*WEEKLY RANT* DISNEY FILMS The Walt Disney Company should really get a major environmental award. There has been no other company in history that has even come close to their brilliance at recycling. “What on earth could he be talking about?”, you wonder. From its earliest days, Disney has made an art form out of dusting off and salvaging previously used material for their films. Everything from fairy tales (Snow White, Cinderella, etc.) to children’s classic books (Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio, etc.) was fair game for them in the early days. Then Disney also got into sequels and big screen/small screen cross-pollination before any of the other film or television studios ever even had a clue about how profitable such enterprises could be. For example, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid are other childrens stories/fairy tales they have cloned. Disney has remade such “classics” with astounding success, yet many people have no idea they are watching a remake of an older film, which has either been copied outright or the story line has been blatantly ripped off and renamed. A couple of examples are Father of the Bride (book 1949, original 1950 film with Spencer Tracy & Elizabeth Taylor, 1991 Disney film with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton) and The Absent Minded Professor (original 1961 Disney film with Fred MacMurray and 1997 remake titled Flubber with Robin Williams). Of course, if you don’t have name recognition remakes cannot take advantage of prior popularity, so Disney usually does not retitle their remakes. But in the case of a foreign film, they just translate the title into English, such as Three Men and a Baby, The Associate and Jungle 2 Jungle. As if that weren’t enough, they will then rehash their films into other entertainment mediums, such as turning the animated feature 101 Dalmatians into a live action comedy or they can be really bold and turn their animated features into musical theatre such as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast (another rehashed fairy tale). Of course, one of their most successful ventures was to transform one of their theme park rides into a film series with the Pirates of the Caribbean series starring Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, as well as producing a video game. Disney also recycled Tron from the original 1982 sci-fi film into the 2010 film Tron: Legacy and a video game, as well. Finally, there is the example of Freaky Friday, a film they have made not once, not twice, but three separate times. The original was the 1976 film with Jodie Foster, Barbara Harris and John Astin, then the 1995 film starring Shelley Long and finally the 2003 version with Lindsey Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis and Mark Harmon. Perhaps they thought the third time would be a charm? I wont even get into what a travesty their historically-based films such as Pocahontas are. I gather Disney executives must shudder at the thought of originality. That is probably why they buy up studios like Pixar, so they don’t have to take that risk under the Disney banner. I think Disney’s motto is “Reduce, reuse and recycle.”
Posted on: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:13:43 +0000