The Real Stories Behind Popular Disney Movies
Published in Film & Animation at March 27th, 2017 at 10:54 AM
Disney is the biggest producer of animated movies the world has ever seen and its difficult to see anybody overtaking them or outdoing them either (though Dreamworks will always try and give them a run for their money). But did you know a lot of Disney movies actually have much darker, sinister, and plain ol' different origins? Let us explore the some tales behind some of Disney's classics, taking a new look at their mainstays of children's pop culture.
Peter Pan
Peter Pan has got it made; an island paradise, surrounded by his buddies, getting into mischief....oh, and he can fly. He never as to grow up either, a power of his that surely keeps beauty companies jealous and absolves him of a lot of responsibility. Its hard not to be at least a little jealous of this fairly-tale hero. Its a happy adventure, and fun for all the family: its got a feel good ending, no one is seriously hurt, and its pretty standard as classic Disney goes.
The Lost Boys are his best friends and minions; they help him have the best times of his entire life, even help him thwart the evil Captain Hook. Old Hook hates Pan and his band of Lost Boys and wants them gone from Neverland. They have a great battle and before long, Hook is left comically dealing with the crocodile that took his hand, and made him a hook, all that time ago. But Disney is family friendly. The source material is a little darker, and there is more to it than Disney's smiles and friendship.
As is the case with so many adaptations from book to screen, certain things are changed. Disney had good reason to given that J.M. Barrie's original tale is notably darker. For one, that comical ending with Captain Hook fleeing with the jaws of the crocodile right behind him doesn't happen. The crocodile straight up kills and eats the Captain. The Lost Boys are especially different. They nearly kill Wendy with an arrow for one; that is until Peter saves her with a magic kiss. The Lost Boys also leave for London at the end of the tale with the Darling children, then grow up and lead successful lives.
One Fan Theory suggests the Lost Boys had good reason to leave Neverland, suggesting that Peter Pan was murdering them whenever they got too old. It occurs in the book that Pan and Tinkerbell attempt to bar the window to the Darling family home in an effort to stop them leaving. Why? Well, Pan obviously wanted to make sure no one escapes his paradise in Neverland.
Cinderella
Cinderella is perhaps more Disney than any other film: princess, prince, fairies, dancing and singing animals and a horrible trio of bad-guys (or bad-gals perhaps?). The evil stepmother and ugly sisters are pure Disney fodder and provide perfect antagonists for the movie. Again, its a case of classic feelgood family fun from Disney.
Cinderella goes from being the down trodden house slave of her awful step-family to a would be princess with the help of a little magic. She starts off scrubbing the floors clean and eventually finds herself wooing a charming young Prince. She does this with some magic godmother-given finery and glitz and Cinders is having a the night of her life until midnight comes upon her. The magic begins to wear off and Cinders is forced to flee the Prince's presence leaving behind only a glass slipper. She returns to her crapshack life until the smitten Prince scours the kingdom for her looking for the woman whose foot fits the slipper.
Its here that the Disney adaptation differs. The Ugly Sisters, in attempt to steal the Prince's affection try on the slipper and inevitably fail. In the original fairy-tale, the Ugly Sisters are significantly more desperate in their efforts. In an attempt to fit in the slipper, the nasty Sisters opt to hacking off chunks of their feet to get them to fit the slipper. Brutal. It is of course all to no avail, and eventually Cinderella gets a shot at trying on the slipper and is proved to be the object of the Prince's affection.
Cinderella and the Prince then get married (because it was the middle ages back when the tale is set, they probably didn't have time for dating and stuff) and live happily ever after.... only the source material, is again, too brutal for Disney to handle. At the wedding of Cinders and the Prince, she orders her singing bird friends to peck out the Ugly Sisters eye balls. The hate must have been stewing in Cinders along time, because the Sisters were obviously so blind to it that they never saw it coming. On an interesting side note, the original tale features 'fur' slippers, not glass ones. This tradition of glass slippers is said to have come about due to a translation error from French (fur is 'fourrure' and glass is 'verre') .
