Fairy Tales in Movies and Television
Hello again! Since this month I am on the theme of Fairy Tales, I thought I would continue from book adaptations to television and movies. Below are going to be some that I have seen along with the ways they are adapted and the genres they come from.
Let's start off with television, shall we.
I think the most obvious adaptation as of late is ABC's Once Upon a Time. One cool thing about this is that it is on the channel owned by Disney, so they can use licensed characters without any repercussions. That was both a blessing and a curse. This show started back in 2011 and started off as a show set in the modern world where a town is full of fairy tale characters who are trapped in our universe by a curse of the evil queen. Now this show was really fun for the first few seasons. The cameos of the other fairy tale characters was really cool and the introduction of the new villains was well done. The later seasons, however, I was not as big of a fan of. Once they started having full arcs to the separate fairy tales, I started to lose interest. I think the last season arc I watched was the Frozen one because it was far too cheesy for me. But all together this series was a cool way to make fairy tales relevant in television again. This show is a family friendly show and even has a spin off for Once Upon a Time In Wonderland that actually has a few crossover episodes!
Going off of this train was NBC's Grimm from 2011-2017. This started, obviously, at the same time as Once Upon a Time, but took a much darker spin. Much like Once Upon a Time, this show started off really good. I loved the monsters masquerading as human and the sub plot of the monsters committing the crimes Nick was investigating as a cop. But it started to lose me quick. The plot was repetitive and not much really happened. One thing I wished would have happened was more direct connections to the Grimm fairy tales. It played off from the beginning as if it would be full of those connections, but it was more of a monster hunting show than anything overly fairy tale oriented. This is definitely an adult genre because it is quite scary for younger viewers.
Beauty and the Beast was a 2012 CW show that was trying to ride off the coat tales of Grimm and Once Upon a Time. It was a cop drama about a woman who is getting help from this monster looking guy in her investigations. I believe this was actually based off of an older television show of the same name. It is obviously playing off the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, but other than the guy being ugly and kind of mutated, there wasn't much of a connection. This show stayed on air until 2016.
Now onto movies!
I think we have to start off with Disney, the all time classic producer of fairy tale movies. So let's get started. I do want to say I am focusing on recent live action films, not so much the animated features.
Alice in Wonderland is one of those films I wanted so dearly to love. This was one of my favorite books growing up, so having a grown up Alice coming back to fight for Wonderland and be a total badass was supposed to be right up my alley. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat. It was fully stocked to the brim with fantastic actors who, I think, probably made it more into a way to show off the star power than actually tell a story. Yes, we got the basic gist of Alice, but it felt a little too forced for me.
Cinderella, also known as Robb Stark's redemption love story, was one of my favorite movies of 2015. We got a Cinderella who is strong and who actually is able to form more of a personality than the original animated feature. We have a prince with a backstory. We have step sisters that I almost feel bad for (but not really). We have a darker plot with the step mother, but also reasoning for her actions. And we have a stunning film. What more could you ask for? (Other than that dress because I HAVE A NEED!!) I liked the pulling of different Disney songs as well. Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly) was a song from an older live action Disney film that was remastered and turned into a gorgeous tune by Lily James.
Beauty and the Beast, starring Hermione Granger, was a really cool addition to the live action Disney films. Did I like it better than the animated? At parts, yes. I liked getting to see more into the Beast's life. I liked getting to see Belle's mother introduced more into the plot (and those connections to the plague in Paris, beautiful.) Evermore was my favorite song of the entire movie. Mainly because the other ones were, in my opinion, better in the animated. But it gave Belle more girl power and less stalkholm syndrome.
Into the Woods is a masterpiece, but not a Disney original. The original stage play, which I saw when they had it on Netflix, was amazing, but the Disney one was pretty good too! Disney definitely took out a lot of the darker elements from the musical which was a bummer, but I liked how they kept most of the characters pretty spot on. Red is that annoying in the play as well, trust me. It hurts. But we do get a feeling of going back to the original fairy tales where there are lessons to be learned from these stories. Don't go out in the woods alone. don't climb up magic bean stalks. Sometimes the prince only knows how to be charming, not faithful. Be careful what you wish for. All of these are seen throughout and are blatantly addressed through song.
Maleficent is the first of many live action retellings Disney has put out. I thought the movie was phenomenal. It took my favorite Disney villain and gave her a new backstory. Yes, it explaiined away why she was the villain, but they did it in such a tasteful way, I don't even care that she was the hero! I think this kind of film is really cool for Disney to do because they have all the text at their disposal. They are looking at stories in a new way and trying to come at the characters in a new light. The visuals were stunning. Angelina Jolie did a great job (and I loved her child being in it, so cute).
