Disney Released A New Lion King Trailer...And I've Got Some Thoughts

It's been a big week for Disney news -- there's been a ton of info released on Disney+ (more on that in a separate post) and, of course, a new trailer from a tiny little franchise you may or may not have heard of. (My husband's the big Star Wars fan in our house, so, yeah. I'm gonna pass on that and leave it to the fan-experts.)

Instead, I'm gonna talk about The Lion King, because that's more my wheelhouse.

First--let me just say that even though we open with Chiwetel Eijofor intoning one of Scar's more iconic lines -- "Life's not fair" -- we're apparently not getting "Be Prepared*"?! Which I am not okay with Disney. Not okay with. 

*"Be Prepared" is one of my favorite Disney songs, full stop. (It's also one of the best Disney villain songs -- absolutely tied with "Poor Unfortunate Souls." Ooh, and "The Mob Song" from Beauty and the Beast. Damn, the villains get good songs.) Even though it's iconic and Elton John was involved, the music from The Lion King has never been my favorite. Probably because The Lion King was never my favorite, which I know is blasphemous to some. I liked it, sure, but it didn't resonate with me as much as other films did. 

But regardless. I have some thoughts.

1. Baby Simba (and Baby Nala) are absolutely adorable and I love them already. I know they're not real and they're CGI, but still. I have a vague memory of my brother and I being allowed to pick out one stuffed animal each on a Disney trip (before a Disney trip?) and I'm 99% sure that my brother had a stuffed baby Simba and I had a baby Nala. But I could be making that up. 
2. I got a minor case of goosebumps seeing what is, presumably, part of the "Hakuna Matata" montage when Simba grows up and he and Timon and Pumba are walking on the log. 
3. One of the things that jumped out to me was Mufasa's quote. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty certain that Mufasa has a new speech. I feel like I'm second-guessing myself, but I think that this quote, from the trailer, is a new revision to the Circle of Life Speech:
   "Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. While others search for what they can take, a true king searches for what he can give."
   
   Okay. It's a new film -- adding new lines and revising speeches is to be expected (and a relief, given that one of the big concerns was that the live-action film would be a shot-for-shot remake of the animated film). But the problem for me was that the line "while others search for what they can take" is played over an image of the hyenas and "a true king" is, of course, paired with Simba. It's the former that concerns me, because Little Me grew up thinking that hyenas were evil, villainous animals. Which...is not true. There are several articles online (like this Disneyfied, or Disney Tried Blog or this Michigan State University Blog or this Odyssey article, among many others) which point out that hyenas aren't scavengers. In fact, they kill somewhere between 60-95% of their own food, and lions are much more likely to steal from hyenas than hyenas are from lions. So, contrary to Mufasa's grandiose speech, hyenas are very much a part of the Circle of Life, and do not ostracize themselves in a graveyard full of old elephant bones.
   I was hoping that this would be fixed in the new film but...seems unlikely.
   It could be misdirection though, and taken out of context, the speech does have particularly poignant political implications, given it's commentary on what makes a good king (re: leader). Which leads me to my next point...
4. The other thing that stood out to me was the difference in Scar's appearance. Here's Scar in the 2019 film:

Looks like a lion, right? I agree. Especially when you consider that Mufasa looks like this:

The lighting isn't stellar for the shot of Scar, but he looks pretty much like Mufasa does, except with a much less magnificent mane.

Which isn't all that big of a deal unless you consider the animated version:

I mean, I know it's an animated movie for a target audience of 4-6 year olds, but the differences here are pretty obvious. (And, yes, I realize that may be Simba but Adult Simba is pretty much a carbon copy of Mufasa, so...) The coloring is completely different -- Scar's darker with a black mane, and Simba is lighter -- and Scar has some stereotypical Disney Villain Features like the lime green and yellow eyes, the facial hair (if his little goatee beard thing can be facial hair on a lion), and the harsher features (compared to Simba's softer, rounder features). If you had never seen this film, you could, pretty instantly, identify who was The Good Guy and who was The Bad Guy.