Frozen
There has been no bigger animated movie than Frozen. Its unlikely the sensation it caused will be topped anytime soon either (until the inevitable sequel made to squeeze cash from the pockets of parents comes out). The story follows Elsa, queen of the Kingdom of Arendelle, and her sister Anna, just wants to establish a loving sisterly relationship with her sibling. There is a host of other characters too: there is the deceptively handsome villain Prince Hans, the reindeer dude Kristoff and his reindeer Sven, and there is Olaf the comic relief snowman.
For some unexplained reason, Elsa also has magic ice powers. She's not much good with them and has trouble controlling them. Eventually, Elsa's powers are too much for her to handle and she screws up her Kingdom with them during her coronation. She is forced to retreat to the mountains and creates a huge ice palace where she can rule supreme...over nobody. Anna goes out to save Elsa and some fun and whacky Disney stuff happens along the way. Eventually she saves her sister Anna from a frozen fate with the power of true love, the kind of familial love between two sisters, a clever twist on the princess needing to be saved by a prince. In the aftermath, little kids, and far too many teenagers, across the world go nuts.
Frozen was originally inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson tale 'The Snow Queen', and its quite different to how Frozen turned out. Frozen is a loose adaptation at best. After sometime in the planning stages, Frozen's writers realised it was going to be a struggle to faithfully adapt Anderson's tale and meet Disney's family friendly standards. The elements of Frozen are there however. It starts when an evil troll makes a magic mirror that makes people see only the bad in things. It gets shattered across the world during the troll's attempts to 'troll' the angels in heaven. The results are people being pierced by the mirror shards and developing icy hearts.
A little boy named Kai is one whose heart is pierced by these shards and he is just about turned to ice. His best friend, a little girl named Gerda, goes on a quest to visit the Snow Queen for help. When she finally meets the Snow Queen, the Queen kidnaps Kai and takes him into the far north of Lapland. Gerda travels north with the help of a reindeer and the advice of some Sami wise-women. Eventually, Gerda frees Kai from the spell and takes him home. There is a problem though. Kai has been through so much he has becomes unable to function, and has a form of PTSD. He remains silent for the rest of his life. So yes, that's quite different and quite darker than Disney's global success story Frozen. Its easy to see why the altered it so much from the original tale.
The Princess and the Frog
Classic story. Girl meets frog. Girl kisses frog. Girl becomes frog. Its a nice twist on girl meets guy, guy meets girl, stuff happens. Thaaaaat's right, in this tale the princess turns into a frog when she kisses the prince who was already a frog. Perhaps Disney's last outing old school animation to tell a classic tale before their switch to CGI. The story behind this film is quite clever, because its not an adaptation of a classic fairy-tale. It is in fact an adaptation of a twist on an classic fairy-tale. Its a pretty clever play by Disney, and probably why so many see The Princess and the Frog as the start of the Disney Revival.
The Movie is actually an adaptation of E.D. Baker's 'The Frog Princess' novel, which was first published back in 2002. This meant that there was only 7 years between the source material and the release of the Disney film in 2009. So yeah, it really isn't based on a traditional or 'classic' tale. Many of you reading this probably remember 2002 like it was only a couple of years a go and shudder at the thought of anything so relatively recent being described as classic. The novel has many differences from the film though. For one, the titular princess is called 'Emeralda', not 'Tiana' (as in the film). The prince is also differently named, called 'Eadric', not 'Naveen'. The setting is also completely different . The novel has none of that Jazz Age New Orleans going for it. Instead, its a much more traditional high fantasy medieval land in which it is set.
