Disney "Ruining" Childhoods

Full disclosure, this is a rant more than anything else.

I hear it far too often. Lately it tends to be preceded by the topic of the Disney live action remakes coming up, but it’s been a common phrase for longer than those have been happening. “They’re ruining my childhood!”

No. Just no.

Let’s go ahead and poke some holes in this.

The biggest issue with this statement is it seems to imply that a remake somehow cancels out the original, as though Emma Watson playing Belle somehow makes it so the animated version never happened at all. Whatever you think of these new movies, they have absolutely no effect on what came before. They aren’t taking their place, they’re adding suplimentery material at best. You can now choose which one you feel like watching at any given moment.

Let’s dwell on the animated Beauty and the Beast (1991) for a moment now that I’ve brought it up. It’s far from being the only adaptation of the material. Searching the name on IMDB brought over 120 matches (though, full disclosure, some are single episodes of TV shows). At least one adaptaion was done as far back as 1919. Though the Disney take on the material is the one the first that comes to mind, it exists as one of many versions out there. I’m sure we’ve lost a few versions along the way, but only due to many films from the past being lost to time, not because Disney’s somehow snuffed them out.

Without the remake we never would have gotten baby pumba.

Two of my absolute favourite movies from childhood were Aladdin (1992) and Lion King (1994). We got live action versions of the two of them together this past Summer. I saw them both in theatres, and had lots of opinions coming out of each. Some good, some… not so much. But more so than anything else it made me feel this nostalgia that made me desperately want to watch the animated ones again. They didn’t take away the validity of these older movies, they gave me even more reason to keep them in my mind and make me want to return to them. There were legit moments that I liked more (or at least the same but for different reasons) in these new movies.

I’m in no way trying to argue that these movies are perfect, but I do think they concept that them merely existing somehow retroactively ruins your past is a even going a little too far past hyperbole. I will fully admit there are criticisms that can be leveled against these movies that are completely fair to make, but this one in particular is just so boring and effortless.

Dislike what you so choose, but at least give something close to a real arguement rather than this verbal meme.