Or maybe I don’t. It’s only a teaser, and I’ve given up assessing teasers because they usually tell nothing. Maybe I don’t have to give this desecration of Walt’s legacy the time of day. Half the internet has probably already said everything that’s need to be said, surely.
I have just under two hours to get a post out, I didn’t sleep well last night, and this movie may be the biggest example of how modern Disney is failing?
Fine.
I’m not kidding when I say that this movie is the biggest example of Disney’s current failings. As I went over in the article comparing how Walt Disney started the company and Bob Iger is ruining it, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs essentially made Walt Disney Pictures. It may have started with a mouse, but Walt helped bring cartoons beyond shorts played during a matinee showing and showed what you can do with animation. He embraced new technologies and made his legacy with this movie. Meanwhile, thanks to the media pecking order in Hollywood, Iger is pushing for live-action replacing animation, and creating movies that are shells of the former works. To this point the oldest films they ruined were Pete’s Dragon by creating from all appearances an original movie using the name, and Cinderella, the only movie under Walt’s tenure until now. (I guess you could make the case for Maleficent, Disney’s attempt to cash in on Wicked‘s success.) I haven’t even heard that either movie was terrible, so it’s gotten worse and worse with these live-action demakes.
So now that Disney has continued to distance itself from the very format that the company was founded on, how bad is this teaser? You know how teasers are supposed to drum up interest in the movie? This is doing the opposite.
The biggest complaint I’ve heard is how creepy the music sounds. This may be the fault of the teaser editors, thinking they’re making it sound epic and mystical. It’s Disney’s first movie that’s being adapted, so what fans expect is something more whimsical than a Game Of Thrones soundtrack. No, it’s not that bad, but it leans more in that direction than…
Hopefully this is just the teaser doing it wrong, like having the dwarves seven magical creatures there. We shouldn’t see them dancing until the later scene showing that Snow White has been accepted as their guest, and showing off their personalities. Granted, I could see them combining the two for time, but that means instead of Snow White and her animal friends doing something they don’t realize is a faux pas in a stranger’s home (she’s a princess and their animals) is replaced with Snow White forcing them to clean the house, something they probably don’t have time to do when they’re busy working in the mine Peter Dinklage thinks they live in. Her making them wash up for dinner is less bossy and shows the early positive influence she has on them. They have to warm up to her, or the rest of the movie is just them bending to her will as the protagonist/girlboss.
Knowing modern Hollywood they may be pushing towards the latter because suffering is for suckers.
I would also point out how muted the colors look. Compare to a fan made edit of the original movie to match the teaser.
Apparently everyone can find this edit except for me!
In the aforementioned article I brought up how Walt Disney embraced Technicolor, a new color processing method that was amazing for its time. Just watch the classic version of The Wizard Of Oz sometime. Instead, Modern Disney is following the rest of Hollywood in going for as little color as possible. Even the two most colorful moments, Snow White dancing with the dwarves and the Queen summoning fire to call the magic mirror spirit, are darker than in the original. It doesn’t make one think the whimsy and fun of the original movie, which includes some serious dark moments when the story demands it, is going to be here.
That’s where this teaser fails, especially if turns out that the movie has the saturation rate up a bit, less creepy music, and does have the elements that made the animated movie so popular that it put Walt Disney Pictures on the map. From the various interviews and leaks both official and otherwise that doesn’t appear to be the case, so you were planning to make the fans feel better, and given the treatment of fans by Hollywood these days I wouldn’t bet on it, you failed. Speaking of bets, how much you want to put on this movie failing as well, regardless of final quality, if this continues to be how it gets promoted?
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