'The Frog Princess', is as previously mentioned, itself on a genuine classic fairy-tale, 'The Frog Prince'. Most of you are probably aware of this tale, but may not know it in depth. In this classic tale, a spoiled princess meets a frog prince when she drops a golden ball into a pond. She befriends the frog and in later versions of the tale, kisses the frog prince; this causes him to transform into a handsome human princess. Happy ever after romance ensues. In earlier Brothers Grimm version of the tale, the princess is so disgusted at meeting a frog that she hurls the creature against a wall. It is then that he turns into a human. The Prince also has a servant who is so sad his master is become a frog, that his hear is ringed in iron to stop it breaking. Upon the spell being broken, his servant's heart kicks into overdrive with happiness and the rings break.
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book. Its Disney's classic tale of of Mowgli the orphan in the jungles of India. Left to the wild, he is raised by a pack of wolves. He grows up with them, a pup as one of their own. Eventually, his adoptive wolf father realises he needs to be with humans. So he sends the young Mowgli to Bagheera, a panther. Not a human, but apparently wise and trustworthy enough that Mowgli can be educated by the grumpy cat.
Eventually, Mowgli meets Baloo the Bear and the result is an instant classic musical number. From here on out, adventures ensue and there is a battle for dominance in the jungle with the tiger Shere Khan. Baloo and Bagheera eventually try to get Mowgli back to civilization. Mowgli sees a girl, and intrigued, he wanders off into the village and becomes part of humanity.... then comes the terrible but watchable sequel that people like to forget about.
Rudyard Kipling's original book tells has some notable differences however. The bit where Mowgli see's a girl and goes to live in the 'man village' at the end? In the book, Mowgli doesn't hang around long; like a lot of young boys, he decides girls are gross (and probably have cooties or something) and runs back off into the jungle. During his brief time in the 'man villiage', he meets a woman who may be is mother and tells us Mowgli's real name is 'Nathoo'. This is all at the age of 10. He doesn't return to the 'man village' again until he is 17, and his reasons for finally giving into civilisation are actually rather grim. Bagheera is getting old and decrepit, and Baloo is damn near blind. Basically, his jungle friends are dying and Mowgli chooses to live in the village out of sheer necessity.
There are a number of other key differences between the original book and the Disney animation. In the original story, there is no King Louie at all. This is a bunch of monkeys called the 'Bandar Log' however, who kidnap Mowgli in an effort to learn the secret of building shelter from the winds. The infinitely catchy 'Bare Necessities' (which has probably worked its way into your head just now if it had not already) is not in the original story either. Instead, Baloo lays down the 'Laws of the Jungle' to Mowgli in the same scene in the book (not that it would be easy to make a song like that work in a novel anyway). Mowgli also possess some memory of his time as a toddler back with is fellow humans as opposed to none at all as in the Disney version. Mowgli is also completely naked for most of the novel (but you can probably understand why Disney gave him a loin cloth at least).
The Little Mermaid
Another Hans Christian Anderson tale now. Again, the original tale comes off a lot darker than Disney's adaptation (though you shouldn't be surprised by now). You probably know the plot of The Little Mermaid; a young mermaid Ariel gets curious about life on the surface and while investigating up there one day discovers the handsome Prince Eric. Despite the advice of her father and Jamaican crab friend, she strikes a deal with the sea witch Ursula so she can go up on land and attempt to woo the prince. She gains legs, but looses her voice for three days as part of the deal. Everything goes well for Ariel until Ursula tries to steal Eric. Some epic magic battle stuff happens with shipwrecks..... and Ariel and Eric fall in love and live happily ever after. Standard feel good Disney ending. You know the drill by now.
In Anderson's original tale however, a lot to more to do with Ariel's quest for an immortal soul than it is to do with the quest for love. Apparently, mermaids lack immortal souls, which in the considerably more religious world of the 1800s, had some serious ramifications. Ariel, who is known only as 'The Little Mermaid', turns to the sea witch simply for some advice about the whole soulless situation she is in and told of a way to gain one. The sea witch, who is not at all the evil antagonist Ursula is in Disney's version, serves only to facilitate the Mermaid's wishes. She learns that for a mermaid to gain an immortal soul, she must marry a human. Its already starting to sound a little sinister; you might have heard of marrying someone to get into a country, but marrying someone to get into heaven seems to be on a whole 'nother level.
