yerricde's Journal: Who Else Hates Disney?

In less than an hour, I will see The Walt Disney Company's second attempt to adapt Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio to the silver screen. I wonder how Disney's going to screw this one up. (Update: See my review in the comments.)

Before October 1998, my biggest beef with Disney was the fact that the writers mutilated classic stories beyond the minimum necessary for a movie adaptation, often completely changing the meaning of a story. Just look at what Disney did to, say, the story of Pocahontas.

After October 1998, I find the fact that Disney lobbied hard for the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act more than enough to demonize Disney. The company goes in, takes advantage of stories that have fallen into the public domain, then goes and gets a copyright extension so that other companies can't do the same thing. Now how hypocritical is that?

You can find more reasons to hate Disney at the web site of The Society of Disney Haters, which has been discussed on Kuro5hin.

Who else has something to say against The Walt Disney Company?

Good job Miramax, but the dubbing...

[yerricde]

Pinocchio [imdb.com] is dead; long live Pinocchio [imdb.com].

For the most part, Miramax actually did a good job this time. The new Pinocchio movie starring Roberto Benigni actually followed the novel. It surprised me that a company [disney.com] known for botching stories could publish a movie whose fidelity to the novel beats even the 1996 New Line Cinema release [imdb.com]. Most notable changes from the novel to the film were minor:

• The fairy likes butterflies. (Is this a subtle plug for MSN? Given that ESPN.com [go.com] is a joint MSN/Disney venture, it could be.)
• Mr. Cherry is gone, replaced by an opening sequence where a log somersaults down the street and lands on Geppetto's front door.
• Pinocchio is as tall as the other boys, not three feet tall as in the novel.
• There is only one cricket with godlike reflexes, as opposed to several crickets in the novel that the puppet kills.
• They never name the inn where Pinocchio, Fox, and Cat ate and spent the night. (In the novel, it was Red Lobster [google.com], but that probably wouldn't fly in today's White America [redlobster.com].)
• Lampwick is named "Leonardo" not "Romeo" as in the novel, although this may be a jab at DiCaprio's role in Romeo + Juliet (1996) [imdb.com].
• Pinocchio's nose grows and shrinks only in the presence of the fairy.
• Ending wasn't as vague. It was possible to read the novel's ending so as to imply that all the adventures were just a dream.

But the dubbing was worse than the dubbing on some of the poorer quality anime; it looked like a dubbed martial arts flick, except of course when somebody said "No, Pinocchio!" which is the same in English and Italian. I guess it's just harder to dub live action than it is to dub animation. I guess this means that Miramax needs to do the same thing for Pinocchio that was done for Princess Mononoke: put both the original-language and English soundtracks on the region 1 DVD, so that viewers can watch it dubbed or subtitled.

And even though Disney did manage to make up for butchering Pinocchio in 1940, it still doesn't make up for the Bono Act.

Re:Good job Miramax, but the dubbing...

[Com2Kid]

• And even though Disney did manage to make up for butchering Pinocchio in 1940,

Not bothering to mention that the 1940 Pinocchio is considered a classic.

Heck, it is a darn good film.

(huh? You mean there is a book? heh.)

The reason I will not go see this current release?

Old ass dude playing a puppet kid. Uh. No. The dude needs to act his age and stick with directing, ick. I refuse to pay good money to go see some guy have a mid life crisis a few years too late.

Hypocritical?

[infolib]

The company goes in, takes advantage of stories that have fallen into the public domain, then goes and gets a copyright extension so that other companies can't do the same thing. Now how hypocritical is that?

It's not hypocritical. They just follow the simple goal of maximizing profit. Earlier they maximized profit by having short copyrights, now they do it by having long copyrights. It's never been a secret that maximum profit was the goal of every corporation.

However, I believe the extensions of copyright are bad for society, so I think they shouldn't get away with it. They are not hypocritical, we just have a conflict of interest (and man, do I wish to win that conflict...)

"Made by Disney"

[WWWWolf]

Okay, Disney's movies are not doing well. However, there's one thing that keeps me from disliking Disney entirely: the comics keep getting better! =/ Don't know how's the situation in the States, but in Europe the Disney comics are far more important and influential than the movies... There has been a lot of great comics coming out in recent years.

But anyway, one of my biggest problems with Disney is the facelessness of it all...

Ask one question from anyone and watch them get puzzled for a while. "Who directed (randomdisneymoviename)? Who was the lead animator?" The answer may take a while. Disney sells the movies as "Made By Disney" or "Made by Pixar" or anything. Same for the comics. Who actually made the movie is, according to them, somewhat irrelevant. They don't even associate the movies or comics to their creators - they associate everything to the faceless Disney enterprises. Only a few particularly big names have avoided this fate. This is what I don't really like.

(Ever needed to tell people that "No, Scrooge McDuck was actually invented by Carl Barks"? I have had the displeasure to educate people on such obvious matters =)

However, it's nice that the Finnish publishers (along with many others, I hope???) have gone against this: They now tell who wrote and drew the comics, and even publicize certain stories as written by famous people. Previously, only big names escaped this ("Carl Barks classics! Al Taliafero's strips from war times! Epic new stories by Don Rosa!") but now the local publisher tells all. And of course, there's sites like INDUCKS [ling.uu.se] that are highly interesting when reading ancient stuff...

Disney

[The Snowman]

Yeah, I hate Disney too. I get into disagreements with my wife all the time because Disney makes "cute" movies and characters. I think they just plaguerize world literature for a quick buck. On top of that, they dumb down stories and twist things to be politically correct. For example, in Hercules, he was a demigod because he didn't drink the whole portion. In the mythology, he was the bastard child of Zeus and a mortal woman. But we can't have sex out of wedlock, can we?

Disney puts out a lot of crap every year too. There are only so many times you can retell the same story without it getting boring and stupid. They need to cut back. And forget about Disneyworld. Why should I waste all that money for an overcrowded theme park put on by a faceless, uncaring corporation whose movies are boring and stupid?

In this economy of the "dollar vote," I choose not to vote for Disney. That's about all I can do, and I am proud to do it.