Now, I'm not the only one who noticed as the articles on Huffpost and Buzzfeed show. But their reactions are decidedly different than mine. Take this one:

Just compare the designs here.
OG Scar: evil and pompous as hell
remake Scar: a ratty looking lion I guess pic.twitter.com/5J6ygMQGGV

— Robert "Fat Leprechaun" Bahn (@SenorWoberto) April 10, 2019

He's not wrong...I basically said the same thing. But the connotation is different. The Interwebz is not a fan of Scar (which, to be fair, The Interwebz may have conflicting opinions, and people may be on board with this new Scar, but that wouldn't be very click-baity would it?) Take Buzzfeed Ben Henry's comments:

"Just to refresh your memory, in the animated version of The Lion King, Scar is flamboyant, he's sassy, he's a flawless icon. To put it simply, Scar is That Bitch. In the trailer for the live-action version, Scar looks like he's been THROUGH it. He looks like he's sick of everybody's shit. In fact, he looks a little sick, period."

This quote, I think, hits the nail on the head: Henry's word choice -- that Scar is "flamboyant," that he "sassy," that he's "flawless" -- these are all words we use to describe divas and fabulously fierce gay men. Especially the "flamboyant," effeminate gay man. Which is fine -- while I know I could do more, I'm a proud ally of LBTQ+ rights -- except when animators code "transgressive" behaviors solely on the villains. Many male villains in Disney movies -- Scar included, but also, for instance, Ratcliffe, Jafar, and Dr. Facilier -- are coded either "feminine" or "homosexual," ostensibly to mark their difference. (It's not just male villains -- female villains like Ursula and Lady Tremaine are coded masculine too. And villains like Gaston and Clayton are hyper-masculine in a way that marks them as different too.)

All of this is to say -- this wouldn't be a problem if villains weren't the only ones being coded this way; if we had a positive male character be coded as homosexual, or, better yet, be homosexual, but we're not there yet. It's not just an academic opinion -- in a 2017 article, The Telegraph includes Scar in their list of "not so secret gay Disney characters," and points out that while it's unclear if Scar is definitely gay, "given the character's undisputed villainy, it all feels somewhat problematic."

So Scar's "new look" in the remake, while perhaps less "evil and pompous as hell" or "disappointing" or "the wonderful villain from the superior 1994 film," I don't think that's a bad thing at all. I think it's Disney -- very subtly and not at overtly -- acknowledging that the whole "Good and Evil look different" trope is problematic, as well as the ways in which they portray that difference. Because guess what? You can't assess someone's moral status based on their physical appearance. (Anna learns this lesson the hard way in Frozen -- which is just another reason I love that movie.) This article from Out magazine acknowledges this and points out that Scar's new look might be a good thing. Mathew Rodriguez quotes Myles Johnson, who points out,

“I’m relieved that “The Lion King” put down the trope of using performed femininity and darkness as a way to visually communicate evil...It’s small, but the representations we consume can communicate a lot and Disney has been a notorious culprit of this.”

YAAAAS.

So, the trailer left me with mixed feelings. On the villain side, Disney does seem to be improving...but the political message still seems a little suspect to me. I guess we'll have to wait until July to find out! 

Disney's Aladdin Trailer -- Will Guy Ritchie Give Us More Of The Same?

A few days ago, Disney dropped a new full-length trailer for Aladdin (2019). Watch it below:

Unsurprisingly, I have thoughts. Lots of thoughts.

My feelings about some of Disney's live-action adaptations have been laced with a heavy dose of skepticism. In the case of Dumbo, at least, my skepticism seems to be misplaced. But with Aladdin...? Not so much. I've written about Aladdin before, mainly about the controversy surrounding the production of the movie. But also Guy Ritchie seemed an odd director choice IMHO, mainly because I'm not a fan of his style.

Aaaaand then there was that second trailer that dropped a few weeks ago and sent the internet (rightfully so!) into a tizzy. Just look at these Google hits:

None of it really inspired confidence.

So what's going on with this new trailer? Let's break it down.

1. The opening of this trailer seems really reminiscent of the beginning of Casino Royale with the urban chase scene -- which is apparently something called Parkour? and also something that seems very Guy Ritchie.

