A Tale of Two Kate DiCamillo Adaptations

Posted on August 22, 2025 by stationmaster

“Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark.”-Kate DiCamillo, The Tale of Despereaux

I really don’t envy any Hollywood screenwriter faced with the task of adapting one of Kate DiCamillo’s books. That’s not to say her books are bad. More often than not, they’re wonderful. But they’re not wonderful in a way in that lends itself to a mainstream commercial children’s movie. Those tend to be, shall we say, stereotypically masculine with an emphasis on action and broad, raucous humor. DiCamillo’s work tends to be quiet, philosophical and touchy feely with an emphasis on character relationships and emotional healing. They tend to be feminine but not feminine in a Hollywood kind of way. They can be really funny at times but not funny after the fashion of a typical kids’ movie. Her books are marketable in that they win awards, but award-winning children’s books are more the kind that parents and teachers recommend to kids than the kind that kids naturally gravitate towards themselves. I hasten to add that there are plenty of kids who enjoy Kate DiCamillo’s books. It’s just that they tend to be kids who already love books and reading in general. Unlike Harry Potter or Captain Underpants, they don’t really appeal to kids who gravitate towards movies. If that sounds like I’m criticizing Kate DiCamillo, I’m not. After all, why shouldn’t books be aimed at bookworms? Sometimes it even rubs me the wrong way when children’s books seem like they’re trying to ingratiate themselves with kids who dislike children’s books. In the words of Jane Austen, “I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding.”

Apparently, being the kind of thing that parents and teachers promote to their children and students is still enough to get several of DiCamillo’s books made into movies. I’m not going to look at all of those though, just two that particularly interest me[1]Well, of the ones that have been made so far anyway. An adaptation of my favorite DiCamillo work, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is currently in development according to IMDB. I’m … Continue reading, the computer animated The Tale of Despereaux and the (mainly) live action Flora & Ulysses.

The Tale of Despereaux (2008)

Unlike most mice, Despereaux Tilling (voiced by Matthew Broderick) is born with his eyes open. He’s also smaller than the other mice in the castle of Dor except for his enormous ears. But what really sets him apart is his soul. Instead of eating the books in the castle library, he falls in love with a story about knights, chivalry and honor. Despereaux adopts the code of conduct he gets from the book and soon finds his very own princess to honor, the human Princess Pea (Emma Watson.) For the un-mouse-like crime of speaking to a human, the other mice banish him to the labyrinthine dungeon with the castle rats. There he discovers a terrible plot against his beloved Pea.

This setup is the same as in Kate DiCamillo’s book, the full title of which is The Tale of Despereaux Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread, but Despereaux’s character is pretty different. In the book, he started out as timid and fearful, painfully aware of his underdog status. In the movie, he’s blissfully oblivious to it and cheerfully fearless[2]He also isn’t the only one of his litter born alive, making it odd that his name is the French word for despair, especially since neither of his parents (William H. Macy and Frances Conroy) is … Continue reading, which is part of why the mouse community, to whom cowardice is a virtue necessary for survival, finds him such a problem. “There’s so many wonderful things in life to be afraid of if you just find out how scary they are,” says his school principal (Richard Jenkins.) And you know what? I actually think I enjoy the movie’s Despereaux better than the book’s even though he doesn’t have much of a character arc.[3]There are a couple of well-done moments where he finally experiences fear but they’re over pretty quickly. Timid underdogs are fairly common as the heroes of children’s stories. Fearless fools like the movie’s Despereaux stand out more. As much as I love the book, its first section, the one that focuses on Despereaux himself, is probably the most generic part of it.

Despereaux isn’t the only character to be radically reinvented in this adaptation. In fact, pretty much everyone is changed in some way or another. Roscuro the rat (Dustin Hoffman), who, being a rat, belongs in the shadows yet is drawn to the light[4]In the book, his full name is Chiaroscuro., is no longer a native of the dungeon and starts out as a much more sympathetic character than he does in the book. (He definitely became sympathetic over the course of the book, but he didn’t necessarily begin that way.)

In the book, the king (an uncredited Kevin Kline)’s redeeming point was how devoted he was to his daughter. In the movie, he neglects her in his all-consuming grief over the death of his wife (Patricia Cullen) and his character arc is about learning to pay more attention to her. Gregory the jailer (Robbie Coltrain) is combined with another character. The cook is made into a man (also voiced by Kevin Kline) and given a magical soup making genie (Stanley Tucci) for a sidekick. (I have no idea what the filmmakers were smoking when they made that addition to the story.)

The character who feels the most like she leaped off the page is the unfortunate serving girl, Miggery Sow (Tracey Ullman), and even she’s arguably a bit changed from the book, her backstory being somewhat softened.

Strangely, I don’t mind this since I think the book’s versions of the characters and the movie’s versions are both great in their different ways.[5]Well, OK, the soup-making genie isn’t great but he’s not that annoying either. There are some great things in the book that aren’t in the movie but there are also some great things in the movie that aren’t in the book. For example, I like the relationship that it develops between Despereaux and Roscuro who barely interact in the source material, and I like how it explores Princess Pea’s dark side at which the book only hints. The story’s climax is reimagined to be much more action packed but, in all fairness, the book’s climax, while thematically appropriate, was arguably anticlimactic. The movie’s climax manages to also be thematically appropriate without being anticlimactic.

The movie recreates or attempts to recreate the feel of the book with voiceover narration from Sigourney Weaver. As one critic in an overall positive review notes, “Weaver’s sensible cadences aren’t necessarily the best match for DiCamillo’s earnest, confiding literary voice” yet this weirdly endears the narration to me. Intentionally or not, it feels like a mother or an aunt reading a book aloud to a child out of love, not necessarily an actress who was chosen for the sound of her voice. Speaking of books, as a lover of literature, this is one of my favorite quotes from the movie’s narrator.

Did a book ever speak to you? Almost like it was written for you? Despereaux loved it all, every bit of it…He even loved things he wouldn’t suspect.

The things about my favorite books that I wouldn’t suspect often end up being the things I love most about them.

The movie’s beautiful backgrounds also have a storybook quality. These days computer animated movies either have a completely realistic look or an ultra-cartoony one. I wish more looked like The Tale of Despereaux.

I love the character designs for the animal characters too though I don’t care for the look of the humans. (Just look at Princess Pea’s prominent nose!)

Some of the character animation is also regrettably stiff. Still, I love the movie’s earnestness and sincerity and how it shows children in a way that’s accessible to them, sympathetic characters doing bad things with bad consequences.

Conscience compels me to concede that “accessible” may not be the most accurate word to describe this film. Many kids find it too slow paced, and it’s not universally loved by adults either. I’ll even admit I don’t rewatch this movie as often as I thought I would when I first saw it. But whenever I do rewatch it, I love it, and I’d encourage others to give it a chance. Like the book, it’s a great tribute to such wonderful, powerful, ridiculous things as love, light, hope, forgiveness and soup.

Flora & Ulysses (2021)

At ten years old, Flora Buckman (Matilda Lawler) already self identifies as a cynic. Her comic book artist father (Ben Schwartz) and her romance novelist mother (Alyson Hannigan) were the kind of idealists who’d actually name their daughter Flora Belle. Now her mother is struggling in her career, her father is unsuccessful in his and they’re estranged from each other. Flora is not going to have any of that disappointment in her life. “Cynics don’t hope. They see what’s real,” she says. “Hope can get in the way of action.” But it’s made clear that Flora isn’t really a cynic at heart by how quickly she latches onto the idea that a squirrel in her yard has been given superpowers by being sucked up by a runaway vacuum cleaner.[6]Indeed, she almost gets this idea too quickly. In the original book, right after he’s been revived, the squirrel picks up the vacuum with one paw. I don’t understand why the movie cuts … Continue reading She names him Ulysses after the vacuum (the Ulysses 2000X) and takes him home despite her mother’s protests, hoping to learn why the universe has bestowed superpowers on this squirrel. It turns out to have been so he could inspire Flora and her family and help them see the universe’s possibilities again.

There’s a lot to love about Flora & Ulysses. The casting is great. Young Lawler really holds the movie together as Flora. The screenplay by Brad Copeland is pretty great too…sometimes. Much of it is quite witty and charming and true to the spirit, if not the letter, of Kate DiCamillo. There’s also a lot of it that’s pretty dumb, mainly when it indulges in visual humor as opposed to verbal humor. I’m not saying I never enjoy slapstick comedy. I think it can be hilarious. But sadly, this film’s slapstick seldom got more than a mildly contemptuous snort from me.

In fact, the only set piece I remember making me laugh harder than that was the car chase where Flora’s dad has to drive the getaway vehicle after his hand has been shot by a tranquilizer dart.

If you’ve read the original book but haven’t seen the movie, that last sentence probably had you going, “What?!” In DiCamillo, the threat of Ulysses being captured by animal control is only brought up once and then neutralized. This adaptation’s biggest addition to the story is a bumbling animal control agent (Danny Pudi) who’s out to get Ulysses and test his brain tissue for rabies.[7]Coincidentally, the movie adaptation of DiCamillo’s Because of Winn Dixie also added a comical antagonist who was involved with law enforcement. This character just isn’t very funny and it’s annoying that the climax becomes all about stopping him.

Strangely, the movie bothers to give him a sympathetic reason for not liking squirrels and then just treats him like a comedic punching bag.

What’s arguably even more annoying for fans of the book is that some of its endearing characters get shortchanged. Flora’s neighbor, Tootie Tickham (Nancy Robertson), the owner of the fateful vacuum cleaner, was a major presence in the book but only gets two scenes here. The sage Dr. Meescham (Anna Deavere Smith) gets more screentime but most of her memorable lines from the book are cut. I particularly miss her telling Flora that cynics are people who are afraid to believe. On the plus side, William Spiver (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), Tootie’s great nephew who suffers from hysterical blindness, is as kooky as he is in the source material. Perhaps he isn’t quite as funny or well developed but the adaptation does more justice to him than to most of the other supporting characters.

Speaking of Tootie and her family, the movie doesn’t include the giant book of poetry which the vacuum also devoured in the book. This makes the fact that one of Ulysses superpowers is the ability to write poetry in English rather random.

This review has been more negative than not or at least I’ve been more specific about the things I dislike than the things I like, so I should mention that it’s not like the only good things about the movie come from the book. An added workplace subplot about Flora’s father’s obnoxious manager (Jesse Reid) is pretty fun.

I actually think the movie improves upon the book-or had the potential to do so anyway-by showing Flora’s mother in a sympathetic light earlier. In the source material, she just comes across as nasty until the very end when she redeems herself.[8]Well, there is a scene of William Spiver helping her with one of her books that hints at a more likeable side to her, but Flora doesn’t see it that way and I’m not sure how many young … Continue reading If anything, the movie goes too far in the opposite direction and doesn’t really show her being nasty at all. I really feel like her angry outburst from Chapter 45 of the book shouldn’t have been cut as the poem Ulysses ultimately writes for Flora isn’t as meaningful without that context.[9]If you really want it spoiled, the poem is what Flora’s mom should have said to her instead.

I see that even when I tried to focus on the positive, I slipped back into negative there. That’s unfortunate since I really do like this movie. Well, I like the parts that have a quirky indie vibe. They’re the parts that feel like they’re from Kate DiCamillo even when they’re not. The parts that feel like just another dumb kids’ comedy, not so much. Still, humor is relative. The things in Flora & Ulysses (2021) that I find unfunny other people-and not just kids-may find funny. Few comedies that center around a young girl dealing with the aftermath of her parents’ separation also center around a superpowered squirrel so you can’t say this movie is unoriginal. And I do think the movie’s ultimate message for cynics is a good summary of the book’s.

Do not hope, only observe because when you do, you’ll see how much wonder the world actually has, and you won’t be a cynic anymore.

Concluding Thoughts

Both The Tale of Despereaux and Flora & Ulysses take a great deal of artistic license with DiCamillo’s plots and characters. Arguably, Despereaux is the one that takes the greater license. But to me, it feels different from other, more commercial children’s movies in the same way that the book feels different from other, more commercial children’s books. Actually, at its best, so does Flora & Ulysses. But it’s not at its best as consistently as is The Tale of Despereaux and I can’t defend it as strongly or recommend it as highly. Still, that’s different from not being able to recommend it at all.

References

References
↑1 Well, of the ones that have been made so far anyway. An adaptation of my favorite DiCamillo work, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane is currently in development according to IMDB. I’m really not sure how they’re going to do that one as a movie.
↑2 He also isn’t the only one of his litter born alive, making it odd that his name is the French word for despair, especially since neither of his parents (William H. Macy and Frances Conroy) is French in this version.
↑3 There are a couple of well-done moments where he finally experiences fear but they’re over pretty quickly.
↑4 In the book, his full name is Chiaroscuro.
↑5 Well, OK, the soup-making genie isn’t great but he’s not that annoying either.
↑6 Indeed, she almost gets this idea too quickly. In the original book, right after he’s been revived, the squirrel picks up the vacuum with one paw. I don’t understand why the movie cuts that.
↑7 Coincidentally, the movie adaptation of DiCamillo’s Because of Winn Dixie also added a comical antagonist who was involved with law enforcement.
↑8 Well, there is a scene of William Spiver helping her with one of her books that hints at a more likeable side to her, but Flora doesn’t see it that way and I’m not sure how many young readers do.
↑9 If you really want it spoiled, the poem is what Flora’s mom should have said to her instead.
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How Good of an Adaptation is The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh?

Posted on August 16, 2025 by stationmaster

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) is actually a compilation of three previously released animated featurettes (e.g. twenty-five-minute length cartoons that would originally appear before full length movies in theaters) with some (entertaining) bridging material and an epilogue added.[1]If it sounds like I’m criticizing this thing for being a cash grab, I’m not. There’s something to be said for fans being able to watch all three featurettes together. When the first of these featurettes was released, it got terrible reviews from English critics who considered it a dreadful adaptation of its source material, A. A. Milne’s beloved children’s stories. They accused it of being too loud and cartoony, lacking the source material’s gentleness, and too Americanized, lacking its dry, quintessentially English humor. Time has been kind to The Many Adventures though. Most of the modern reviews I’ve read describe it as a good, even great, adaptation of the Pooh stories, especially considering the Walt Disney studio is famous for making inaccurate adaptations. That seems to be the consensus now.[2]It should be noted though that those reviews weren’t generally from English critics. If there’s a grudge held against Disney’s Pooh these days, it’s not so much that it’s regarded as a bad adaptation itself. It’s that it led to multitudinous spinoff movies, shows, picture books, comics, etc. that are now more familiar to American audiences than the original books.

Is this more tolerant view of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh justified or was the original English disdain for it correct? Here’s my attempt at an in-depth analysis to answer that question.

The Characters

Disney adaptations are known for softening the darker aspects of their source materials. You’d think that wouldn’t be a thing with The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, given the great innocence of the Winnie-the-Pooh books. But if you pay attention, some of the characters did kind of having dark shades that Disney airbrushed. The most famous example of this is Eeyore (voiced by story artist Ralph Wright) who is as pessimistic in the movie as he was in the books but not nearly as arrogant or bitterly, not to mention elaborately, sarcastic. Piglet (John Fiedler) is defined by his timidity in both the books and the movie but in the former, he also had a great deal of pride and defensiveness of which you don’t get as much in the film. He also could be rather competitive in the books and even had a jealous streak towards his best friend, Winnie-the-Pooh.[3]The very introduction to the first Pooh book brings this up. Disney’s Piglet is loveable in a less complicated way though he does get a great snarky line in the third featurette. (“Pooh, I don’t think Rabbit’s splendid idea worked.”) The character who comes across the most differently from the book is Rabbit (Junius Matthews) who is much more frazzled and panicky in the movie than the dignified, authoritarian literary version.[4]This is the only instance I can recall of the character in Disney’s later spinoffs and tie-ins being closer to the books. He’s also much more frequently the butt of the comedy. I don’t mind this as much as you’d think since while the character is different in the movie, he still feels like the kind of comedic character A. A. Milne could have written. Plus, Junius Matthews’s vocal performance is just so entertaining.

Since the Disney movie doesn’t adapt every single Pooh story, some characters inevitably get more focus than others. The ones who end up emerging as the leads are Winnie the Pooh himself (Disney veteran Sterling Holloway), Piglet, Rabbit and Tigger (Paul Winchell.) In spite of not being the focus though, Owl (Hal Smith) still emerges as a vivid and funny personality if not as rounded as he was in Milne. The same can’t be said for Kanga (Barbara Luddy, another regular Disney voice actor) and Roo (Clint Howard in the first two featurettes, Dori Whitaker in the third) who really don’t come across as that funny here. To be fair, they were probably the least funny and least developed characters in the books too, but I’d say they were still funnier there than were here. If there’s one supporting character I really wish had more development though, it’s Eeyore. That’s not because Disney made him unfunny. Sure, his acerbic personality may not have been unchanged but he’s still hilarious. For being a story artist rather than a voice actor, Ralph Wright turned in a great performance. It’s just too bad that there’s not more of him in the movie compared to the books.[5]In 1983, he’d star in a new featurette, Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore but despite adapting some top-notch material from the Pooh books, the visuals, voice acting and comedic timing in … Continue reading

It should also be mentioned that there’s a character who is original to the movie, but I’ll get to him later.

The Framing Device

In the first Pooh book, the one titled simply Winnie-the-Pooh[6]By the way, Milne hyphenated Pooh’s full name and Disney didn’t. I’m going to spell it based on which version of the character I mean., it’s established that all the stories are being told to Christopher Robin by the narrator (presumably his parent) before bathtime and that the characters are all based on his stuffed animals. This doesn’t really feature in the second book, The House at Pooh Corner, except for the introduction.[7]Or, rather, the contradiction. You have to read it to understand. The Many Adventures uses a somewhat different framing device. It begins in a live action bedroom featuring the stuffed animal versions of the Pooh characters.[8]Even Rabbit and Owl who aren’t supposed to be toys, but I digress. An invisible narrator (Sebastian Cabot) informs us that this room belongs to a boy called Christopher Robin. On a window seat is a book which opens up. The illustrations come to life and we’re off.

Now I’ve read that director Wolfgang Reitherman was not a fan of the Pooh books[9]Though it should be noted that some of the leading animators on The Many Adventures were, mainly Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Milt Kahl. and even initially resented being assigned them to adapt. But I really don’t feel a lack of affection, watching this. A lot of the toys we see in Christopher Robin’s room are the kind of toys that were depicted in Ernest H. Shepard’s illustrations for Milne’s two books of verse for children, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six, such as toy soldiers, a rocking horse and a train set. Yeah, they’re 60s-era American versions of those things rather than Edwardian English ones but still. Even the window seat on which the book stands is arguably reminiscent of the window seat in Christopher Robin’s nursery in Now We Are Six.

The map at the beginning of the book within the movie is clearly modeled on Shepard’s map from the real book and that’s not the only nod to the original you’ll notice if you’re quick eyed. While we don’t get Pooh’s arms being stuck, we do get a nod to his name’s origin from the book as we see him blowing an insect from his nose. (“Pooh!”) Even if the director wasn’t a fan of the Pooh books himself, it seems like he wanted to please viewers who were fans.

I consider it a happy accident that The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was animated with xerox technology since it means the pencil lines on the animated characters are frequently visible, evoking the original illustrations by E. H. Shepard.

Now on to the individual segments.

Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966)

This featurette is based on the first two chapters of Winnie-the-Pooh, the one In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees, and the Stories Begin and the one In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place. Why adapt two stories instead of just one? Beyond needing to fill out the runtime, I suspect the motivation lay in fact that roughly half the Pooh stories end without the main characters having accomplished anything. That’s part of their easygoing nature. Whether our heroes’ goal is to get some honey or to catch a Woozle or to get the bounces out of Tigger, they’ll usually have forgotten about it by the time the chapter is over. Sometimes even when they do accomplish a goal, such as discovering the North Pole, it’s more accurate to say they feel like they’ve accomplished it. You could argue this important to the spirit of Pooh, but Disney probably felt it would be unsatisfying. Fortunately, the first two chapters of the first book blend into one story pretty seamlessly. The first one is about Pooh trying and failing to get a meal. The second one is about him getting one but with unintended negative consequences.

