Ah, Pinocchio. The book by Carlo Collodi has become an
unexpected favorite of mine. The book is
darkly hilarious and crazily creative in an almost random way. Despite being rather didactic, I find it very
entertaining. Disney’s animated movie on
the other hand . . .
Not gonna lie. It’s
not my favorite (though, that didn’t stop me from buying a copy of the recent
DVD release. Why? Because I’m a sucker, I guess). Truth be told, when it first came out it was
hardly anyone’s favorite. While Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a
big hit, Disney initially lost money on Pinocchio,
and Fantasia. Crowds just weren’t digging the different
stuff they were trying in those films and only managed to recoup their losses
with Dumbo. Mind you, this is before they started a line
of theme parks and essentially gave themselves a license to print money.
So yeah, this film is likely going to happen even if it
isn’t with Mendes at the helm. The news
that he was in the running was enough for pop culture website The Nerdist to do a fan casting. I’m not as interested in
casts as I am in stories, though. And
the thing that interests me about the Disney remakes is that almost every one
of them has used something from earlier versions of the story that was not
present in the animated films. There was
the reference to the hazel branch from Grimm and the lizard footmen from
Perrault in Disney’s Cinderella. There was the myth about the elephants
creating the jungle in The Jungle Book. Let’s not forget the theft of the rose from Beauty and the Beast. Even if it was a small detail, I appreciated
it.
But now the question becomes: What extra bit of the source
material could make its way into Pinocchio?
Well, I’m going to create my own wish list, but first let’s
set some reasonable expectations with Things
that will be in the Pinocchio remake whether I like them or not!
The “Wish Upon a Star” scene. Yes,
it’s amazingly maudlin and it takes away some of the humor present in the story
with Pinocchio being a sentient log. But
that scene and the song that accompany it are iconic Disney. So iconic that the song gets used for things
that aren’t even Pinocchio-related. It’s
not my favorite addition to the story.
It actually plays into my theory that the darker a story was, the more
Walt and company made it sappy and sentimental.
But I will patiently wait through this kind of syrupy sweetness for the
sake of the dyed-in-the-wool Disney fans.
Jiminy Cricket’s co-starring
role. People just love that
bug. If you watch that movie again, you’ll
notice he’s not a very good conscience, but people still love him. They love him so much that people look at me
in shock and horror when I tell them that Pinocchio squishes the Talking
Cricket out of anger in the book. It
doesn’t even get better when I tell them he comes back with no explanation
later in the book (#Pinocchiologic).
People even loved Jiminy back when the movie was bombing at the box
office. That’s why Disney brought him
back as a presenter for some of their featurettes and shorts later on. So, you can bet that Pinocchio’s rather
flawed insectoid conscience will be back for the remake.
The Scary Donkey Scene. In the
book, Lampwick’s complete transformation into a Donkey and Pinocchio’s partial
transformation into one were played more for laughs. There was this whole scene where they both try
to hide their donkey ears from each other.
Yet, ask almost any Disney fan and they’ll tell you that Lampwick’s transformation into a donkey is one of the most traumatizing scenes in the
Disney canon. And it’s often the scarier
scenes that people remember best from Disney movies. Perhaps because they’re so rare. So, I can’t see this scene changing for the
remake.
Monstro the Whale. Honestly,
I just can’t see them changing the whale back into a giant dogfish. I just can’t imagine that happening. It’s another
one of those iconic Disney things.
Now that that’s out of the way,
let’s make a new list! Here we have The Fairy Tale Geek’s wishlist of things to
be brought into the new Pinocchio remake.
Pinocchio’s and Geppetto’s Personalities. When we get right down to it, both
Pinocchio and Geppetto had kind of bland personalities in the Disney
movie. Geppetto was just a kindly old
man and Pinocchio was just innocent and naïve.
The book was a different matter.
Geppetto was a hothead and Pinocchio was a pleasure-seeking child who
had to learn to behave the hard way. I
think making the characters more like their literary counterparts here would
actually deepen the relationships and show them with more complexity. It would be nice to see Geppetto actually
have to make the effort of controlling his temper around Pinocchio. Meanwhile, Pinocchio would be a little bit more
like a real child who has to find out that he can’t always get what he wants
and will have to deal with being told “No.”