2. Will Smith's awful looking blue genie? Well, it seems that he's not blue all the time, which is good, I suppose.

📷: Disney

3. The trailer also gives some much needed humor -- as in the scene above, where Smith's Genie humorously explains the "gray area" the subjectivity of wishes -- and some glimpses of the music. Smith's version of "Friend Like Me" is giving me some very Fresh Prince vibes, and, if I'm being totally honest, "A Whole New World" gave me chills. (I was lucky enough to see the OBC of Aladdin on Broadway, but I was not impressed with Jasmine's vocal performance: it was very nasal to me, and that's one of my Disney princess pet peeves.) Naomi Scott's voice was amazing here.

4. It looks like we're going to get a Bollywood dance numbers, which makes me so incredibly happy.

📷: Disney

But here's where it starts to get tricky for me.

1. There's not a glimpse of Billy Magnussen's Prince Anders in the trailer -- which means (1) he's either really inconsequential and the Internet made a big fuss out of nothing or (2) leads me to wonder if Disney made some changes because of that fuss. I personally didn't have an issue with the casting, but that's another post.

2. I'm still concerned about the female costuming:

Don't get me wrong -- all the costumes look beautiful. I also do not claim to be anything close to an expert on Middle Eastern costuming -- which is complicated by the fact that we don't really know where this story is set. Is it India? Iran? Iraq? Egypt? Who knows.
But the costumes give off a very "exotic" vibe...the bright colors, the veils-that-don't-really-veil, the accentuation of chests and waists...*sigh*

3. The accents. Oh, the accents.

This is a complicated issue to unpack in a blog post, so if you want to read more, feel free to check out Richard Scheinin's 1993 article from The Washington Post, "Angry Over Aladdin." It's a piece that was released shortly after the film was and really highlights the central issues at play. The gist of it? Aladdin plays into Middle Eastern stereotypes by making the bad guys distinctly "foreign" and the "good guys" basically American. After all, all 3 of our main characters -- Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie -- are obsessed with the notion of being free and Aladdin himself was modeled after Tom Cruise.

Now, Scheinin's article includes a quote from a then Disney-spokesperson, Howard Green:

"...most people are very happy with it. All the characters are Arabs, the good guys and the bad guys, and the accents don't really connote anything, I don't think."

I mean, I honestly wouldn't expect anything else from Disney -- they're not going to admit to being racist or prejudiced, even if it was largely subconscious or unintended or colored by the Gulf War.

But the thing is, it's not just Aladdin, and not just Disney, and the accents can connote something. In an article for The Atlantic, "Why Do Cartoon Villains Speak in Foreign Accents?" Isabel Fattal references a 1998 study by Gidney and Dobrow. As she points out, here's

"The kicker: In many of the cases studied, villains were given foreign accents.[...] Meanwhile, the study found that most of the heroic characters in their research sample were American-sounding; only two heroes had foreign accents. Since television is a prominent source of cultural messaging for children, this correlation of foreign accents with “bad” characters could have concerning implications for the way kids are being taught to engage with diversity in the United States."

Fattal offers more details of course, but the point is, these aren't just harmless kid's movies -- especially when there are noticeable trends and patterns. So, yeah. Things like accents and facial features (and facial hair) were a key part of the criticism of the 1992 Aladdin and I've been curious to see how they would be handled in the live-action adaptation, and all the casting controversies didn't do much to help.

This trailer, I gotta say, doesn't help much either. We don't get a lot of dialogue, and Will Smith's Genie does take up a significant portion of it, but here's what I noticed:

1. Aladdin -- American accent. Or, at least, non-accented English. He's portrayed by Mena Massoud, who was born in Egypt but raised in Canada. (So, yes. His accent isn't technically American, but it's not going to be perceived by American audiences as accented.)
2. Jasmine -- American accent. But -- she's portrayed by English actress Naomi Scott, so it was a conscious decision to have her forego her natural accent in favor of an American one. Perhaps because, as Fattal notes, "the most wicked foreign accent of all was British English[...]From Scar to Aladdin’s Jafar, the study found that British is the foreign accent most commonly used for villains."
3. Jafar -- foreign accent. It's subtle, for sure, and not as heavily "different" as Jonathan Freeman's Jafar was, but in this film, Jafar is played by Marwan Kenzari, a Dutch actor. It will be interesting to see how Jafar's accent plays out in the film, but at least from the trailer, it's clear that it is audibly different from that of the protagonists. Now, maybe it's because Kenzari couldn't nail down an American accent -- I can only imagine how difficult it is to act in different accents and certainly not every actor has been able to do it successfully. But maybe not. Maybe it was a conscious decision to help mark the character as a villain which would certainly be problematic when the female lead doesn't keep her "foreign" accent.

