With each passing live-action remake Disney have been
putting less and less effort into creating any sort of distinction between the
clone and the original. 2019’s The Lion King stole the script verbatim,
and now 2022’s Pinocchio is cloning the exact visuals of the original, everything
from the character designs to the bloody entrance to Gapetto’s shop, smearing
it all in unfinished CGI from likely overworked and underpaid artists. Meanwhile
Robert Zemeckis returns to his motion-capture filmic style of gently gliding the
camera through the scene at a breezy pace with no sense of motion or purpose,
just pure visual noise to keep things going, as if the camera was strapped to
an escalator by accident. The film steals the visuals-because yes, this is
theft-regardless of it being owned by the same company, the crew of the
original film are the artists that brought it to life and are now seeing their
work ripped-off and made worse-while losing any sort of character. Classic
Disney films have a tendency to rely on their visuals, they lack narrative
cohesion because they never really strived for it, you’d simply see characters
walking down the street and appreciate the slow, relaxing pace and detailed
animation painstakingly drawn by hand. Modern films are too busy, everything
has to be made fast and move fast-yet simultaneously take longer in a paradox
of incompetence-which if you’re adapting a visual focused picture like Pinocchio,
you can’t rush through that and hope the narrative you’re copying will carry it
for you.
Speaking of, who thought it was a good idea to copy the
narrative yet remove any of the spine that gave the original film a point? 1940’s
Pinocchio may not have had much for character arcs or textbook loyal
plot points, but it was a film blunt and heavy in its messaging for kids. Pinocchio
lies and his noes grows, lying=bad. Yet this film decides to use this ability
as a method of the wooden boy escaping his cage, so…lying=good? How about Pleasure
Island, where in 4kids style censorship they have replaced beer with root beer,
removed all reference to smoking and gambling, and now have Pinocchio realising
that this place is bad and never once gives into temptation. This is despite
the fact the whole point of Pleasure Island is that Pinocchio learns the
dangers of temptation, that’s what temptation is; something that feels good in
the moment but has negative consequences long-term (Being turned into a Donkey),
that’s why they used alcohol, cigars and gambling, very common addictions that
have a divisive appeal. If Pinocchio is never tempted, then he has no indulgence,
and thus no reason to be punished. It’s amazing how the original film can be so
incredibly on the nose about these lessons and yet the grown adults who wrote
this film missed them entirely.
This is becoming the worst aspect of these live-action works
of theft, they steal the scripts, steal the visuals, yet leave behind the
themes and morals that gave the original works any sort of spirit and meaning.
It is as hollow and transparent a film can get, it doesn’t deserve to be
referred to as a film, it is a nothing, an empty shell, a meaningless display of
noise and colour that will leave no signature it ever existed.
-Danny
