I don't really like Lindsay Ellis at all but I never thought I'd see the dag where I agree with her on something and she'd have a video that perfectly sums up my issues with Disney in recent years.
I was watching her Beauty and the Beast 2017 review and she was basically complaining about how years of whiny, nitpicky nobodies on the internet like u and me going on and on about "stereotype" this and "problematic" that regarding Disney films has pretty much resulted in the hot ezel messes modern Disney films are today. How the BatB remake is a terrible adaptation of the OG film and it's contribution to Disney's current obsession with being "meta, self aware, subversive" and "progressive, feminist, woke", only adds to the nonsense.
And it's so funny because Lindsay Ellis is the exact type of person these modern films are trying to appease with this stuff but now that it's affecting a film SHE likes (BatB) even she agrees that this crap has gone too far. In fact, in the video, she's almost kind of apologetic for contributing to this mentality. ("I will never cease my penance walk")
Actually, in a few reviews of the BatB remake on Youtube, the reviewers generally have this attitude of "We were just joking around and nitpicking about the onbeantwoord questions, the stockholme sydrome etc. We didn't think you'd actually listen to us. This isn't what we wanted."
And this issue isn't exclusive to the remakes, it's in the revival DP films too, the writers are so obsessed with inserting the self aware meta-contextual humor you'd expect to find in parodies of Disney films and making sure the heroines and the stories are as progressive, feminist and "unproblematic" as possible.
With the criticism of wishing, (PATF) the "I don't need a prince" crap, (Brave) the "you can't marry a man u just met" crap, (Frozen) and the "if u have animal vrienden then you're a princess" crap. (Moana) There's huge hoorah over Tiana being the first black princess and Moana's body type and that stuff IS nice but what about u know, the actual story?!
It doesn't surprise me at all that PATF, Brave, Frozen and Moana have all been labelled various combinations of "rushed, bland, messy, lackluckster" among Disney fans compared to Tangled, often praised as one of the most cohesive rounded out stories from Disney in the last decade.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this might be a contributing factor as to why Rapunzel/Tangled is the most populair Revival princess/movie door such a significant margin among the Disney community, because outside of Flynn's "I don't sing" bit, it doesn't have any of the pretentious meta crap. This may come as a shock to some of you, but people don't like being patronized and antagonized for liking what they like! Which seems to be the intent of a lot of these modern movies.
Disney, we already know your older films have ridiculous elements (they're fairytales for crying out loud) we don't need u to tell us, especially in the most condescending "on the nose" way possible. And on top, boven of that, u encourage and further perpetuate the louder strawman arguments against the older films, like Cinderella.
In the 2015 remake, y'all were so determined to make this Cinderella "smarter, stronger and meer independent" than her 1950 counterpart but as the Nostalgia Critic points out, u ironically made her dumber and weaker. And now it seems this foolishness is gonna continue with the Aladdin remake because apparently they're making these same kind of "improvements" with Jasmine.
To quote Naomi Scott "this movie, u see her go on such a roller coaster, as opposed to her one goal being to fall in love of get married.” Right, because the original jasmijn was all about love and marriage. A false critique that quite a few people, including Lindsay Ellis, have spouted about Jasmine.
And again, this is an issue with the revival DP films as well, the whole "smarter, stronger, meer independent, meer developed, meer progressive, meer feminist" heroine shtick did exist in the renaissance era but it is turned up to 100 with the modern films, and it's even meer in your face because of the try-hard self aware crap.
Y'all were so determined to pander to whiny, nitpicky bastards that gather on sites like Reddit and Tumblr complaining about how the vorige princesses are "problematic" and again, ironically u created characters like Tiana, who actually did marry a man (or in this case frog) she just met, Merida, who finds herself needing to be rescued meer often any other princess, Anna, arguably the dumbest princess yet, and Elsa, an arguably very undeveloped character. u made princesses who are just as if not meer guilty of the stuff vorige princesses are gegeven grief for.
To bring it back to Lindsay Ellis, she made a potent point about the gradual change in Disney's approach and ironically praised the old fashioned Walt for putting the story first and just trying to appeal to the childlike wonder that's in all of us. In Eisner's days it was meer of a balance between telling stories and making money. Nowadays, with the current Disney head (can't remember his name) it's all about doing what's marketable and mainstream of at least what they think is mainstream.