This newest trailer has generally been more positively received than the other ones, and seems to have redirected the conversation -- for now, at least.

This Is Not A Drill: The Lion King Teaser Trailer

After an unscheduled 2-month hiatus (😳#momlife #professorlife #whatworklifebalance 😳) of course it would take The Lion King teaser trailer to get me back into blogging.

Fun fact: my husband is a die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan. So, of course, Thursday night after Thanksgiving dinner, he was glued to the TV watching the Cowboys-Redskins game. I was mostly checked out, watching the kids, chatting with relatives, glancing up at the screen every now and then out of habit. It was hard to hear much since I was sitting pretty far away from the TV and multiple conversations in a small space make a fair amount of noise.

So when I looked up at the TV and saw "And the Director of The Jungle Book" -- I had a moment. It went something like, "Disney's The Jungle Book? Or do they mean Andy Serkis' version that's going to straight to Netflix release? Jon Favreau directed the Disney version...that's how he got The Lion King gig. I wonder when we'll see a trailer for that. My students have been clamoring for a trailer for that.  It has to be soon right? WAIT. Cowboys/Redskins is a big event with a lot of viewers...would Disney drop a trailer for one of their biggest hits during a high-traffic TV event on a family-centric holiday? OMFG YES THEY WOULD EVERYBODY HUSH AND BE QUIET." [<--This last bit was actually said outloud to the bewilderment of my husband's family.]

Oh well. I watched it and then Googled it and watched it again. Maybe 5 times.

And, yes. It looks (and, TBH, sounds) like a shot-for-shot remake of the original and I DON'T EVEN CARE. Don't come at me with your negativity, bro.

There's a part of me -- a tiny part -- that wonders, "Why remake a movie if it's just going to be the exact same?" so I do hope they do something different with the film.

But then there's another part of me that just doesn't care because there are cute baby CGI lions and James Earl Jones intoning those iconic lines in Mufasa's voice. Don't get me wrong -- there is literally no one else who could have filled those shoes but...that had to be a super easy day at the office for him, amirite?

Watch (and rewatch) the trailer below:

New Wreck It Ralph Trailer

It's a big week for Disney-related things -- new trailers for Mary Poppins Returns, Captain Marvel and now Ralph Breaks the Internet:

Fewer princesses, more details about the plot. I was wondering what the motivation was for Ralph and Vanellope to leave the arcade and go explore the Internet, and now we know: Vanellope's game is broken and they need to find a piece on Ebay. (Where else?) 

We also get a glimpse of Gal Godot's character, who seems to be a racer, albeit in a much different game, like Vanellope and there seems to be some female bonding going on. (Will she be a bad guy though? I'm skeptical of all secondary characters in Disney movies though...no matter how wondrous they are in real life.) 

I'll end with these screenshots from the trailer that just make my heart happy. 

Captain. Freaking. Marvel.

I've never been a big comics fan. I had a small collection of Archie comics (she said as she was binge-watching Riverdale -- I was totally Team Betty and harbored a deep irrational resentment for Veronica -- I'm glad that rivalry isn't a thing on the show) but they were mostly just random issues my mom bought me at the grocery store.

Aside from that...I watched Dean Cain and Terri Hatcher in The Adventures of Superman and I watched Smallville back when The WB was a thing. But Superman and Batman...they exist in pop culture in a way thats transcends comic books. You don't need to have picked up a single comic book to know about the moral compass of the Man of Steel or the tortured background of Gotham's Dark Knight. (Although I did love the cheesiness of the 1960s Batman series; I'd watch it with my parents on Nick at Nite.)

