Within the last half-decade, Hollywood has been on a fairy-tale kick. Not just with CG-animated movies like “Brave” and “Frozen,” but also with live-action adaptations.
The trend seemed to kick off with Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” in 2010, and since then we’ve seen “Snow White & the Huntsman” (2012), “Mirror, Mirror” (2012), “Oz: the Great & Powerful” (2013), “La belle et le bête” (2014) and, most recently, “Maleficent.”
Also in the works is a new retelling of “Cinderella” from Disney directed by Kenneth Branagh and due next year. And Sofia Coppola is penning her version of “The Little Mermaid” for the future.
Why the surge of beloved stories revamped on screen? Maybe to balance out all the testosterone-filled superhero movies that are flooding the screens. Will these live-action attempts work and be as classic as the animated versions? Probably not, unfortunately.
Since the early 20th century, Walt Disney Pictures has been putting out timeless, animated fairy-tale adaptations, from “Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs” in 1937 to “Cinderella” in 1950, “The Little Mermaid” in 1989 and “Beauty and the Beast” in 1991. It’s almost as if animation was created for these type of tales, with the perfect combination of fantasy and musical numbers.
At the same time, the original, darker origins of these fairy tales are suited just as well for real people and settings in front of a camera – especially as a way to draw adult audiences into the theaters.
This tactic seemed to work modestly well for the original French classic “La belle et le bête” (1946) and the R-rated “Snow White: A Tale of Terror” (1997). The dark “Return to Oz” and “Alice in Wonderland,” two rather frightening films targeted at families, followed a strange trend in the 1980s of combining children’s tales with scary effects.
The adaptations that do seem to work successfully in cinema are the ones that are only loosely based on the fairy tales and do their own thing setting-wise.
Cinderella appears to be popular as a theme, with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s famous musical about the princess, the romantic period-piece “Ever After” and the teen movie “A Cinderella Story” continuing to be favorites of young female viewers.
Another teen movie is “Sydney White,” borrowed from Snow White, and Tim Burton’s own “Edward Scissorhands” could even be taken as a gothic retelling of “Beauty and the Beast.”
What seems to be going wrong with the newer screen versions is the usual style-over-substance dilemma. Studios per usual are trying too hard to please all ages and get the most seats filled. That shouldn’t be a big problem, but now all the fairy tales coming out are lacking consistent narratives or have boring character developments.
There was – and still may be – a lot of potential for another well-made live-action fairy tale, especially with the A-list casts Hollywood has been landing. But we might have to wait until 2015 to see it.
mbianco@durangoherald.com. Megan Bianco is a movie reviewer and contributes other entertainment-related features and articles.
