I thought for a long time that some of Shakespeares classic works, those of which are so tragic in scope that it’s worse than dating a Goth on downers, couldn’t possibly be given the Disney Treatment.
Then, they popped off with “Gnomeo and Juliet”.
If there’s any small mercy to be had there, it’s that somebody sobered up enough to refrain from making it “Julielf”.
But then, they’ve given the Disney Treatment to such wonderful objects of literature as Grimms’ Fairy Tales and anything by Hans Christian Andersen. “The Little Mermaid” they even made a sequel to it. HOW? In the book, Ariel’s prince charming got killed in a war and she couldn’t go around anywhere on land because (like all good fairy-tale spells) her enchantment that changed her fins to feet didn’t go far enough, and it hurt to walk. So she sits on a rock in Copenhagen harbor looking out to the sea to which she can never return, and the land that causes her excruciating pain, then she dies the end.
And that’s one of the nicer ones. What next, Hamlet starring Porky Pig? Oh, wait, that’s Warner Brothers.
Imperial culture degenerating before our eyes.
Sorry to disagree, but one of my favorites happens to be the 1957 classic, “What’s Opera, Doc?”. It features Bugs and Elmer parodying Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, and has been deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It was the first cartoon short to receive this honor. To each his own.
That was meant to be parody though. Good too.
Sometimes with Disney “The Treatment” well, if it’s parody it’s really subtle. SNL did a couple of takeoffs on it, probably more, but one was a Disney-fied version of the Titanic.