If the main appeal of the Pooh books is their verbal humor, I don’t see how The Honey Tree doesn’t capture that. It includes most, if not all, of the funniest jokes from the corresponding sections of the text. Criticism of its humor being too American as opposed to British comes more from it adding slapstick. For example, in the book, the balloon-borne Pooh simply decides that the bees he’s trying to rob are “the wrong sort of bees” and has Christopher Robin get him down from the sky by shooting the balloon with his gun which he always takes with him.[10]Who says the Pooh books don’t resonate with Americans? This adaptation replaces that with a chase scene that begins in the air and continues on the ground after all the air has gone from the balloon. Along similar lines, Rabbit goes beyond using Pooh’s legs as a clothesline when the bear is stuck in his door and turns his “south end” into a decorative center piece. In the film’s defense, the ending of the balloon incident in the book is a bit anticlimactic and the stuff with Rabbit is quite fun.

Part of me wishes the jingly songs by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman used Milne’s poetry from the Pooh books but it’s not as big a part as might be supposed. As they are, the songs are great and broadly within the spirit of the Pooh books’ poetry. I’m especially a fan of the song Pooh sings as he does his Stoutness Exercises in which he explains that their purpose is to make him hungry, so he’ll eat and get stouter. (Pooh was talking about body positivity before anyone else!) The voice acting is also great in general, especially Sterling Holloway’s delightful turn as the loveable bear.

In addition to the chapters from the book I already mentioned, the featurette also features an allusion to Chapter 4 of Winnie-the-Pooh, In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh Finds One. (Christopher Robin[11]This character was originally voiced by the director’s son, Bruce Reitherman, whose American accent was a big source of contention in England. He was redubbed for The Many Adventures but … Continue reading is seen nailing the donkey’s tail back on and Eeyore swishes it around to make sure it won’t come off again.) The only characters to appear in the first two chapters of Winnie-the-Pooh were Christopher Robin, Pooh and Rabbit but The Honey Tree also features, besides Eeyore, Owl, Kanga and Roo. No Piglet or Tigger though. The latter is understandable since he wasn’t introduced until the second Pooh book, but the former is more eyebrow raising. Apparently, many of the featurette’s English detractors felt that he’d been replaced by the new and distinctly American character of Gopher (Howard Morris)[12]Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show. I can’t blame any Milne fan for feeling offended by the idea that Milne’s cast of characters needed an American animal with an American accent and American persona.[13]And, honestly, even if they wanted an animal to appeal to Americans, I feel like the turkey is more iconically American than the gopher. But while he’s not as funny any of the characters from the book, Gopher does have his moments. I love the meta joke about his business not being in the (phone)book and the scene of him almost ruining the extreme weight loss program for Pooh (“Don’t! Feed! The! Bear!”) is my favorite bit specific to this adaptation. When he’s asked to dig Pooh out of Rabbit’s doorway, he takes a good long look at him and says, “The first thing to be done is get rid of that bear! He’s coverin’ up the whole project!” That sounds like an A. A. Milne joke to me.

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968)

Is it weird that this is my favorite of the three featurettes artistically but my least favorite as an adaptation?

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day mainly adapts the climactic chapters of Winnie-the-Pooh (the ones In Which Piglet Is Entirely Surrounded by Water and In Which Christopher Robin Gives Pooh a Party and We Say Goodbye) and The House at Pooh Corner (the ones In Which Piglet Does a Very Grand Thing and In Which Eeyore Finds the Wolery and Owl Moves Into It.) In between them, it adapts part of Chapter 2 of The House at Pooh Corner (the one In Which Tigger Comes to the Forest and Has Breakfast.) There’s also a nightmare sequence, one of the few scenes in The Many Adventures that tries to be scary, about Heffalumps and Woozles, imaginary beasts from Chapter 3 and Chapter 5 of Winnie-the-Pooh, (the ones In Which Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a Woozle and In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump.)[14]We also briefly see Eeyore building a house for himself out of sticks, a reference to the first chapter of The House at Pooh Corner (In Which A House Is Built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore.) The house in … Continue reading

As you can tell by the titles of the chapters, Piglet and Tigger make their Disney debuts here. Tigger is really only the focus of one scene that exists to introduce him for the next featurette, but Piglet is one of the main characters in Blustery Day‘s story which is one of the reasons I’m inclined to favor it. Since I was a Very Small Animal myself as a kid, I related to him. Sure, I wrote above that Piglet is more complex in the book but he’s still great here. John Fiedler’s vocal performance is delightful.

However, I have a problem with how Pooh saving him from the flood is adapted. In the literary Winnie-the-Pooh, Pooh comes up with a clever idea to rescue his friend. This was a great moment for him. In the movie, all he does is happen to be in the same area as him when he’s in danger and wrongly gets credited with saving him by Christopher Robin. Why the filmmakers thought this would make for a better ending is beyond me. To be fair though, since this was only the second Pooh cartoon, it wouldn’t really have had the same effect as it did after an entire book of him being a Bear of Very Little Brain. Neither does Blustery Day include Piglet’s act of bravery that saved Pooh and Owl when they were trapped in Owl’s house in The House at Pooh Corner.[15]Come to think of it, that was also the result of a surprisingly crafty idea on Pooh’s part. Of course, since this was the animated Piglet’s very first appearance onscreen, having him behave uncharacteristically heroic right off the bat would have made even less sense than Pooh behaving uncharacteristically clever so early. The adaptation does include Piglet’s later moment of self-sacrifice, which also ends up being a great moment for Pooh. This was one of the most emotional moments in the books[16]Not that that’s saying much since being emotional is beside the point of most of the Pooh stories. Still, it’s saying something. and the movie does a very nice job with it.

Why is this Pooh featurette my favorite when it makes what I consider such misguided changes to the source material? Well, the songs are even better than the ones in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. In particular, I think A Rather Blustery Day and The Rain, Rain, Rain Came Down, Down, Down are underrated gems. And I don’t feel like Blustery Day comes across as lacking in affection for the books. There’s something fun about just how many Pooh stories it crams into its runtime. It also helps that since the main chapters from the books it adapts are the ones where the characters in the most physical danger, relatively speaking, they lend themselves to elaborate Disney-style slapstick comedy better than the chapters adapted by Honey Tree did. Perhaps because of that, the scenes of slapstick are much funnier. I especially love the one with Owl, Pooh and Piglet in Owl’s dangerously swaying tree. All three characters are hilariously in character with Piglet being concerned about the physical danger, Owl being concerned in the family anecdote he’s relating to his guests and Pooh being concerned with getting some honey to eat. Just because it’s slapstick doesn’t mean it can’t be about character.[17]By the way, one of Owl’s speeches has a fun allusion to Edward Lear’s classic nonsense poem, The Owl and the Pussycat.

Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974)

This featurette is mainly based on Chapters 7 and 4 of The House at Pooh Corner, (the ones In Which Tigger is Unbounced and It Is Shown That Tiggers Don’t Climb Trees.) It also inserts Chapter 3 of Winnie-the-Pooh, In Which Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a Woozle.[18]Attentive viewers will note that a snatch of dialogue between Piglet and Pooh in that scene was already used in Blustery Day though with the speakers reversed. Why did I just list Chapter 7 of House at Pooh Corner before Chapter 4? Because the movie puts them in that order. I actually think this change in the chronology works well, making it so that we don’t see Tigger really humbled until after we’ve seen the other characters fail to “unbounce” him.

A side effect of having Chapter 7 take place before Chapter 4 though is that Rabbit can’t be reconciled to Tigger at the same point he does in the book. Well, the movie could have done that, but it would have meant his character arc would have been over halfway through the featurette. Instead, it creates some new drama[19]Well, it’s dramatic compared to the movie’s generally comedic tone. for the characters so that Tigger remains a nuisance to Rabbit and Rabbit remains hostile to Tigger until the end. Happily, I think the added drama works well.

Unlike the other two featurettes, this one only features the characters necessary to the story. Owl, Gopher and Eeyore are all absent even though the last one was present for one of the scenes in the book that Tigger Too adapts. There are also no new songs, only reprises of The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers from Blustery Day. I mean that as an observation, by the way, not a criticism. As much as I enjoy how Blustery Day is crammed with things from the books, there’s something to be said for not forcing characters into a story when you can’t think of anything for them to do. And I’d rather have no new songs than songs that paled in comparisons to those from earlier segments.

The Epilogue

[20]The above image on the left is an allusion to Chapter 5 of The House at Pooh Corner, (the one In Which Rabbit Has a Busy Day and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings.) The one on the … Continue readingThe added ending to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a truncated version of the final chapter of The House at Pooh Corner, In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place and We Leave Them There. It’s mainly Christopher Robin and Pooh’s final conversation about the joys of doing Nothing, of which Christopher Robin will no longer be able to partake-or not as often anyway. It’s one of the more downbeat endings to a Disney movie.[21]I’ve written before that there was a time when Disney movies didn’t always have happy endings, but that time wasn’t very long and even then, it wasn’t as if Disney movies … Continue reading Being truncated, the scene isn’t as moving as it is in the source material, mainly because the relationship between these two characters hasn’t really been a focus since Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, but it’s still touching.

Conclusion

Actually, “not as great as the source material but still pretty great” is a good summary of my opinion on this adaptation in general. It could be better. Besides the issues I’ve mentioned above, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh could have been improved if the creators had planned the featurettes out as a movie in advance. Then the exciting events in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day could have functioned as the climax of the whole film just as they did for Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner (respectively.) That would have given them more time to develop Pooh’s relationships with Piglet and Christopher so the few dramatic moments would have packed even more punch.[22]Maybe this is because I haven’t read enough books but the literary Pooh and Piglet’s friendship is actually one of my favorites in literature. There also could have been some foreshadowing of Christopher Robin’s farewell to childhood, as there was in The House at Pooh Corner, so the ending would have come less from nowhere. And I’m miffed that in all these years, Disney has never adapted the third chapter of The House at Pooh Corner (the one In Which A Search Is Organdized and Piglet Nearly Meets the Heffalump Again) e.g. the funniest Pooh story ever!

But it’s not like I’m actually thinking about any of those potential improvements while I’m watching the movie-certainly not stuff about structure! I’m just relaxing and soaking in the charm. Both the original books and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh are appealing to and appropriate for very small children yet have a wit that engages adults too.[23]Also, more adults may find the cuddly stuffed animals appealing than they’d admit. Actually, they’re arguably aimed the most at adults who work or have worked with little kids-well, assuming they look on those kids with some degree of fondness. Such adults have probably met a few Poohs, Piglets, Rabbits and Tiggers in their time-or been one of them themselves. (We were probably all Eeyore at some point in our adolescence.) You could even argue that each of the episodes that make up The Many Adventures represents a different aspect of childhood. Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree is about childish appetites. Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is about childhood fears. And Tigger Too is about overexuberant kids who drive adults crazy. Hmm, maybe the movie does have a good structure after all.

Any lingering resentment towards The Many Adventures in the UK seems to be less to do with the adaptation itself and more to do with how the Pooh characters have come to be defined in American minds by the Disney versions. I think it’s unfortunate that Disney held onto the copyright so firmly and that we haven’t gotten to see other takes on the material.[24]Well, there were those weird Russian Pooh adaptations. I’d have loved to see what the people who made The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends and The Wind in the Willows (1995) could have done with the Pooh books. They’d likely have captured aspects of them that Disney didn’t and doubtless been more authentically British. But it’s also possible Disney’s hold on the rights to the characters has saved us from less faithful adaptations being made. If The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh has to be The Winnie the Pooh for many people…eh, things could be worse.

I think the text in this image really says it all.

Bibliography

Finch, Christopher. (2000) Winnie the Pooh: A Celebration of the Silly Old Bear. Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Milne, A. A. (1994) The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh. Dutton Children’s Books.

Kothenschulte, Daniel. (2016) The Walt Disney Film Archives: The Animated Movies 1921-1968. Taschen Books.

References

References
↑1 If it sounds like I’m criticizing this thing for being a cash grab, I’m not. There’s something to be said for fans being able to watch all three featurettes together.
↑2 It should be noted though that those reviews weren’t generally from English critics.
↑3 The very introduction to the first Pooh book brings this up.
↑4 This is the only instance I can recall of the character in Disney’s later spinoffs and tie-ins being closer to the books.
↑5 In 1983, he’d star in a new featurette, Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore but despite adapting some top-notch material from the Pooh books, the visuals, voice acting and comedic timing in that featurette would pale by comparison to the original three.
↑6 By the way, Milne hyphenated Pooh’s full name and Disney didn’t. I’m going to spell it based on which version of the character I mean.
↑7 Or, rather, the contradiction. You have to read it to understand.
↑8 Even Rabbit and Owl who aren’t supposed to be toys, but I digress.
↑9 Though it should be noted that some of the leading animators on The Many Adventures were, mainly Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Milt Kahl.
↑10 Who says the Pooh books don’t resonate with Americans?
↑11 This character was originally voiced by the director’s son, Bruce Reitherman, whose American accent was a big source of contention in England. He was redubbed for The Many Adventures but I’m not sure by whom. I would assume it was by Timothy Turner who voiced Christopher Robin in the third featurette but according to behind-the-scenes material, John Walmsley, who voiced him in the second one, did his dialogue in the epilogue.
↑12 Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show.
↑13 And, honestly, even if they wanted an animal to appeal to Americans, I feel like the turkey is more iconically American than the gopher.
↑14 We also briefly see Eeyore building a house for himself out of sticks, a reference to the first chapter of The House at Pooh Corner (In Which A House Is Built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore.) The house in the movie is less fortunate than the one in the book, not that Eeyore would expect anything better.
↑15 Come to think of it, that was also the result of a surprisingly crafty idea on Pooh’s part.
↑16 Not that that’s saying much since being emotional is beside the point of most of the Pooh stories. Still, it’s saying something.
↑17 By the way, one of Owl’s speeches has a fun allusion to Edward Lear’s classic nonsense poem, The Owl and the Pussycat.
↑18 Attentive viewers will note that a snatch of dialogue between Piglet and Pooh in that scene was already used in Blustery Day though with the speakers reversed.
↑19 Well, it’s dramatic compared to the movie’s generally comedic tone.
↑20 The above image on the left is an allusion to Chapter 5 of The House at Pooh Corner, (the one In Which Rabbit Has a Busy Day and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings.) The one on the right is an homage to an illustration from Now We Are Six, one accompanying the poem Us Two.
↑21 I’ve written before that there was a time when Disney movies didn’t always have happy endings, but that time wasn’t very long and even then, it wasn’t as if Disney movies always ended tragically.
↑22 Maybe this is because I haven’t read enough books but the literary Pooh and Piglet’s friendship is actually one of my favorites in literature.
↑23 Also, more adults may find the cuddly stuffed animals appealing than they’d admit.
↑24 Well, there were those weird Russian Pooh adaptations.
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How Bad of an Adaptation is The Black Cauldron?

Posted on August 8, 2025 by stationmaster

The Chronicles of Prydain are a series of children’s fantasy adventure novels from the 1960s by Lloyd Alexander. They are beloved largely because of their characterizations. The Black Cauldron (1985) is an animated movie adaptation of the first two books in the series.[1]The title of the first of which is The Book of Three by the way. It is…not beloved.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The film does have something of a cult following but it’s also generally considered a terrible adaptation, unworthy of the source material. Since I just said the characters were the main thing that made the books great, you’d assume that the movie is really untrue to them.

But that is less true than you’d think.

The titular cauldron is a magical artifact capable on creating an unstoppable army of deathless warriors. One of the only beings who knows the cauldron’s location is Hen Wen, an oracular pig. Wait. An oracular pig? Yeah, that’s a thing from Welsh mythology which served as the inspiration for the Prydain books. As I was saying, the villainous Horned King (voiced by John Hurt) seeks Hen Wen so he can use her to find the cauldron and use that to conquer the entire land of Prydain or possibly the world. Hen Wen’s caretaker, the old enchanter Dalben (Freddie Jones), divines this threat and sends his assistant, an ambitious young boy called Taran (Grant Bardsley), to take the pig to a safe hiding place. Stuff happens, Taran gains a motley crew of companions, and his quest evolves from hiding Hen Wen into trying to destroy the black cauldron itself before the Horned King finds it.

Most of the characters’ personalities and character arcs are the same as in the books. Taran still starts out complaining about his humdrum life and dreaming of glory in battle. He still messes up and feels guilty. He still learns the cost of true heroism and becomes maturer and more selfless. Gurgi (John Byner), the short hairy creature Taran picks up on his travels, still starts out a groveling, cowardly mercenary with a huge appetite and still ends up becoming a genuinely good and helpful friend. Fflewddur Fflam (Nigel Hawthorne), the boastful wandering bard[2]Sorry about all these unpronounceable names. Welsh, you know? still has his magic harp with the strings that break whenever he lies or exaggerates. Princess Eilonwy (Susie Sheridan) is still blunt, chatty and unflappable in the face of danger.[3]Well, she’s a bit less unflappable than in the books but I’m willing to believe that’s because the action scenes wouldn’t work as well if she didn’t display any fear. She still has a magical golden bauble that glows in the dark. She still offends Taran’s pride with her blunt words, and he still offends hers by not being immediately grateful for her help and speaking disparagingly of girls. They still make up and Eilonwy still ends up encouraging Taran when he’s feeling useless, and their friendship still becomes something more. The notes are all here. But there’s no music.

That’s largely because of the writing[4]This movie had so many writers, I’m not going to bother mentioning all their names. which includes little of Lloyd Alexander’s dialogue. To be fair, his distinctly literary humor, such as Eilonwy’s speech patterns (“It’s like putting your fingers in your ears and jumping down a well.” “That’s like asking someone to a feast, then making them wash the dishes!”), might not have translated well onscreen. Gurgi at least keeps his verbal tick of speaking of himself in third person, and he says “smackings and whackings” and “munchings and crunchings” a couple of times. But not only does the movie not have time to develop his character properly but the voice John Byner gives him is highly annoying. True, he’s supposed to start out that way, but he’s supposed to wind up being endearing and, for me anyway, the film never accomplishes that part.

Fflewddur’s characteristic exclamation from the books (“Great Belin!”) makes it into the movie.[5]Belin is a god from Welsh mythology. But he’s not a quarter as funny or endearing as he is in the text. Well, OK, maybe he’s a quarter as funny and endearing. Hawthorne’s vocal performance is one of the better ones in the movie and there’s one really funny moment where he covers his harp’s magical strings with his hand right before they explode from his bluster.

Here it is.

As Taran and Eilonwy however, Bardsley and Sheridan give two of the worst vocal performances I have ever heard in a Disney movie. Some of their line readings are flat and some of them are overdramatic. Were these really the best actors who auditioned for the roles? But to be fair, neither of them is given much help by the bland, boring writing. I know that the serious characters in animated Disney movies, such as the various fairy tales princes, are generally regarded as boring. But most of those movies don’t focus much on the serious characters. (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs focuses more on the dwarfs, Cinderella more on the mice, Sleeping Beauty more on the fairies, etc.) The Black Cauldron, on the other hand, really wants to be about Taran’s character arc and his relationships with the other characters and those things were very compelling in the original books. But the versions in this movie are horribly dull.

Speaking of animated Disney movies, I believe this was the first one not to be some sort of musical. I’ve gone on record as saying that I don’t believe kids demand musical numbers from all their entertainment as some seem to think but it recently occurred to me that The Black Cauldron might actually have benefited from being a musical. Assuming the songs were good, which is admittedly a bit of a gamble, Taran singing about wanting to be a hero at the beginning would likely be much more engaging than him just talking about it to no one in particular. He mostly just comes across as whiny.[6]Imagine if in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Belle just walked around her yard, complaining about how boring her town was, instead of singing about it. True, Taran is supposed to start out as whiny and grow into a better person, but a song with eloquent lyrics and a memorable tune would do more to make us sympathize with him even in his whininess.

Other characters are similarly true to the broad outlines of their literary counterparts without capturing their charm. Dalben is as critical of Taran’s immaturity as he is in the books but not nearly as insightful or witty. The three witches of Morva more or less keep the dynamic they had in the books with Orwen (Adele Malis-Morey) being more girlish, Orgoch (Billie Hayes) being more evil[7]The witches claim to be more amoral than immoral in the books but Orgoch certainly comes close. and Ordu (Eda Reiss Marin) being the most levelheaded and the trio’s spokeswoman. But they’re simply not very funny.

I have no idea why the character designs for Dalben and Fflewddur are so similar by the way.

Ironically, the best character in the movie is the one who’s technically the most changed from the book. The Horned King is a combination of various antagonists from The Chronicles of Prydain, but he makes for a great villain. John Hurt’s vocal performance is easily the best in the film and even when he’s not speaking, the Horned King is a chilling presence. The Black Cauldron becomes infinitely more gripping whenever he’s onscreen.

