The incident creates national headlines and while the circus is setting up shop in Joplin, Missouri, Medici is visited by more successful showman V.A. Medici and his patrons are both shocked when a firehouse clown act gives way to Dumbo swooping all around the big top. When Jumbo Jr., who is renamed Dumbo when a sign gets jostled, inhales a feather, he can fly. Holt's kids are the first to discover the fact that with great ears comes great power. Where would an oddity like oversized ears fit in among such ordinary folk as a strongman and a snake charmer?! Once Medici's star attraction as a proficient horse rider, Holt is now assigned to maintain the elephant tents.ĭumbo's birth is inexplicably a great disappointment to Medici and everyone else in his troupe. His wife has died, leaving him the sole guardian of his two kids Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins). ![]() Top-billed and perhaps closest to a protagonist is Colin Farrell as Holt Farrier, who returns home from the Great War with only one arm. In this new version, none of the animals talk and the same basics - Dumbo is born with unusually giant ears to a circus elephant - are presented primarily from the perspective of the Medici Brothers circus, which is run by the actually brotherless ringmaster Max Medici (Danny DeVito). While Dumbo didn't talk in the original, adapted from Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl's story, that film still had an animal point of view, as other elephants talked, as did crows (whose depiction raises some concerns today) and Dumbo's one true friend, Timothy Mouse. Burton's films have often had a sideshow quality to them and if nothing else, he'd be guaranteed to inject the proceedings with plenty of flair.īurton and screenwriter Ehren Kruger ( The Ring, 2017's Ghost in the Shell) use the animated film, which at just 64 minutes is one of Disney's shortest, as a starting point. This seemed like a particularly good fit. And while everyone seems to know that Dumbo as a big-eared elephant who could fly, the average person and even casual Disney fan might struggle to tell you any more than that.īolstering the credibility of this Dumbo remake was its director's chair being occupied by Tim Burton, a reliable visionary whose body of work includes commercial performers and cult classics alike, plus the live-action remake Disney's present craze can be traced back to. Dumbo II was one of the rare direct-to-video sequels Disney announced and promoted that failed to materialize. It never sold well enough to make the studio's Platinum line of bestsellers, even when that line was expanded to include more than ten. ![]() Dumbo has also never been as beloved by the general public as the other four. The fourth of Walt Disney's first five animated features all regarded as masterpieces by most film historians and critics, Dumbo (1941) also happens to be the studio's slightest and most dated of the so-called Golden Age efforts. And even that latter number seems destined to be dwarved by this summer's new version of The Lion King.Īmong the latest project to undergo this treatment is Dumbo. ![]() Instead, movies like 2015's Cinderella, 2016's The Jungle Book, and 2017's Beauty and the Beast have all garnered some Oscar nominations while grossing anywhere from $200 million to over a billion worldwide. ![]() In sheer contrast to the last period the company tried exploiting their proven animated classics (with inexpensive and highly profitable direct-to-video sequels of the late '90s and early 2000s), this new age of revisiting yesteryear hits has unfolded with a minimum of critical disdain and public backlash. With a modest amount of creativity, the studio has managed to tighten its stranglehold on the box office, supplement the steady stream of blockbusters coming in from their titanic acquired brands, and renew interest in their catalog of past triumphs,Ī class which has already withstood the decades better than any other type of film in history. It's hard to object to the strategy from a purely business perspective. At the moment, Disney seems determined to remake all of their most popular animated films in a mix of live action and CGI.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |