DVDizzy Forum

This may sound blasphemous, but I've just seen Cinderella 2 today and I actually thought it wasn't as bad as others thought. Okay, nowhere near as good as the original classic, but still, it wasn't really bad.

I must admit that the idea of Tarzan/Brother Bear/Toy Story style songs was a bit of a wrong one, but I must admit that the stories were rather cute and optimistic like in the 1950 classic. The animation is most certainly not amazing, but it was still better than a lot of the Disney TV shows. As a matter of fact, watching this has wetted my appetite for this October's platinum release a bit.

I used to dislike the concept of these sequels and the ones that I saw like Belle's Magical World quite a bit (one of my first posts was this!), however, I've decided to be open minded and see if some of the "cheapquels" that I haven't seen are as bad as they're made out to be and I have to admit that this movie is generally a winner. I wouldn't go and buy this the week it comes out for the full price, but if it were in a sale or "buy 3 DVDs for £20" offer, I would pick it up.

I think that people just watch this movie trying to hate it just because it's Cinderella 2. I'm sure if you went to watch Beauty and the Beast thinking that you must think it's crap, you'd hate that movie.

And I'm sure an appreciation thread on this is much better than yet another slip-cover topic...

I saw the first one at a very gentle age and loved it. My previous experiences about II and III parts of all Disney's movies (despite some exceptions) were painful and sad. I simply can't imagine what may be possibly put in the IIor even in the III part of Cinderella. I surely won't watch both II and III in order to pay respect to my memories of the first Cinderella and to keep my nervous system healthy unless anyone who has already saw II and III movies will impress me and change my mind.
I'm very sorry about putting the same answer as in the Cinderella III discussion, but my ideas are the same and I' m tired of rewriting after a long university day full of exams...

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I've said elsewhere in this forum that I thought it was a great set of positive stories for kids, and it's not the horribly blasphemous sequel that everyone makes it out to be.

What's so wrong about letting the characters live on this way for a new generation? Why do people have to freak out over it?

In fact the only real problem I have is the use of color, similar to the LIttle Mermaid sequel which is just so Lisa Frank, but that's a minor squabble.

It's really nice to see some positive comments on it, and I hope we'll see more.

Wonderlicious wrote:I think that people just watch this movie trying to hate it just because it's Cinderella 2. I'm sure if you went to watch Beauty and the Beast thinking that you must think it's crap, you'd hate that movie.

I respectfully disagree. I have approached each and every sequel open-mindedly, and every time I've been let down by a cheesy story, unoriginal songs and animation sub-par to the original. I really am disappointed that anyone who enjoys a sequel, claims haters hate it only because they're narrow-minded. While some might be, I don't see myself narrow-minded at all!

Beauty and the Beast, for me, delivers everything I expect from a top notch movie, and the end result shows. Even the most critical of Disney's work have praised this movie. To say someone can truelly hate this movie like the hate for a Disney sequel is a bit redicilous, and please before you get defensive let me explain. Even the most critical will admit that there's a good story and ground breaking animation, something that cannot be said for a cheapquel. Even the weakest of the Disney cannon cannot be fully dismissed, while many sequels show no positives other than the ability to appeal to all 6 year olds throughout the world.

I personally object to continuing movies with "happily ever after" endings. It's just not needed. You can look at a movie and see if there's somewhere to go from there. In the cases of Aladdin, Lion King, and Mulan, there was clearly more to the story that could be told. Aladdin had several loose ends that could be played with, Liong King had the perfect lead in to the next generation, and Mulan left the door open for future adventures. On the other hand, the "princess trio", Beauty and the Beast, and to a lesser extent The Little Mermaid left the movies exactly where the story should have ended. To try to continue the story is an inherently bad idea. Although I will say that the plot of Cinderella III doesn't sound half-bad. It will all depend on the execution.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a continuation of "happily ever after." As the country song asks Cinderella, "does the shoe fit you now?"

In real life, there are no beginnings and there are no ends. Maybe that's a weird concept to apply to a Disney film, but you know, what is it that so many people waiting to fall in love are looking for? They think that once they find their "prince," everything is gonna be just grand and they're gonna live happily ever after. But as this sequel shows, there's more to it than that.

Life's problems never end. My dad always reminded me of that whenever we'd watch the scene in Aladdin where he remarks that it would be great to live in a palace and "never have any problems at all." He'd always laugh at that line, saying that no matter how many great things you may attain in your life, whether you're a prince or a pauper, there's always problems to deal with.

Heh. Just like when I used to delude myself into believing that everything would be perfect if I ever found a boyfriend.

And then there's something like the Shrek films. I was initially agaqinst a sequel but once I watched it I loved the concept that the honeymoon was over betweem Shrek and Fiona.

