Hence why I specifically said "DISNEY'S ALADDIN", which they would 'darken' by making sure to link it with the popular nostalgia surrounding that film so as not to (as they would believe) completely alienate the audience while introducing all manner of 'adult' themes.
That's the pattern with this sort of nonsense.
Perhaps a better example would be turning "Toy Story" into "Child's Play".
There are simply some stories best left alone. Also, the "Hunchback" was a serious dramatic story FIRST. And the kiddie movie adaptation was... mediocre at best. It only strengthens my point that caution need be exercised when 'adapting' stories outside their original theme.
That said, your other comment bring up the brothers Grimm, who were quite good at adapting and combining the variations of local tales and legends from all over Europe. That their versions have stood the test of time for so long is testament to their skill at the craft.
But we must also keep in mind that their stories were short fairytales (sometimes barely a full page), which lend themselves easily to reworking into movie-length so long as the core narrative is preserved. A number = of their stories were extremely similar thematically, and were likely very distant versions of the same root tale retold until they'd diverged enough to be considered 'different' stories. "The Singing, Soaring Lark" bears great similarity to "Beauty and the Beast" in many central details in the first halves of both stories. Even the film versions of "Snow White" and "Cinderella" retained some elements of drama and there was no illusion of who the villains were. I would also posit that the rather blunt violence in the 'originals' would be off-putting and feel oddly contrasting with the whimsical portions of the stories in the minds of viewers, not only today, but for the past hundred years... hence the changes made by Walt. These stories were made 'adult', in fact, not by making them 'dark', but by using very mature notions of unified theme and tone and plot progression, notions that young children who eagerly sat in their beds listening to parents telling to old tales, waiting for the wicked Queen and the stepmother and stepsisters to 'get what was coming to them', would not usually appreciate or comprehend.
Today, however, 'adult' seems to be uniformly associated with making everything brutal, hyper-sexualized, bleak, and miserable... perhaps a bit of a psychological leak from the minds of the shallow Hollywood types?
Perhaps what would work better as far as retellings and reinterpretations are concerned would be stories re-written by real adults rather than spoiled old children.
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Hecate-3
8 years ago
I get tired of dystopias too sometimes.
Good writing is hard. Hollywood executives tend to favor flashy, trendy notions rather than timeless quality. From what I have gathered, writers in Hollywood are not usually paid all that well, are given little respect, are constantly forced to rewrite what happens in their story according to the executives' whims of the day, and are subject to being replaced at a moment's notice if they don't want to incorporate the latest trendy idea that the executives demand they shoehorn into their work. In such an atmosphere, it's not surprising that a lot of work coming out of Hollywood has inferior writing.
Nevertheless, I am willing to give this work a chance to show that it has something worthwhile to offer.
I understand what you're saying about inferior writers capitalizing on the nostalgia surrounding established works. I don't think that's ever going to go away. If that's all a work has to offer, it's not likely to do all that well.
But there are some marvelously creative people out there, and although it might be worthwhile to warn them of the difficulties with such projects, I'm not going to tell them that they shouldn't try their own take on a work just because I have fond memories of it. Lots of times it won't work, but some of the time it can. I'd rather keep the successes, even if it means tolerating the existence of the failures. After all, no matter what restrictions are or aren't placed on writers, most writers are going to produce absolute crap most of the time.
_____
Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath.
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