Turning classics soft and fluffy

[Zuul]

My sister has a large collection of Dreamworks animated films. There was something naggingly familiar about the plot to one of them, however. The Road to El Dorado felt like an adaptation, yet as far as I knew there was no similar story about a pair of con-artists in central America.

Then today I realized it. I'd been looking at the wrong continent entirely. It's an adaptation of The Man Who Would be King. Except instead of ending with one man being dropped into a gorge and the other crucified, it just ends in escape. The basic structure of two con-men going to a foreign land, being mistaken for gods due to a prophesy, embracing this and using it to make themselves wealthy, and ultimately being discovered by a priest to be mortal when one is caused to bleed publicly is all there. Another element common between this and the Sean Connery live-action adaption is one of the men wanting to stay and the other preparing to leave with his stolen wealth, then ultimately escaping with nothing.

What other adaptations are out there that have been so sanitized or altered as to be nearly unrecognizable?

[Queen of Hearts]

The Lion King is basically Hamlet, except with a happier ending for the protagonist and his girlfriend. What do you expect from a Disney movie?

[Zuul]

The Lion King would have been awesome if Nala had gone nuts.

[OtakuLoki]

What about Disney's animated Hunchback of Notre Dame? I've not read the Victor Hugo original, but the changes that have been made have been reported widely: Quasimodo is made into a completely sympathetic character, instead of the frightening and ominous character from the novel; Frollo's authority from the novel is split between two characters to offer a 'good priest' in the story; Phoebus is a lot more likable, and shown in the movie to have actual honorable intentions towards Esmerelda; and there's Esmerelda's husband, who was left on the cutting room floor for the Disney film¹. Now, most of these changes are ones I'd have made, myself, if I were to choose Hunchback for a film that would have to be suitable for an audience of children. (Of course, I'd have argued long and hard for any other classic of literature to be made into a Disney film before Hunchback, even the story of David, Uriah the Hittite, and Bathsheba from the Bible.)

Disney has a tradition of santizing many of the stories they've used in their movies: The Little Mermaid did not end in Hans Christen Andersen's bleak tragedy; Snow White skips that she was dead, not simply sleeping - I believe there was some necrophilia involved in some versions of how the Prince awoke her, the death of the queen is also sanitized; Sleeping Beauty again leaves out the revitalizing power of rape (and one version I've seen alluded to claims that some of the stories had her waking up in childbirth not before).



1. Well, not only would modern audiences consider him a wimp, for several reasons, when the book describes him dealing with Esmerelda's refusal to have relations with him by forcing himself upon her goat... I don't think Disney wants that character in one of their movies.

[OtakuLoki]

Oh, and one more... The story of the Jim Henson classic sketch Mahna-Mahna is pretty bizarre in it's own right.

The original music was part of the soundtrack to an European shockumentary film about sexual excesses in late 60s Sweden. Which Jim Henson then used to base a skit of two girls singing it with a scruffy and enigmatic male character, for Sesame Street.

[Zuul]

Interestingly enough, Kevin Kline did a voice in The Road to El Dorado and Disney's Hunchback. Oh Kevin. I hadn't heard that the original novel included bestiality with Esmeralda's goat, though. What the hell?

Loki, I'd thought I'd heard that song came from Italian pornography. I'm glad to hear Jim Henson didn't pluck it from quite that strange of a place.

[Feirefiz]

Loki, I'd thought I'd heard that song came from Italian pornography. I'm glad to hear Jim Henson didn't pluck it from quite that strange of a place.

I have seen only clips of the film, but I don't think there is a contradiction. The same genre was very popular here around the time. The circumstances didn't allow marketing real porn so you got "documentaries" running the gamut from legitimate to not even trying.

Here is a trailer: (NSFW)