All of that to say -- I was never a big comics fan. And when an ex was Fanboying over the first Iron Man movie, I rolled my eyes and wasn't convinced that Robert Downey Jr could convincingly portray a hero let alone carry a franchise. (Yeah, yeah, yeah. Past Lisa was kinda dumb in that regard. She also refused to watch the first Thor movie with Chris Hemsworth and was in love with a guy who is an ex for obvious reason. Hindsight.)

But then The Avengers came out while my husband and I were dating, and my husband was a fan and was appalled that I had never seen them. (Honestly, between that fact and the fact that I had never seen the Star Wars movies, I'm surprised he put up with me. 😂) Aaaaand I was hooked. Kevin Feige hasn't had a miss yet and the new spate of DC movies are...soul-suckingly bad. Except Wonder Woman. She is kick-ass and amazing and everything I could want in a female superhero. It bothered me that the MCU, a stronger franchise in almost every other way, couldn't compete. (Don't even get me started on Black Widow.)

Until now.

I know there's a lot that I don't fully understand -- things about Kree and Skrulls and Ronan and Captain Marvel's backstory -- and obviously the thing I want the most (to know how in the world she's going to fix everything that happened in Infinity War) isn't going to be in the trailer, but I'm still super excited. Brie Larson looks amazing. 

Mary Poppins Returns -- New Trailer

Cue the "practically perfect in every way" and "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" puns. 

This morning was...rough, for a variety of reasons. But, then this trailer dropped and things got a little brighter:

First--that cast! I knew Emily Blunt was playing Mary Poppins (and that the iconic Dame Julie Andrews gave her her blessing); I knew that Lin-Manuel Miranda was playing Jack -- not Bert!!! -- I even knew that Dick Van Dyke was playing/reprising the role of Mr. Dawes (again, not Bert). 

But Angela Lansbury! Colin Firth! Julie Walters! And Meryl Streep!!!

Second--this is probably uber-nerdy even for an uber-Disney-nerd, but I love the film-specific castles in the front of each film:

But I also left a piece of my heart in London, so there's that. 

Third--the old-school 2D animation!!! 😍😍😍

ScreenRant has a really cool article on the attention to detail in this sequence -- how it's not just an homage to the original film or a remake of it, that's worth a read. (For example, how the characters' clothes look they were drawn/animated, which you can kinda see above!) 

Fourth--the CGI. When it came out in the 1960s, Mary Poppins was a technical innovation for its time (something that can always be said of Disney) -- but with the advances in CGI, the magic is going to seem so much more...fluid. 

I'm sure this film will be filled with Easter eggs and nods to the original film -- the kite, the original house with the infamous bannister, the chimney sweeps dancing, the 2D animation, Jane campaigning for women's rights, just like her mother -- which makes my heart happy on so many levels. There's even a questionable Cockney accent from LMM, continuing Dick Van Dyke's terrible accent tradition. 

Look, I'm sure P. L. Travers -- author of the original Mary Poppins book -- would probably hate this film too. I've blogged about Disney's Mary Poppins and Distory before, with the end result being my decision to both love the books as one of the cornerstones of children's literature and the Disney movie as a cornerstone of my own childhood. (Julie Andrews was one of my grandmother's favorite actresses and we watched this movie together a lot.) I know that the Disney movie(s) are Disneyfied versions of the books and while I wish Disney would reflect that in this film -- especially given it's setting during the Depression, a less cheerful, more no-nonsense Mary Poppins would fit -- I'm not expecting them too. The trailer reflects that -- it looks a magical concoction about the wonder and purity of childhood -- and I can't wait to see it. 

Wreck-It Ralph Trailer #2 -- They ARE All Here!

YAY! Disney pretty much knew what we wanted and gave us the Princesses for a good chunk of the new trailer today. Look! Here they all are!

And, can I just say, I was right about the panorama and the other princesses being off-screen:

See? There's Ariel, charmingly combing her hair with a dinglehopper, and you can just make out part of Merida all the way at the right. But when they realize Vanellope has entered the room:

There are Mulan and Merida (and all the rest of them) being bad-ass!

