or some other nonsense.
4 comments:
It's hard to believe it will draw many "woke" parents, dragging their little ones toward more indoctrination in leftism, but harder to believe normal people will waste their money and time...barring whining from their little ones to see it, if that's at all a possibility.
Walt Disney routinely drew from old fairy tales for inspiration, and changed them considerably to protect the little ones from the true horrors many of the tales related as part of their ultimate lessons or morals. But to water that down further with leftist "wokism" has not helped their bottom line in recent years.
Art,
It could be argued then, that this recent trend is in keeping with that precedent. Although I don't think that toning down the evil in some of those stories because of their intended audience is necessarily a bad thing. This recent trend is piling "woke" bullshit on top of a complete lack of creativity, and it's not drawing audiences.
I wrote elsewhere (in the context of the various strikes) that it might not be a bad thing is Hollywood and the whole entertainment industry implode. It's not unrealistic to think that the people who control the entertainment industry are getting complacent, arrogant, and out of touch with the majority of their audience. There is obviously a desire for entertainment, but maybe a great reset of the current system might allow some new, more creative, more diverse artists to emerge.
I don't know if you follow the Critical Drinker on YouTube. He's Scottish dude who does fantastic reviews of movies from the perspective of a guy who really loves and understands what a good movie is, and does so supposedly somewhat drunk. He's awesome and his reviews of crap movies like this new Snow White movie are worthy of awards for their creativity and entertainment value. But just as cool is when he reviews a great movie and one can feel just how much great movies mean to him. He's like a Roger Ebert for our time but not a leftist.
Ebert, though he said stupid lefty stuff now and then, was my go-to guy for movies back in the day. (I wasn't a Gene Siskel guy) By some means unknown to me, I developed an affinity for his reviews and found that I could really accurately gauge how much I'd like a movie by his reviews, including when he'd give less than stellar marks for films like "Die Hard", which I really liked. I believe he gave it only two stars, but at the same time, he didn't totally crap on it. He judged "Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure" on it's own merits and seemed to like it better. By this time I was totally in tune with how he reviewed movies. Just about a week or so ago, I watched a YouTube vid of him explaining why he regarded "Casablanca" as one the all time greats in his book (and it remains so in mine), while also pointing out its shortcomings. An awesome hour or so if you can find it there.
The Critical Drinker has the same passion for film and the same understanding of what makes a movie great. But above Ebert, his criticism of crap is golden entertainment. At this point, as it was with Ebert, if the Drinker likes a movie, I know I will as well. Go to YouTube and seek out his Snow White review. It'll be worth your while.
BTW, now and then he'll review and older movie. One that's been around for twenty years. He reviewed "Falling Down", which starred Michael Douglass in the main role and Robert Duvall as the retiring cop who hunts him down (Tuesday Weld played Duvall's wife in a bit part that's just awesome). If you've not seen it, you won't be disappointed.
Interesting.
The problem with Hollywood in it's current incarnation is a complete lack of imagination or creativity. We continually get sequels and shot for shot remakes of old movies. When we do see something "creative" it's usually something that pushes the bounds of decency to extremes, which probably isn't that creative.
I am more and more convinced that Hollywood simply needs a total rebuild if it's going to remain viable.
we've seen this on the music industry, and now we're seeing in in the film and tv industry as well. Technology has lowered the bar for people to create content, to the point that anyone can do a credible production, and the myriad of streaming services provide outlets for content. Including overseas content that has been hard to find until recently. Those in power in Hollywood think that they still have the lock on the industry they had 15 years ago, but they don't
I honestly just don't see many movies at this point in my life, and I've never relied on reviews to guide my choices.
I want to go see Sound of Freedom in a theater because I think that it's important to drive the box office numbers for films like this.
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