Enchanted I think has to be my favorite from this list. Not only is it a fairy tale that isn't based solely on one princess, but it is making fun of the genre in a light-hearted way. The way this is done is through the male lead character and his standing in for the audience. It is still the stereotypical Disney princess movie with the singing and the talking animals, but there are characters who question all of that. Plus, it is one of the first movies to question the princess falling in love and marrying the prince after such a short time of knowing him! The music is great, the dual animation and live action style is really fun, and Amy Adams is perfect in the role! Plus, Jodie Benson (Ariel in The Little Mermaid) has a cameo! How cool is that?
Onto the other production companies!
Red Riding Hood, starring Amanda Seyfried, was promising when I saw the trailer. I thought it was going to be this cool werewolf film with a chick who was going to save the village and kick ass. While we kind of got that, it was also really predictable and the story line lacked direction in places. When you think there is a lot of tension in the scene, it goes no where. When something happens, it seems to be out of the blue. There is an attempt in remaking this classic fairy tale, but it just does not stick.
Beastly is based off a book by Alex Finn in a loose sense. Gone is the girl who has self esteem issues, who cannot find love in herself, and up comes Vanessa Hudgens. It becomes less of a coming to love yourself book and more of a need to have a savior complex. I enjoyed the book more (obviously) but the film had some success. Alex Pettyfer starred as the scarred (not turned into a beast) boy who is still attractive but has magical tattoos. I would think that would be really cool, but I digress. I wasn't as in to this retelling of Beauty and the Beast as I have been for other adaptations, personally.
Mirror Mirror was a phenomenal comedy version of Snow White. This was back when everyone was making Snow White films, so there were a lot to compare it to. I liked how everything was so bright and colorful, so at odds to what you think the evil queen would be. She is vain, yes, but she does not immediately strike you as evil which is something I thought was interesting. I think Lily Collins did an excellent job as Snow and did a great job being a badass fighter when she needed to be.
Snow White and the Huntsman is yet another Snow White retelling that tried to make Snow into a fighter with possibly magic? It was very underdeveloped in the plot, parts seemed just to be shoved in there to make it a prettier film which was unfortunate. They made a sequel either last year or the year before, but I never saw it. Overall, I was unimpressed. Even Chris Hemsworth being in it did nothing to make it better.
Sydney White is a modern era Snow White where she is in college and has to deal with an "evil queen" sorority girl who is out to get her. The character of Sydney White is an obvious Amanda Bynes tom-girl character that she played a lot in this time frame. It is a cute movie and gets the story down very well, surprisingly. I thought it was fun and just a great retelling overall!
That just about does it for this post! As always, you can find me on social media at dsbookie on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Goodreads!
I'll catch you later!
XO
Dana
Let's start off with television, shall we.
I think the most obvious adaptation as of late is ABC's Once Upon a Time. One cool thing about this is that it is on the channel owned by Disney, so they can use licensed characters without any repercussions. That was both a blessing and a curse. This show started back in 2011 and started off as a show set in the modern world where a town is full of fairy tale characters who are trapped in our universe by a curse of the evil queen. Now this show was really fun for the first few seasons. The cameos of the other fairy tale characters was really cool and the introduction of the new villains was well done. The later seasons, however, I was not as big of a fan of. Once they started having full arcs to the separate fairy tales, I started to lose interest. I think the last season arc I watched was the Frozen one because it was far too cheesy for me. But all together this series was a cool way to make fairy tales relevant in television again. This show is a family friendly show and even has a spin off for Once Upon a Time In Wonderland that actually has a few crossover episodes!
Going off of this train was NBC's Grimm from 2011-2017. This started, obviously, at the same time as Once Upon a Time, but took a much darker spin. Much like Once Upon a Time, this show started off really good. I loved the monsters masquerading as human and the sub plot of the monsters committing the crimes Nick was investigating as a cop. But it started to lose me quick. The plot was repetitive and not much really happened. One thing I wished would have happened was more direct connections to the Grimm fairy tales. It played off from the beginning as if it would be full of those connections, but it was more of a monster hunting show than anything overly fairy tale oriented. This is definitely an adult genre because it is quite scary for younger viewers.
Beauty and the Beast was a 2012 CW show that was trying to ride off the coat tales of Grimm and Once Upon a Time. It was a cop drama about a woman who is getting help from this monster looking guy in her investigations. I believe this was actually based off of an older television show of the same name. It is obviously playing off the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, but other than the guy being ugly and kind of mutated, there wasn't much of a connection. This show stayed on air until 2016.
Now onto movies!
I think we have to start off with Disney, the all time classic producer of fairy tale movies. So let's get started. I do want to say I am focusing on recent live action films, not so much the animated features.
Alice in Wonderland is one of those films I wanted so dearly to love. This was one of my favorite books growing up, so having a grown up Alice coming back to fight for Wonderland and be a total badass was supposed to be right up my alley. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat. It was fully stocked to the brim with fantastic actors who, I think, probably made it more into a way to show off the star power than actually tell a story. Yes, we got the basic gist of Alice, but it felt a little too forced for me.