And, as Cosmo points out in their article on the trailer, they are all so hyper-aware of their narratives. (I really do love this new, meta-Disney that has fun poking fun at itself.) I especially like that Rapunzel and Belle asked Vanellope if she'd been "kidnapped or enslaved." The whole scene is just fantastic because it implies that each of the princesses know their stories and are just playing their parts -- just like Vanellope (and Ralph). Just like Ralph is a "good guy" playing the role of Bad Guy, each of the princesses are strong heroines playing the role of Damsel in Distress because it's the way the story goes. (Well, most of them. Perhaps that's why Merida, Anna and Moana don't really chime in during this part.)

I also really want to believe that the people who worked on this movie are fans of Amy Mebberson's Pocket Princesses.

Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms Trailer

So, this dropped the other day:

And, yes: that is Keira Knightley. 

I have mixed thoughts about this. 

On the one hand, it's a Disney movie that looks absolutely gorgeous. So of course I'm excited. 

Also in the "plus" column -- my daughter's name is Clara (she was named after a Doctor Who companion though; not the character from The Nutcracker) so if this Clara is a princess (1) she can share a name with a Disney princess and (2) we'll buy ALL the Clara merchandise because, Hi. I'm a good little Disney consumer.

Another plus: this looks like it has  a lot of girl power. Clara looks like she undergoes some sort of warrior princess transformation which could bode well from a gender studies perspective.

And, of course, Misty Copeland. 

But on the other hand....I don't know. It seems a little too Alice in Wonderland to me. Curious girl enters fantasy land with a cast of magical creatures and characters and undergoes a journey of self-discovery which results in her empowerment and subsequent victory over Evil.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love Alice in Wonderland (the Carroll book -- not so much the Disney adaptation, although it was creative in its own way) but that doesn't mean I want the story to become a formula for media companies to use for every coming-of-age story with a female protagonist who travels to a fantasy land. It's been a while since I've seen The Nutcracker (and I'll admit that I've never read the original Hoffman story) so perhaps the story does need some updating. I have vague recollections of the Mouse King fighting the Nutcracker....but Clara saves him by throwing a shoe? And then he whisks her away to the fairy-tale land of flower dances and sugar plum fairies...so, not terribly problematic, but perhaps there's room for improvement/updating. And, after all: that's the true litmus test for a new adaptation of a beloved story: what is the "something new" you're doing with the story?

Trailer for Pixar's _Coco_

Disney/Pixar just dropped an absolutely beautiful trailer for their new film, Coco, this morning. Watch it below:

According to IMDB, the plot synopsis is as follows:
Coco follows a 12-year-old boy named Miguel who sets off a chain of events relating to a century-old mystery, leading to an extraordinary family reunion.

The important thing to note, of course, is that this is, arguably, Pixar's first foray into diversity, as the film deals with Mexican culture and the Day of the Dead. (Pixar films tend to deal with anthropomorphized objects -- toys, cars, bugs, monsters, robots, fish, emotions -- moreso than with humans. While most of their films have human characters, the only Pixar films I can think of that deal primarily with human characters are The Incredibles, Up, and Brave...and all of those characters were white.

There are, I think, two additional things worth noting:

1. The cast -- at least, the cast listed right now on IMDB, which is sure to grow -- is entirely Hispanic/Latino actors. If the entire cast stays that way...I don't know if it's as unprecedented as Moana's all-Pacific-Islander-cast, but it's got to be a big deal.
2. Lalo Alcaraz, an outspoken Disney critic, was specifically hired as a cultural consultant for this film -- which hopefully means good things for the film's portrayal of Mexican culture and traditions. 

I'm pretty sure that people will still hurl accusations of cultural appropriation at Pixar, skewering them for making money off a culture that isn't their own, but...*sigh* You know my complicated thoughts on this. You can't call for diverse books/films for children and then lambast the world's biggest producer of children's films for making a diverse film. I, for one, am happy to see Disney & Pixar branching outside of their normal European-fairy-tale fare (Moana) or their X-has-feelings formula (Pixar) to tell a unique and, yes, diverse story. Especially in our current climate...I think it's all the more important.

New Moana Trailer!

You guys. I've said it before -- I'll say it again. Moana is going to be a beautiful film.

It's more of a clip than a trailer -- showing baby Moana (merchandise gold, amirite?) discovering she can control the ocean -- but it's beautiful and gorgeous and I can't wait for this movie. 

