I Wish: The Disney Butchering of Into The Woods

By Quee

Part Two: the feature presentation

Disclaimer: I own nothing except for my own opinions which are expressed in this story.

**So, we pay the outrageous price, and tromp into the theatre. Our shoes stick to the floor. We try not to notice. We sit down and read little tidbits of trivia about Hollywood's current stars that interest no one for at least five hours. Finally, the lights dim, and the previews start.

We are subject to four car commercials, an ad for Aida, and a short clip about The Lion King on Ice. (Because everyone knows that ice is most plentiful in the African jungles.) Speaking of wishing, we are beginning to wish that we waited for this movie to come out on video. Finally, we see it. A picture of Mickey Mouse, proclaiming,

"And now, our feature presentation. . . "

The lights dim even more. A forest scene appears on the screen. Some of the trees have faces, others have random pink leaves. The opening credits appear, in spirally gold writing.

"Based on the play by Stefan Songdime," they say. We are suspicious. The Disney minions seem to have anticipated this, however, and we are not given much time to ponder this name. Immediately, the title, which is also gold and spirally, vanishes and a stray cat with spectacles and an English accent appears in a tree, in a manner reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat, except a little less creepy. Never again will Disney try to create characters who are insane. This cat, who is the narrator, clears his throat, and a book pops up in front of him, propped up on a branch. He begins to speak.**

Narrator: Once upon a time, in a far off kingdom, there lived a young maiden, a sad young lad, and a childless baker with his wife.

(As their names are mentioned, each respective character strolls dreamily by the tree. Cinderella is carrying a broom, and the baker and his wife have trays of bread. Jack is leading his cow, who he seems to have decided to milk in front of this tree. They have not yet begun to sing, because singing during the introductory narration may confuse the children.)

Narrator: The maiden, whose name was Cinderella, had one wish. She wished, more than anything, to go to the Royal Ball that evening. (What child understands that ball and festival are the same thing?)

Cinderella steps out from the group and sings her little blurb about wanting to go tho the festival (royal ball). It is the same as the opening for Into the Woods, only without the different parts. In addition to being too uncreative to write their own storyline, Disney also can't be buggered to write their own songs. And Elton John and Time Rice are too busy re-adapting The Jungle Book for Broadway. As she finishes her song, Cinderella waltzes off, using her broom as a dance partner and humming Last Midnight in a major key. This is almost like foreshadowing, but the tune has been made too sickeningly happy to be recognisable.

Narrator: The lad, Jack, wished, more than life, that his cow, Spot would give him some milk. (Milky White, is too long and complicated. Plus, referring to any creature by colour will surely cause at least one anti-Disney person to sue, or at least write an angry letter. Cows, like anyone else should not be judged based on the colour of their skin.)

Jack, the only one who seems to feel that a talking cat is strange, gives the narrator and odd look, rather reminiscent of Ron from Harry Potter. He is cute. We love him. The narrator doesn't however. He throws an acorn at Jack, which hits him in the head. Grimacing, Jack sings his song, while trying to milk Spot. His mother comes on.

Mother: Jack!!!! It's no use trying, Spot won't be giving any more milk. You must try and sell her at the market today. Of course, no one will buy her I'm sure. (Singing, slowly turning into Sweeney Todd) But can you really blame them? She is probably the worst cow in London. . . .

Jack: Spot's not the worst cow! She's my best friend in the whole world. (There will be no she/he cow jokes, as most kids may not realize that only She's can give milk. Disney doesn't want to make their audience feel stupid, because then they wouldn't feel good. And if Disney movies don't make you feel good, then they serve no purpose at all, and it's "bye, bye Disney!")

Mother: Jack, look at her!(she sings her "bugs on her dugs" bit. Only she doesn't say "Sometimes I fear you're touched!" at the end, because this is derogatory, and Jack's mother loves him, and shows him no forms of verbal abuse. Instead, she merely says, "Now off you go, and be back soon!")

Off he goes, whistling Into the Woods. Despite the fact that he will soon have to part with his best friend, he is skipping.

The Baker and his wife also turn, and start heading home down a dusty path. The narrator jumps out of his tree and follows them. He sits on the window sill of their house, allowing us to see inside.

Narrator: Now the baker, whose name was George, and his wife, Joanna, wished, more than jewels, more than the moon, more than anything, that they could have a child.

They sing their song. The witch enters. She looks frustrated. There are no jokes about nothing cooking or having no bread, because the children would not understand.

Baker: Who are you? (Any decent, Disney-type person would move if they knew they had a witch living next door.)

The witch gives us a brilliant Greens, greens, speech. It is almost the same, except that the word raping is by no means present. The overprotective mothers would have a field day with that one. Unlike in Into the Woods Jr., however, 'raping' will not be replaced with 'harassing' because that just sounds stupid. One of the animators gets the credit for the replacement word. It seems that at the exact moment that she is supposed to say raping, the witch sees a bug on her shoulder and flicks it away with disdain. And so, the line becomes: He was robbing me, bugging me. Another area of concern regarding this particular speech was the use of greens that no one has ever heard of, like arugula. These have been aloud to stay, however, because they sound like magic herbs. Much to our disgust, however, the geniuses of Disney have replaced the word 'mollified,' which is an amazingly great word that suits the witch's character, with the word 'satisfied,' a word which the average audience member can recognize and understand more easily.