Disney, the loud minority of pedantic nitpicky people online who get critical and offended over little thing u do are just a minority, they don't represent the general public of even the hardcore Disney fandom. I know these grievances may seem mainstream because celebrity idiots like Kiera Knightley bash Cinderella and Ariel in an interview, but if u look in the commentaar section (usually a cesspool but surprisingly sensible in this context) of that interview on Youtube, vast majority of people are actually not co-signing on what she's saying....not even a little bit.
Concepts like diversity and progressiveness are very much welcomed but I'm just saying maybe we should take a page out of Walt's book, and just prioritize telling a fun entertaining well written story. It's like a contributor to the YouTube channel Cheshire Cat Studios zei in his Frozen review about Disney's current state of "social justice wokeness". He zei "the problem is that people treat this as though it owes them a responsibility".
Disney's only responsibility and obligation is to tell an entertaining story and maybe present a moral of two along the way. It's not their responsibility to coddle u and basically "talk u off a ledge" nor is it to make some revolutionary progressive statement, and not to mention when they do try to make these statements they make them in the most half-assed way possible.
For example, if they really gave a crap about developing and progressing Belle in the remake, they would have made her an aspiring auteur of writer. u know, an actually natural and logical progression for her character, not taking a characteristic from Maurice (inventing) and giving it to her and basically turning her into Emma Watson's self indulgent feminist power fantasy. The fact her inventing skills never actually impact the plot tells me it was just to put in to make her seem "better" than the 1991 Belle.
Let's not forget about Le Fou being gay....apparently and what happened to Belle's mom. Both of which, as Lindsay Ellis points out, were just inserted in the film to be progressive ("first gay Disney character YAY!") and to make some meta-response to the age old "dead mom" critique from whiny people on the internet.
Disney, as loud as people on Tumblr, Reddit, a few beroemdheden and dozens of artikels on Buzzfeed-esque sites may be, there are not the vast majority of people watching your movies. Most people actually DON'T care that "the first black princess is a frog for the most of the movie", to them it's just a thing that happens in the story. Regardless, meer people are just happy to have a black princess and even meer of them just want to watch a good movie.
Same goes most of the similar complaints about Disney films being regurgitated on the internet. The fact is, most of the people making those complaints are either a) not actually being serious of b) just plain crazy and won't be satisfied no matter what Disney does. Trying to accommodate and pandering to these people should not be a priority.
I know Walt wasn't the most progressive man but contrary to what may seem like populair belief, most people actually subscribe to his way of thinking when it comes to movie making. Just tell a compelling and cohesive story. That's it.
I was watching her Beauty and the Beast 2017 review and she was basically complaining about how years of whiny, nitpicky nobodies on the internet like u and me going on and on about "stereotype" this and "problematic" that regarding Disney films has pretty much resulted in the hot ezel messes modern Disney films are today. How the BatB remake is a terrible adaptation of the OG film and it's contribution to Disney's current obsession with being "meta, self aware, subversive" and "progressive, feminist, woke", only adds to the nonsense.
And it's so funny because Lindsay Ellis is the exact type of person these modern films are trying to appease with this stuff but now that it's affecting a film SHE likes (BatB) even she agrees that this crap has gone too far. In fact, in the video, she's almost kind of apologetic for contributing to this mentality. ("I will never cease my penance walk")
Actually, in a few reviews of the BatB remake on Youtube, the reviewers generally have this attitude of "We were just joking around and nitpicking about the onbeantwoord questions, the stockholme sydrome etc. We didn't think you'd actually listen to us. This isn't what we wanted."
And this issue isn't exclusive to the remakes, it's in the revival DP films too, the writers are so obsessed with inserting the self aware meta-contextual humor you'd expect to find in parodies of Disney films and making sure the heroines and the stories are as progressive, feminist and "unproblematic" as possible.
With the criticism of wishing, (PATF) the "I don't need a prince" crap, (Brave) the "you can't marry a man u just met" crap, (Frozen) and the "if u have animal vrienden then you're a princess" crap. (Moana) There's huge hoorah over Tiana being the first black princess and Moana's body type and that stuff IS nice but what about u know, the actual story?!
It doesn't surprise me at all that PATF, Brave, Frozen and Moana have all been labelled various combinations of "rushed, bland, messy, lackluckster" among Disney fans compared to Tangled, often praised as one of the most cohesive rounded out stories from Disney in the last decade.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this might be a contributing factor as to why Rapunzel/Tangled is the most populair Revival princess/movie door such a significant margin among the Disney community, because outside of Flynn's "I don't sing" bit, it doesn't have any of the pretentious meta crap. This may come as a shock to some of you, but people don't like being patronized and antagonized for liking what they like! Which seems to be the intent of a lot of these modern movies.