The adaptation’s other problems are generally more what you’d expect: the results of squashing the first two books in a series into one story. There are a lot of gestures towards a larger mythology that never get explained. How exactly is Eilonwy a princess? What’s with her golden bauble? How did Taran end up living with Dalben? Those and other questions are answered by the books, but the movie raises questions of its own that it doesn’t answer. For example, Taran refers to a war in his first scene, but we never learn any more about that. There’s no explanation for the black cauldron’s behavior in the story’s climax beyond the movie wanting an action-packed finale and needing a way to dispose of the villain.[8]I don’t think it’s spoiling anything to reveal that the villain of a children’s movie dies. Because Gurgi doesn’t have his magical wallet of never-ending food, he doesn’t have anything besides an apple core in the scene where all the heroes offer to sacrifice their most prized possession for the cauldron, weakening the dramatic moment.[9]Eilonwy still has her bauble, but she doesn’t offer it in the movie. What’s up with that?

All of Taran’s mentors besides Dalben are cut. To be fair, none of them were the most fun characters and I can see why you’d want to cut them if you absolutely had to turn the first two Prydain books into an eighty-minute movie but the result is that Taran is given no role models in humble heroism, weakening his arc.[10]It’s also kind of weird that he’s called an assistant pig keeper when he seems to be the only pig keeper. The worst omission is that of Prince Ellidyr, one of the most memorable characters from the literary Black Cauldron. Without him, neither Taran’s heroic sacrifice nor the resolution are anywhere near as interesting. On the plus side, if the first two Prydain stories absolutely had to be melded into one and none of the others adapted, giving the sword Dyrnwyn the role of Adaon’s broach makes sense.

A character whom the adaptation really does dirty is Doli (also John Byner) of the Fair Folk.[11]The Fair Folk in general are some of the least faithfully adapted characters in the movie, being much cutesier and friendlier to humans than in the books. Lloyd Alexander’s version was definitely a prickly curmudgeon, but he never abandoned the heroes as he does in the movie. He was separated from them in the book The Black Cauldron, but he returned in the end to rescue them. The film gives that role to Gurgi. It doesn’t seem to want Doli to be unsympathetic though as its final moments show him inexplicably watching the heroes with approval. Would it have killed the filmmakers to have him actually do something to redeem himself?

I’m probably making the movie sound unwatchably bad which it really isn’t. There just aren’t many reasons to watch it. Some of the action scenes are enjoyably suspenseful. The music by Elmer Bernstein has its good moments though much of it is too cacophonous for my taste.[12]There’s also a weird moment when after an effectively ominous prologue (narrated by John Huston) explaining the cauldron’s evil, we cut to the movie’s title and the score suddenly … Continue reading The backgrounds are fine though I’m mystified that some critics praise the film’s visuals even if they criticize its story.

These are some of the few I’d describe as downright beautiful.

For a while, The Black Cauldron was described as Disney’s worst animated movie[13]As in their worst movie to be animated, not the movie with the worst animation., from its main animation studio anyway. I haven’t watched every one of their animated movies and neither do I intend to do so, so I can’t speak with authority, but I still feel like that’s fair. There are other Disney cartoons with more annoying aspects, but this one is the most lifeless and dull of any of them.[14]I did end up seeing the recent Wish which many on the internet were denouncing as a trainwreck-largely for good reasons in my opinion. But while The Black Cauldron‘s basic premise is much … Continue reading It’s a shambling zombie of a Disney movie.

One of the only things about it with a little flair is the character animation and even that’s largely misguided flair. The characters are prone to flailing around and making constant sweeping gestures which are easier for animators but distracting to watch. This movie also has some of the unfunniest slapstick to appear in an animated Disney film.

Fans of the Prydain books have long lamented that this is the only noteworthy adaptation of them out there and rightfully so. Hopefully, someone will give it another shot someday.

References

References
↑1 The title of the first of which is The Book of Three by the way.
↑2 Sorry about all these unpronounceable names. Welsh, you know?
↑3 Well, she’s a bit less unflappable than in the books but I’m willing to believe that’s because the action scenes wouldn’t work as well if she didn’t display any fear.
↑4 This movie had so many writers, I’m not going to bother mentioning all their names.
↑5 Belin is a god from Welsh mythology.
↑6 Imagine if in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Belle just walked around her yard, complaining about how boring her town was, instead of singing about it.
↑7 The witches claim to be more amoral than immoral in the books but Orgoch certainly comes close.
↑8 I don’t think it’s spoiling anything to reveal that the villain of a children’s movie dies.
↑9 Eilonwy still has her bauble, but she doesn’t offer it in the movie. What’s up with that?
↑10 It’s also kind of weird that he’s called an assistant pig keeper when he seems to be the only pig keeper.
↑11 The Fair Folk in general are some of the least faithfully adapted characters in the movie, being much cutesier and friendlier to humans than in the books.
↑12 There’s also a weird moment when after an effectively ominous prologue (narrated by John Huston) explaining the cauldron’s evil, we cut to the movie’s title and the score suddenly turns from being ominous to strangely celebratory.
↑13 As in their worst movie to be animated, not the movie with the worst animation.
↑14 I did end up seeing the recent Wish which many on the internet were denouncing as a trainwreck-largely for good reasons in my opinion. But while The Black Cauldron‘s basic premise is much better than Wish‘s confusing and unrelatable one, Wish at least has a consistently strong voice cast and a little pizzazz.
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Adaptation Station Blog Posts That Were Not to Be

Posted on July 25, 2025 by stationmaster

Waste not, want not, I suppose. Scott Cramer, a YouTuber whom I like[1]Partially because we’re both North Dakotans., once did a video about ideas he had for YouTube videos which he ultimately never made for various reasons. This allowed him to make use of some of the best lines he would have used in those videos and give fans an interesting look at the behind-the-scenes process. I thought it’d be fun to do a blog post like that, so here are some concepts for blog posts that I’ve reluctantly rejected-well, rejected so far anyway. There’s no reason I couldn’t still take one and make a blog post out of it. If my readers are particularly intrigued by any, they should tell me and maybe-just maybe-I’ll expand on them.

Without further ado, here in no particular order are The Adaptation Station.com’s posts that weren’t.

The Best Guilty Pleasures About Which I’ve Blogged

You may have noticed I like to make lists looking back on movies, miniseries, etc. that I’ve done over the years. I thought it would be fun to do a lookback list of a very specific kind of movie: the guilty pleasure. Different people have different definitions of that but mine is a piece of entertainment which I’d have to say is more bad than good if I were to neutrally add up all its strengths and weaknesses but which I also happen to really enjoy even if I have a difficult time justifying the extent of that enjoyment. This is distinct from a piece of entertainment that’s a mixed bag in that there’s an element of embarrassment in my pleasure and it’s distinct from the so-bad-it’s-good pleasure in that there are things about guilty pleasures that I honestly believe are high quality. It’s just that the low-quality aspects should be bad enough in theory to keep me from revisiting those pleasures as often as I do. The concept may sound confusing, but I think a lot of people have “favorites” like this. I can think of three adaptations about which I’ve blogged that fit the criteria. In alphabetical order, those adaptations are Disney’s A Christmas Carol (2009), Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1997) and Peter Pan (2003.)

Ranking them for a Best Guilty Pleasures list gets difficult though. By a better guilty pleasure do I mean something that gives me more pleasure or more guilt? And what about other, less clear, guilty pleasures The Adaptation Station.com has covered? A big part of me feels I shouldn’t like Prince Caspian (2008) as much as I do considering the major changes it makes to the original story and characters. But there are very few scenes or lines in it that I find silly as I do scenes and lines in the aforementioned GPs. My guilt is more academic and theoretical with that one. Much the same could be said of Into the Woods (2014) though I’m less of a fan of the original stage play than I am of the Narnia books, so both my guilt and my pleasure are less intense. And what about things that are sort of the opposite of guilty pleasures, movies like Return to Oz that I feel I should enjoy much more than I actually do? Should they be included on the list or should they get their own post? What ultimately dissuaded me from a blog post about The Adaptation Station’s top guilty pleasures though was that I believe my original posts about the three adaptations that I’m confident would make the list already do a good job explaining why they’re guilty pleasures for me. To write more would just be repetitive.[2]Indeed, this blog has returned to the 2003 Peter Pan far more often than it has to either the more consistently faithful 1924 one or the more consistently entertaining 2000 one. I guess that’s … Continue reading

Alice in Wonderland (1999)

You know, I’ve blogged about all the adaptations in my blog’s header image except for Alice in Wonderland (1951.) I’ve loved that movie ever since I saw it as a kid, but I don’t have any ideas for blog posts about it. If I were to do a post about an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, it would be about Hallmark Entertainment’s star-studded 1999 TV movie directed by Nick Willing, which I also saw and loved as a kid. In fact, I preferred it to the 1951 movie since it included more from the books.[3]Though a downside of that is that the 1999 movie threatens to drag. In general, I really like Hallmark Entertainment’s adaptations of classic fantasies from the 90s and early 2000s (cf. Gulliver’s Travels. The Odyssey. A Christmas Carol. Arabian Nights. Snow White: The Fairest of Them All.) and I wish more adaptations nowadays would strive to be like them. To my mind, Alice in Wonderland might be their masterpiece. It’s full of fun performances and has a superbly witty script by playwright Peter Barnes. (“Last time, the whole audience hissed. Hissed! All except one man who was applauding the hissing.”) You wouldn’t necessarily think of this as being an asset to an Alice in Wonderland adaptation, but it also has an absolutely beautiful musical score courtesy of Richard Hartley.[4]He also did the soundtrack for the 2012 Great Expectations by the way. The White Knight (Christopher Lloyd)’s farewell to Alice (Tina Majorino) is oddly moving, largely because of that music.

Actually, the reason I’m not doing a blog post about the movie (unless someone insists) is that I love it so much. Except for a few small criticisms, I fear it would be one of those posts where I’m like, “this is great. That’s great. Those are great too.” Sometimes I’ll do a rave review on this blog or alternatively a post just ripping an adaptation I hate to shred but while those can be fun to write, the blog posts I think are most interesting to read tend to be about mixed bags or guilty pleasures. The most interesting part of my hypothetical post about the 1999 Alice in Wonderland would be the part comparing it to the 1985 miniseries and the 2010 movie, the latter of which acts as a fanfiction-y sequel of sorts to the Alice books. All three give Alice a character arc in which her adventures teach her to be more courageous.[5]The parallels between the 1999 and 2010 movies are particularly striking. At the beginning of both, Alice is being pressured into doing something at a garden party against her will for the sake of … Continue reading I’d argue that the fact that the original stories didn’t have any such message was something that made them stand out from other Victorian children’s books. To give them a point is to miss the point, so to speak. What’s more, I never got the impression from the books that Alice was someone who suffered from timidity. She usually tried to be polite but when confronted with something that really offended her sensibilities, such as crockery being thrown at babies or sentences before verdicts or books without pictures, she never hesitated to speak out against them. However, I love how the added character arc ultimately plays out in the 1999 movie. It strikes me as much truer to what makes the original Alice a cool character than the climaxes of the 1985 and 2010 adaptations.

Adaptations of J. M. Barrie’s Works Besides Peter Pan

Despite writing about so many adaptations of famous stories on this blog, I really do like to draw attention to great pieces of art with which people generally aren’t familiar. The only famous thing playwright J. M. Barrie created is Peter Pan-or, at least, that’s the only thing he created that’s famous nowadays and I’d argue his other works deserve better. I’ve thought about doing a blog post about movie adaptations of his other plays. The problem is I haven’t really found that many movie adaptations of those other plays. There’s The Little Minister (1934), an impossible romance between a straightlaced minister (John Beal) and a wild gypsy girl (Katharine Hepburn)-or so she seems to be-set against the backdrop of the labor disputes in 1840s Scotland. The thing about The Little Minister though is that Barrie wrote both a novel version and a play version and I’d want to be familiar with both before I wrote a blog post about it. Unlike Peter Pan however, I haven’t been able to get into the novel version of The Little Minister. I probably could get through it with an effort but there are so many other books I’d like to read now instead. Any Little Minister post will be a long time coming. There are also adaptations of Barrie’s romantic comedies, Quality Street (1937), also starring Hepburn, and What Every Woman Knows (1934) starring Helen Hayes. All I have to say about those movies is that they’re good but not as great as the original plays deserve.

The non-Peter Pan Barrie adaptation out of which I’d probably be able to spin the longest blog post is The Admirable Crichton (1957), the story of Lord Loam (Cecil Parker), an English peer of the realm with egalitarian ideals, and Crichton (Kenneth More), his butler who firmly believes in social hierarchies. While Lord Loam enjoys shocking people with his radical beliefs, he really loves being in charge too much to honestly like the concept of equality. And while Crichton believes that hierarchies are inevitable, he doesn’t believe that the specific hierarchy they have in England is the only possible one. Everyone’s ideological commitments are challenged when Lord Loam, his three daughters (Sally Ann Howes, Mercy Haystead and Miranda Connell), two of their boyfriends (Jack Watling and Gerald Harper), Crichton and another servant (Diane Cilento) are shipwrecked on an uncharted island and have to create their own civilization. The movie’s casting is great, but the writing isn’t particularly. Very little of Barrie’s dialogue is used and the script is not the better for it. While most of the story is the same as in the play, what changes there are make the comedy less funny and the story less effective. The only alteration I really like is giving Cilento’s character a happier ending than the play does-and I even have reservations about that since it also means giving Crichton a happier ending. Still, I don’t hate the movie or anything. It’s just that if I blogged about it, it’d be one of those posts that are really excuses for me to write about the original, not the adaptation.

Three Hans Christian Andersen Movies

Did you know there have been at least three movies that tell stories about Hans Christian Andersen-or a fictionalized version of him anyway-interspersed with retellings of some of his stories? To paraphrase Dr. Doofenshmirtz, that’s not a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened more than once. In the 1952 musical starring Danny Kaye, Andersen is an eccentric cobbler who is kicked out of Odense because the stories he tells distract the children from their schoolwork.[6]While the real Andersen was a cobbler-or, more accurately, the son of a cobbler-from Odense, he didn’t get along well with children and was very offended by the design for a statue of himself … Continue reading He goes to Copenhagen where he gets a job making ballet slippers for a ballerina (Zizi Jeanmarie) and eventually gets a publishing deal for his stories. Those stories are told in songs by Frank Loesser. In The Daydreamer (1966), one of a handful of theatrically released movies made by Rankin/Bass productions, a young Hans Christian Andersen (Paul O’ Keefe)-or Chris as he’s called-goes on a search for the Garden of Paradise e.g. Eden. The Sandman (voiced by Cyril Ritchard)[7]Or Ole Lukoie as he’s called in Danish. Maria Tatar’s English translation of Andersen dubs him Ole Shuteye. sends him dreams, depicted in stop motion animation, that show him he’s no less susceptible to temptation than Adam and Eve were and that give him the inspiration for the stories he will write. Hallmark Entertainment’s Hans Christian Andersen: My Life as a Fairy Tale (2003) is the only one of these movies[8]OK, technically, it’s a three-hour miniseries but on DVD, it plays like a three-hour movie. to be a straight biopic of Andersen though, after the fashion of films that are “based on a true story,” it definitely shouldn’t be used as a legitimate source. His stories are depicted in fantasy sequences with Andersen (Kieran Bew) and the people in his life cast as the characters.[9]I’m cynical about the way author biopics always depict their subjects’ famous work as directly inspired by their life experiences. Don’t they think authors ever use their … Continue reading

I thought it’d be interesting to compare and contrast these three movies but on reflection, apart from their basic premise, I feel like they don’t have enough in common for that. Sure, they feature a number of the same fairy tales but the only one to get an equal amount of attention in all three is The Little Mermaid. If there’s anything else they all have in common, it’s that while they don’t include Andersen’s least likeable traits[10]This is even true of the semi-accurate My Life as a Fairy Tale., none of them portray him as perfect either. The characters whose place he takes in The Daydreamer and Hans Christian Andersen: My Life as a Fairy Tale tend to be, well, not negative ones per se but ones who unintentionally hurt others like the prince in The Little Mermaid or Kai in The Snow Queen. The 1952 Hans Christian Andersen and My Life as a Fairy Tale each have a scene where another character accuses him of confusing stories with real life. I’m not sure what the overall thesis of a blog post about the films would be besides that Hans Christian Andersen: My Life is a Fairy Tale is the best of them by a long shot. I don’t say that because it takes more from the author’s real life than the other two by the way. I don’t really care much about historical accuracy. It’s just that My Life as a Fairy Tale is a wonderful movie and Hans Christian Andersen and The Daydreamer are simply average.

My Favorite Novels Based on Greek/Roman Mythology

I can think of at least three books adapted from Classical myths that I love. The first, Greek Heroes by Geraldine McCaughrean, is actually a compilation of four children’s novellas, each about a famous mythic adventurer. Those adventurers are Perseus, Hercules[11]Yeah, he’s called by his Roman name while everyone else is called by their Greek name. Deal with it., Theseus and Odysseus.[12]Part of me wishes McCaughrean had also done one about Jason-which in itself is a tribute to the series’ quality since only a few incidents in his story really capture my imagination. For more mature readers, I’d recommend a pair of novels by Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen, The God Beneath the Sea and The Golden Shadow.[13]Garfield and Blishen saw themselves as writing for young readers but I’d automatically consider them for young adults at least since while they don’t get graphic whenever sexual assault … Continue reading The first is more about the gods and covers such famous myths as those of Pandora, Persephone and Sisyphus. The second is more about mortals and demigods. It mainly follows the life of Heracles, but it also tells the stories of his brother-in-law, Meleager, and Atalanta since you can’t get into Meleager’s story without getting into Atalanta’s. Last but not least, I’d heartily recommend Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis, which reimagines the Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche[14]Well, truth be told, it’s more of a fairy tale than a myth but who cares? from the perspective of Psyche’s antagonistic sister, here named Orual. Longtime readers may remember I’m skeptical about reimaginings of famous villains that make them misunderstood, but the idea was more original when Lewis used it and Till We Have Faces is so great it transcends the trope.

Part of the reason I’m holding off on this idea is that I’m not sure if Greek Heroes really deserves to be ranked beside the other three books. While its prose is certainly lush and engaging, it can’t compete with the utter beauty of The God Beneath the Sea, The Golden Shadow or Till We Have Faces.[15]In general, I consider Leon Garfield one of the best prose writers ever. Yet it’s endeared itself to me more than some other novels based on mythology that are more adult or more interestingly written. If nothing else, it deserves credit for how many little details from ancient sources it includes, such as blood dripping from Medusa’s head planting snakes in the desert or Theseus being mistaken for a girl when he first arrives in Athens. Clearly, Geraldine McCaughrean did her research. Another thing that holds me back from making this idea into a real blog post is that I’m not sure if adapting one form of literature (ancient myths) into another form of literature (modern novels) is as interesting as adapting literature into movies, plays, etc. I have blogged about remade movies though so there’s that precedent. However, since so much of my love for these books is due to their succulent prose I fear the blog post would end up being mainly a series of quotations. Is that what anyone wants to read? On a more hopeful note, there is actually a major parallel between The Golden Shadow and Till We Have Faces. (Major spoilers!) Both the character of the old storyteller in the former and Orual in the latter are desperate to find evidence of the divine but their skeptical minds, in The Golden Shadow‘s words, “would helplessly destroy it even as (they) found it.” Later, the storyteller comes to see his life as random and meaningless and Orual comes to see the gods as her sadistic tormenters but from the larger perspective the readers are granted, they can see that their lives are actually part of a divine plan. And while the divine plan in The Golden Shadow may not be as consistently benevolent as the one in Till We Have Faces, neither is it completely lacking in benevolence. Like most of Leon Garfield’s work, his adaptations of mythology get very dark but are ultimately uplifting.