The witch finishes this speech, and goes directly into telling the baker and his wife to bring her, in three days time:

A cow as white as milk - it seems to be okay to refer to the cow by colour here, because Disney still needs it to be a specifically white cow to make it harder to find.

A cape as red as apples - there will be no blood in this movie. It is violent and wrong to compare capes to blood. Unfortunately, the only other thing the people at Disney could think of was apples. To be sure it is understood which type of apple, however, the witch throws one at the baker, which hits his foot and causes him slight pain - no more than slight, however. Because she is a witch, and witches are allowed to do some minor socially unacceptable things, this is okay to show to children.

A hair as bright as the sun - all Disney worker have obviously had very quaintly wholesome upbringings. One of the Disney corporate executive grew up on a sweet corn farm, and he knows as well as the rest of us that 'the silky hair of the corn' is not yellow. It starts out purplish in the field, and then it turns brown. It is, therefore, not a very legitimate substitute for Rapunzel hair. And so, they have given it a more vague specification-watch out for this, it will come up later *wink, wink*

A slipper as pure as ice - in their previous movies, Disney has already established those slippers as glass, and, by gosh, they are sticking with it. Besides, the kiddies would be confused. (Again.) By the way, we're talking pure as ice made out of distilled water in a highly sanitized, state-of-the-art freezer, none of that mucky, dirty, natural ice.

The witch then vanished in a puff of purple smoke. She will do this frequently. It will help establish that she is magical. (In her case, this is more difficult, as she has no Harry-Potteresque British accent to establish this fact.)

As the baker and his wife sit around looking confused, Cinderella waltzes down the path, still with her broom, still humming. Her two stepsisters appear, followed by their mother. Disney seems to have insulted enough people with their previous 'ugly-people-are-always-the-evil-ones' statement from the last set of stepsisters, so they have made the new stepsisters a lot prettier. It seems however, that not enough minority groups have complained about Disney mistreatment yet, because the stepsisters seem to bear a very close resemblance to Pocahontas and Mulan. Their names are no longer Florinda and Lucinda, because, although the characters are not beautiful, they still have to have ugly-sounding names to establish them as evil. They will be called, respectively, Hortense and Prunella. They wear ugly frilly dresses and disdainful looks. The stepmother looks the same as she did before, and she still has no name. According to previous Disney logic, the all-around multiculturalism of the step-family makes complete sense, (take, for example, the Disney movie of Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella.) and so none of it needs to be explained.

They sing their You wish to go to the Festival? bit, with the obvious changing of 'Festival' into 'Royal Ball.' Cinderella's father is not present. No good Disney father would turn on his daughter like that, and so he is dead instead. It is assumed that the audience has all seen the Disney Cinderella, thereby knowing this already. It may or may not, therefore, ever actually be stated in this movie.

It is time for all the characters to decide to go into the woods, and so they do.

Jack, as you know, is already on his way. His mother has second thoughts about sending him off alone, and follows him with a jacket, as all good mothers should.

The baker and his wife, who have discovered the witch's beans in a drawer, have an argument similar to that in the play, in which it is decided that she should stay home. She sneaks out after he leaves, carrying a basket and a scarf. Disney uses this to appeal to the "Girl Power" mentality of their young female audience members and feminist mothers.

The step-family is off to the ball. No surprises there.

For Cinderella, the obvious choice is not to go to her mother's grave and ask for help. That would be odd, and sort of creepy. She has decided, instead, to go visit her godmother's house to ask for advice. The mother in the tree will show up later, however, because Disney feels the need to stick Grandmother Willow in there somewhere.

The Witch is also on her way, mumbling something about 'keeping an eye on that dunderhead of a baker . . . . . '

It is at this point that the Disney animators and screenwriters realize that they have completely neglected to put Little Red Riding Hood in anywhere. She, therefore, runs into the Baker's Wife as she is sneaking out of the house. Johanna gives her the basket she is carrying, which happens to suddenly be full of baked goods. Little Red doesn't try to steal anything else, because this is wrong. The wife does, however, feel the need to warn her to save some of those sweets for Granny, because she has already eaten most of them by the time she turn to leave. She is a pig. We dislike her ever so slightly.

She skips off, singing Into the Woods. Eventually, she is joined by the rest of the company, who are all within a three-metre radius of each other, and yet notice no one else.

As they all promise to go Into the woods, and out of the woods, and home before dark, we shift uncomfortably in our seats. The narrator, who follows up the crowd, turns and winks. We suddenly like cats considerably less.

But the movie continues . . . . . . . . . .

AN: Perhaps that a bit slow. Sorry. I'm hoping it will get better as the introductions finish. I dunno. Please let me know what you thought!

Thanks to all who reviewed: Colleen, who is completely right about the evils of making sad stories too happy, Mandy of the Amoeba and Kate, who I hope will continue to read and to like this story, nightstorm, who I hope is enjoying doing this amazing play as much as I did (I was the witch once - sigh!) Lois Lane, the amazing Sondheim / Bernadette fan, Citrusy Snicket, who I hope I haven't too seriously offended by speculating what the evil of Disney would do to the genius of Sondheim, and Devil's Advocate for whom the stepsisters were Pocahontas and Mulan.