Cinderella, also known as Robb Stark's redemption love story, was one of my favorite movies of 2015. We got a Cinderella who is strong and who actually is able to form more of a personality than the original animated feature. We have a prince with a backstory. We have step sisters that I almost feel bad for (but not really). We have a darker plot with the step mother, but also reasoning for her actions. And we have a stunning film. What more could you ask for? (Other than that dress because I HAVE A NEED!!) I liked the pulling of different Disney songs as well. Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly) was a song from an older live action Disney film that was remastered and turned into a gorgeous tune by Lily James.
Beauty and the Beast, starring Hermione Granger, was a really cool addition to the live action Disney films. Did I like it better than the animated? At parts, yes. I liked getting to see more into the Beast's life. I liked getting to see Belle's mother introduced more into the plot (and those connections to the plague in Paris, beautiful.) Evermore was my favorite song of the entire movie. Mainly because the other ones were, in my opinion, better in the animated. But it gave Belle more girl power and less stalkholm syndrome.
Into the Woods is a masterpiece, but not a Disney original. The original stage play, which I saw when they had it on Netflix, was amazing, but the Disney one was pretty good too! Disney definitely took out a lot of the darker elements from the musical which was a bummer, but I liked how they kept most of the characters pretty spot on. Red is that annoying in the play as well, trust me. It hurts. But we do get a feeling of going back to the original fairy tales where there are lessons to be learned from these stories. Don't go out in the woods alone. don't climb up magic bean stalks. Sometimes the prince only knows how to be charming, not faithful. Be careful what you wish for. All of these are seen throughout and are blatantly addressed through song.
Maleficent is the first of many live action retellings Disney has put out. I thought the movie was phenomenal. It took my favorite Disney villain and gave her a new backstory. Yes, it explaiined away why she was the villain, but they did it in such a tasteful way, I don't even care that she was the hero! I think this kind of film is really cool for Disney to do because they have all the text at their disposal. They are looking at stories in a new way and trying to come at the characters in a new light. The visuals were stunning. Angelina Jolie did a great job (and I loved her child being in it, so cute).
Enchanted I think has to be my favorite from this list. Not only is it a fairy tale that isn't based solely on one princess, but it is making fun of the genre in a light-hearted way. The way this is done is through the male lead character and his standing in for the audience. It is still the stereotypical Disney princess movie with the singing and the talking animals, but there are characters who question all of that. Plus, it is one of the first movies to question the princess falling in love and marrying the prince after such a short time of knowing him! The music is great, the dual animation and live action style is really fun, and Amy Adams is perfect in the role! Plus, Jodie Benson (Ariel in The Little Mermaid) has a cameo! How cool is that?
Onto the other production companies!
Red Riding Hood, starring Amanda Seyfried, was promising when I saw the trailer. I thought it was going to be this cool werewolf film with a chick who was going to save the village and kick ass. While we kind of got that, it was also really predictable and the story line lacked direction in places. When you think there is a lot of tension in the scene, it goes no where. When something happens, it seems to be out of the blue. There is an attempt in remaking this classic fairy tale, but it just does not stick.
Beastly is based off a book by Alex Finn in a loose sense. Gone is the girl who has self esteem issues, who cannot find love in herself, and up comes Vanessa Hudgens. It becomes less of a coming to love yourself book and more of a need to have a savior complex. I enjoyed the book more (obviously) but the film had some success. Alex Pettyfer starred as the scarred (not turned into a beast) boy who is still attractive but has magical tattoos. I would think that would be really cool, but I digress. I wasn't as in to this retelling of Beauty and the Beast as I have been for other adaptations, personally.
Mirror Mirror was a phenomenal comedy version of Snow White. This was back when everyone was making Snow White films, so there were a lot to compare it to. I liked how everything was so bright and colorful, so at odds to what you think the evil queen would be. She is vain, yes, but she does not immediately strike you as evil which is something I thought was interesting. I think Lily Collins did an excellent job as Snow and did a great job being a badass fighter when she needed to be.
Snow White and the Huntsman is yet another Snow White retelling that tried to make Snow into a fighter with possibly magic? It was very underdeveloped in the plot, parts seemed just to be shoved in there to make it a prettier film which was unfortunate. They made a sequel either last year or the year before, but I never saw it. Overall, I was unimpressed. Even Chris Hemsworth being in it did nothing to make it better.
Sydney White is a modern era Snow White where she is in college and has to deal with an "evil queen" sorority girl who is out to get her. The character of Sydney White is an obvious Amanda Bynes tom-girl character that she played a lot in this time frame. It is a cute movie and gets the story down very well, surprisingly. I thought it was fun and just a great retelling overall!
That just about does it for this post! As always, you can find me on social media at dsbookie on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Goodreads!
I'll catch you later!
XO
Dana
Comments
Post a Comment