The Reluctant Dragon (1941)

Remember my Animation Station series on what I christened Disney’s Anim-Anthology Movies? Probably not but I really enjoyed writing them. It occurred to me afterwards that The Reluctant Dragon (1941), a Disney movie of a similar vintage, is also a collection of animated shorts. It depicts humorist Robert Benchley going to the Disney studio to pitch The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame of Wind in the Willows fame as a cartoon. As he wanders around the studio, he meets various (actors portraying) staff members, learns about the process of animation and sees three cartoons.[16]During this time, the Disney company was going through a bitter animators’ strike, so the portrait painted by the movie is much rosier than real life. I know what you’re thinking. … Continue reading The best of those, by the way, is actually not the titular cartoon but Baby Weems which is about an infant genius who becomes a celebrity to his loving parents’ dismay. None of the three shorts are bad though. I believe I was entirely justified in not including The Reluctant Dragon in my series on Anim-Anthologies since it’s really more a live action movie with a lot of animation than an animated movie with a lot of live action. Also, the series was pretty long as it was for something that didn’t get a lot of positive reader response. Still, The Reluctant Dragon, while no forgotten masterpiece, is a fun little historical curiosity and I’d enjoy recapping it.

So what do you guys think? Are there are any of these ideas you’d like to see me expand into full length blog posts? What about any you think sound terrible and are glad I didn’t make into full length blog posts? I’d love to hear from you.

References

References
↑1 Partially because we’re both North Dakotans.
↑2 Indeed, this blog has returned to the 2003 Peter Pan far more often than it has to either the more consistently faithful 1924 one or the more consistently entertaining 2000 one. I guess that’s just the way it is with guilty pleasures.
↑3 Though a downside of that is that the 1999 movie threatens to drag.
↑4 He also did the soundtrack for the 2012 Great Expectations by the way.
↑5 The parallels between the 1999 and 2010 movies are particularly striking. At the beginning of both, Alice is being pressured into doing something at a garden party against her will for the sake of her family and at the end of both, she finds a way to be her own person without letting them down.
↑6 While the real Andersen was a cobbler-or, more accurately, the son of a cobbler-from Odense, he didn’t get along well with children and was very offended by the design for a statue of himself that portrayed him as reading to children on his knees.
↑7 Or Ole Lukoie as he’s called in Danish. Maria Tatar’s English translation of Andersen dubs him Ole Shuteye.
↑8 OK, technically, it’s a three-hour miniseries but on DVD, it plays like a three-hour movie.
↑9 I’m cynical about the way author biopics always depict their subjects’ famous work as directly inspired by their life experiences. Don’t they think authors ever use their imaginations? But I really like how this plays out in My Life as a Fairy Tale.
↑10 This is even true of the semi-accurate My Life as a Fairy Tale.
↑11 Yeah, he’s called by his Roman name while everyone else is called by their Greek name. Deal with it.
↑12 Part of me wishes McCaughrean had also done one about Jason-which in itself is a tribute to the series’ quality since only a few incidents in his story really capture my imagination.
↑13 Garfield and Blishen saw themselves as writing for young readers but I’d automatically consider them for young adults at least since while they don’t get graphic whenever sexual assault is a plot point, as it often is in Greek mythology, they don’t try to whitewash it either.
↑14 Well, truth be told, it’s more of a fairy tale than a myth but who cares?
↑15 In general, I consider Leon Garfield one of the best prose writers ever.
↑16 During this time, the Disney company was going through a bitter animators’ strike, so the portrait painted by the movie is much rosier than real life. I know what you’re thinking. Hollywood giving a sanitized portrayal of something? And Disney of all studios? I am shocked, I tell you! Utterly shocked!
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Speaking of Snow White Movies…

Posted on July 19, 2025 by stationmaster

I first saw Hallmark Entertainment’s Snow White: The Fairest of Them All (2001) before I was ten years old. It would be a long time before I got to watch it again, so it loomed large in my childhood imagination. Personally, I thought it was better than the 1937 animated Disney movie since it felt more like the kind of fairy tale I got from the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen. Being a kid, I appreciated that it was more adult than a Disney fairy tale but wasn’t so dark or adult, like, say, Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997), that I couldn’t watch it. Indeed, some young children are less likely to be scared by the subtle eeriness of Fairest of Them All than they are by the more melodramatic scariness of the Disney movie. However, now that I’m finally able to rewatch the movie whenever I please as an adult, I must admit that Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the more consistently great movie. That’s not to say Snow White: The Fairest of Them All is never great though and I’m still more of a fan of how it adapts the original fairy tale.

The story begins with a peasant woman (Vera Farmiga), living out in the woods with only her husband (Tom Irwin, one of the movie’s less well cast actors) for company, wishing for a child with lips as red as blood and skin as white as snow. The woman’s wish is granted but unfortunately, she dies the same night. Her husband has to take his newborn baby to the next village to save her life, but they’re waylaid by a snowstorm. The man’s tears free a spirit (Clancy Brown) from a frozen lake.

As a reward, it grants him three wishes. The first wish is for milk for Baby Snow White. Then the spirit grants his joking request for a kingdom to rule. It can’t bring his wife back from the dead, but it does bring him another beautiful woman (Miranda Richardson)[1]Who played a similar character on an episode of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. to be his queen.

What the spirit doesn’t tell the newmade king is that this woman is actually his sister who used to be an ugly witch until he gave her a magical mirror.[2]It seems to be relatively common for modern Snow White reimaginings have the evil queen start off as plain or even ugly and use magic to make herself more beautiful. cf. Mirrored by Alex Flinn and … Continue reading She uses shards of the mirror to enchant the king’s eyes and heart.[3]A hint of The Snow Queen. As a result, Snow White (Kristin Kreuk) grows up such a neglected, lonely child that she talks to the lawn gnomes, never guessing they’re really…. well, I’ve explained enough to give you an idea of how the script by frequent Tim Burton collaborators, Caroline Thompson (who also directs) and Julie Hickson embellishes the story.

Most Snow White adaptations even if they claim to be based on the tale as told by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm are really based more on the Disney movie. I appreciate that that’s less true of this one than most. Two of the seven dwarfs’ personalities might be homages to Grumpy and Dopey but it’s subtle enough that it might be a coincidence. And if it’s not a coincidence, who cares? The movie includes the disturbing detail of the evil queen eating what she believes to be Snow White’s heart[4]Well, actually, it was her lungs and liver in Grimm. I don’t know if the Disney movie was the first to have the queen request her heart or if some other translation or adaptation did that first. and makes it more disturbing by having her almost trick Snow White’s father into eating it too.[5]Something borrowed from another Grimm tale, The Juniper Tree, as well as several classical myths. It doesn’t include the incident of the poisoned comb, but it does include Snow White being almost choked to death and the dwarfs saving her. This is the only Snow White movie to my knowledge that keeps the detail of the queen only poisoning half the famous apple and eating the safe half herself to win Snow White’s confidence.[6]Though the 2012 movie, Mirror Mirror, does have a little allusion to this in its last scene.

Some of the changes to the source material this adaptation has in common with the Disney one are more due to practicality than a lack of imagination, mainly having Snow White meet the prince (Tyron Leitso) long before the climax. He sort of awakens her with a kiss at the end, as has become the norm for retellings despite it not being that way in Grimm, though it’s not clear if that’s what breaks the spell upon her. (I don’t want to spoil more I’ve already spoiled.)

The seven dwarfs are portrayed here as nature/weather spirits. (Instead of putting Snow White’s comatose body in a glass coffin, they freeze it in a block of ice.) Each of them wears one of the colors of the rainbow and when they stand side by side in the correct order, they can travel across the sky in the shape of one. This looks rather cheesy, but I like how it plays into the plot. And I enjoy how their names and personalities are modeled after the nursery rhyme:

Monday’s child (Michael Gilden) is fair of face
Tuesday’s child (Mark J. Trombino) is full of grace
Wednesday’s child (Vincent Schiavelli) is full of woe[7]He’s the one who might be a stand in for Grumpy.
Thursday’s child (Penny Blake) has far to go[8]Dopey.
Friday’s child (Martin Klebba)[9]Who would go on to play a dwarf in two unrelated Snow White movies. is loving and giving
Saturday’s child (Warwick Davis) works hard for a living
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day (Michael J. Anderson)
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

As far as comic relief goes, these dwarfs may not be as hilarious as the Disney ones, but that kind of broad, cartoony humor wouldn’t have fit with this movie’s tone. The dwarfs do have some fun moments and a few good serious ones too, mainly the scene of them mourning over the seemingly dead Snow White.

I described their rainbow as looking cheesy. While this movie naturally has the effects of a made-for-TV movie from the early 2000s, that being what it is, I think the visuals generally hold up well. I’ve mentioned on this blog before that I feel like the CGI in popcorn movies these days actually looks less convincing than it did years ago.[10]From what I hear this is because the CGI people are so overworked. So Snow White: The Fairest of Them All actually strikes me as no harder on the eyes than Snow White (2025.) The film’s locations and its production design (courtesy of David Brisbin) are lovely.

I wish the costumes by Nancy Bryant looked more lived-in, but their designs are great. Michael Convertino’s soundtrack is beautiful too.[11]He also scored Faerie Tale Theatre‘s excellent Aladdin episode. Even in intense or dramatic scenes, it tends to sound quite pleasant and peaceful. Some may find that a distraction and it’s not what I would have done if I’d been the movie’s director. But to me, it fits in with the film’s odd, dreamlike atmosphere.

Interestingly, this version of Snow White implies that the verdicts of the magic mirror may not be as objective as the queen thinks. At a party one night, the queen is disconcerted to find that however she tries to attract the attention of the handsome visiting prince, he’s more interested in her stepdaughter.[12]This is arguably reminiscent of the beginning of The Blue Bird, a lesser-known French fairy tale. She retires to her apartment and nervously asks the mirror who is the fairest woman of all. It replies that it’s Snow White although the answer was the queen herself merely one night ago when she was confident. So, either Snow White grew significantly more beautiful in just one day or the mirror is reflecting the queen’s own thoughts. “She was no threat until you imagined her to be one,” someone tells her later in the movie. It’s an interesting interpretation though the fact that the mirror is able to tell the queen Snow White is alive when she believes her to be dead muddies it. The beautiful queen’s disguise as an ugly old hag in the Disney movie is unforgettable and I don’t have a problem with it. After all, it makes sense that a character with such a high opinion of her own looks would think an ugly person the best disguise. But I’m fond of Fairest of Them All‘s more subtly unnerving version where she disguises herself as the mother Snow White can’t remember.

Some have criticized Kristin Kreuk for being bland in the title role, but I really like her. To me, she brings a regal dignity to the character which is much closer to how I imagine Snow White than the chirpy Disney heroine.[13]That could apply to either the 1937 movie or the 2025 one. The makeup team, doubtless helped by the actress’s natural good looks, do a great job making her beautiful in an otherworldly way. Her pleasant speaking voice is a big asset too. I really do feel like my natural instinct would be to bow if ever I met this Snow White in person.

It does seem though that the movie wants to give her a character arc which it doesn’t really succeed in conveying. According to the director, this story is supposed to be about two women who are about to enter a new stage in life and are afraid of getting older. It’s clear how this applies to the character of the queen but not so much Snow White. She seems a bit frightened by the prospect of a romantic relationship with the prince and gets an early line about not wanting to grow up but it’s not clear what she means by that or why. What is clear is that the temptation of the poisoned apple, offered here by an enemy disguised as a loving mother, becomes the temptation to stay a little girl forever. After she awakens, she’s perfectly happy to ride off with the prince. I guess she’s learned that it’s dangerous to try to stay a child forever and is now ready for an adult relationship or…something like that? It’s all quite surreal but, to be fair, Grimms’ fairy tales typically are that way. Of the A-list fairy tale protagonists, Snow White is probably the one who fits our modern expectations of a protagonist the least since she’s the one who’s most thoroughly a victim.[14]As Walt Disney once pointed out, Cinderella didn’t just wait for her prince to come. She went to the ball and got him. That’s true of Fairest of Them All‘s version too[15]The script gives her noble intentions, but the plot seldom allows her to act on them. and you know what? I’m fine with it. I read and watch stories from so many different time periods; it really doesn’t matter to me whether they live up to modern society’s dramatic expectations. Why pretend something bugs me just because society says it should bug me? I just mention that the movie doesn’t quite succeed in giving Snow White a character arc in my opinion because, objectively speaking, failing in what you attempt is a flaw though, subjectively speaking, it doesn’t bother me.

If there’s something about the script that does bother me it’s the shallowness of the romance between Snow White and the prince. As I mentioned, the two of them meet early in the story and the prince gets more screentime than in the old Disney movie but he spends most of it separated from Snow White. Early on, she rebuffs his advances somewhat angrily, saying that all he knows about her is that she’s beautiful which doesn’t tell him anything about her character. He argues that the two of them do know each other in their hearts or something like that. I guess that line of reasoning works because when we next see them, they’re about to smooch. As I wrote in my last blog post, I think there’s something to be said for just using the love-at-first-sight trope rather than having fictional lovers start out hating each other and giving them a manufactured conflict to overcome. But why bring up the fact that they haven’t had time to really get to know each other if that’s not going to have changed by the end of the movie? Maybe if the actors had better chemistry between them, it would work.

Let’s get back to positives. The queen’s ultimate fate tends to vary in different versions. In Grimm, she’s forced to wear red-hot iron shoes at Snow White’s wedding and dance to death. Often translations or retellings for children will tone this down by simply giving the queen a heart attack upon learning that Snow White is alive yet again and married to a prince. In Disney, she tumbles off a cliff, gets crushed by a boulder and has her remains eaten by vultures, which is less dark in that it’s quicker and isn’t directly inflicted on her by the heroes but scarcely less gruesome. A beautiful picture book written by Josephine Poole and illustrated by Angela Barrett has the queen bring a poisonous flower to the wedding to place under the bride’s pillow. When she sees that it’s Snow White, she angrily crumples it in her hand, accidentally(?) killing herself. I’m fond of the ending of the Faerie Tale Theatre episode where she’s cursed to never be able to see her own reflection and goes mad from the horror of it. But the queen’s comeuppance in this movie, which I’m not going to spoil, is the one I find most satisfying.

Of course, talking about spoiling Snow White: The Fairest of Them All presumes that other people would like it, something I can’t guarantee. There are people out there who’d find it too dark and strange and others who’d feel like it’s not dark or twisted enough for their tastes. But for me, this particular fairy tale film really hits that sweet spot and if I were to adapt a classic fairy tale into a movie myself, this would be one of my main models.

References

References
↑1 Who played a similar character on an episode of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller.
↑2 It seems to be relatively common for modern Snow White reimaginings have the evil queen start off as plain or even ugly and use magic to make herself more beautiful. cf. Mirrored by Alex Flinn and Fairest by Gail Carson Levine
↑3 A hint of The Snow Queen.
↑4 Well, actually, it was her lungs and liver in Grimm. I don’t know if the Disney movie was the first to have the queen request her heart or if some other translation or adaptation did that first.
↑5 Something borrowed from another Grimm tale, The Juniper Tree, as well as several classical myths.
↑6 Though the 2012 movie, Mirror Mirror, does have a little allusion to this in its last scene.
↑7 He’s the one who might be a stand in for Grumpy.
↑8 Dopey.
↑9 Who would go on to play a dwarf in two unrelated Snow White movies.
↑10 From what I hear this is because the CGI people are so overworked.
↑11 He also scored Faerie Tale Theatre‘s excellent Aladdin episode.
↑12 This is arguably reminiscent of the beginning of The Blue Bird, a lesser-known French fairy tale.
↑13 That could apply to either the 1937 movie or the 2025 one.
↑14 As Walt Disney once pointed out, Cinderella didn’t just wait for her prince to come. She went to the ball and got him.
↑15 The script gives her noble intentions, but the plot seldom allows her to act on them.
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Snow White (2025) Makes Me Neither Happy nor Grumpy Part 2

Posted on July 11, 2025 by stationmaster

This is a continuation of Part 1. If you haven’t read it already and you want to understand this, you’d better do so.

CCC 3: The Movie is Anti-Man/Anti-Romance

I can’t blame people for expecting this since Rachel Zegler’s infamous remarks pretty much told them to expect it. But, after all the rewrites and reshoots, it turned out to be untrue.[1]I suspect it may have always been untrue and that Zegler was just emphasizing the aspects that resonated with her personally. The character of Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) may not be a literal prince but he’s definitely Snow White’s love interest and their relationship is actually developed more-though perhaps not necessarily developed better-than it was in the 1937 movie in which the prince had only two scenes. He was more of a symbol of romantic fulfillment than an actual character though when the movie was at its most emotional, he was a potent symbol. The remake also makes him more actively heroic. When Snow White first meets him, he’s risking the queen’s wrath, getting food for his starving friends. After she defends him to the queen and helps him escape, he encourages her to run away from the castle where she’s a slave. Later, he actually takes an arrow in the chest for Snow White! It’s true that Jonathan also stupidly falls into a trap when the story requires it, but Snow White is also easily tricked by the queen in almost the very next scene, so you can’t say it’s a gender thing. While Zegler’s criticism of the 1937 movie implied that this remake wouldn’t have Snow White be awakened by a kiss, I’m guessing this was one of the things Disney reshot in response to fan backlash because that is indeed what happens in it.[2]Ironically, if the filmmakers really wanted to avoid a nonconsensual kiss, they could have just followed the original Grimm fairy tale in which Snow White is revived by being jogged in her coffin, … Continue reading If it sounds like I’m about to argue there was some brilliant feminist version of this movie that we’ll never see because of angry fans, no, I’d actually argue that giving in to fan backlash made the movie relatively better. The scene of Snow White’s resurrection is one of the more effective emotional ones in the movie if you ask me. If the film had just done a better job of getting me invested in the characters prior to it, it could have been a great scene. That’s largely because of the music which uses the theme of A Hand Meets a Hand, the love duet which is the one song from this movie I really like.

If I were to criticize the romance, it’d be for its genericness[3]That or Andrew Burnap not making much of an impression. Maybe the real feminist agenda in this movie came from the casting director since the women are all better cast than the men., mainly the part where they’re irritated by each other before they fall in love. Of course, fairy tale romances are supposed to be generic and the kind of love-hate relationship the remake attempts can be done well. The thing is it has been done well many times. Jonathan and Snow White’s bickering and bantering isn’t badly written per se. But viewers have seen so many identically written romances that it needs some quality or other to make it more than not badly written. Not helping is the fact that the story doesn’t really have time to make it convincing for the characters to go from being mildly antagonistic towards each other to deeply in love. I’m reminded that Cinderella (2015) didn’t bother having the romantic leads start out disliking each other and was the better for that. I wouldn’t describe them as falling in love at first sight, but they didn’t have any significant disagreements. In theory, that should have made the relationship less interesting but lovers being angry at each other and in denial of their attraction has been the convention for so long that forgoing it actually felt refreshing and different.[4]Disney’s 2023 Little Mermaid remake also didn’t bother with the whole bickering lovers thing and I recall that being the best thing about it.

Some have objected to the prince’s character being downgraded to a common outlaw but that’s no different from what Disney did to Rapunzel’s prince in Tangled. Rightly or wrongly, I imagine the filmmakers believed they were making him a cooler character by doing so. The movie has also been accused of teaching kids an ends-justify-the-means morality with the theft he and (it’s implied) his band of rebels commit. But I don’t remember the same criticism being made of Disney’s Aladdin which gave its main character the same justification for being a thief. Neither do I see Robin Hood, the character whom Jonathan was clearly made to resemble, treated with the same concern. (If you are someone who objects to all three equally, I applaud your consistency and I don’t mean that as a joke.) It’s true that the way Doc (voiced by Jeremy Swift) explains this is annoyingly “woke” (“They’re actually a band of erstwhile actors whose sustenance was made unstable by the queen’s greedy economic policies, which forced them into a liminal space where ethics and motives are ill defined.”) but, to its credit, the movie kind of mocks him for it. Grumpy groans and rolls his eyes in response.[5]Or maybe I’m just projecting my view onto the movie since that kind of talk makes me groan and roll my eyes.

Jonathan isn’t the only positive or helpful male character in the movie. Not only is Snow White’s goodness inspired by the example set by her biological mother (Lorena Andrea) but also by the one set by her father (Hadley Fraser.)[6]A West End star who had a memorable cameo in Les Misérables (2012.) In fact, the script hearkens back to him more often than to her mother.[7]Here’s another point of comparison between this remake and Cinderella (2015.) That one gave its heroine a similar relationship with her doomed parents, but it did a much better job of … Continue reading There’s also the huntsman who not only spares Snow White’s life at risk to himself but later helps Jonathan escape the queen’s dungeon so he can break the spell upon her.[8]According to the book Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs & The Making of the Classic Film by Richard Hollis and Brian Sibley, the animated movie was also going to have the queen … Continue reading While Snow White defeats the queen peacefully by convincing all her guards to side with her, the queen would then kill her herself were it not for the intervention of Jonathan’s men.[9]His band contains a token woman (Dujonna Gift) but, for whatever reason, she’s not involved in the movie’s climax. She also ends up being a love interest to another member of the band … Continue reading And that’s not even mentioning the seven dwarfs. Some men may object that the male characters in this movie only exist to help the heroine just as some women object that female characters in certain other movies only exist to help the heroes. I’m sympathetic to both criticisms in a broad sense. If that’s the only kind of story that can be told, we have a problem. But condemning individual stories is trickier. It’s nice when both the hero and the heroine can have their own goals, struggles and character journeys but it doesn’t always feel natural. If we sense that the storyteller is constantly checking off boxes and examining scales to make sure the lovers are getting equal treatment, it can take us out of the story. The sad thing is if Snow White (2025) were actually, you know, good, it could have been an example of a well-done female empowerment story that also features powerful male heroes.

