Live action remake of Aladdin? Good idea or bad idea? Plus tangents on Disney

[Aginor]

because humans have always associated snakes as evil,

It is mainly a Jewish/Christian (Genesis) and Norse (midgard snake) thing. There are also mythologies in which snakes are considered to be the good guys, or at least neutral.

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

It is mainly a Jewish/Christian (Genesis) and Norse (midgard snake) thing. There are also mythologies in which snakes are considered to be the good guys, or at least neutral.

Not necessarily. Humans have always feared snakes due to their venom, like spiders, even when they don’t have any venom, and I imagine also for the way they can slither so quickly across the ground - it can seem so incomprehensible for us to see such a creature moving so fast without any limbs at all, just as spiders are seen as creepy because they scuttle around on eight of them.

 

[Aginor]

Not necessarily. Humans have always feared snakes due to their venom, like spiders, even when they don’t have any venom, and I imagine also for the way they can slither so quickly across the ground - it can seem so incomprehensible for us to see such a creature moving so fast without any limbs at all, just as spiders are seen as creepy because they scuttle around on eight of them.

Well, yes. But then there are enough cultures that had very positive attributes associated with snakes, despite that. It seems the snake=bad ones are actually the minority.
(Not making this up. I looked up some articles on that kind of thing. German language though so it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to post them)

And in turn there are many other dangerous animals that do not have mostly negative attributes in mythologies, or have a lot of both positive and negative ones.
Wolves, Lions, Tigers, Eagles and other predators are examples of that last category.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

I honestly feel that making Kaa female is a sign of feminist influence in branches of Disney other than LucasFilm - why else would they make such a big character change?

That can't be right...

and you've got to love James Woods’ performance of Hades

YES YES YES!

That was such a great performance!

Humans have always feared snakes due to their venom, like spiders, even when they don’t have any venom, and I imagine also for the way they can slither so quickly across the ground - it can seem so incomprehensible for us to see such a creature moving so fast without any limbs at all, just as spiders are seen as creepy because they scuttle around on eight of them.

This is true, there is an evolutionary impetus to do so.

 

[Scalenex]

Moulan —vs— Mulan ?? What’s the deal with the spelling difference? (Maybe? I would know if I had ever seen any version of the material.)

I'm not sure about the spelling, but I was curious enough to Google the "original" Mulan. The interesting thing is that while Disney altered the story to suit their purposes they were hardly the first person or group to do this. The basic premise of Mulan impersonates a male soldier to protect her family is held constant, but nothing else is.

Sometimes she sneaks away from her family in the middle of the night. The historical era and the enemy she fought changes. Sometimes she did so with her parent's knowledge and blessing. Sometimes she dies, sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she is a leader and other times she is merely a competent soldier. Sometimes her secret is exposed and sometimes she gets away with her ruse where only her family knows.

Will Smith as the genie. An aging Fresh Prince of Bellaire trying to reprise Robin Williams at his best. Sounds a little dubious. It could work. I think I’d like it if he was a bit more the evile Djinn. (edited to add: A nice twist would be if he was the Genie of the Ring instead of the Genie of the Lamp...)

In my opinion, most A-list and B-list actors either age gracefully or they get sidelined out of movies entirely. Most. I fully admit Will Smith's more recent work is not as good as his 90s and 00s work, but I'm not about to write him off yet. Just don't let Will Smith write anything.

Will Smith is (was?) known for being charismatic, so he could be a good genie. More importantly, he can (could?) sing. He has a chance at being a good genie. I would very much like to see him be the Genie of the Ring. Among other things, while I do like Will Smith in general he is arrogant, so I think playing a support character might bring him down to earth.

But I like Al Muktar’s desert dogs.

I own a set of this Regiment of Renown. Back when I still wanted to collect Dogs of War as a full army, I tried to find boosters for this, but I couldn't, only the base That means if I wanted a unit of ten, I'd have to four Al Muktar sets. Grrr.

Ladin... good thing that is an obscure family name.

As Honest Trailers highlights in this review. There is a lot of stuff in Aladdin that was acceptable in dark ages of the 1990s but would be viewed favorably today.