An Expanded Role for the Blue Fairy.
In Disney’s movie, the Blue Fairy is a magical benefactress. She brings Pinocchio to life and lays out the
conditions for him to become a real boy.
She doesn’t appear much after that.
In the book, she doesn’t bring Pinocchio to life. He’s already alive even before being
carved. But she does have a bigger
role. She saves Pinocchio from certain
death when he gets hung from a tree.
Pinocchio also stays with her at one point and even considers her his
mother. I know that movies are limited
in length, but that’s something I’d like to see. It’s so rare that you see Pinocchio depicted
as having any kind of mother figure.
Besides, in 2017 it seems like a good idea to give a bigger role to one
of the few female characters in the story.
The General Weirdness. To
tell the truth, despite some of the more fantastical parts, Walt and company
really grounded the heck out of the movie.
Just having magic as an explanation for Pinocchio being alive did a lot
of it. As I said before, that part is
probably not going to change. In general
though, the book was like a Wonderland story if Wonderland looked an awful lot
like 19th Century Tuscany.
Maybe with less wordplay than a Lewis Carroll story (not sure, it could
have been lost in the translation) but almost as much randomness. But I would love to see more of that
stuff. Maybe the Green Fisherman could
make it into this version. Or maybe the
animal-populated town of Fool’s Trap. Or
maybe we could see the Blue Fairy’s snail servant and coach drawn by white
mice. It would just be nice to see some
of the surrealness brought back into Pinocchio’s world.
The Great Puppet Theater.
This one’s the ultimate long shot because it would mean changing an
existing scene from the original film.
But I would like to see a more book-accurate version of the Great Puppet
Theater. In the book, Pinocchio sells
his school book to see the puppet show and there he meets some other living
puppets and is nearly thrown into the fire by the showman who’s named
Fire-Eater (or Mangiafuoco in Italian).
In the movie, Pinocchio is tricked into joining the puppet theater by Honest
John (the Fox) and Gideon (the Cat) and ends up being held captive by the
puppeteer Stromboli. None of the other
puppets are alive. Now, like I said,
they’re probably not going to change the “wish upon a star” origin story. Still, it would be great to see Pinocchio
meet other living puppets. It would have
to be recontextualized for Pinocchio’s Disney origin, though. Perhaps they’re other puppets who’ve been
brought to life by fairy magic and never figured out how to be “brave, truthful
and unselfish” so never won the chance to be real. Maybe they’ve been living puppets who’ve been
like that for nearly a hundred years and could serve as a bit of a warning for
Pinocchio that he needs to try harder to be good. Of course, they’d also have to try something
different with the “I’ve Got No Strings” song.
This time, I imagine it being sung by the other living puppets as
Pinocchio watches in the audience.
So, that’s my wish list. Even if Disney doesn’t make any great changes
for the remake, there will still be some Pinocchio options out there. Last I heard, there’s still a Pinocchio movie
in the works at Warner Bros. with Robert Downey Jr. and Ron Howard attached. Also, Italian director Mateo Garrone is working on a version of the story. But I’d like
to hear from my readers about what they’d like to see added or changed during
the Mouse’s continued walk down memory lane.
What stories would you like to see with some of their literary
counterparts added or what could be changed to make the movie just better in
general. Personally, I’ve also got some
suggestions for both The Sword in the
Stone and Peter Pan but those are
best saved for another day. So, here’s
the list of upcoming movies from InkGypsy’s blog. Let’s hear what you’d like to see Disney’s
second chance with these stories.
There was, some years ago, an Italian telemovie, with Gina Lollobrigida as the Blue Fairy. Interesting!
ReplyDeleteAdam, I've nominated you for the Mystery Blogger Award - check out my post about it here. The Mystery Blogger Award Don't feel obliged, but do read my post to see what it's about.
It just reminded me about my childhood stories. We used to imagine a same house while our grandmother was telling us the story.
ReplyDeleteIt's most likely that it's going to be a pointless shot for shot remake.
ReplyDelete