To be honest, the recent trend of remaking older animated films seems to me like a money-making scheme more than anything else. “Star Wars” has a million new movies, most of which are honestly not that good, there’s a prequel to everything, and some of the remakes are just plain stupid.
For example, they’re making a live action “Lion King.” How on earth is that going to work? All of the characters are animals. I don’t want to sit in a theater and spend 90 minutes looking at creepy CGI lions. Also, a lot of the movies don’t have a ton of singing in them. “Cinderella” doesn’t, and the “Mulan” remake apparently won’t, either. Like come on, the songs are some of the best parts of these classic Disney films. Why get rid of them?
When they released a live-action version of “Cinderella” back in 2015, I didn’t really see what all the fuss was about. Why remake what was already a perfectly good movie? To be fair, I was also 15 and didn’t think it was ‘cool’ to go see a Disney princess movie. But now at 18 and having realized that that was completely ridiculous I still don’t really see the point.
I absolutely loved “Cinderella” when I was little. I have actually refused to see the live action movie because of how obsessed I was with the original.
Until now, that is.
I sat in my dorm room late on a Monday night, eating leftover Halloween candy, and rented the live-action “Cinderella.” And…
I absolutely loved it.
The acting was amazing. The costumes and scenery were gorgeous. Lily James and Cate Blanchett were incredible. The prince was dreamy, but he was a real person, too, not just a pretty face with money and status. I went into this not expecting to like it at all, and it wound up being one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very, very long time.
I’m still not 100 percent on board with the remake trend, though. A lot of the movies that will be coming out soon, such as “Mulan” and “Aladdin,” have led to concerns about whitewashing the characters and the plot. I love Disney, don’t get me wrong, but they leave a lot to be desired in that department. The fact that they’re also remaking classic ‘girl meets boy and all is happily ever after’ stories seems kind of stale for 2018.
As much as I loved the 2015 “Cinderella,” I want to see more new stories, or even retellings, with queer couples and black and Hispanic couples, or even some stories without couples at all. On another note, I still really, really dislike the idea of a live action “Lion King.”
Despite all of those concerns, honestly of the biggest things that I was worried about going into this movie, more than anything else, was losing the sense of magic that I remembered feeling as a kid when I watched Disney movies. Their animated films are fantastic and wonderful and only a little realistic just to the point where you can relate to it. I didn’t want real people to ruin something I had loved so much. But this actually did the complete opposite. It brought more humanity to a story that, when you think about it, is incredibly convoluted. It made me cry, it made me laugh, and most importantly, it showed me that there’s still a little bit of magic left in the world.