Variants on the idea of a beauty in a love affair with a beastly figure are universal and timeless, but in the realm of popular written fairy tales, the French version written by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont is the best known. To do our part in improving that exposure, here are just a few of the live action adaptations of classic fairy tales that make for fine alternative viewing to Disney’s retreads, from around the world and across the history of cinema:įor Beauty and the Beast:La Belle et la Bête (1946, France) More films can and have been made from them, but with how much of a worldwide conglomerate Disney has become, what chance does any fresh approach have in getting a comparable degree of exposure? These fairy tales can be brought to the screen in other ways. But they are alternate takes on the Disney version, a self-imposed limitation. And if I were being fair to the remakes (and lord, is that hard), they are also valid efforts at adapting these stories. They’re certainly my preferred version in most cases. The cartoon features by Walt Disney and his successors are among the most well-known in some cases, they are seen as definitive. Many of the fairy tales Disney has produced through animation and then live-action are centuries to millennia-old, passing through myriad interpretations.
Their existence means we live in a world where you have to specify which Lion King you’re talking about, and there are people who don’t immediately know which one you mean when you say: “the good one.”īut another objection, with repercussions beyond the broken hearts of lapsed Disneyites, is the oxygen they take away from fresh adaptations.
The very idea of such repetition was anathema to Walt Disney. Their moral posturing in relation to the originals usually backfires. They’re part of a larger negative trend in Hollywood. There is no shortage of reasons to not like Disney’s live action remakes.