Spring Preview: The Stories Disney Tells About Itself

T. S. Elliot wrote in his poem “The Wasteland” that “April is the cruelest month.” No offense to T. S. but I think that the title of cruelest month easily belongs to February – mainly because it IS a wasteland. All the joy of the holiday season is over and the warm weather and good times of spring seem like they will never come again. For being the shortest month of the year, February is one long, lightless, icy, gray punch in the neck.

To distract myself from the fact that I live in winter’s meat locker here in Michigan, I think about spring movies, the pre-summer blockbusters, comedies, and dramas that give me something to look forward to. They give me hope that one day I can go to an evening show at the theater and not have to scrape my windows when the movie’s over. Looking forward to a movie coming out in May reminds me that May is actually coming.

Two interesting spring movies  are Cinderella, coming out in March, and Tomorrowland which comes out in May. Cinderella, of course, is Disney’s live-action retelling of its classic 1950 animated movie. It stars Lily James of TVs Downton Abbey and was directed by Kenneth Brannagh. From the looks of the marketing, it’s going to be very straightforward – wicked step-mother, glittery blue dress, glass slipper left behind, the whole deal. There doesn’t appear to be much revision on the horizon.

The exact details of Tomorrowland are hazier. The film’s plot has been kept secret and only now is Disney beginning to release teaser trailers and other crumbs of information. The plot involves a girl named Casey who discovers an alternate reality called Tomorrowland. The movie apparently hints that Walt Disney named the futuristic section of his theme parks after the secret dimension that he somehow discovered. George Clooney plays an inventor who had something to do with Tomorrowland and who serves as Casey’s guide there. 

Cinderella was directed by Kenneth Branagh, who got his start with high-minded Shakespeare adaptations but has remade himself into a genre director with movies like Thor. I’m curious to see how his eye for adaptation fits with Disney’s regimented, corporate-driven ways. Can a talented director make a good adaptation when one of the biggest companies in the world is standing over his shoulder, making sure that everything fits with the merchandising?

Tomorrowland is interesting because #1 it was directed by Brad Bird who has made some of my favorite movies of all time and #2 it has jetpacks. I’ve never been disappointed in a movie with jetpacks. I’m a sucker, I know.

The two movies together represent a fascinating time in Disney’s existence. The company has been around for so long that it’s begun making movies about itself and retrofitting some of its older properties to suit the 21^st century. 2013’s Saving Mr. Banks was a revisionist white-washing of the story of how Mary Poppins got made. It turned Walt Disney from the ruthless creative steamroller he was into a folksy, avuncular friend to the masses. 2014’s Maleficent was a feminist reworking of Sleeping Beauty, taking a standard prince-rescues-narrative and turning it into a story of a woman reclaiming her goodness and power from the patriarchal society that stole it from her.

Disney is mythologizing itself while trying to make its classic stories more relevant and politically correct. It’s an intriguing accidental sub-genre they’re creating. I hope Cinderella and Tomorrowland are good movies but even if they’re not, they’ll provide an revealing look into the how the Disney corporation wants us to view it. Plus, even if they are bad, a bad movie in May is better than anything in February.

This preview was originally broadcast on Q90.1. www.deltabroadcasting.org .