Once upon a time, I wanted to be Cinderella. I dreamed about having the pumpkin carriage, the animal sidekicks, the fairy godmother, the hair that looked perfect every second of the movie, even when she had just woken up, and of course, the Prince Charming. technically a fragment, I’d end the sentence. Most kids my age had a dream like mine. Most of us grew up watching Disney, imagining that one day we would live a life as exciting and fantastic as the characters on the screen.
But as we grew older, some things started to change. We began to realize our animal sidekicks can’t talk to us, swinging on vines for a living isn’t feasible and sadly, our lives aren’t picture perfect like the movies. We drifted away from the animation because we were growing up. Luckily, Disney realized what was happening and decided to grow with us.
Disney has started to remake some of our favorite classic movies such as “Cinderella,” “The Jungle Book,” “Tarzan” and “Beauty and the Beast,” which will be released in March. Despite how beautifully crafted these movies are, some conflict has arisen regarding them: are we compromising the originality of the animated Disney movies by putting them into a modern context? Is this a money-making scheme Disney has in order to make more profit? Is Disney just running out of ideas?
These are some of the doubts Disney fans around the world are having, but I don’t believe that these are actually any of the motives the company has behind the remakes. Instead, I believe that they are trying to let the movies mature as we enter adulthood. These stories, the ones that played such a large role in our lives when we were young, the ones that filled us with hope and admiration and dreams of what we believed we could become, are able to follow us as we mature.
Moreover, some of these fairy tales have been around for centuries. They’ve been written in books, re-written into plays, performed as ballets and made into movies – so this is just the next step Disney is taking in order to keep the stories alive. Our world is modernizing, and as this happens, our movies also have to modernize.
It’s not as if Disney is getting rid of the animated stories. The colorful fairytales still exist through newer movies like “Frozen” and “Moana.” In reality, the company is expanding the audiences they can appeal to through their movies by opening up these remakes to teenagers and adults. The beautiful filmography, well-known actors and actresses, and well-told storylines capture a larger audience than what the animated films captured and thus keep the tradition of the story alive.
Overall, as I’ve been watching these remakes, I’ve had a newfound appreciation for the stories, the morals behind them and the thought the workers at Disney put into their films. I watch these movies and remember the things I focused on as a little girl.
The parts of the movie that stood out to me were the hair, the animal sidekicks, the Prince Charming, and as I matured, I realized the stories had a different meaning to me, and the remakes helped me realize this. Of course Cinderella’s dress was still to die for, and of course I would never turn down an animal sidekick that could talk, but I began to realize that the friendships, the family ties and the failures or successes each character encounters gives me emotions that I never would have felt by just watching the animated movie.
These movies aren’t something bad, and they aren’t jeopardizing the integrity of the original films. We’re growing up, and the stories are growing up with us.