I'm predicting Disney will take flak from both the Left and the Right on this one...

- Snow White is not cured by a kiss. The prince drops her casket and the apple part she bit off falls out of her mouth and she wakes up

That's actually more fitting to modern audiences than the original animated film.

I forgot about Pinnochio literally killing his conscience. In any event a full accounting of the Disneyification of classic stories would fill many pages. That is the nice thing about public domain intellectual property, you can adapt it to fit the needs of a new time.

I'm kind of irked that Disney has basically crippled the concept of public domain intellectual property, but that's a topic for another time.

nd you've got to love James Woods’ performance of Hades

Being the DC fanboy that I am, I really like his performance of Owlman in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. Most affable villain ever.

I just looked this up and I have to admit that would have been good to see Kaa as a good guy. I think the reason that’s they made Kaa a villain in the original was because humans have always associated snakes as evil,

Western humans have always associated snakes as evil

and I honestly feel there’s nothing perverted about him.

Framing, it's all about framing. Check out the three minute mark of this video.

On the flip side, Mulan started training much later in life, is physically weaker and an inexperienced warrior. All she has is a training montage alongside a catchy song.

It's my all time favorite Disney song. In the Disney metaverse, music is power. She also didn't fight conventionally and the villain had essentially lost his mind by the end of the film.

If Disney wanted to be original...

Disney wants to make money. Pixar wants to be original. Pixar is doing a lot of sequels lately. Maybe Disney infected them...

Incredibles 2 was, in my opinion, the best movie of 2018, but in my opinion, 2018 was the worst year for film since I was born, so that's a low bar.

OK, I know Hercules is not very mythologically accurate at all,

"Mythologically accurate". Is that an oxymoron or what? I've seen so many different variants of Hercules I cannot say which one is right.

Well whatever Rick Riordian writes goes. He is easily my favorite contemporary author. Sadly, the two Percy Jackson movies were very disappointing.

 

[Aginor]

the two Percy Jackson movies were very disappointing

Yeah they weren't outright bad, but...meh. To me they felt like something was missing.
I don't know the books though so that might be the reason.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

It's my all time favorite Disney song. In the Disney metaverse, music is power. She also didn't fight conventionally and the villain had essentially lost his mind by the end of the film.

Tell you what, I'll play you the Disney song while you train and then you can go fight the UFC Heavyweight champion! The divide between the two was simply too great, even for a cinematic underdog story.

 

[Scalenex]

Yeah they weren't outright bad, but...meh. To me they felt like something was missing.
I don't know the books though so that might be the reason.

Lots of movie adaptations of books add gratuitous action scenes that are tacked on awkwardly. The Percy Jackson movies removed action scenes.

I want to see Percy fight the Chimera on the Saint Louis Arch!

You can tell this was done to save money. Sea of Monsters had a large carnival cruise ship filled with brain washed hypnotized tourist families and hundreds of monsters. The movie cut it down to a small yacht with six evil demigods and one monster. They made Circe's Island a quest destination in the movie but cut Circe out entirely. They even had the cyclopes kill all his giant sheep before the movie started (and they hung a lampshade on this). You cannot afford CGI sheep? WTM

 

[Warden]

Not necessarily. Humans have always feared snakes due to their venom, like spiders, even when they don’t have any venom, and I imagine also for the way they can slither so quickly across the ground - it can seem so incomprehensible for us to see such a creature moving so fast without any limbs at all, just as spiders are seen as creepy because they scuttle around on eight of them.

Well, yes. But then there are enough cultures that had very positive attributes associated with snakes, despite that. It seems the snake=bad ones are actually the minority.
(Not making this up. I looked up some articles on that kind of thing. German language though so it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to post them)

And in turn there are many other dangerous animals that do not have mostly negative attributes in mythologies, or have a lot of both positive and negative ones.
Wolves, Lions, Tigers, Eagles and other predators are examples of that last category.

Looking at the snake argument, one could bring up the New World cultures. Snakes were magical creatures. In Mayan cultures they had ties to royalty (snake totems, snake kingship bar, an entire kingdom of the city of Calakmul whose symbol was a Snake) and celestial bodies (snakes were emblematic of stars and the Milky Way). Aztecs/Mayans even had a god who was a feathers serpent (Queztacoatl/Kukulkan).