Please, please, please give us a strong heroine, Disney. 

Moana Teaser Trailer!

It's finally here! A teaser trailer for Moana!

I am beyond excited for this movie -- despite the fact that I know very little about it.

Thoughts:

1. LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA. That is all.
2. I love, love, love the sequence with the tattoos. It's done in the "traditional Disney" 2D style, and it kinda reminds me of the muses and the Grecian urns in Hercules. 
3. The computer animation is gorgeous as well -- this is going to be a beautiful film. 
4. It's interesting that the teaser trailer features The Rock's character, Maui, rather than the titular protagonist....I'll try not to read too much into that.
5. Many people are already commenting on how The Rock is of Samoan descent--very important since this is one of Disney's "diverse films." (This hasn't really been an issue for Disney lately -- in their more recent films they have used voice actors that match the ethnicity of the characters, like Asian-American actors for Mulan, but still.

I *really* hope that this princess movie continues Disney's forward progress. They have a great momentum going from Frozen, and I'd love to see Moana be a spirited, independent princess with agency. 

And wouldn't it be great if there was no love story? 

Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme...

...Beauty and the Beast. 

The teaser trailer.

It's finally here.

I may or may not be having a fangirl freak-out moment over here.

I have been super excited about this adaptation -- and particularly the casting choices -- for awhile. I know that there was talk about Emma Watson playing Beauty in a Guillermo del Toro version (which would have been much darker, for sure), but when Stephen Chbosky (author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and who worked with Emma Watson on the film adaptation of that book) signed on to write the screenplay, I got even more excited. 

Like most Disney projects, details of this one were kept tightly under wraps. While Luke Evans and Josh Gad were pretty active on social media (relatively speaking), the one thing that the Internet really wanted to see -- Emma Watson as Belle -- was the one thing we didn't get. 

Until now:

It's small, but it's something. (It's also the only shot we get of an actual character in the film.) My husband complained that the trailer didn't reveal much -- that he wanted "more" than just scenic shots and voice-overs. 

My response? "It's called a teaser trailer for a reason." At which he astutely compared it to the teaser trailer for Cinderella, which was basically just a shoe and a butterfly, so at least we got a little more. But not nearly enough. :) 

The Jungle Book Trailer Is Here!

Sooooo, The Jungle Book trailer is here. And it actually looks really good.

Although, honestly: this isn't a "live-action" film. It's a CGI film with a human co-star. (Not even Disney Realism could have a small child running around with real-life bears and tigers and panthers.)

Still, it looks like an interesting adaptation -- of the original animated film, of course. At the very end you hear a few strains of "The Bare Necessities" (I'm not sure if the music will carry over) and just before there you see what looks like a monkey (orangutan?) arm swiping out of a deserted temple which very strongly evokes "I Wanna Be Like You" of the original movie. 

After all -- it's Disney. I don't expect a faithful retelling of Kipling's original story, although I will go re-read the story to see if Jon Favreau leans at all on the source material.

Final note: I think it's *very* interesting that the trailer features Scarlett Johansson's Kaa. It seems as if Kaa is still an antagonist here -- as compared to the snake's role as mentor much like Baloo and Bagheera in the original Kipling story -- but the change isn't that surprising given (1) the snake's symbolic history and (2) Disney's need for villainous henchmen. However, I still maintain that it's *very* interesting that in both the Disney adaptation and the forthcoming Warner Bros. one (The Jungle Book: Origins, boasting an equally impressive cast) Kaa is voiced by a woman. Don't know what to make of that yet. 

Jungle Book Teaser Trailer

Truth Talk: Not a fan of a teaser of a teaser. Especially when it's just a teaser trailer and not a full one.

But. 

This "teaser of a teaser" for Disney's The Jungle Book looks visually stunning. 

Full teaser drops tomorrow!

Zootopia Teaser Trailer

This one flew under my radar -- while I knew about The Good Dinosaur, I hadn't heard about this one. Teaser trailer doesn't give much away story-wise, but it looks cute! And Disney has a long tradition of cute, anthropomorized-animal movies -- particularly with foxes. (Plus, Ginnifer Goodwin is the voice of the female lead, though you wouldn't know it from the trailer!)