CCC 4: Snow White Doesn’t Actually Work During Whistle While You Work. She Just Directs the Dwarfs in Cleaning.

Finally, I agree with this criticism!

Technically speaking, Snow White does sweep for a few seconds in the remake’s version of this song but mostly she just sings and dances as the dwarfs do the work. It would make her look a lot better if she did.

That being said, I don’t quite get the level of disgust some people on the internet have over this. As I detailed in Part 1, Snow White does other helpful and kind things in the movie. And if we’re going to compare this to the original movie, she only did the easiest chores like dusting and sweeping while leaving the hard ones like dishes and laundry to the animals-and then she chided some of them for not doing it right![10]To be fair, she also made an apparently delicious soup offscreen and was going to bake gooseberry pies for the dwarfs but was tragically poisoned before she could do so. Anyway, this ties into a larger criticism of Snow White’s character in this remake but I thought I’d give it its own section since I’ve noticed people keep specifically mentioning it.

CCC 5: The Other Characters and the Movie in General Keep Going on About Snow White’s Awesomeness but She Hardly Does Anything

Again, I basically agree. As I detailed in my defense of CCC 3, the male characters do far more to save the day than Snow White does yet too much of the movie consists of them fawning over her and giving speeches about her greatness. But I question how different this is from the 1937 classic. The most altruistic things she did were comfort a baby bird that had been separated from its parents and clean the dwarfs’ house for them. And you know what? They never wanted anyone to clean their house for them! They were fine with the way it was.[11]Her motives were also to get them to let her stay in the house. And, yeah, she also cooked for them, but she did it on her own terms, refusing to let them have a bite to until they’d washed. Why isn’t she criticized for being a girl boss?

Much of that last paragraph was tongue in cheek but I admit it I don’t love the character of the animated Snow White. I do consider her movie great, but I don’t love the main character.[12]It’s mostly her voice that I find annoying. I recognize this as a limitation in myself. Adriana Caselotti’s operatic singing was considered great in its day and it’s tragic that we … Continue reading That didn’t used to be a controversial opinion. In his four-star review of the film, Roger Ebert wrote, “If Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had been primarily about Snow White, it might have been forgotten soon after its 1937 premiere and treasured today only for historical reasons…Disney’s inspiration was not in creating Snow White but her world.” That was the consensus not so long ago. Snow White and the prince were seen as dull characters and the queen, the dwarfs and the animals as great. Of course, no one is obliged to agree with whatever is the consensus. Honestly, I think it’s nice that the controversy about the remake has encouraged some fans of the animated heroine to speak out about their love for her even if it’s a love I don’t necessarily share. I love enough characters that others don’t that I can empathize in the broad sense. But I have the right to my opinions just as they have to theirs. It’s not like I hate the animated Snow White with a passion or anything. Sure, both she and the recent live action one are Mary Sues but, hey, Disney Princesses are supposed to be Mary Sues. That’s part of their appeal. What I’m tired of is the simplistic assumption that everything old=good/ “based” and everything new=bad/”woke.”

Thoughts on Internet Outrage

I’ve seen people argue that the character of Snow White from the old, animated movie embodied important virtues and that progressives’ haste to replace her with more overtly tough, pugnacious heroines means that our culture runs the risk of raising children without those virtues. I theoretically agree with this. In fact, it’s pretty much what I wrote in my old blog post about Cinderella (2015.) However, what I’m seeing from people online who have grown up loving the original Snow White-or claim to have done so anyway-makes it impossible for me to believe that growing up with the film has made them kind, gentle, sweet or gracious. In their bitter insults towards Rachel Zegler, they seem more like Grumpy or even like the spiteful, obsessed queen than like Snow White whom they claim to champion.[13]Pardon me for generalizing here. There are plenty of people who take issue with Zegler’s words and love the animated movie that aren’t like that. For example, there’s the unusually … Continue reading Of course, there’s nothing new about people on the internet piling on a celebrity. And I’d be a huge hypocrite if I claimed I didn’t understand the impulse. There have been times when I’ve obsessed about celebrities who offended my sensibilities. But I feel like I realized on some level that this was unhealthy for and irrational of me. I didn’t know those people personally. I didn’t need to pay attention to them if they annoyed or insulted me. Why couldn’t I just forget about them? But I’m not sure if Zegler’s more ardent detractors have that self-awareness. Some of them seem to think they’re part of a glorious crusade to shame the woman. And as much as I disagree with her about hot button issues, it disturbs me how much the Rachel Zegler hate train really took off not because of any of those issues but because she said she disliked a beloved movie. If that’s all it takes for someone to become hated on the internet, who among us is really safe?[14]I admit I’m also a little weirded out how angry people are at the prospect of Disney changing the love’s first kiss scene because of concerns about consent. Sure, Zegler’s comments … Continue reading

Now the rare times I have gotten obsessively angry at a celebrity, it was because it was hard for me to ignore them since they’d made things I’d enjoyed in the past or they were involved with a project about which I cared, so I can kind of understand why Disney fans feel like they have to read/listen to interviews with Zegler and pay attention to her output on social media-even though they really don’t have to do so. But I don’t understand why social conservatives specifically should feel like they need to care about her or the 2025 Snow White remake. The rising generation of them seems to be mainly made up of men who enjoy action movies from the 80s, not princess musicals from the 30s. I mean, it’s great for people to be able to enjoy both but…seriously? Ironically, it wasn’t so long ago that conservatives were sharing an article about how J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, both of whom are admired in conservative circles these days, disliked Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Now all of a sudden, the movie is a pillar of Western civilization, and we all have to love it? Well, to be fair, conservatism is a broad camp, and I imagine that the conservatives most interested in Lewis or Tolkien aren’t the kind to be interested in either the 1937 movie or its recent remake, one way or another. Still, I couldn’t resist bringing up the irony.

While I think Zegler definitely brought much of the controversy on herself by behaving unprofessionally, I do think it’s kind of a loss to cinema if it ruins her career. She really does strike me as a charismatic actress and an excellent singer. (cf. her performance in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story.) And I don’t buy that conservatives couldn’t possibly enjoy her in anything because of her politics. After all, when some of the picture books of Theodor Geisel AKA Dr. Seuss were withdrawn from publication for racist imagery, conservatives raised their voices in protest despite him being an ardent democrat.[15]I like to think it’s because Geisel’s picture books, unlike his political comics, have universal values that transcend political lines or maybe that both liberals and conservatives are … Continue reading Plenty of conservative Christians enjoy the Lord of the Rings movies despite the lifestyles of some of the filmmakers. Zegler’s lack of tact may be unusual in Hollywood, but her liberal politics aren’t. I feel like the reason she’s become such a target is not because her beliefs are even worse than those of so many other actors but because she’s a fairly new talent who hasn’t been in that many successful movies, making her vulnerable.

Some readers may be skeptical right now that I could really be a conservative when I’ve just devoted so much space to criticizing conservatives of my own free will. That’s the thing though. I feel like I share so few presuppositions with liberals that it’s pointless for me to try reasoning with them. The reason I’m more likely to argue with conservatives is that I feel I have enough common ground with them for us to argue. I have something of a personal interest in what people are calling “the vibe shift” whereby Hollywood has gone from needing to worry more about offending the left to needing to worry more about offending the right. The backlash against Snow White (2025) and its subsequent box office failure were a big part of this-but I suspect the seeds of the vibe shift’s destruction can be seen in them. If you ask me, there were a number of reasons why so many people became fed up with progressives but one of them was their entitlement. The feminist criticisms of the 2015 Cinderella were a case in point. I know many liberals reading this will object that that movie’s progressive detractors were a minority even among the left and they didn’t have much impact on it financially. But I can’t resist bringing up the topic because I see some fascinating parallels between leftwing criticism of Cinderella and rightwing criticism of Snow White. Contrary to what you might have heard, Cinderella had plenty of things that seem like they were made to appeal to the left[16]The heroine’s philosophy involved a stereotypically masculine virtue (have courage) as well as a stereotypically feminine one (be kind.) She also took a stand against deer hunting which strikes … Continue reading but because it had some things that appealed to conservatives, its most vocal critics showed no mercy. This was typical of the online left when it came to complaining about movies. No matter how Hollywood tried to placate them, it was never quite enough.[17]To really get into this, I’d have to talk about race, but not only would that be somewhat off topic, but this blog series is already too long. They had this thing where they were both gleeful about finally having some influence over the entertainment industry and relentlessly bitter that they hadn’t had it long before and that they still didn’t have even more. There was something sadistic about how they’d self-righteously gloat whenever someone or something they disliked was suffering financially that I think it alienated a lot of people who might otherwise have sympathized with their concerns about, say, racial profiling or sexual harassment. You got the impression they were dead set on shaming anyone into submission if they didn’t tow their line in every last way. And that’s what I see from the online right in their criticism of Snow White (2025.) Fortunately for them, I don’t think it’s a fun enough movie for too many people to accuse them of being killjoys or fun suckers.[18]Not at the moment anyway. We’ll see what happens when kids who watch it on streaming grow up. But if they keep up the same attitude towards every movie that isn’t one hundred percent conservative-coded, the vibe might very well shift back again.

References

References
↑1 I suspect it may have always been untrue and that Zegler was just emphasizing the aspects that resonated with her personally.
↑2 Ironically, if the filmmakers really wanted to avoid a nonconsensual kiss, they could have just followed the original Grimm fairy tale in which Snow White is revived by being jogged in her coffin, expelling the piece of poisoned apple stuck in her throat. Apparently, the 1913 short film was the first to replace that with the kiss and no adaptation has gotten it right since.
↑3 That or Andrew Burnap not making much of an impression. Maybe the real feminist agenda in this movie came from the casting director since the women are all better cast than the men.
↑4 Disney’s 2023 Little Mermaid remake also didn’t bother with the whole bickering lovers thing and I recall that being the best thing about it.
↑5 Or maybe I’m just projecting my view onto the movie since that kind of talk makes me groan and roll my eyes.
↑6 A West End star who had a memorable cameo in Les Misérables (2012.)
↑7 Here’s another point of comparison between this remake and Cinderella (2015.) That one gave its heroine a similar relationship with her doomed parents, but it did a much better job of developing them as mentors without much screentime. The mantra they bequeathed their daughter (“Have courage and be kind”) was also much catchier than Snow White‘s (“Someone fearless, someone fair, someone brave, someone true”) which is far too wordy and repetitive to roll off the tongue.
↑8 According to the book Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs & The Making of the Classic Film by Richard Hollis and Brian Sibley, the animated movie was also going to have the queen imprison the prince and him escape to awaken Snow White, but this was ultimately cut.
↑9 His band contains a token woman (Dujonna Gift) but, for whatever reason, she’s not involved in the movie’s climax. She also ends up being a love interest to another member of the band (George Appleby) which I doubt makes feminists happy.
↑10 To be fair, she also made an apparently delicious soup offscreen and was going to bake gooseberry pies for the dwarfs but was tragically poisoned before she could do so.
↑11 Her motives were also to get them to let her stay in the house.
↑12 It’s mostly her voice that I find annoying. I recognize this as a limitation in myself. Adriana Caselotti’s operatic singing was considered great in its day and it’s tragic that we can’t appreciate it now due to changing tastes. C’est la vie.
↑13 Pardon me for generalizing here. There are plenty of people who take issue with Zegler’s words and love the animated movie that aren’t like that. For example, there’s the unusually softspoken YouTuber MJTanner.
↑14 I admit I’m also a little weirded out how angry people are at the prospect of Disney changing the love’s first kiss scene because of concerns about consent. Sure, Zegler’s comments about it made me roll my eyes but it’s not like anybody I know wouldn’t be weirded out by someone kissing them while they’re unconscious. This isn’t a liberal vs. conservative thing.
↑15 I like to think it’s because Geisel’s picture books, unlike his political comics, have universal values that transcend political lines or maybe that both liberals and conservatives are committed to ideals even if those ideals make them behave counterintuitively sometimes. In my more cynical moments, I think it’s because they automatically disagree with each other like Daffy Duck telling Elmer Fudd to shoot him just because Bugs Bunny says otherwise.
↑16 The heroine’s philosophy involved a stereotypically masculine virtue (have courage) as well as a stereotypically feminine one (be kind.) She also took a stand against deer hunting which strikes me as something a liberal is more likely to do than a conservative. The reimagined story also gave her two scenes where she stood up to her oppressor. While the ending explicitly had her getting married, something Snow White‘s ending doesn’t, the closing narration, like Snow White‘s, emphasized her becoming a great leader. And the closing credits song encouraged the viewer to “be the one that rescues you.”
↑17 To really get into this, I’d have to talk about race, but not only would that be somewhat off topic, but this blog series is already too long.
↑18 Not at the moment anyway. We’ll see what happens when kids who watch it on streaming grow up.
Posted in Comparing Different Adaptations, Remakes | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Snow White (2025) Makes Me Neither Happy nor Grumpy Part 2

Snow White (2025) Makes Me Neither Happy nor Grumpy Part 1

Posted on July 10, 2025 by stationmaster

I never wanted this to be a Disney blog. I mean, I always wanted to do some blog posts about Disney movies since I’m a fan of fairy tales and classic children’s fantasies, many of which they’ve adapted, and I consider animation to be a fascinating medium. But it seemed to me that there were enough blogs about Disney movies and Disney-related things in general. I’d rather have more posts about my more niche interests. But I don’t have that many ideas for blog posts about those interests right now. This summer, The Adaptation Station.com is going to be all or mostly about Disney adaptations. I’m really surprised at myself for doing a two-part series on the recent live action(ish) remake of the 1937 animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, especially since the series is going to be less about the remake itself than the Controversy around it. Ordinarily, I disdain writing about things just because they’re controversial.[1]I do try, within reason, to mention whether there’s anything in whatever piece of entertainment I cover that might offend anyone, but the blog isn’t really about that. I don’t even watch or read things just because they’re controversial! And Snow White (2025) seems like the kind of controversial movie that makes for the most boring blog posts since, in my opinion, it’s neither good enough to deserve defending nor bad enough to deserve more attacks than it’s already had. But now that I’ve finally watched the film, I do find it to be interesting in that it’s the kind of controversial movie you wouldn’t guess would be controversial from simply watching. The controversy only makes sense knowing the context, as opposed to the content, of this Snow White.

The main readers of this blog are my friends and family, and I assume most, if not all, of them weren’t that interested in all the controversy, so I should probably sum it up for them. Honestly though, Snow White had such a cursed production history that it’s hard to know where to start. Not only have the actors who were in it, like Gal Gadot sparked controversy, but even actors who weren’t, like Peter Dinklage and Warwick Davis, have done so.[2]I was going to explain in this footnote but after writing the rest of this post, I don’t have the energy. Sorry. You’ll just have to use Google. This blog series is mainly going to be about the gender-related controversy though, so that’s what I’ll explain. Infamously, in early interviews, the movie’s star, Rachel Zegler, dismissed the 1937 movie as hopelessly dated, saying she never enjoyed it even as a child, and calling the love interest in it a stalker. She praised her version for not being a love story but rather about a girl realizing her leadership potential. While Zegler referred to the movie’s male lead as a “great dude,” she also said (jokingly?) that all his character’s scenes could easily be cut. “It’s Hollywood, Baby!” Naturally, this turned off fans of the animated movie, especially conservative ones. Zegler being vocally pro-choice, anti-Israel, anti-Trump, etc. didn’t do much to reconcile the latter to her. The movie went through several reshoots and rewrites[3]Though the only screenwriter to receive credit in the movie itself was Erin Cressida Wilson. which I imagine were at least partially in response to the backlash.[4]I don’t care enough about it to research all the details. In the end, the movie didn’t appeal to conservatives or liberals, not enough for them to go see it in cinemas anyway. It was a notorious box office bomb and left bad blood between Zegler and Disney as well as between Zegler and the general populace.

The remake’s failure was regarded by conservatives as a triumph of “basedness” over “wokery.” I really feel like I should be celebrating it too. Not only do I consider myself a conservative with whom I’m sure Rachel Zegler would never get along, but I’ve been a fan of old-school fairy tales for most of my life. My favorite recent Disney remake is Cinderella (2015) which was actually accused of being antifeminist by some leftwing critics and praised for its old-fashioned heroine by some rightwing critics. I’m also a big fan of Charles Dickens books, the heroines of which tend to be condemned as bad depictions of women even more strongly than traditional fairy tale princesses. And I’m also a big fan of the Narnia books, which have also been historically criticized for their portrayal of women. If you’d predicted the Snow White controversy to me ten years ago, I’d have disbelieved you but wholeheartedly wished it would come to pass. The prospect of Hollywood being pressured into treating old-school heroines with the respect I believe they deserve instead of always having to radically reimagine gives me great satisfaction.

Yet somehow, I can’t rejoice as much as some conservatives are doing. Maybe it’s because I have a foot in both camps. While I’ve grown up loving traditional fairy tales and still love them today, I also grew up loving some modern fairy tales that were feminist adjacent at least, such as the works of Gail Carson Levine. And while the 2015 Cinderella is my favorite piece of modern Disney nostalgia bait, my second favorite is the 2019 Aladdin which took an explicitly feminist approach to its heroine.[5]Mind you, I don’t think the movie actually gave modern feminists what they want since it basically shoehorned a feminist heroine into a male-driven story. For the record, I’d say that … Continue reading As for animated Disney princesses, I don’t hate Snow White with a passion but I’m more of a fan of Belle and Mulan though I hasten to add I’m more of a fan of the animated Cinderella than I am of many more feminist-friendly Disney princesses.[6]Truth be told, I gravitate towards the animated Disney films from the 1950s. Their heroines (Cinderella, Alice, Wendy Darling, Lady, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather) tended to be traditionally polite … Continue reading I think the real reason I’m writing this blog series is that there’s this weird dissonance between the way conservatives tend to describe Snow White (2025) and the movie I actually saw when I finally got around to watching it. For the record, if you’re a conservative who boycotts Disney (or, for that matter, a progressive who boycotts them), I’m not saying you should abandon your principles and watch this film. I’m just saying conservatives who cite this as the most insufferably progressive thing the company has made strike me as silly.[7]For one thing, this Disney movie doesn’t have any token gay or trans characters. I try to remind myself that plenty of conservative reviewers who castigated the movie went into it with open minds (or tried to keep their minds open anyway) and would have been the first to admit if they were pleasantly surprised. But so much of the vitriol aimed at this Snow White seems so out of proportion to me and the criticisms so nitpicky that I can’t help thinking that many hoped for it to be as bad as possible.[8]Along similar but apolitical lines, many fans of the animated movie, who weren’t particularly conservative, regarded it as sacred and objected to the very idea of a remake. I respect that as … Continue reading To be fair though, I’d pegged the film as middling and broadly left-coded but largely harmless long before I watched it, so I could also be accused of confirmation bias. To come to your own conclusions, keep reading.

How Is the Movie Just as a Movie?

It seems like anyone who calls any modern Disney movie better than utter garbage gets dubbed a shill. There’s probably no way I can escape that, but I’ll try by starting with all the things about Snow White (2025) that I consider bad, beginning with the visuals. The costumes are much more concerned with reminding people of the 1937 classic than they are with actually looking good on the actors. When Snow White appeared in white for the final scene, my mom, who was watching with me, said, “They finally got her out of that dumb dress!”[9]Interestingly, Sandy Powell the costume designer also designed the costumes for Cinderella (2015) which I feel had the best costumes of any recent Disney fairy tale even if the colors were a little … Continue reading

The giant eyes of the CG forest animals are supposed to look cute but to my eyes, they just look kind of creepy.[10]I recall the cricket and the goldfish from Disney’s Pinocchio remake looking that way too. Whatever issues Beauty and the Beast (2017) had, at least the filmmakers realized that certain cartoon … Continue reading

The seven CG dwarfs also look pretty freaky, humans being one of the hardest things to do in computer animation.