The Mermaid is granted legs to go on land and woo herself a prince, but unlike in the Disney version, it does not cause the Mermaid her voice; instead, each step causes her great pain. The other nasty part of the deal is that failure to fulfil her goal will also cost her her life and turn her into sea foam. The Mermaid goes ashore and succeeds in wooing the Prince with good looks, charm and dancing (even though each step is immense pain). The Prince, though wooed, tells the Mermaid that his heart belongs to a Princess who he is arranged to marry and eventually, he does so; much to the dismay of the Mermaid. The Mermaid is offered an alternative way out of the deal she is caught in. She is told to stab the Prince dead and cover her feet in his blood so that she may return to being a mermaid once more. She boards the Prince's party ship on his wedding night and breaks into his cabin. She find the Prince asleep and is about to kill him when she finds herself overcome with mercy; she can't bring herself to kill the Prince, accepts her fate, and turns to sea foam. So yes, no happy ever after. The titular character dies.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Disney's tale of a lovable hunchbacked Frenchman, named Quasimodo, who lives in a cathedral bell tower and falls in love with a beautiful gypsy girl. However, the Hunchback's love, Esmeralda, falls for a guard captain named Phoebus, and Quasi has a hard time accepting this. There are quite a few nasty goings on by Quasi's adoptive father that sees Phoebus almost killed twice and Esmeralda nearly executed, but eventually all goes well; the bad guy dies a nasty death. Esmeralda and Phoebus can live happily ever after and Quasimodo survives certain death. Not quite the Disney standard formula, but still a feel good family friendly ending.
Naturally, Victor Hugo's novel on which the Disney tale is based is a lot less feel good. Its damn right dour. In the book, Quasimodo is deaf and mute, communicating through sign language, which adds a whole layer of complications the movie ignores. He is quite the loner, having a general disdain for people and enjoys only the company of his bells. Phoebus is serial philanderer who leads Esmeralda on, caring only for her beauty. He eventually abandons her. Esmeralda too is quite different. She is only 16, lovestruck and obsessed with Phoebus. And the badguy, Frollo, Quasimodo's adoptive father, is a lot more nuanced of a character in the book; a once pious priest fallen from grace, succumbing to temptation and lust.
In the book, Quasimodo initially meets Esmeralda when he kidnaps her as part of a gypsy hunt. Quasi gets caught and is slapped in the stocks where Esmeralda takes pity on him and offers him water. He opens his heart to her and later saves her from being burned at the stake, taking her to Notre Dame cathedral calling out 'Sanctuary'. This is similar to the Disney adaptation, but Esmeralda is much more afraid of Quasimodo. It all gets very different at the conclusion of the tale. Esmeralda ends up being hanged at the gallows while Phoebus watches from afar with his wife-to-be. Quasimodo searches in vain for her only to find her executed. He also finds Frollo laughing at the tragedy, so he pushes him to his death. Quasi then disappears completely only for his bones to be found in Esmeralda's grave years later, wrapped around hers. The bones all crumble when they are moved. A poignant, but very grim ending. Not at all cheerful,and not all the sort of thing Disney wants to peddle as wholesome family entertainment.
Pocahontas
Pocahontas, Disney's venture into American history giving us a Native American Princess, and story of white man who came from across the sea, bringing her joy and the opposite of misery. John Smith, an impossibly handsome Englishman, wins Pocahontas's heart and understands and accepts her way of life. Despite her father's disagreements, and the violent actions of one of her suitors, things so as well as you'd expect for a Disney princess and she eventually gets her fathers blessing to leave with John Smith back to England. Its assumed they lived happily ever after.
