Pinocchio (2022) - Cheap Thoughts

In front of every film there is a question to be asked, “What is the point?”. This can be anything from to entertain, to educate, to experiment, to empathise, there are a multitude of answers. The answer to every one of these live action Disney remakes is “To make money”. Which is why Pinocchio’s existence is so confusing. It is a straight to Disney+ film, and it’s difficult to see who exactly benefits from that. Do they really see people signing up for the platform just to watch a remake of Pinocchio? Well, perhaps that’s not the actual answer, perhaps there is just a genuine inspiration to remake the film, to modernise it and tell a new version of the tale…No.

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