What’s more, the comedy of the dwarfs and the forest animals isn’t half as funny as that of their 1937 counterparts. The scenes of Snow White’s nightmarish run through the forest and the queen transforming herself into an ugly old crone also lack the emotional punch that had in the old movie. (I’m not sure if the filmmakers were even trying in the last case.)

The decision to include some of the 30s-style showtunes by Leigh Harline, Frank Churchill[11]No relation to the character from Emma. and Paul Smith from the original movie along with modern-style songs by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Jack Feldman was pretty ridiculous.[12]Cinderella (2015) wisely decided not to be a musical and only had the heroine briefly sing a snatch of one of the 1950 movie’s songs as an easter egg for fans as well as having two others in … Continue reading The movie tries to make them blend together by adding sassy new lyrics to the old songs, but this just feels wrong. (At one point in the updated Whistle While You Work, Grumpy (voiced by Martin Klebba) threatens to shove Bashful (Titus Burgess)’s scrub brush “where the sun don’t shine.”) I’ve enjoyed some of Pasek and Paul’s work in the past (their other musical credits include Dear Evan Hansen, La La Land and The Greatest Showman) but, even taking them on their own terms and ignoring the songs from the 1937 film, their songs here are all pretty forgettable with one exception to which I’ll get to presently. There’s an annoying plot point where the huntsman (Ansu Kabia) says to Snow White before she runs off that “she was never told the truth about her father” but doesn’t bother saying what the truth was. (It’s pretty easy to guess but, of course, nobody does until the queen spells it out for Snow White.) The climax is even more ridiculous. (I’ll get into it in the spoiler-filled parts of this series.)

Having said all that, however unlikeable you or I might consider Rachel Zegler herself, she’s very appealing as Snow White and has a lovely singing voice. Gal Gadot is great fun as the cartoonishly evil queen. I also honestly enjoyed some of the movie’s attempts at foreshadowing, heavy handed as they are, such as Snow White describing the queen as poisoning people’s minds long before she literally poisons her or singing about being wakened by a kiss long before that happens. The song in which she does the last one, A Hand Meets a Hand, is the one from the movie that I really like. While I described the movie as less funny than the original animated one, there are some scattered funny bits. And while I also described the scary scenes as less effective, I’m kind of impressed the remake kept the grisly detail of the skeletons in the queen’s dungeon though she doesn’t kick or taunt one of them here.

The writing in general isn’t terrible or anything, just rather bland and generically modern. And apart from the annoying plot points I mentioned above, I think the reimagined story is pretty good. I can imagine it making for a good fairy tale movie with better direction and writing. As the film is, if you enjoy the genre and are bored, it’s not an unpleasant diversion.

So that’s the not-related-to-politics part. Not very interesting, was it? Now I’ll address some common criticisms I’ve heard of the 2025 Snow White online from a specifically conservative perspective. Major Spoilers Ahoy!

Common Conservative Criticism 1: The Story is Socialist Propaganda for Kids

The movie begins with the narrator (Andrew Barth Feldman) informing us that Snow White was brought up to believe that “the bounty of the land belonged to all who tended it.” Along similar lines, the soundtrack version of the opening song includes the lyrics, “we lead with open hearts, and we live with open doors.”[13]These were cut from the movie itself. A first glance would seem to justify the accusation of socialist messaging, not to mention accusations of corny writing.[14]Of course, it’s not like the animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs wasn’t corny in its own way. Given Hollywood’s social milieu, I’ve no doubt these parts do reflect such political leanings but giving the movie more than a first glance reveals that if it’s socialist propaganda, it’s the most capitalist-friendly socialist propaganda ever.

The queen’s tyrannical rule doesn’t involve introducing a system of free markets to the kingdom. While the script is somewhat vague about the details, the implication is that she forcibly seizes all of her subjects’ property for herself-exactly what conservative Americans fear a socialist government would do. Either that or it’s a case of taxation without representation, another thing they’re against. On the other hand, the queen doesn’t redistribute the wealth to everyone, as socialists would advocate, but hoards it all for herself. She strikes me as a villain whom both capitalists and socialists can hate. In the end, Snow White doesn’t convince the populace to turn against the queen by saying how nice it was when they didn’t own anything. She reminds them of how great it was when they owned things themselves and freely chose to share them with others. In my experience, when American conservatives are asked who will help the poor if they don’t have the government aid, their answer is privately owned charities. That also seems to be what Snow White advocates. Contrary to caricatures of conservatives by liberals, they don’t teach their children not to share with each other. But by ranting against this movie’s message of sharing, they run the risk of looking like caricatures of themselves. In her big musical number, the queen proclaims that she can do whatever she wants, singing, “all is fair when you wear the crown.” From what I understand, American liberals are talking about “rule of law” right now, but it wasn’t so long ago when conservatives were the ones worrying about it. The leftwing filmmakers may not have realized it, but their message transcends party lines-or if you want to be a cynical, you could say it’s a message with which whichever party isn’t in power can agree. Likewise, while the fact that the climax involves Snow White, more or less, leading a protest against the queen reflects our culture these days, it’s not like conservatives never partake in protests. It’s also worth noting that Snow White’s rallying speech looks back to the past rather than forward to the future. That doesn’t seem very progressive-coded. (My best guess is it represents the leftwing writers’ nostalgia for Barack Obama’s presidency.)

I imagine the movie listing the queen drafting men into an army as an example of her wickedness and her later telling people Snow White shouldn’t be queen because she can’t keep them safe or raise any army were intended to be some sort of Take That at Donald Trump. (Although if Gal Gadot is supposed to be doing a parody of him, she didn’t do a very good job.) It’s pretty dumb to suggest that a country can do without an army and that any leader who cares about them is evil. But does anyone really expect political realism from a movie like this? I think all it merits is an eye roll.

CCC 2: The Remake Turns the Character of Snow White Into an Insufferable Girl Boss

It’s true that whereas the first song we heard the 1937 Snow White sing was about her “wishing for the one (she) loved to find (her),” this Snow White sings in the equivalent moment about wishing to be “someone no one needs to save.” Later, she sings that it’s time for her “to lead and not be led.” Her main goal throughout the story is to overthrow her stepmother and become queen herself. However, I’m confused as to why this particular reimagining has drawn such ire for doing the same thing that ABC’s Once Upon a Time, Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror and Rupert Sanders’s Snow White and the Huntsman did with the character.[15]Along similar lines, while Rachel Zegler’s derogatory comments about the animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs didn’t endear her to me, they weren’t really anything new to me … Continue reading I suppose it’s because this Snow White is specifically a remake of the iconic Disney movie and not just another adaptation of the Grimm fairy tale-though pretty much every Snow White adaptation these days is really based more on that movie than the fairy tale. What stands out to me about this remake is not how it makes Snow White more of a feminist-friendly heroine. That’s to be expected. What strikes me is how, compared to other recent adaptations of the story, this one tries to retain the animated character’s sweet, motherly personality.

Snow White’s kindness is emphasized from the very first scene where we see her as a child (played by Emilia Faucher) give her crown of flowers to a shy, sad girl (Freya Mitchell.)[16]Later in the movie (when the girl is grown up and played by Zoe Athena), the crown actually becomes a nice visual symbol. While her goal is to become queen, her motivation is a desire to help the suffering people of the kingdom rather than to gain power for herself. When she meets the seven dwarfs, she’s able to remember all their names like the ideal hostess, a skill which serves her will in the movie’s climax. She comforts and encourages Dopey after he’s humiliated in front of the others and she wins over Grumpy by being the only one to acknowledge when he has a good point. These all seem like traditional feminine virtues to me. If this is the most obnoxious girl boss Disney has created recently, they’re doing better than I thought.

Snow White’s initial timidity and lack of confidence aren’t portrayed as the result of “the patriarchy” but of the emotional abuse of a villainous matriarch who dismisses her as beautiful but weak, useless and fragile. “Your subjects await you, Snow White,” sneers the queen, “What will you tell them? That you’ve made them dessert?” In the end though, her stepdaughter’s sweetness and compassion are her strengths. If anything, it makes sense to interpret the movie as an antifeminist fable with the wicked “girl boss” being defeated by a heroine who represents traditional femininity.[17]Of course, many feminists these days say the problem with society isn’t that women aren’t allowed to act like men, but that society is governed by a stereotypically masculine mindset and … Continue reading

The dumbest part of the movie, if you ask me, isn’t the result of making Snow White more of a leader or a fighter but by making sure she conquers the queen in a way consistent with her 1937 counterpart’s character. In their final confrontation, the queen gives Snow White a knife and dares her to kill her in front of everyone. She refuses which her stepmother naturally takes as evidence that she’s weak. Then Snow White gives a speech reminding the guards of how much happier they and everyone else were before the queen was in power. Seemingly, the whole army joins her. It’s so stupid when kids’ movies resolve problems by having a character give a speech and all the relevant characters just agree with them![18]Sadly, it’s not entirely confined to kids’ movies. Has any conflict in real life ever been resolved that way? Having Snow White defeat the queen with violence would have been a more boringly conventional ending for a girl empowerment film but it would also have made more sense.[19]In the original fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, Snow White (or, rather, her husband, but it’s implied she’s complicit) forces the queen to dance to death in red hot iron shoes. Now … Continue reading Still, there is a hint of an interesting thematic idea here that could have resonated with both liberals and conservatives for different reasons if it had been handled better.

I find it odd that people who can’t stand this movie’s version of Snow White seem fine with Princess Leia. In the original Star Wars, doesn’t she complain about how her male rescuers didn’t plan the rescue very well and constantly snark at them? Yet Snow White, who graciously thanks her male rescuers even when they’re grumpy, is the shrew? Of course, Leia isn’t exactly what feminists want in a heroine either since in spite of herself, she eventually ends up succumbing to the advances of a roguish man. Maybe that’s why it’s OK for conservatives to like her story. But I can’t help but suspect it’s because they first saw Star Wars when they were kids wanting to enjoy a movie and they saw Snow White (2025) when they were adults looking for another chance to complain about modern cinema.

At this point, you might think what I’ve described as this remake’s blandness is the result of it trying to cater to viewers on both the left and the right instead of committing to just one. But I find myself thinking nostalgically of the days when a politically middle-of-the-road family popcorn movie like Star Wars could be enjoyed by both liberals and conservatives. I know the obvious rejoinder to that is “movies back then were better written” and I can’t argue in this case.[20]I don’t consider Star Wars the pinnacle of screenwriting or anything, but Princess Leia’s putdowns were pretty snappy. Still, people these days, not only on the right but on the left, seem so impossible to please that I can’t help but imagine they only love older movies because they saw them in their youth.

To Be Continued

References

References
↑1 I do try, within reason, to mention whether there’s anything in whatever piece of entertainment I cover that might offend anyone, but the blog isn’t really about that.
↑2 I was going to explain in this footnote but after writing the rest of this post, I don’t have the energy. Sorry. You’ll just have to use Google.
↑3 Though the only screenwriter to receive credit in the movie itself was Erin Cressida Wilson.
↑4 I don’t care enough about it to research all the details.
↑5 Mind you, I don’t think the movie actually gave modern feminists what they want since it basically shoehorned a feminist heroine into a male-driven story. For the record, I’d say that description applies to the animated Aladdin too.
↑6 Truth be told, I gravitate towards the animated Disney films from the 1950s. Their heroines (Cinderella, Alice, Wendy Darling, Lady, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather) tended to be traditionally polite and ladylike but didn’t hesitate to get angry at anything they really believed was wrong.
↑7 For one thing, this Disney movie doesn’t have any token gay or trans characters.
↑8 Along similar but apolitical lines, many fans of the animated movie, who weren’t particularly conservative, regarded it as sacred and objected to the very idea of a remake. I respect that as their position, but I don’t see why I should care about their criticisms of something they were never going to like.
↑9 Interestingly, Sandy Powell the costume designer also designed the costumes for Cinderella (2015) which I feel had the best costumes of any recent Disney fairy tale even if the colors were a little bright for my taste. Chris Weitz, who wrote Cinderella‘s screenplay, was apparently also one of the uncredited writers for Snow White. You know, I could do a whole blog post about how Snow White tries to do the same thing as Cinderella but doesn’t do them nearly as well. Actually, I think blog series will be about that but mostly in the footnotes.
↑10 I recall the cricket and the goldfish from Disney’s Pinocchio remake looking that way too. Whatever issues Beauty and the Beast (2017) had, at least the filmmakers realized that certain cartoon characters needed to be redesigned for photorealism.
↑11 No relation to the character from Emma.
↑12 Cinderella (2015) wisely decided not to be a musical and only had the heroine briefly sing a snatch of one of the 1950 movie’s songs as an easter egg for fans as well as having two others in the end credits after the obligatory pop song.
↑13 These were cut from the movie itself.
↑14 Of course, it’s not like the animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs wasn’t corny in its own way.
↑15 Along similar lines, while Rachel Zegler’s derogatory comments about the animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs didn’t endear her to me, they weren’t really anything new to me either. Countless modern literary takes on fairy tales, such as The Practical Princess and Other Liberating Fairy Tales by Jay Williams, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede and The Ordinary Princess by M. M. Kaye, have displayed the same attitude of “traditional fairy tale princesses are dumb; our princesses know what’s up!” (A nice thing about Gail Carson Levine is that while that may be her opinion, she seldom, if ever, displays it in her books themselves.) I guess the people who were so offended by Zegler just watch movies and don’t read books.
↑16 Later in the movie (when the girl is grown up and played by Zoe Athena), the crown actually becomes a nice visual symbol.
↑17 Of course, many feminists these days say the problem with society isn’t that women aren’t allowed to act like men, but that society is governed by a stereotypically masculine mindset and that it needs a more feminine one. Presumably, the leftwing filmmakers intended that brand of feminism though I don’t think it’s the brand people expected from what Zegler said. On the flipside, some modern conservatives hold that the problem with society is that it’s governed by a stereotypically feminine mindset and that it needs a more masculine one. Perhaps the conservative criticism of this Snow White comes from that place.
↑18 Sadly, it’s not entirely confined to kids’ movies.
↑19 In the original fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, Snow White (or, rather, her husband, but it’s implied she’s complicit) forces the queen to dance to death in red hot iron shoes. Now there’s a girl boss for you!
↑20 I don’t consider Star Wars the pinnacle of screenwriting or anything, but Princess Leia’s putdowns were pretty snappy.
Posted in Comparing Different Adaptations, Remakes | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Snow White (2025) Makes Me Neither Happy nor Grumpy Part 1

Two Peter Pans That Fly Under the Radar

Posted on June 13, 2025 by stationmaster

Back when I did a series on Peter Pan movies, in this blog’s early days, I only wrote about the three theatrically released ones and the various TV versions of the musical by Mark Charlap and Carolyn Leigh. Now I’d like to do two less iconic TV movie adaptations. To call them “less iconic” isn’t to say that no one has ever seen them or liked them. They each won an Emmy after all. Still, compared to some other Peter Pans, I don’t hear many people talking about them. As you’ve doubtless guessed by now, I think they deserve a little more appreciation. Mind you, I think they deserve some criticism too.

Peter Pan (1976)

I initially assumed this television musical starring Mia Farrow as Peter and Danny Kaye as Mr. Darling/Captain Hook was made to compete with the 1960 Mary Martin version. To my (mild) surprise, both were actually made by NBC.[1]Actually, the 1976 movie was a British-American collaboration between ITV and NBC. This one definitely follows in the prior musical’s footsteps, especially when it comes to song ideas. There’s a bedtime prayer sung by Mrs. Darling (Virginia McKenna) and her children before she leaves for her party. Peter Pan sings a celebratory song once he gets his shadow reattached. He sings another song about flying as he teaches Wendy (Briony McRoberts), John (Ian Sharrock) and Michael (Adam Stafford) how to do so. There’s a song and dance done by Tiger Lily (Paul Kelly) and her tribe as our introduction to them. You get the idea.

Unlike the 1960 TV musical, this one only aired once and that’s kind of sad in my opinion. While neither movie is exactly to the tastes of modern audiences, I feel like the 1976 Peter Pan is superior to the 1960 one in most aspects. Not every aspect, mind you, but most. It begins, more or less, with footage of Kensington Gardens, Peter’s early stomping grounds according to J. M. Barrie[2]If these aren’t the real Kensington Gardens, they’re a pretty impressive recreation., and voiceover narration from an actor no less distinguished than John Gielgud.

I’m sorry these are the highest quality images I could get.

While the sets for the rest of the movie are obviously sets, they’re still much more elaborate and visually appealing than the ones from the 1960 Peter Pan.

I’d like to see a restoration of this old broadcast.

While the scripts for both musicals take most of their dialogue from Barrie, I think this one by Peter Pan/Barrie scholar Andrew Birkin[3]Interestingly, he wasn’t yet a scholar on those subjects when he wrote this script. He became one later when doing research for his 1978 biographical miniseries, The Lost Boys. makes better choices or at least more interesting ones.[4]Like the 1953 Disney movie, it has the Lost Boys ultimately decide to stay in Neverland. That’s the only way in which the 1960 musical is closer to the source material. For what it’s … Continue reading For example, it intercuts the Darlings’ joyful flight from their nursery with their loving parents returning to find them gone, leaving us with mixed feelings that are true to the spirit of the source material.

Also, while none of the character portrayals in this Peter Pan are my favorites, I enjoy all the acting more than that of the other musical.[5]Nicholas Lyndhurst, who plays one of the Lost Boys, would grow up to play Uriah Heep in my favorite David Copperfield adaptation! Some might suggest that’s because the acting in the 1976 musical is more realistic and less theatrical than in the 1960 one but I don’t think that’s entirely the reason. The performances in the 2000 restaging of the Mary Martin musical, which was actually filmed onstage before a big audience, are just as hammy and I love them.

There’s really only one thing about this Peter Pan musical that strikes me as inferior to the other one. Unfortunately, it’s something pretty big. The songs are by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse who also did the songs for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.[6]Bricusse’s other credits include Scrooge (1970) and Doctor Dolittle (1967.) I didn’t care much for that movie’s songs, but these are even less memorable.[7]OK, maybe the better ones are better than the worst song from Willy Wonka. I wasn’t a fan of the songs from the 1960 Peter Pan either, but I’ll admit most of them are probably more fun in their corny way than the similarly corny 1976 songs.[8]The Peter Pan musical with the best songs that I’ve found is the one by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe who contributed original songs to the stage adaptation of Mary Poppins. In particular, Flying is catchier than its counterpart here, When You Can Fly. Both musicals (though at different points) have Peter sing a wistful solo that doesn’t fit with his general character but If I Could Build a World of My Own makes even less sense than Distant Melody. Peter basically has built a world of his own in Neverland! His 1960 counterpart singing about a lullaby he vaguely remembers his mother singing to him sort of made sense. (The problem was arguably more that it didn’t fit in with the overall tone of the movie.) I wonder if the 1976 song was originally written for and cut from a totally different musical and the songwriters were so attached to it that they had to put it somewhere.

Still, the soundtrack isn’t dreadful or anything. The opening number gets points for being sung by Julie Andrews(!) and it might have a better tune than most of the others too. Capt. Hook’s songs do have some clever wordplay and one of them, They Don’t Make ‘Em Like Me Anymore, is catchy though the meter sometimes strikes me as awkward.

Of all the cutthroat pirate kings who plagued the seven seas,
Quite the most appalling one to be
Is me.
(You’re telling me!)
The only old Etonian who flies the skull and cross bones,
Davy Jones’s favorite crook,
Captain Hook.

While I can’t say that most of this Peter Pan‘s songs are better as songs than those from 1960, I will argue that some of them are more interesting, dramatically speaking. In one of the only ones that doesn’t have an obvious counterpart from the Mary Martin musical, the Lost Boys sing dismissively about all the annoying things about mothers before ultimately admitting that each of them wishes he had one. Later, when Hook and his crew plan to make Wendy their mother, they sing a reprise of this song. You could argue this is untrue to J. M. Barrie who wrote in the stage direction for his play that the Lost Boys are only casually interested in their mothers “who are now as important to them as a piece of string” and in his novelization of it that “they knew in what they called their hearts that one can get on quite well without a mother and it is only the mothers who think you can’t.” Still, this adaptation’s take on the characters’ feelings is intriguing and works on its own terms. Back in 1960, Peter sang a cheerfully defiant anthem about not growing up. In 1976, albeit at a different point in the story, he sings a bitter diatribe about the loss of youth. I can’t say the resulting song is better than I Won’t Grow Up as a song, but again I find it more interesting.