With Pocahontas, Disney were dabbling with actual history. While there are some myths mixed up with the facts, its not like their source material was a fairy tale this time around. The real Pocahontas's life ends up end a mix of highs and lows. She is rumoured to have saved John Smith from execution by her tribe, as happens in the Disney movie, but its what happens afterwards when she leaves for England with John Smith that you begin to see the tale in a whole new light. She is actually captured by the English settlers during hostilities in 1613, but upon given the opportunity to return home to her people, she opts to stay with the English. She converts to Christianity and takes on the name Rebecca and marries and English tobacco planter by the name of John Rolfe (John Smith is an entirely different person in history as you may have figured out).
Rebecca and John Rolfe have a son called Thomas, and in 1616, they set sail for England. During this time in England, she became quite the celebrity, being shown off as a perfect example of a 'civilised savage'. Though she was not a princess in her native culture, she was introduced as one the English, who welcomed her warmly. She was however, never really regarded as a Princess, likely being seen as more of a respectable curiosity by the people. She was kind of used as an example of the success of the Jamestown colony in an effort to attract investment in it. She did get herself to all the fanciest parties though, and even met with the kind of England. She was treated to the all the pomp and circumstance England had to offer and generally had better life in England than most English people could have ever dreamed of during the time. For whatever reason, Rebecca, John and Thomas decided to sail back to Virginia and boarded a ship in London. However, Rebecca fell ill as the ship was sailing down the River Thames and died aged only 21. The exact cause of death is unknown, but pneumonia, tuberculosis, smallpox and even poisoning are all speculated causes. She was buried at the town of Gravesend, in Kent in England, which was where she was taken ashore when she fell ill.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White is as wholesome as they get. A lovely little rosy red lipped beauty princess living in the woods, residing seven little dudes who've all got their own little quirks, such as being grumpy or sneezing all the time. An odd bunch that sounds like it would make a watchable late 80s sitcom, but instead makes for the genre defining Disney family fairy-tale. The plot is very simple; Snow White is a fallen princess who is considered 'the fairest of them all', and there is an evil queen who can't stand that there is someone else rated prettier than her. Snow White is forced to hide out with a colourful bunch pf dwarves and she makes friends with nature. Its all very happy until the evil queen, using magic, turns up disguised as an old woman and feeds Snow White a poisoned apple. Snow White falls into a coma and is treated as dead by the dwarves, who go so far as to give her a funeral in a glass coffin (which is she were actually dead, would be kinda' horrific when you think about it). A year later, a Prince turns up and kisses the comatose Snow White, waking her. Earlier on, the queen was struck by lighting and fell to her death (starting the Disney trend of villains falling to their implied, out of shot, bloody ends of some sort of precipice).
The Disney tale is based on a Brothers Grimm fairy-tale, which have a bit of reputation far being a bit a grim it turns out (and sometimes, plain ol' disturbing). In this version, becoming the dwaves' housekeeper is not something that happens accidentally; she has to agree to becoming the housekeeper in exchange for her sanctuary from the evil queen. The evil queen is also much more persistent, attempting to kill Snow White three times, not just once. She is also Snow White's step mother, and wants rid of the threat to her power that is Snow White (though it is still made somewhat of a contest of beauty). The Prince is mentioned even less in the Grimm version than he is in the Disney one, only really turning up at the end as little bit of happy deus ex machina.
Unlike in the Disney version, the evil queen is not dead when Snow White gets together with the Prince; she is instead alive and kicking, thinking that she had indeed killed Snow White. When asking her magic mirror who the fairest in that land is, she hears of a new queen to be and decides to attend the wedding only to see her own step daughter, Snow White, marrying the Prince. So overcome with absolute rage, the evil queen quite literally chokes on her rage and dies. The Grimm version has it that the evil queen also meant to eat the heart and lungs of the dead Snow White, but the dwarves trick her into consuming the heart and lungs of a slaughtered animal. One version has the queen wearing a pair of iron hot shoes and made to dance until she dies a painful and horrible death. There is perhaps even some historical basis for Snow White, with one German historian citing the story of Margaretha von Waldeck. Margaretha was a German countess forced away by her step mother. Exiled to Brussels, she fell in love with a young man who turned out to be a Spanish prince, a young Phillip II of Spain. The parents on both sides found the relationship to be politically inconvenient, and its suggested that Phillip's family may have had Margaretha posioned.