Cinderella discovers that there's more to being a princess than sitting there and looking pretty. There's responsibilities to face, and it's a great lesson for kids.

I'm also happy that Anastasia learned her lesson before she turned into a conniving old biddy like her mother. People can change, and so can Disney characters.

Sunset Girl wrote:
I've said elsewhere in this forum that I thought it was a great set of positive stories for kids, and it's not the horribly blasphemous sequel that everyone makes it out to be.

What's so wrong about letting the characters live on this way for a new generation? Why do people have to freak out over it?

2 words: Walt Disney! That man was a genius! He was probably one of the few people who can make both kids and adults entertained by his entertainment wheter it'd be movies, television or Theme Parks. Those crappy seqeuals I think only kids will like! And alot of kids hate those! Sure they can still make movies kids and adults can both like like Lilo and Stitch or Brother Bear for example. But those sequels are just for kids! They don't have a good audience.

As for having a narrow mind and you won't enjoy Beauty and the Beast, I actually just rediscovered it last December and I loved it! I wasn't expecting anything from the film but now it's in my top 5 animated Disney movies of all time! I had watch sequels with a narrow mind and they almost always turn out sucky!

Timon/Pumba fan wrote:2 words: Walt Disney! That man was a genius! He was probably one of the few people who can make both kids and adults entertained by his entertainment wheter it'd be movies, television or Theme Parks. Those crappy seqeuals I think only kids will like! And alot of kids hate those! Sure they can still make movies kids and adults can both like like Lilo and Stitch or Brother Bear for example. But those sequels are just for kids! They don't have a good audience.

That's why I think that they should only make sequels to the movies that were made after Walt died, out of respect. The man had a really strong opinion of sequels and he really disliked them. Then, after he dies, the company that he created goes and makes sequels to his classics just to make a quick buck. Whether the sequels are good or bad, it's the principle of the thing. Walt was basically stabbed in the back on that one.

I'll have to agree with what Netty said in his post atthis thread:

2099net wrote:I've never understood why people have so much hate for Disney. Why do people hold Disney above all other studios? Disney's "explotation" of characters is actually quite mild compared to others. A DTV sequel here and there isn't going to bring the whole building toppling down brick by brick.

In fact, my only complaint about Disney is their non-ending Princess merchandise. But it obviously sells. So people obviously want it. Nobody can complain about being given what they want, I suppose.

All I hear is the often quoted Disney/Sequels line. Well, wake up people. Walt lived and died in a different age. Entertainment was simpler and less competetive then. They followed Walt's rules and almost got taken over by other companies. Now Disney is a mega-corperation.

Releasing a limited number of films a year (say 8, 1 animated and 7 live action) will not keep the Disney banner flying for long. Pixar manage it with 1 film per year, but Pixar is a small company with only one building of employees. Disney has thousands upon thousands of employees worldwide.

Despite this, Disney has been the best in its treatment of classic characters.

Yes, you may not like the sequels. But does any of them treat the characters as bad as Warner's Batman and Robin treated Batman? Does any of them feature pointless redesigns like Loonatiks (yes, I know these have been changed now). Do any of them make cruel jokes about the characters, or totally reinvent them, like the first Scooby Doo motion picture did?

Disney is not perfect. But Disney is doing it's best to keep afloat in a competetive sector, When Walt was alive the only entertainment options were reading, watching television (with limited channels), going to see a movie or playing sport/playing out.

Today we have reading, television (including cable/digital), film theaters, home video, computer/video games, the internet, cell phones (yes, lots of kids would rather spend their money on calls and texts as entertainment) and sport (which is much more fashion concious these days). All of these activities are after your dollar.

Things have changed in the past forty years. Walt was someone that changed with the times. We honestly don't know what he'd be wanting to do if he were still alive, and it would be pointless and a waste of time pursuing an ideal that we cannot possibly fathom.

Okay why are we talking about Cinderella 2? In my opinion when I first saw it on The Disney Channel I really felt bad for this Disney sequel.
Disney should have just left Cinderella alone.

I have no problem with "Cinderella 2".

1. People keep going on about how the original was just as appealing to adults as it was to children.

Which is something I would dispute anyway. I've not seen "Cinderella" !Gasp!, but if we take "Sleeping Beauty" and "Snow White" as an example, there's nothing to appeal to the adult audience apart from the magnificent animation. Neither script is full of the witticisms of a Pixar film today, or even a Disney short in their own time. "Sleeping Beauty" doesn't even have any character development for a good 80% plus of its cast! Had those films be filmed in live action, there's very few people who would champion them having a prolonged appeal to adults. So that's one myth debunked.

