Comments

1

"The good news: At least Johnny Depp isn't playing Dumbo."

Funniest thing I've read all day. A+ joke!

2

Wha? No. NO! Good God. It really is the end times isn't it.

4

Could be worse: could be Peter 'Sandworms!' Jackson at the helm.

Here's to hoping Mr. Burton'll have little Dumbo questioning his gender while surrounded by fascists, religulous zealots and anti-Darwinists. I see our own Trumpfy (or The Dick Cheney, equally compelling) as the S&M leather-clad head Barker, whip in hand, doling out teeny little treats, maximizing return on Investments, and Damn the PETA-types. (Perhaps the animals may give him the Comeuppance spineless Republicans are currently too chicken to deliver)

And then (spoiler alert!): lil' Dumbo learns he can fucking FLY.
Back to Africa, perhaps. Led by crows, maybe?
Justice -- is it too much to hope for?
It is Tim Burton, after all....

5

but maybe burton, who hadsnā€™t been the most inclusive director out there , sees no prblem with the crows. maybe heā€™ll even have one of the more dirivative composers for film, danny elfman, try his hand at ā€˜wokeā€™ hip hop for them.

6

One story can go from mythology to history to novel to play to opera to film to musical to soundtrack to symphony. Remakes and adaptations are the norm in the history of art, not the exception.

7

@4: I think you need to take a break from the internet.

8

@7: Projecting Teddy, thanks for the Pro Tip!

9

Oh, come on. John Waters should remake Dumbo.

10

I was a little ways into this and thought, ā€œthis is really good writing, must be Seanā€ (I hadnā€™t checked the byline). Such considered, honest writing really stands apart. Nice work, Sean! And I canā€™t even look at that baby/Mom scene from the original without bursting into tears.

11

I'd recommend Bonnie Raitt's cover of Baby Mine recorded sometme in the 90s. I've loved it for years...didn't realize it was from Dumbo!

12

I think your second to last paragraph nailed it. It is quite common these days for movie studios to either rehash old movies, or old TV series. Even some terrible TV series have been turned into movies, in an effort to appeal to nostalgia. It is a judgement call, certainly, because quite often, a famous movies was a famous book, first. If someone makes a movie about one of the OZ books, everyone is going to think about 1939 classic movie, and plenty will think they are trying to rip off the idea. But the books contained dozens of stories that could be made it a movie. The same could be said for lots of Disney movies (and TV shows) like Winnie the Pooh, Alice and Wonderland and even Mary Poppins. Those were all hugely successful books before they were movies.

You can't really say that about Dumbo. It was a children's book, but it was barely known when Disney bought the rights. Very few copies of the book can be found, and thus very few people actually read it. So, basically, when just about anyone thinks about Dumbo, they think about the original movie.

As you said, there is nothing wrong with making another version of something great. Hell, Led Zeppelin built their whole career on that idea. But call me skeptical. I think this is just another attempt to pay the bills by making a version of something that was great, in hopes that the parents and grandparents who remember the original will take their kids and grandkids to it.


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