Disney, we already know your older films have ridiculous elements (they're fairytales for crying out loud) we don't need u to tell us, especially in the most condescending "on the nose" way possible. And on top, boven of that, u encourage and further perpetuate the louder strawman arguments against the older films, like Cinderella.
In the 2015 remake, y'all were so determined to make this Cinderella "smarter, stronger and meer independent" than her 1950 counterpart but as the Nostalgia Critic points out, u ironically made her dumber and weaker. And now it seems this foolishness is gonna continue with the Aladdin remake because apparently they're making these same kind of "improvements" with Jasmine.
To quote Naomi Scott "this movie, u see her go on such a roller coaster, as opposed to her one goal being to fall in love of get married.” Right, because the original jasmijn was all about love and marriage. A false critique that quite a few people, including Lindsay Ellis, have spouted about Jasmine.
And again, this is an issue with the revival DP films as well, the whole "smarter, stronger, meer independent, meer developed, meer progressive, meer feminist" heroine shtick did exist in the renaissance era but it is turned up to 100 with the modern films, and it's even meer in your face because of the try-hard self aware crap.
Y'all were so determined to pander to whiny, nitpicky bastards that gather on sites like Reddit and Tumblr complaining about how the vorige princesses are "problematic" and again, ironically u created characters like Tiana, who actually did marry a man (or in this case frog) she just met, Merida, who finds herself needing to be rescued meer often any other princess, Anna, arguably the dumbest princess yet, and Elsa, an arguably very undeveloped character. u made princesses who are just as if not meer guilty of the stuff vorige princesses are gegeven grief for.
To bring it back to Lindsay Ellis, she made a potent point about the gradual change in Disney's approach and ironically praised the old fashioned Walt for putting the story first and just trying to appeal to the childlike wonder that's in all of us. In Eisner's days it was meer of a balance between telling stories and making money. Nowadays, with the current Disney head (can't remember his name) it's all about doing what's marketable and mainstream of at least what they think is mainstream.
Disney, the loud minority of pedantic nitpicky people online who get critical and offended over little thing u do are just a minority, they don't represent the general public of even the hardcore Disney fandom. I know these grievances may seem mainstream because celebrity idiots like Kiera Knightley bash Cinderella and Ariel in an interview, but if u look in the commentaar section (usually a cesspool but surprisingly sensible in this context) of that interview on Youtube, vast majority of people are actually not co-signing on what she's saying....not even a little bit.
Concepts like diversity and progressiveness are very much welcomed but I'm just saying maybe we should take a page out of Walt's book, and just prioritize telling a fun entertaining well written story. It's like a contributor to the YouTube channel Cheshire Cat Studios zei in his Frozen review about Disney's current state of "social justice wokeness". He zei "the problem is that people treat this as though it owes them a responsibility".
Disney's only responsibility and obligation is to tell an entertaining story and maybe present a moral of two along the way. It's not their responsibility to coddle u and basically "talk u off a ledge" nor is it to make some revolutionary progressive statement, and not to mention when they do try to make these statements they make them in the most half-assed way possible.
For example, if they really gave a crap about developing and progressing Belle in the remake, they would have made her an aspiring auteur of writer. u know, an actually natural and logical progression for her character, not taking a characteristic from Maurice (inventing) and giving it to her and basically turning her into Emma Watson's self indulgent feminist power fantasy. The fact her inventing skills never actually impact the plot tells me it was just to put in to make her seem "better" than the 1991 Belle.
Let's not forget about Le Fou being gay....apparently and what happened to Belle's mom. Both of which, as Lindsay Ellis points out, were just inserted in the film to be progressive ("first gay Disney character YAY!") and to make some meta-response to the age old "dead mom" critique from whiny people on the internet.
Disney, as loud as people on Tumblr, Reddit, a few beroemdheden and dozens of artikels on Buzzfeed-esque sites may be, there are not the vast majority of people watching your movies. Most people actually DON'T care that "the first black princess is a frog for the most of the movie", to them it's just a thing that happens in the story. Regardless, meer people are just happy to have a black princess and even meer of them just want to watch a good movie.
Same goes most of the similar complaints about Disney films being regurgitated on the internet. The fact is, most of the people making those complaints are either a) not actually being serious of b) just plain crazy and won't be satisfied no matter what Disney does. Trying to accommodate and pandering to these people should not be a priority.
I know Walt wasn't the most progressive man but contrary to what may seem like populair belief, most people actually subscribe to his way of thinking when it comes to movie making. Just tell a compelling and cohesive story. That's it.