nomad2010 wrote:Should Disney get five or six big name directors and allow them to take their biggest most memorable animated classics into live action movies? Not for the sake of remaking the classics but giving the stories new life as a reinvisioning?
Yes, if only to show there is more than one way to tell a story. The problem is that too many misinformed/uninformed people consider a Disney version to be the definitive version of a story, without realizing that the beauty of storytelling is that it can yield many variations that are either as good or better than an original.
Throwing my wishlist out there for what I'd like to see...
David Lynch directing
Fantasia - 'Nuff said.
Matthew Vaughn directing
Cinderella,
Peter Pan, and/or
The Sword in the Stone - after
Stardust, I'd love to see what he'd do to these stories.
Catherine Breillat directing
Sleeping Beauty - it'd be interesting to see if she'd tone down the sexual overtones often found in her films for a story like
Sleeping Beauty (and it'd be more interesting if she did the complete one, with the ogress mother, the children, and the "prince rapes her in her sleep" variant). If not Breillat, then...
Joe Wright directing
Sleeping Beauty - I really enjoyed his version of
Pride and Prejudice, and loved
Atonement. He got both the director's eye and the ability to really get emotion and depth from his actors, so he could easily give a sleeper like this (no pun intended) more life and story.
Joe Johnston directing
Robin Hood and
Aladdin - just so we can finally get a
Robin Hood movie that will lives up to the Errol Flynn and Richard Todd versions, and so we finally have a good solid live-action version of
Aladdin. The fact that he directed
The Rocketeer has nothing to do with why I want him to do these movies.
Martin Scorsese directing
The Fox and the Hound - He's great at tackling the grittiness and hardships in life, while also blending it with endearing themes of family and loyalty. With a story like
The Fox and the Hound, it'd be interesting to see how he'd handle it (especially as it's an animal story).
Richard Linklater directing
Beauty and the Beast - this focuses mainly on Linklater's
Before Sunrise and
Before Sunset, as it comes across as one of the best views of the relationship between two people. But if I couldn't get a Linklater version...
Rob Reiner and/or
Nora Ephron directing
Beauty and the Beast - this stems mainly from
When Harry Met Sally... (which Reiner directed and Ephron co-wrote), as well as
Sleepless in Seattle and
You've Got Mail (which Ephron directed and wrote). All three films focus on difficult relationships that end up working out in the end (though I'm still not keen on WHMS's ending), which is one of the many themes in
Beauty and the Beast. Plus, it'd be great to see either tackle a period piece (Reiner's
The Princess Bride excepted). Still, a romcom version of BATB wouldn't fit my most-wishful-thinking idea of a gothic and dramatic version (akin to Cocteau's
La Belle et la bĂȘte), so I'd also like to see...
Lasse Hallström directing
Beauty and the Beast - He's not the best director out there, but I think he'd be a great contender for a gothic version of
Beauty and the Beast. Plus, I love
What's Eating Gilbert Grape?,
The Cider House Rules,
Chocolat, and even his glossy and slightly-over-the-top version of
Casanova.
Mel Brooks directing
The Emperor's New Groove - if it were the 1970s, it'd be a match made in heaven.
Ridley Scott directing
Atlantis: The Lost Empire,
Treasure Planet, and/or
Meet the Robinsons - the first two are his forte (action epics) while the third is just a personal preference to see how he'd handle it.
There's plenty more that I wouldn't mind seeing as well, along with wishful thinking movies that will never happen because the director is deceased (for example: George Stevens directing
Pocahontas, or David Lean directing
Brother Bear.)
Albert