Further side tangent: one of the reasons the Spanish were so zealous about squashing the New World religions and replacing it with Catholicism was because of the snake imagery, which the Old Worlders linked to the devil. These savages were obviously under the spell of an evil demon! or so they believed simply by looking at much of their religious iconography.

 

[Aginor]

I would even go so far to say that in the jewish/christian mythology the snake is evil for that very reason. It is a positive symbol in more than a few cultures, and what is better to show they are evil than use their positive symbols as negative ones?

The snake was mainly a positive symbol for the Greeks, and to a lesser degree for persians, babylonians, Egyptians and other ancient cultures.

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

I’ve been watching the Jungle Book remake of late as I thought I’d give it a try as it was premiering here in Britain this year on BBC One. I haven’t finished it yet but here are my feelings so far:

Spoiler: Anyone who hasn’t seen the new version yet mustn’t read this

Good Parts:

• There are lots of small animals to spot throughout this film all over the jungle, which is a nice touch that doesn’t feature in the original and makes the jungle far more realistic.
• The action scenes are well done and the effects are very good (although they don’t beat Rogue One’s effects, contrary to the Oscars)
• There are a few more animals from the stories that appear in this version, such as the Porcupine so well-played by Gary Shandling (Vern from Over the Hedge) and Baloo’s little Pangolin friend.
• The voice acting is mostly very well-done and the voices chosen are largely reminiscent of the animals in the original film (certainly Ben Kingsley’s Bagheera is very good representation of him and while I still prefer the great George Sanders as Shere Khan, Idris Elba is still pretty good as the tiger).

Bad Parts:

• One thing I thought spoilt it rather was that much of the mystery from the original film (Mowgli’s origins, Shere Khan returning to kill him) didn’t remain mysterious in this version. In the original film nobody knows how Mowgli’s family were killed or how their boat was destroyed, or how Mowgli himself survived, because the animals wouldn’t know it because they’re busy going along their daily lives - they just think ‘how the hell did this get here?’, and seeing him as a vulnerable baby they raise him as their own. Conversely in this version Kaa tells Mowgli how his father was killed trying to defend him from Shere Khan and the tiger, burnt by the traveller’s fire, ignores Mowgli due to his pain and leaves. Of course this could all be a lie, but assuming it isn’t, how did Kaa know this? There’s no explanation of if she saw the whole thing or if she heard it from gossip. Also with Shere Khan, in the original there was a lot of suspense as to Shere Khan’s whereabouts - all the other animals knew was that somewhere Shere Khan was returning to the jungle and was out to kill Mowgli, so everyone was paranoid about where he would strike next, while in this new version he appears almost right at the beginning - the element of surprise is over almost as soon as it began.
• Again I mention Kaa being female as a bad point. There was no reason to change Kaa’s gender other than to make it more PC. While I didn’t think the original voice was perverted at all anyway, you could easily do a male Kaa that sounded less creepy in that way and yet still threatening as a villain - look at Asmodeus in Redwall. His voice was done excellently without any form of perversion while still being pretty terrifying. The Kaa in this new version on the other hand, just reminded me of one of those sleazy tarts who try to seduce the hero to steal their possessions in films - hardly a threatening villain. Probably the only decent thing done with the new Kaa was the hypnotism sequence, which of course looks more natural than the one in the original film. Of course we know that the book version was benign which makes both film versions less accurate, but the original film version is still better in that his gender wasn’t compromised simply to get another actress in.
• Also some of the other animals were portrayed differently in personality, which I think messed it up further - Baloo in particular is more of a lazy, blunt-speaking, selfish con-man than anything else, compared to the happy-go-lucky original who genuinely wouldn’t intend to hurt anything larger than an ant unless it gave him genuine reason to do so. Certainly I’m sure Phil Harris’ original wouldn’t have made Mowgli go up to a bees’ nest, risking being stung to death, purely to get him some honey, a task that Baloo could have done himself in a less difficult location to reach the nest. I don’t know if this was done to make him more similar to the book version, I’ll have to read the book before I make any further comments.