Disney ruins another good story - The nutcracker

[Kyriakos]

"The story you know... has a dark side"

lol, really? It does (The nutcracker and the king of the mice), but it isn't your garbage fantasy war movie about four realms
Going by the sugar plum fairy (music, and i suppose the actress in the still) this is based on the lesser and later version, by Alexandre Dumas. Another bad idea to market as having 'a dark side'.

Anyway, doesn't someone actually own the rights to this, or at least the music? (Disney likely bought those long ago, but it still seems strange).

I am sure Hoffmann would love this. Then send Coppelius to take the eyes out of the film-makers.

 

[Borachio]

Even the music is out of copyright.

So I'd expect the story to be too.

Actually, copyright generally runs out 70 years after the death of the author.

 

[Kyriakos]

Even the music is out of copyright.

So I'd expect the story to be too.

Actually, copyright generally runs out 70 years after the death of the author.

In cases of adapting a work or translating it, it can involve special deals which allow for extending the local market copyright (ie the US one in such a case). It does happen here with some old foreign works (eg Freud).

 

[Wastl]

This doesn't ruin anything. The whole idea is absurd to begin with. The original story exists, nothing will change anything about that. A movie will have no bearing on that, nor will it in any way influence the standing of the original work.
Your whole line of thought doesn't make any sense. If the movie is based on the work done by Dumas, then it doesn't really have anything to do with the version you consider to be superior, now does it?

I really have no idea why people freak out over completely irrelevant stuff like this. Your life doesn't get impacted at all, and neither is the original work that is supposedly getting "ruined". You are perfectly free to ignore the movie, just like you are free to ignore all the plays, ballets and other material connected to this story which have been running all over the world, of which the law of averages alone suggests that plenty have been horrible.

You can like or dislike something, you may even think that there is no need for it, but it doesn't ruin anything. This sense of entitlement is really getting annoying. And it is even worse when it comes to fans of large franchises.

 

[Kyriakos]

If you find freaking out so terrible, why do you freak out while responding to my most serene and monocle'd sober thread?

 

[PhroX]

I preferred Scarfe's take on the Nutcracker with AK47 wielding terrorist mice....

 

[warpus]

I didn't see one nut being cracked in the trailer

 

[Sofista]

This doesn't ruin anything. The whole idea is absurd to begin with. The original story exists, nothing will change anything about that. A movie will have no bearing on that, nor will it in any way influence the standing of the original work.

However, adaptations can overshadow an original. For example, outside Italy Pinocchio means the (very unfaithful) Disney version rather than Collodi's original - which is grimmer as it is, and was before the publishers imposed themselves to end with chapter XV, where the wooden protagonist dies hanged.

 

[Hrothbern]

I think that every culture has to some degree the inclinement to edit older stories, to make them more apropiate for that culture.

Christianity edited innumerous pagan stories to get the element in that God was after all the supreme being, and many old heroes and gods were pushed in minor roles, got a more chaotic or evil role, etc.
Consider for example the Christmas tree, the Nordic pantheon, etc

Other stories were edited to get them more social-political correct.
For example SnowWhite and the "true love kiss".
Just imagine.... you, a male, see a beautiful young woman sleeping, all alone in the forest.... what do you do ?
In todays romantic version you fall in love and give her a "true love kiss" and the happy end is there.
In the older European version the girl was taken before she really knew what happened, raped so to say, and after some hence and forth, the male did the "honorable" thing: he married her.
I wonder whether this version was not also already edited, and what the more original version was.

Another example (I love fairy tales since I was a kid )
Cinderella
The poor girl, doing dirty work, ash of the fire on her clothes....... and because of that tiny shoe, that she could wear, and not her stepsisters, got the first price of the lottery of life: get married with a rich guy. The romantic era happy end.
The older story is about a Shamanka (a female Shaman), guarding the fire, who gets access to the spiritual world, and her "stepsisters", who are focused on earthly material things, lose forever the possibility to get there. The happy end that Cinderella is able to travel between the worlds (without using drugs !.... as proven because she fits the tiny shoe without getting bleeding feet like her sisters)
Cinderella, also Assepoester, Asschenputtel, Askungen, Cendrillon, Ye Xian, as someone who learned to be a true Shamanka, is a story that is in various versions present from China to Scotland.
All really intersting stories, if you like the relation between culture and fairy tales.
And BTW considering the more original version, the Cinderella story could easily be many thousands of years old, perhaps as old as the first Shamankas in history.

I guess that living in a world where culture is changing all the time, we have to deal with that editing.

 

[Kyriakos]

Iirc in the original Nutcracker (by Hoffmann) the war (between the toys and the mice) happens because the human queen killed the mother of the mouse king (then prince, i suppose). The mouse king had seven heads. The nutcracker was sort of a cursed human.

The tin soldier also is a bit tragic, although written in such a way that it doesn't really cause much emotion, imo. Unlike the little girl with matches

 

[Borachio]

I didn't see one nut being cracked in the trailer

Cashew!!!!

(I'm sorry. I have a cold.)

 

[Broken_Erika]

I prefer Global Tetrahedron's remake of the Nutcracker.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I think that every culture has to some degree the inclinement to edit older stories, to make them more apropiate for that culture.

Christianity edited innumerous pagan stories to get the element in that God was after all the supreme being, and many old heroes and gods were pushed in minor roles, got a more chaotic or evil role, etc.
Consider for example the Christmas tree, the Nordic pantheon, etc

Other stories were edited to get them more social-political correct.
For example SnowWhite and the "true love kiss".
Just imagine.... you, a male, see a beautiful young woman sleeping, all alone in the forest.... what do you do ?
In todays romantic version you fall in love and give her a "true love kiss" and the happy end is there.
In the older European version the girl was taken before she really knew what happened, raped so to say, and after some hence and forth, the male did the "honorable" thing: he married her.
I wonder whether this version was not also already edited, and what the more original version was.

I was sufficiently creeped-out by the original Disney versions of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Modern audiences want things to be darker, or so that's what the studios tell us.

I saw a ballet version of Sleeping Beauty on PBS many years ago. Aurora was awakened when the prince raped her.

Iirc in the original Nutcracker (by Hoffmann) the war (between the toys and the mice) happens because the human queen killed the mother of the mouse king (then prince, i suppose). The mouse king had seven heads. The nutcracker was sort of a cursed human.

The tin soldier also is a bit tragic, although written in such a way that it doesn't really cause much emotion, imo. Unlike the little girl with matches

Heh, I've got several computer games based on these stories. I've no idea how much they resemble the source material, but since the games are considered family-friendly, it's a safe bet that they're not that dark (the games, that is; I haven't finished them yet).

The story about the little match-girl makes me cry every. single. time. I suppose a Disney version of it would have her rescued by a kindly benefactor and given a life of luxury (as in Oliver Twist, although in that story the benefactor turned out to be an uncle).

Not all stories are supposed to have a happy ending. I've been trying to explain that to some of the American posters over on TrekBBS who complain that Margaret Atwood didn't write a happy ending for Offred in The Handmaid's Tale. The ending was left ambiguous, which turns out to be a good thing since it provided the opportunity for the TV series to have a second season (the first season covered most of the events of the novel).