The Live Action Disney remakes do NOT demonstrate any level of understanding of the original content.
- Belle likes to read because she likes the idea of adventure in the great wide somewhere, not because she’s a feminist who believes in overturning the patriarchy by learning to read. Then she learns that giving up your life for someone else and looking past the surface of people is the best adventure she can get.
- Cruella is—and I cannot stress this enough—a crazy puppy-skinning self-obsessed maniac with no discernible care for anybody but herself. She is not a tragic young woman looking to find herself.
- Simba doesn’t think poorly of himself: he thinks about himself too much. When he’s a cub he thinks about how he’ll grow up and get to do everything his own way, and when he’s an adult he thinks he should get to stay in the jungle without anybody telling him how to live his life. He’s always hiding from responsibility. His reasons for doing it just go from childish entitlement to crippling guilt until Rafiki and Mufasa’s ghost knock some sense into him. But until then, he’s always thinking about how he shouldn’t have to take any responsibility. That’s how he runs from who he is—not because he’s ashamed of who he is, but because who he is requires responsibility.
- Genie wants to be free more than all the wonders and all the riches in all the world. He would never tell Prince Ali “I don’t care anything about that wish.” If he had said anything like that in the original movie, half the weight of his actually being set free in the finale would be gone. Meaningless.
- Mulan is a klutz who had to learn discipline; she was absolutely not born with a convenient superpower for fighting.
- Jasmine does not want to be Sultan. She wants to be free. She wants to be normal. She wants to be known. She’s caring enough toward normal peasants to hand them an apple when she notices they’re hungry; she’s naive and sheltered enough to forget that everything has to be paid for, even apples.
- Mulan is a homebody who loves her family enough to risk her life for them; she does not dream of leaving them to have her own adventures and thrills, not even as a child.
- Lady doesn’t teach Tramp how to have self-worth by helping her owners to adopt him after his original owner abandoned him. Actually, the original Lady teaches Tramp, who was never abandoned but instead takes advantage of several human families and lady-dogs alike, the value of commitment and loyalty.
- Maleficent lives alone in a crumbling tower with nobody but a pet raven. Flora, Fauna, and Merrywhether work together and love each other and stay with one another. Maleficent is petty, holding centuries-long grudges and never forgetting an offense. Flora, Fauna and Merrywhether are selfless, giving up their whole lives and all their magic to raise a child that isn’t even theirs in a poor cottage. Maleficent is cruel enough to kill all her own minions and doom an innocent child and chain a lovelorn prince to a wall while she tells him all about his doomed love. Flora, Fauna, and Merrywhether are compassionate enough to bake a cake and make a dress with no magic and endless trouble for Briar Rose’s birthday, even while they wipe away tears at the thought of giving her back to her parents. Maleficent shouldn’t get to be the villainess and heroine and the lover and the mother and the guardian of nature, while Flora, Fauna and Merrywhether get reduced to annoying stabs at comic relief. Flora, Fauna, and Merrywhether protect and nurture nature, while Maleficent kills flowers and children. That’s the story. You lose all the compare-contrast when you make Maleficent the only character.
- The Beast doesn’t just allow Belle to trick her father into letting her take her father’s place. He realizes Belle could break the curse, not because she’s a girl who found his castle, but because she’s a girl who is selfless and loving enough to say something like “take me instead.” He makes her promise to stay forever; he would never say that her love for her father makes her a fool, because that type of love is what he’s banking on to break his own curse.
- Aladdin would never say “‘I basically am a Prince.” His whole problem is that he knows, all too well, who he truly is, and it’s not the kind of guy who can be Sultan. He won’t set the Genie free because he can’t make himself pretend otherwise and thinks he needs help.
- Alice starts the movie by saying she wishes she could literally have a world where everything is done her way, then ends it by running out of that world for her life from a mad Queen…who ALSO wants everything done her way. It is just not a story about a young lady remembering who she really is (muchness) and embracing her inner crazy. It’s the opposite of that.
- Belle would never plan to escape when she gave her word that she would take her father’s place. Belle would never prioritize her own freedom over the Beast’s happiness.
Disney producers keep trying to adapt their old stories to “‘updated” values, and it will never work. The values that made characters like Belle and Mulan so enduring are totally incompatible with the bilge that gets printed on sassy t-shirts and Facebook statuses today.