Secondly, Disney makes lots of other films only targeted at children or other demographics, and nobody on this forum seems to mind. Do you really think the "Princess Diaries" films have much to make a 30 year old male keep their attention for example? There is nothing wrong with making a film for a specific target audience.

I'll admit it probably shows a lack of ambition, a lack of confidence and can result in lazy writing. But there is nothing wrong with it in theory. Not every film can have, or even should have enormous cross-demographic appeal.

2. People keep going on about how Walt was opposed to sequels. True. I cannot deny that he said it. The thing is, Walt said or did many things that seemed to contradict his own philosophy.

Walt was an "imagineer", but Walt was also a businessman. A businessman who didn't have to put up with all the corporate hysteria, hypocrisy and general greed that exists today. Companies like Disney were run differently in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

Was General Motors closing down plants making thousands of people redundant in the process, only to open up cheaper factories in Mexico? Was Kraft pumping it's food products full of chemicals and artificial flavourings simply to be able to use cheaper ingredients and save an extra fraction of a cent on each pack of a product. Were the banks closing down branch after branch and insisting people did their banking over the telephone? Needless to say, this is what all three examples are doing today, even though each is still racking in profits of multiple millions of dollars.

The business environment has changed. Some of this is because the technology has changed. Some is because our attitudes to business have changed. Walt had shareholders in Disney when he was alive, but Walt had the advantage of knowing most of his majority shareholders. He offered them the opportunity to buy shares. He only offered them to people he trusted, and if a problem arose he could talk to the individual. Today, Disney has tens of thousands (if not millions) of shareholders, and the vast majority of them are concerned with only one thing: How much are my shares worth today. Not how much are my shares worth in 6 months time or 3 years time. How much are they worth today.

Walt made decisions around business needs in his time. Initially dismissive of television and vowing that he would never make shows for the medium or allow any of his theatrical films or shorts be shown on television, he went on to not only make shows for television but actually host them himself.

What caused such a change of mind? He needed the money to fund his Disneyland project, and ABC offered the money (as long as he made programmes for them).

Walt was insistent that his animation was of top quality. He spent years and years at the start of Disney pushing his animators further and further to create "the plausible impossible". Most of this innovation was done in the shorts of the time. Yet when the market began to drop out of the theatrical short thanks to television's influence, he made the decision to shorten the production time and reduce the cost of each short made. Look at some of the later Disney shorts and their animation quality is way below the quality of many of the much hated "cheapquels". When it became no longer viable to create shorts, Walt dropped them.

Nobody knows what Walt would have done if he was alive today. How can anybody predict that the man would do based on comments made in the 1940's or 1950's. Walt himself couldn't even predict what he was ultimately going to end up doing. Do you think Walt predicted the rise of television from his initial scorn? Do you think Walt predicted the fall of the theatrical animated short? After all it was with the shorts that Walt built his business.

3. The argument "Is a sequel needed". No, its not. But is a film version of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" needed? If you want to know the story, read the book. The book will always have a better narrative, have better character insight and will always describe and build a better setting than a movie ever could.

Was an animated film of "Snow White" needed. Not at all, being as it was a widely known fairytale and had been filmed at least twice before the animated film was made. No film is "needed". It's entertainment. And no form of entertainment is vital.


I do have one problem with "Cinderella 2" though. Its the same I have with so-called "movies" like "Tarzan and Jane", "Stitch" and the two "House of Mouse" so-called "features". Its that Disney are basically lying when they call them films. They are partworks from televison shows rather poorly stiched together. It's even more obvious in the case of "Tarzan" and "Lilo and Stitch" where we have the proper sequels coming out suffixed with a 2 rather than a 3. This is a cheap practice, and should be stopped. Because this is what's harming their work on the sequels the most. Ironic when they appear to be putting so much more work into the proper sequels.

Thanks Netty; once again, well said!

Hmm. . . I'm trying to remember if it was this forum or somewhere else that I said it should have been called "Cinderella Stories." Well, no matter. But I wonder if people would have been more accepting of that. Hey, let's say that the exact same stories appeared in a nice children's book for Disney; no one would care then, and some might even commend it for being a great set of positive stories for kids. Stranger things have happened.

Does anyone know the origins of this movie as a TV series? Weren't the stories in this going to make up part of a Disney Princess hour with the other Disney princesses where the characters would alter each episode (for example, Cinderella, Pocahontas and Belle in one showing, and Snow White, Ariel and Jasmine in an other). And would some of the material have been reused from the Aladdin and Little Mermaid TV shows and the terrible Belle's Magical World DTV? And am I asking too many questions over a pointless thing?

I believe it was to be part of an anthology series on TV. I don't know what the other segments would be. They could even have been planned to be live action!