In my series on Peter Pan adaptations, I made it a rule to only do straightforward retellings, not modern twists on the material. But this post isn’t really part of that series and I’m going to write about one that comes close to being both a modern twist and a straightforward retelling. Confused? Keep reading.

Peter and Wendy (2015)[9]Not to be confused with the 2023 Disney+ movie Peter Pan and Wendy.

“Of Peter himself you must make what you will. Perhaps he was a little boy who died young, and this is how the author conceived his subsequent adventures.”-J. M. Barrie

This ITV film was written by Adrian Hodges who also wrote my favorite David Copperfield adaptation and directed by Diarmuid Lawrence who was also one of the directors of my favorite Little Dorrit adaptation (although there’s not as much competition for that honor.)[10]Lawrence also directed an adaptation of Emma that’s decidedly not my favorite, but let’s not hold that against him. It tells the story of Lucy Rose (Hazel Doupe), a modern young teen with a critical heart condition. To undergo a risky surgery, she is admitted to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children to which J. M. Barrie left the rights to Peter Pan. A twinkly eyed old man (Bjarne Henrikson) gives her a first edition copy of the novel to read. She initially dismisses it (not angrily) as being for little kids, but she ends up reading it aloud to younger patients at the hospital and gets sucked into the story. “It’s funny,” she explains, “and a bit sadder than I remember.”

As Lucy and the other kids bring the tale to life in their imaginations, Lucy’s mother (undervalued actress Laura Fraser) becomes Mrs. Darling, Dr. Wylie (Stanley Tucci) and his team, who are to perform Lucy’s operation, become Capt. Hook and his crew[11]Coincidentally or not, Wylie is also the last name of the heroine of J. M. Barrie’s play, What Every Woman Knows. and pop singer Paloma Faith, of whom Lucy is a fan, becomes Tinker Bell. I love the contrast in this adaptation between the tinkly, bell-like sound of the fairy language and the somewhat vulgar content of Tink’s subtitles.

The boys at the hospital become John (Maurice Cole), Michael (Patrick Williams) and the Lost Boys. Lucy herself becomes Wendy and the movie cuts back and forth between her in critical condition and Wendy and other characters in danger. As the movie proceeds, we start to wonder if everything with Peter Pan is really in her imagination. A throwaway line from the book, which this film cites, is that according to in-universe stories, “when children died, (Peter) went part of the way with them so that they should not be frightened.” Is that what he’s doing to Lucy?!

Intentionally or not, this movie resembles the 2003 Peter Pan in many ways. Both of them portray Wendy as more of an action heroine and both even have her tell a version of Cinderella that makes her the same. Both embrace the tragic aspect of Peter (Zak Sutcliffe) and Wendy’s doomed relationship. Both have John and Michael briefly encounter the ticking crocodile when they’re separated from Peter and Wendy.[12]By the way, while John is traditionally portrayed as wearing glasses, this is the only version I’ve seen where both he and Michael are bespectacled. And both have children all over the world (or the English-speaking parts of it anyway) express their belief in fairies to save Tinker Bell, as in the novelization, rather than rely on viewer participation as in the stage play. I sometimes think I might like Peter and Wendy‘s version of that scene better than the earlier adaptation’s since it’s less self-indulgent though I really do like the music from the 2003 scene.

What’s not so like Peter Pan (2003) is Capt. Hook. Whereas Jason Issacs’s pirate captain was creepy with only an undertone of camp, Stanley Tucci’s is a completely comic figure. Even when this Hook is killing one of his crew (Asim Chaudhry) for accidentally spitting on his boots, he fails to be even as intimidating as Hans Conried’s technically more bumbling Hook from the 1953 movie. I might have preferred a more menacing, though still funny, take on the character but I can’t complain. You see, while the pirates have more original dialogue than any of the other characters, they’re hilarious. “Educational standards were higher in my day, Mr. Smee,” Hook laments at one point. “Back then, being a pirate was all about hard work! It was blood, sweat and tears. Mainly blood.” Smee (Rasmus Hardiker) says that he got an F on his entrance exam. “They said it stood for fantastic,” he adds proudly. Later, two other pirates (Gershwyn Eustache Jr. and Ricky Champ) praise Hook for never having them lashed without a good reason “even if he won’t tell you what the reason is.” I’d better stop before I spoil all these characters’ great lines.

Unfortunately, the mention of Hook brings me back to some things I don’t think work as well about this movie. For the most part, I think the connection between the fantastical scenes and the realistic scenes is great. For example, the interior of the Darlings’ nursery looks like, well, a nursery but when the children take flight out the window, it becomes a window in the Great Ormond Street Hospital, and they soar over a modern-day London. The implication seems to be this is what the patients wish they could do.

And Marooners’ Rock, a place of refuge for weary swimmers but a death trap with the changing of the tide, is made up of hospital beds and operating tables.

But there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason why Dr. Wylie should be Capt. Hook. He’s a tad prickly, mind you, but a benevolent character who has a good relationship with Lucy. Maybe the idea is that she subconsciously resents him because of she resents being at the hospital in general or she’s worried about the surgery he’s going to perform. Or is it because Mr. Darling and Hook are traditionally portrayed by the same actor and Lucy’s divorced mother is attracted to Wylie? It’s not clear what the double casting is supposed to mean in the play or movies that use it, if it’s supposed to mean anything at all, and I don’t really have a problem with that there. But it feels like it should mean something specific in this film, given the style. It might make sense if Lucy didn’t want her mom to date again. In that case, Wendy returning to her father could symbolize Lucy accepting it. But as it is, she encourages her mother right from the beginning. Maybe it’s a subconscious thing? When she and her mother have a brief argument about her father in an early scene, Mum says, “you always defend him.” If I’d been writing the movie, I might have made Lucy be estranged from her father herself and had him be Hook. As it is, I guess this particular double role can be argued into coherence.

My least favorite thing about the film is regrettably Zak Sutcliffe as Peter Pan himself. I get that the movie wants to delve into the darker aspects of the source material but even when he’s smiling, this Peter seems oddly subdued and lacking in gaiety. I prefer Jeremy Sumpter’s Peter who was angstier than some Pans but still playful. For that matter, so was Mia Farrow’s. Even Cathy Rigby’s ultra exuberant Peter Pan had some well-done sad moments. Actors and adaptations don’t need to choose one or the other.

If you’re wondering to whom Peter corresponds in Lucy’s regular life, in a rare scene at her home, we get a look at a photo of her and a boy who is played by the same actor. The implication seems to be that he was a friend or boyfriend of Lucy’s who died, tying into her being told that J. M. Barrie based Peter on his brother who died young and therefore never grew up.[13]I’m not sure if that’s actually true or just speculation on the part of biographers by the way. It might be true though. “Not a bad way to remember someone you loved,” another character says.[14]Going by this interpretation, Wendy regretfully leaving Peter and Neverland to grow up signifies that while part of Lucy wishes to join her friend or boyfriend in the afterlife, a larger part of her … Continue reading It all makes sense, but I wish the movie could have been a trifle more explicit. I’m not saying I want everything spoon fed to me, but it didn’t actually occur to me that the boy in the photo might be supposed to be deceased until someone online suggested it. A single line of dialogue to imply it wouldn’t have had to be too heavy handed.

Ending spoilers in this paragraph. In addition to being a tribute to Peter Pan, this movie is also a tribute to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. I like that it shows us one child whom the doctors are able to save and one whom they aren’t, acknowledging that not all stories about hospitals have happy endings but some do.

I’ve written before that Barrie was a naturally ambiguous writer. While on the surface, Peter Pan seems like it’s saying that growing up is a necessary evil at best, it’s so upfront about the bad things about kids that the thoughtful reader can’t help but suspect it’s being ironic. On the other hand, to unequivocally describe the parts that celebrate or seem to celebrate childhood as ironic is also an oversimplification. It used to be that Peter Pan movies would take the position that being a kid is better than being an adult. (cf. Peter Pan (1953), Peter Pan (1960), Return to Neverland (2002.)) [15]Then again, the 1953 movie does end with Wendy telling her father she’s ready to grow up and the 1960 ends with the Lost Boys cheerfully singing that they will grow up after all. Still, in … Continue reading More recent takes have gone the opposite route, proclaiming that growing up is something to be embraced. (cf. Peter Pan (2003), Wendy (2020), Peter Pan and Wendy (2023.)) [16]I think the last Peter Pan-related movie to be anti-growing up was Finding Neverland (2004.) If I recall correctly, Hook (1991) spends most of its runtime being pro-childhood and anti-adulthood but … Continue reading This film is the only one to really capture the neutrality of the source material. Of course, much of that is due to it focusing less on the theme of youth vs maturity and more on the less obvious theme of mortality. But that brings me to something else I enjoy about Peter and Wendy.

Sometime ago I wrote about how some adaptations function as commentaries on the original work, more so than adaptations always do, using Peter Pan (2003) and Little Women (2019) as examples. I argued that such adaptations can be fun and interesting and can draw viewers’ attention to things about the source material they might not have noticed otherwise but they run the risk of misrepresenting the original authors’ intentions and can make reading their original work anticlimactic. The nice thing about Peter and Wendy is that, unlike the 2003 Peter Pan or, for that matter, the 2019 Little Women, it doesn’t pretend that it’s anything other than the subjective imaginings of modern readers. Those movies started out as, more or less, straightforward adaptations and by the end, for better and for worse, the specific interpretations of the adapters had taken over. Peter and Wendy, on the other hand, puts the fact that what we’re seeing is what someone is imagining based on the book front and center. Thus, we get things like Indian princess Tiger Lily (Natifa Mai) being Hindi rather than American and Capt. Hook being described as “worse than Capt. Jack Sparrow” rather than being compared to Flint and Barbecue AKA John Silver. There’s not much danger of anyone watching this movie and assuming it’s exactly what J. M. Barrie intended. Peter and Wendy gives us the specific pleasures of a commentary-type adaptation while minimizing the drawbacks.

And now I think I’ve got the Peter Pan bug out of my system.

References

References
↑1 Actually, the 1976 movie was a British-American collaboration between ITV and NBC.
↑2 If these aren’t the real Kensington Gardens, they’re a pretty impressive recreation.
↑3 Interestingly, he wasn’t yet a scholar on those subjects when he wrote this script. He became one later when doing research for his 1978 biographical miniseries, The Lost Boys.
↑4 Like the 1953 Disney movie, it has the Lost Boys ultimately decide to stay in Neverland. That’s the only way in which the 1960 musical is closer to the source material. For what it’s worth, I understand why the decision was made since showing all the Boys being adopted by the Darlings is complicated.
↑5 Nicholas Lyndhurst, who plays one of the Lost Boys, would grow up to play Uriah Heep in my favorite David Copperfield adaptation!
↑6 Bricusse’s other credits include Scrooge (1970) and Doctor Dolittle (1967.
↑7 OK, maybe the better ones are better than the worst song from Willy Wonka.
↑8 The Peter Pan musical with the best songs that I’ve found is the one by George Stiles and Anthony Drewe who contributed original songs to the stage adaptation of Mary Poppins.
↑9 Not to be confused with the 2023 Disney+ movie Peter Pan and Wendy.
↑10 Lawrence also directed an adaptation of Emma that’s decidedly not my favorite, but let’s not hold that against him.
↑11 Coincidentally or not, Wylie is also the last name of the heroine of J. M. Barrie’s play, What Every Woman Knows.
↑12 By the way, while John is traditionally portrayed as wearing glasses, this is the only version I’ve seen where both he and Michael are bespectacled.
↑13 I’m not sure if that’s actually true or just speculation on the part of biographers by the way. It might be true though.
↑14 Going by this interpretation, Wendy regretfully leaving Peter and Neverland to grow up signifies that while part of Lucy wishes to join her friend or boyfriend in the afterlife, a larger part of her wants to live.
↑15 Then again, the 1953 movie does end with Wendy telling her father she’s ready to grow up and the 1960 ends with the Lost Boys cheerfully singing that they will grow up after all. Still, in 1953, Wendy’s father tells her there’s plenty of time for that and the last line of spoken dialogue in the 1960 musical is Peter telling her she’s now too old to go back to Neverland.
↑16 I think the last Peter Pan-related movie to be anti-growing up was Finding Neverland (2004.) If I recall correctly, Hook (1991) spends most of its runtime being pro-childhood and anti-adulthood but ultimately subverts it.
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Return to Neverland Is Better Before It Actually Returns to Neverland

Posted on June 6, 2025 by stationmaster

That Mother’s Day post got me in the mood to blog about Peter Pan adaptations, ones I haven’t really covered here in detail before. Technically, the movie I’ll be discussing in this post is a sequel to Peter Pan (1953), but it does take a number of things from the original source material by J. M. Barrie so it kind of counts as an adaptation.

Return to Neverland was released in 2002 by DisneyToon, Disney’s subsidiary studio that mostly made spinoffs and sequels to their main animation studio’s films. Return to Neverland was one of their few projects to get a theatrical release as opposed to going straight to television or video.[1]Most of the others to receive that honor were Winnie the Pooh movies. Was it because the company thought it was so good or that its visuals were so impressive that they had to be seen on the big screen? Or did they just think it might make more money that way for some reason?[2]The credits include the names of Kevin Lima and Roger Allers, both of whom worked on some of Disney’s A-list animated movies. That might indicate the company wanted this one to be special. The movie’s opening is pretty cool. Tinker Bell flies through the night sky over London illuminating the shapes of characters and objects from the 1953 Peter Pan in the clouds, giving us a recap of sorts. I love how the musical theme for each character or item is heard on the soundtrack when it appears.

As I mentioned, the filmmakers clearly read the original book for inspiration. The sequel’s premise is that, as in Barrie, the adult Wendy (voiced by Kath Soucie)[3]Kathryn Beaumont, the original voice of Wendy was originally going to reprise her role and even recorded all her dialogue but for whatever reasons, none of her performance was used, which is a really … Continue reading has a little girl named Jane (Harriet Owen) who also goes to Neverland and has adventures with Peter Pan (Blayne Weaver, probably the voice actor who sounds the least like the 1953 character.) The twist is that this Jane is no Pan fangirl. She used to love listening to her mother’s stories about him, just as her little brother Danny (Andrew McDonough) still does, but by the time the sequel’s story really gets underway, she’s come to consider them “childish nonsense.” Becoming a responsible adult has become Jane’s main goal in life, understandably so since both her parents and possibly her brother or herself could die at any moment. Her beloved father (Richard Rees who starred in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s epic production of Nicholas Nickleby!) is off fighting in World War II, London is being bombed, and she and Danny are about to be evacuated, leaving their mother behind. The movie’s beginning is a lot darker and more dramatic than anything in the 1953 film and, honestly, I’m down for it.

The night before Jane and Danny are set to leave, Wendy begs her daughter to tell Peter Pan stories to her little brother since they comfort him or, at least, distract him from his bad situation. But Jane angrily refuses and even shouts at Danny that Peter Pan isn’t real. The ensuing scene of Jane by herself in her room, the same room Wendy slept in as a child, is pretty great. You may recall that the young Wendy asked her mother to keep the nursery window open at night for Peter Pan. Not only is that same window now shut but it has taped X’s on it to protect it from shock waves, a nice visual symbol for lost innocence. I love how Jane smiles nostalgically up at the famous second star to the right through that window and then that smile fades as her gaze travels down to the smoked-out city below. I don’t love the pop song, I’ll Try, that accompanies this scene, but I appreciate how its lyrics emphasize that Jane really wishes she could believe what her mother and brother do but feels like she can’t. I can see how, say, a young adult struggling to believe in the religion their parents taught them as children would really relate to this scene. It’s pretty powerful stuff.

After Jane cries herself to sleep, a flying pirate ship appears over her house. Captain Hook (Corey Burton, the voice actor who sounds the most like his 1953 counterpart) and his crew descend, stuff Jane in a sack, mistaking her for Wendy, and fly with her across London and back to Neverland.[4]How did they get their ship back after Peter and the Lost Boys took it over at the end of the original movie? And would the pixie dust that made it fly really still be effective after all these … Continue reading This scene is probably the main reason this movie got a theatrical release. Unfortunately, the CGI hasn’t aged well.

Fortunately, I find the scene great anyway. It’s probably the highlight of Return to Neverland.

Strangely though, once the movie actually does return to Neverland, it gradually but steadily goes downhill.

Hook uses Jane as bait in a trap for Peter, threatening to feed her to a giant octopus. Peter, however, rescues her and gives Hook a taste of his own medicine-and the octopus a taste of Hook. This is the movie’s other big twist on the original. Instead of Hook being pursued by a crocodile who, thanks to Peter, is obsessed with getting another bite of him, he now has this new nemesis who is so similar that the squelching noise he makes even sounds like a ticking clock. I guess the filmmakers felt that more of the crocodile would just be repetitive but that a sequel without him would feel weird.[5]Jane and Danny’s nursemaid is a dog like their mother and uncles’ by the way. Nana wasn’t replaced by a walrus or anything. It’s not like the crocodile died or anything at the end of Peter Pan.

Jane initially enjoys getting to see the place she’s only heard about in her mother’s stories, but she’s horrified to learn from Peter that the only way for her to get back home is to fly. Due to her lack of faith and trust, Tinker Bell’s pixie dust won’t stick to her. Peter guesses that Jane’s notebook, in which she writes down important things she needs to remember, is what is weighing her down with all its grownup concerns. He and the Lost Boys play a game of keep away with it which ends with the plump Lost Boy (Spencer Breslin) accidentally ingesting it. In a way, I applaud the movie for making Peter and the Lost Boys such immature jerks since J. M. Barrie’s thesis in Peter Pan was that “children are gay and innocent and heartless.” It’s nice that this spinoff doesn’t shy away from that last part. But it works against this movie’s own thesis which is unambiguously that Jane needs to be more like Peter and the Lost Boys. It’s hard to see why [6]To be fair, Peter does sympathize with Jane when she explains just why she’s so desperate to get home. And it doesn’t help that the slapstick comedy of the Boys isn’t nearly as funny as the original movie’s slapstick. (That’s not to say Return to Neverland boasts no good comedy. It just doesn’t typically involve these characters.)

Actually, this relates to the movie’s biggest problem for thoughtful viewers. On the one hand, I think it’s great that they gave Jane sympathetic reasons for wanting to grow up so fast. It’s much more interesting than having her just be an arrogant killjoy. But I feel like they made her reasons too sympathetic. Her bedside manner could certainly use some work but is Jane really wrong for saying that she and her brother need to be responsible and mature? Under their grave circumstances, it’s pretty much true. I think the movie is trying to say that the themes of good conquering evil in Wendy’s stories can help people of any age. But I feel like Peter Pan is simultaneously too fluffy[7]The Disney version anyway. and too amoral a fantasy to support that message.[8]In an interesting coincidence, it wouldn’t be many years later that Disney would release another movie that was (partially) about a young girl being evacuated from London during the Blitz who … Continue reading

The next three paragraphs are full of spoilers. Skip to the conclusion if you’re interested in seeing the movie. Getting back to that scene of Jane’s notebook being destroyed, she lashes out in anger, saying, “I don’t believe in any of this! And I especially don’t believe in fairies!” This causes Tinker Bell to fall dangerously ill. Peter and the Lost Boys’ goal for the rest of the movie is to save her by getting Jane to believe in fairies.[9]By the way, in the 1953 movie, Tinker Bell was only referred to as a pixie, not a fairy, for some reason. I like that this sequel is harkening back to a memorable plot point from the original book and stage play but they don’t get it quite right. It’s true that in Peter Pan, “every time a child says, ‘I don’t believe in fairies,’ there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead,” But it wasn’t just any random child saying so that made them die.[10]To be fair, the 2003 Peter Pan makes this mistake too. Each fairy was born when a child laughed for the first time and perished when that child stopped believing in them.[11]Barrie wrote that Tinker Bell died long before Jane was born, presumably since her corresponding child lost faith but no adaptation I can remember has had the heart to keep that detail. Moreover, it’s pretty obvious that Jane just says she doesn’t believe out of spite. Earlier, she told herself that this was all a dream but by this scene, she clearly doesn’t believe that anymore since she’s desperate to find a way home. This makes the whole plotline with Tinker Bell kind of dumb since Jane doesn’t seem cruel enough to deliberately kill her. Realistically, all Peter needs to do is explain the situation to her and, of course, he doesn’t do that until the movie is almost over.