Tangled
Tangled is the re-telling of the classic Rapunzel story, a girl who has lots of hair and lives trapped in a tower. In the Disney version sees her trapped in said tower by a witch who spirited her away as baby and raised her as her own, using Rapunzel's magic hair as means to preserve her youth. Its about as creepy as Disney has allowed itself to get in recent years. Due to an event whereby her real parents release lanterns into the sky on her birthday, Rapunzels decides she wants to leave the tower and see them up close. She coerces a dashing and comical rogue named Flynn into escorting her to see the lanterns, and thus the adventure begins.
There is addition of a chameleon sidekick and a horse called Maximus. Together with Flynn and Rapunzel, they make a colourful gang off on an innocent adventure that inadvertently unravels the scheming of Rapunzel's false mother and witch Gothel. Rapunzel confronts Gothel and end ups bound in her tower quite utterly. Flynn rides off to save her and climbs Rapunzel's long magical hair to reach her in the tower, only to be killed by Gothel. Flynn severs Rapunzel's hair as he dies and causes Gothel's magic to weaken resulting in her turning to ash. Rapunzel cries magical tears in grief, and revives Flynn, and its all a very convenient feel good family friendly Disney ending (you've probably noticed this trend by now if you hadn't already).
The Rapunzel fairy-tale is another classic of the Brothers Grimm, you probably know what tone its gonna have already. It starts off a bit odd with rampant pregnancy cravings. While pregnant with Rapunzel, her mother gets a wild craving for some salad after seeing a rapunzel plant. Her husband steals some from the garden of their neighbour Dame Gothel to make the salad, but is eventually caught in the act and accused of theft. He begs for mercy and Gothel agrees that he can have all the rapunzel plants he needs if she can have the child. Desperate, he agrees and Gothel does indeed take the child to raise as her own, naming the babe 'Rapunzel' after the plant her birth mother craved. Then the young girl reaches the age of twelve, Gothel has the girl locked away in the top of a tower in the woods that has no door and no stairs. It has but one window. Rapunzel's hair also grows to the super long length that this tale is famed for. So far, the similarities are there. One day, a young prince passes by the tower and decides to investigate upon hearing Rapunzel singing. I longs to find a way up to meet to the girl but can't. He waits and sees Dame Gothel gain access by climbing Rapunzel's long hair and uses Gothel's call for himself to gain access to the tower room.
Obviously the Prince and Rapunzel strike up some sort of some relationship, because Gothel discovers his intrusions when Rapunzel asks Gothel why her clothes aren't fitting anymore. Gothel realises that someone had gotten Rapunzel knocked up and figured she must have had a regular visitor. Gothel cuts off Rapunzel's hair and forces her out of the tower and into the wild to fend for herself. Gothel awaits the Prince's return uses the massive off cut of Rapunzel's hair when he comes calling. When he gets near the top, Gothel let him know that she has found him out and drops from the side of eh tower into a thorn-bush, which blinds the Prince. He too is left to wander the wilderness, yet somehow, after all this cruelty, there is still a happy ending. The blind prince eventually stumbles upon Rapunzel in the woods; she had been living in relative peace raising twins which he had fathered. Rapunzel's tears of joy upon seeing him magically restore his sight and he lead her and their children back to his kingdom where they live happily ever after. Actually, despite some of its brutality, that one actually had quite a pleasant ending; if anything, Disney's adaptation was darker in places. And what of Gothel? When she dropped the Prince from the tower, she accidentally trapped herself in the tower, damning herself to a slow lonely death. She doesn't get out-right turned to ash like in Tangled, but we are lest to assumed she is still doomed to a rather nasty fate.