Well, I remember rumors about "Power Princesses," which was supposed to be about the daughters of the Disney princesses fighting together in some sort of super-hero team. Thankfully, it was an abandoned concept.

Sunset Girl wrote:Well, I remember rumors about "Power Princesses," which was supposed to be about the daughters of the Disney princesses fighting together in some sort of super-hero team. Thankfully, it was an abandoned concept.

Oh dear. That would have been dreadful. I don't think that the princesses should clash at all. Different time periods and locations. Imagine Pocahontas with Aurora. Disney has weird ideas. I remember that they wanted the bells of Notre Dame to talk to Quasimodo. That makes the gargoyles look good.

Cinderella II is one of the films that I do not class as a sequel, as has been pointed out, it is merely three episodes of a cancelled TV series and in my opinion it is NOT a sequel and lives in the same shoebox as, Tarzan and Jane, Atlantis: Milo's Return, Stitch: The Movie, and Belle's Magical World.

Anyway I think the point that Wondy made is exactly how I feel about this film. It is no masterpiece, It never will be, it's a cheap bit of fluff to kill and hours time. It is certainly nowhere near as bad as some make it out to be. It is aimed at kids (which I agree 100% with Netty's comment about how having a film for multiple demographics not always necessary, and I would have said the same point myself I had got here first,a lhtough as usual Netty always puts it better than anyone else .) and is nothing more than a bit of harmless entertainment.

Some people expect it to be equal to the original, which it is not. People need to lower their expectations.

People here seem to get up in arms about the fact that it is 3 seperate parts strung together, which as I have pointed out, makes me put it in that shoebox. It is NOT IMO a sequel, and actually i appreciate this "film" as it is not often that studios will release a TV show that didn't even make it to air.

Imagine something for a minute, if these three TV episodes were made back in 1950 to air on the Disneyland anthology program, but were never aired and everybody knew that they had been sitting on the shelf at the Disney studios for half a century, I bet half the people on the forum would be going nuts emailing Leonard Maltin to get them put on one of the Treasures DVDs. People nowadys seem to dismiss anything new from Disney, and complain because the animation and story of the sequels had dropped, yet as Netty pointed out, quality dropped back in the 60s too. But do you ever get a thread on this forum started up by someone outraged at the quality of the animation in "Aquamania" in comparison to "Goofy and Wilbur". People all to often look at the past with rose tinted glasses and see everything as perfect. It's like Fantasia the word "flop" is not strong enough to descrive this movie when it was first released, it was abhorred! Walt Disney every publically apologised for it, saying "everyone makes mistakes"

My point being that, as the films are new most are often quick to judge, in 50 years time we will have a greater retrospective on things and Cinderella 2 will not seem as bad. Who knows like Fantasia, Cinderella II could be the admiration of future generations of animators to come.

As Netty pointed out, Disney are in the world of business, and if they have something sat on a shelf (like the 3 Cindy episodes) that are going to do what they can to get their money back.

Also the fact that it is 3 episodes strung together annoys people from a plot point of view. How often do you hear complaints that "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" is an ambomination, because it is three seperate 25 minute segtions strung together. how many people love "The Sign of Zorro", "Davy Crockett and the River Pirates" or "Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier"? they were all Tv episodes strung into films, and now they are considered classics.

IN order to wind up this rant I would like to conclude by saying that my only beef with Cindy II, is the same as Netty's. the fact that it has a "II", which the others like "Stich: the Movie", "Atlantis: Milo's Return" etc don't have. As it does give the impression that it is a proper sequel.

I bet Disney a really kicking themselves they did that now that Cindy III is coming!

And what where they smoking?

And what kind of heroins would have been those little brats?

ichabod wrote: Some people expect it to be equal to the original, which it is not. People need to lower their expectations.

Here's another idea: Companies (not just Disney) push the level of creativity and reach the customer's high expectations.

Raydawggie wrote:I personally object to continuing movies with "happily ever after" endings.

Am I the only one that remembers the tagline for this film: "what happens after happily ever after?" I haven't read any mention of the tagline, or even any hint of it except the comment that I am quoting.

You take a tagline that makes no sense and put it with a collection of short stories like Tarzan and Janeabout Cinderella and Prince Charming and you get Cinderella II: Dreams Come True. I've said numerous times on other threads that I really don't like this movie. It has no plot and it's quite cheesy. I understand your comment, netty, about how a 30-year-old wouldn't be very interested in The Princess Diariesor how the plots of such fairy tales as Snow Whiteand Sleeping Beautydoesn't offer much for adults, but in all of these movies, there's a great supporting cast (Julie Andrews in PD, the seven dwarfs, Flora, Fauna and Meriweather), better songs (well there's no music in The Princess Diaries, but if Julie Andrews' voice hadn't been destroyed, there might have been)and better animation.