Lost Boy Slightly (Quinn Beswick) having a thermometer is another allusion to the source material.

Shortly after Jane’s statement of disbelief, Capt. Hook approaches her with a proposition much like the one he made to Tinker Ball in the 1953 film. He’ll take her back to London in his ship if she helps him find the chest of treasure Peter stole from him long ago.[12]In the book, Peter and the Lost Boys also had a pirate treasure though it wasn’t stolen from Hook. He promises not to harm a hair on Peter’s head and gives Jane a whistle, telling her to signal him with it when she finds the treasure. When the crucial moment comes, however, she throws the whistle away. But then one of the Lost Boys finds it and innocently blows on it, summoning the treacherous Hook who captures them and credits Jane. I guess the filmmakers realized it would be pretty stupid for Jane to trust Hook after growing up listening to stories of his villainy, especially when, you know, he recently kidnapped her.[13]Credit where credit is due, the scene of him faking remorse is the funniest in the movie, especially the picture of his mother that he shows Jane. But they couldn’t think of another direction to take the story. The result is that Jane feels guilty and has to redeem herself when it doesn’t really feel like she needs to do so.[14]I suppose she should have just not accepted the whistle in the first place.

Of course, all ends happily (except for Hook and his crew) and we even get a scene of the adult Wendy reuniting with Peter Pan that’s a lot less depressing than the scene J. M. Barrie wrote. (That’s not necessarily a complaint by the way. I found the movie’s scene quite touching.)

Ordinarily, I’d avoid writing about a movie like Return to Neverland since it’s ultimately neither particularly good nor particularly bad, just kind of meh, and pieces of entertainment like that usually aren’t very interesting. But, as I said, I’m in a Peter Pan mood and I do find it interesting how the best things about Return to Neverland, like the character of Jane, also tend to lead to its biggest dramatic problems.

Next Week: I Cover Two Lesser-Known Peter Pan Adaptations

References

References
↑1 Most of the others to receive that honor were Winnie the Pooh movies.
↑2 The credits include the names of Kevin Lima and Roger Allers, both of whom worked on some of Disney’s A-list animated movies. That might indicate the company wanted this one to be special.
↑3 Kathryn Beaumont, the original voice of Wendy was originally going to reprise her role and even recorded all her dialogue but for whatever reasons, none of her performance was used, which is a really frustrating piece of trivia. Beaumont may have sounded too old at the time, but I’d still have loved to hear her as Wendy again. Actually, if you do the math with the time periods, Wendy really should be older than she appears here.
↑4 How did they get their ship back after Peter and the Lost Boys took it over at the end of the original movie? And would the pixie dust that made it fly really still be effective after all these years? Your guess is good as mine.
↑5 Jane and Danny’s nursemaid is a dog like their mother and uncles’ by the way. Nana wasn’t replaced by a walrus or anything.
↑6 To be fair, Peter does sympathize with Jane when she explains just why she’s so desperate to get home.
↑7 The Disney version anyway.
↑8 In an interesting coincidence, it wouldn’t be many years later that Disney would release another movie that was (partially) about a young girl being evacuated from London during the Blitz who favors pseudo adult practicality over childlike faith. Like Jane, the girl has a much more playful and intuitive younger siblings to whom she feels protective and, also like Jane, she gets stuck in a magical world. I recommend that movie much more than I do Return to Neverland.
↑9 By the way, in the 1953 movie, Tinker Bell was only referred to as a pixie, not a fairy, for some reason.
↑10 To be fair, the 2003 Peter Pan makes this mistake too.
↑11 Barrie wrote that Tinker Bell died long before Jane was born, presumably since her corresponding child lost faith but no adaptation I can remember has had the heart to keep that detail.
↑12 In the book, Peter and the Lost Boys also had a pirate treasure though it wasn’t stolen from Hook.
↑13 Credit where credit is due, the scene of him faking remorse is the funniest in the movie, especially the picture of his mother that he shows Jane.
↑14 I suppose she should have just not accepted the whistle in the first place.
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An Adaptation Station Mother’s Day

Posted on May 10, 2025 by stationmaster

In honor of Mother’s Day this year, I’m doing a post looking back on some of my favorite mom characters from adaptations this blog has covered. It shouldn’t be a surprise that parents pop up in so many stories, even more so than romance, since, after all, everybody has parents. Still, considering how conventional it is for the mothers of protagonists to die in childbirth[1]Even back in the 1700s, Jane Austen joked about it in her book Northanger Abbey., I was surprised, looking back over this blog, to see how many of the stories it’s discussed have mothers as prominent characters. I decided to only write about four of them in this post, limiting myself to a certain kind of “Mom” archetype. No evil mothers (Sorry, Lady Susan) or even just dysfunctional ones (so no Mrs. Bennet.)[2]Although, in fairness, the only Pride and Prejudice adaptation I’ve reviewed in depth makes her a tad more of a sympathetic character than the book does. I’m also sticking to biological mothers, not adopted ones like Betsey Trotwood, though I did allow ones who were also mother figures to characters besides their children. To qualify for this list, a mother has to not only love her child or children but be actively raising them, disqualifying Fantine and Lady Dedlock. While the four winners didn’t have to be perfect, they had to be at least good mothers. I didn’t plan for this but they each ended up being from a story (originally) for young people though not necessarily the same age.

After all that whittling things down, who made the cut? Well…

Mary Darling (Olivia Williams) from Peter Pan (2003)

Mother of Wendy (Rachel Hurd-Wood), John (Harry Newell) and Michael (Freddie Popplewell)
Adopted Mother (eventually) to Nibs (Harry Eden), Slightly (Theodore Chester), Curly (George MacKay), Tootles (Rupert Simonian) and the Twins (Patrick and Lachlan Gooch.)
Married to George (Jason Issacs)

I should say that the 2000 Peter Pan is a more consistently great adaptation, in my opinion, but the character of Mrs. Darling isn’t developed as much in it and while Barbara McCulloh is well cast, Olivia Williams does a better job of embodying the character if you ask me.

Mrs. Darling represents a specific maternal archetype: warm, loving, beautiful, sweet, patient and soothing. Unlike her husband, a decidedly flawed fatherly archetype, she’s seemingly perfect.[3]Mr. Darling’s personality is pretty different in the 2003 movie from what it is in the book, with his prouder, more commanding characteristics being given to the new character of Aunt Millicent … Continue reading Or is she? According to Peter Pan‘s creator, J. M. Barrie, she’s a bit too sweet for her own good. When her children thoughtlessly fly the coop, abandoning her, she doesn’t get angry or even consider punishing them should she get the chance. She, not being able to follow them to Neverland, just tearfully waits for their return, always leaving the nursery window open for them. Part of the original book’s thesis was that children will always take advantage of this kind of unconditional love. Thus, to be a mother (and, arguably, to be an adult) is to leave oneself open to abuse. In the penultimate chapter of Peter Pan, Barrie wrote that he despised Mrs. Darling for her weakness but then after describing her sorrow, he turned right around and wrote, “I find I won’t be able to say nasty things about her after all. If she was too fond of her rubbishy children, she couldn’t help it…Some like Peter best and some like Wendy best but I like her best.” How much of this was Barrie being playful with his authorial voice and how much of it was sincerely meant is anyone’s guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Darling really was his favorite of the characters. Her motherly virtues and her motherly plight certainly are part of Peter Pan‘s appeal.

Of course, the movie doesn’t have Barrie’s narration[4]Well, it does have recurring voiceover narration (read by Saffron Burrows) which often draws from Barrie but that’s not the same thing. and you don’t really get this double sense of Mrs. Darling as both heroic and pathetic from it. This blog post is supposed to be about adaptations of these maternal characters, but I find I’ve written an entire paragraph that’s all about the original. Not a promising start. I’d better course correct. The biggest thing that the 2003 adaptation brings to the character of Mrs. Darling is a speech she gives to her children about their mild banker father who “has never brandished a sword nor fired a pistol, thank heavens, but he has made many sacrifices for his family and put away many dreams.” Using Barrie-esque language, she describes him as putting those dreams in a drawer and occasionally taking them out at night to admire them. “It gets harder and harder to close the drawer. He does. And that is why he is brave.” The movie suggests that unglamorous but self-sacrificing Mr. Darling may be the real hero rather than the dashing Peter Pan (Jeremy Sumpter) whose eternal childhood comes with perpetual selfishness.[5]Well, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. In the original story anyway, Peter does have moments of unselfishness, most notably when he and Wendy are stranded on Marooners’ Rock, he … Continue reading But now we’re drifting from the subject of mothers to fathers, so I’d better get back on topic.

Ellen Andrews (Barbara Harris/Jodie Foster) from Freaky Friday (1976)

Mother of Annabel (Jodie Foster/Barbara Harris) and Ben (Sparky Marcus)
Married to Bill (John Astin)

I know most people prefer the 2003 Freaky Friday and I’ll grant that Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan give better performances as that movie’s equivalent of this mother than Harris and Foster gave. (If you don’t know the premise of Freaky Friday, it’s about a mother and daughter who switch bodies for a day hence my crediting two actresses as one character.) But I prefer this adaptation since it’s closer to the original book by Mary Rodgers and its characters. That’s not to say Mrs. Andrew is exactly the same though.

Like Mrs. Darling, Ellen Andrews is good looking, gracious, maternal and conventionally ladylike but, unlike Mrs. Darling, we see her yelling at and arguing with her daughter. Not that I blame her since Annabel is something of a slovenly, irresponsible, opinionated rebel. The story reinforces her mother’s words, “When you’re grown up, people don’t tell you what to do. You have to tell yourself which is sometimes more difficult.” Mom is even more justified in the source material. There Mrs. Andrews isn’t a protagonist on equal footing with Annabel but a mentor figure who inexplicably has the ability to swap bodies with her daughter. She does so for the better part of a day to teach her a lesson and succeeds in this perfectly. Not only does half the film follow Mrs. Andrews, but it also makes her a more flawed character who has her own lesson to learn.[6]For what it’s worth, Mary Rodgers wrote both the book and the screenplay. At the beginning, she glibly tells Annabel that “childhood is the best time of a person’s life.” Then when they switch places through means mysterious to both of them, she finds she’s expected to have all kinds of skills she never learned as a kid. She has to develop film for a still photography class, use an electric typewriter, keep time in a marching band, play field hockey and waterski. She also gains a new respect for the complex social dynamics of school. Ellen easily wows her daughter’s history teacher (Barbara Walden) with her knowledge but when she does so, her daughter’s peers resent her for making them look bad, branding her a nerd, a showoff and a teacher’s pet. “How do you win?” she wonders. “One bunch thumps you if you don’t do well, the other bunch snubs you if you do!”

In spite of her having more to learn in this adaptation, I’d still call Ellen a good mother.[7]And I wouldn’t say the mother in the book was meant to be totally perfect by the way. The story backs up her daughter’s criticism of her smoking addiction. (It affected her sense of … Continue reading When she’s bruised and exasperated from playing field hockey in Annabel’s place, she considers calling it quits. Then members of the other team taunt her or, rather, her daughter, calling her “yellow.” “Annabel yellow?” thinks Mrs. Andrews. “Sloppy, yes. Yellow, never!” And with that, she’s back in the game and even manages to score a goal-though not for the right team. Whatever her criticisms of her daughter, she won’t let anyone besmirch her honor. (Indeed, that’s probably why she’s so tough on her.) And for all their differences, both Ellen and Annabel have the same determined spirit. It turns out they also share a capacity to admit their flaws. After having to do laundry, iron shirts, pay a mechanic (Jack Sheldon), attend a parent-teacher conference and cook a buffet for her father’s employers at the last minute, Annabel tells her mother she’s a lot dumber than she thought she was.[8]The daughter in the 2003 movie isn’t humbled nearly as much. That’s one of the reasons I chose this version. Smiling, Ellen hugs her and says, “Oh, my darling, aren’t we all?”

“Marmee” March (Laura Dern) from Little Women (2019)

Mother of Meg (Emma Watson), Jo (Saoirse Ronan), Beth (Eliza Scanlen) and Amy (Florence Pugh)
Honorary mother to Theodore Laurence (Timothee Chalamet)
Married to “Father” March (Bob Odenkirk)[9]I don’t believe either parent is named in the original book or this particular adaptation.

I’m more of a fan of Susan Sarandon’s performance as this character in the 1994 Little Women but I believe this movie’s script does a far better job of developing her as a character and it’s not like Laura Dern is bad in the role. (The Little Women film that resonates with me the most, personally, is actually the 2018 one but the Marmee in it is fairly underwhelming.)

This character represents a motherly archetype even more idealized than Mrs. Darling’s. She combines that fictional mom’s loving attitude and warmth with some of Mrs. Andrews’s toughness and emphasis on discipline-without needing to learn to empathize with her children’s feelings. When her youngest daughter gets caned at school for drawing a caricature of her teacher (Bill Mootos), she immediately takes her out of the class, but she also makes sure Amy knows she “did wrong and there will be consequences.” She supports her children’s various artistic ambitions, no matter how impractical, and while the movie doesn’t show this as the book does, it’s implied she discourages them from marrying for money. But she also doesn’t hesitate to contradict their wishes by asking them to give their Christmas feast to their destitute neighbors, chiding Meg for wearing too small shoes for the sake of fashion and urging Jo and Amy not to be angry with each other. She models hard work and selflessness by helping out at a Soldier’s Aid Society. I don’t blame anyone for considering Mrs. March insufferably preachy and too good to be true, not in theory anyway, but I always admire her when I read the book by Louisa May Alcott or partake of an adaptation of it. Maybe it’s the strength the character shows in the face of the harsh circumstances she faces with her husband at war, a daughter with Scarlet Fever and not much money.

Is Marmee really perfect? Not necessarily. In one scene, Jo is terrified that she’ll never be able to control her fierce temper. Surprisingly, the saintly Marmee says she reminds her of herself. “I’m angry nearly every day of my life,” she admits. “I am not patient by nature but with nearly forty years of effort, I’m learning to not let it get the better of me.” This confession gives Jo hope for herself. Of all the Little Women movies, this is the only one to include this moment from the book[10]The 2017 miniseries includes it too, but I found that one underwhelming and have never blogged about it. I haven’t watched other miniseries adaptations. and it’s a big reason why I chose to praise this particular version of the March matriarch. This mother’s standards may be high but she’s willing to admit she doesn’t always live up to them herself. That scene isn’t the only moment of vulnerability from Marmee that this adaptation retains from the source material. When Beth dies[11]In the book, this was right before she dies whereas in the movie, it’s right afterwards., she, who has been a rock of Gibraltar for her daughters throughout the story, breaks down crying and turns to one of them for comfort.[12]The 1933 movie also includes this.

Grace Bradley (Judy Greer) from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (2024)

Mother of Beth (Molly Belle Wright) and Charlie (Sebastian Billingsley-Rodriguez)
Honorary mother to Ralph (Mason Nelligan), Imogene (Beatrice Schneider), Leroy (Ethan Matthys-Wood), Claude (Matthew Lamb), Ollie (Essek Moore) and Gladys Herdman (Kynlee Heiman)
Married to Bob (Pete Holmes)

Unlike with Peter Pan, Freaky Friday or Little Women, I’ve only blogged about one adaptation of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever in anything like detail. But while I enjoyed Loretta Swit’s portrayal of this character in the 1983 movie, I think I’d pick Judy Greer’s version even if I had more candidates from which to choose.

The fact that this character is a mother was somewhat irrelevant in the original book by Barbara Robinson. The first-person narrator being her young daughter allowed her to give the readers a behind-the-scenes look at her directing her church’s annual Christmas pageant one year. The 2024 movie, being a tad more sentimental, makes motherhood a bigger theme and the relationship between Grace and Beth[13]Neither of them had names in the literary Best Christmas Pageant Ever by the way but those ones do come from Barbara Robinson. Grace was named by the stage adaptation written by the author and Beth … Continue reading more important. It also has Mrs. Bradley become something of a surrogate mother, or a mentor figure anyway, to the Herdmans, “the worst kids in the history of the world,” who muscle their way into the main roles of the Christmas pageant. While she isn’t put on a pedestal as much as Marmee or Mrs. Darling, like the former, this is a mom who keeps it together in a terrible situation. OK, maybe directing a Christmas pageant starring the diabolical Herdmans isn’t as stressful as the prospect of a husband or a child dying or having all your kids disappear or suddenly exchanging bodies with your daughter but it’s up there. I say she isn’t put on a pedestal since her motivation for giving them a chance starts out as pride more than a desire to show them Christian charity but that comes to change. “The whole point of the story is that Jesus was born for the Herdmans as much as He was for us,” she tells her daughter. “We’d be missing the point of all of it if I turned them away.”

Grace chides her stars for things like taking the Lord’s name in vain, hitting each other and hypothetically snatching a baby from a stroller outside the supermarket to use as Baby Jesus in the pageant but she also compliments them on asking good questions about the Christmas story. She defends them to an understandably hostile public on the rare occasions when they’re wrongly accused. (“The Herdman children don’t talk about underwear during rehearsals. That was another boy.”) And when they want the pageant to end with Mary and Joseph brutally killing Herod, she points out that “they picked the right villain.” As Beth says looking back on the whole thing as an adult (when she’s played by Lauren Graham), “Maybe my mom didn’t lead committees or run a business or wear a power dress while shopping, but she did the right thing when no one else would.” I described the literary version of Mrs. Bradley as less sentimentalized, but that description applies to her too.

I wanted to end with this particular mother because she’s the one that reminds me the most of mine. I grew up seeing my mom direct our church’s Christmas program every year.[14]Technically, that makes her more like the character of Mrs. Armstrong (Mariam Bernstein) but never mind. Those rehearsals could be quite a hassle but while I can recall her worrying about how the programs would turn out, I never recall her losing her cool with the cast. My mother also works as a schoolteacher and regularly deals with kids as troubled as the Herdmans or worse. I don’t know how she keeps at it day after day, but she does. She’s always fair to me and my brother, giving credit and blame when they’re due and to whom they’re due.[15]Or if she doesn’t, she apologizes before too long. She inspires me just like Grace Bradley inspires Beth.

Love you, Mom!

References

References
↑1 Even back in the 1700s, Jane Austen joked about it in her book Northanger Abbey.
↑2 Although, in fairness, the only Pride and Prejudice adaptation I’ve reviewed in depth makes her a tad more of a sympathetic character than the book does.
↑3 Mr. Darling’s personality is pretty different in the 2003 movie from what it is in the book, with his prouder, more commanding characteristics being given to the new character of Aunt Millicent (Lynn Redgrave), but he’s basically a likeable bumbler in both.
↑4 Well, it does have recurring voiceover narration (read by Saffron Burrows) which often draws from Barrie but that’s not the same thing.
↑5 Well, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. In the original story anyway, Peter does have moments of unselfishness, most notably when he and Wendy are stranded on Marooners’ Rock, he lets her have the one means of escape and later he lets her return home to her parents though he wishes for her to stay with him.
↑6 For what it’s worth, Mary Rodgers wrote both the book and the screenplay.
↑7 And I wouldn’t say the mother in the book was meant to be totally perfect by the way. The story backs up her daughter’s criticism of her smoking addiction. (It affected her sense of smell, keeping her from sniffing out that her maid (Patsy Kelly in the movie) was stealing her gin.) And when recounting her Friday in the last chapter of the book, she mentions being annoyed by the condescension she received from adults when she was in her daughter’s body, suggesting Annabel may not have been the only one to learn empathy after all.
↑8 The daughter in the 2003 movie isn’t humbled nearly as much. That’s one of the reasons I chose this version.
↑9 I don’t believe either parent is named in the original book or this particular adaptation.
↑10 The 2017 miniseries includes it too, but I found that one underwhelming and have never blogged about it. I haven’t watched other miniseries adaptations.
↑11 In the book, this was right before she dies whereas in the movie, it’s right afterwards.
↑12 The 1933 movie also includes this.
↑13 Neither of them had names in the literary Best Christmas Pageant Ever by the way but those ones do come from Barbara Robinson. Grace was named by the stage adaptation written by the author and Beth was named by her sequel, The Best School Year Ever.
↑14 Technically, that makes her more like the character of Mrs. Armstrong (Mariam Bernstein) but never mind.
↑15 Or if she doesn’t, she apologizes before too long.
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