HYPEBy Ng Yang Han & Bryan Toh
You know times are changing when you can actually go to a bookstore and pick up a pornographic book based on the fairy tales you loved as a child.
Such an incident almost happened in December 2010, when publishers had to recall a collection of translated Brothers Grimm fairy tale books in China after mistaking an erotic reinterpretation of the stories for the real, puerile thing.
Among the recalled book’s contents was a re-imagining of the popular fairy tale, Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, with the prince falling in love with Snow White’s corpse.
What lovely bedtime story material.
Thanks to their commercial potential, fairy tales are no longer limited to the playpen, and instead, have been altered to appeal to a wider range of audiences as was seen with the recalled books in China.
It’s a subtle trend that is most evident on the big screens, with an increasing number of films taking fairy tales and retrofitting them to fit popular cinema trends of the day, in a bid to appeal to a wider audience base.
Locally based director Kevin Sng, whom we spoke to, agreed that this was the case.
“In film, there are formulas that filmmakers follow to make their movies appeal to the general audience,” he explains.
Expounding on his statement, the managing director of Kelvin Sng Productions Pte Ltd says, “Fairy tale films have generally followed these formulas, but differentiate themselves by making various changes to the story line”.
Kelvin feels that this is down to the fact that today’s moviegoer is more mature and dislikes wholesale rehashes of the fairy tales they are already familiar with – hence the filmmakers’ need to make tweaks.
One only has to look at some recent and upcoming fairy tale movies to gain a better understanding of this phenomenon.
Take the recently released Tangledfor example.
Largely based on the fairy tale Rapunzel, the film jumped on the animated comedy bandwagon, which includes films like Despicable Me and Megamind, as such films are wildly popular with audiences, and by positioning itself within that genre, Tangled could only appeal to a greater crowd.
That aside, Tangled also made significant changes to the plot of the fairy tale it was based on.
In the movie, Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore) has been given much more spunk and character than the original ever evoked, and manages to take Flynn Rider (voiced by Zachary Levi), the kingdom’s most wanted bandit, hostage.
Then, instead of the lovey-dovey nightly rendezvous that Rapunzel and her Prince Charming have in the original fairy tale, the Rapunzel of Tangled goes with Flynn on an action-packed, madcap adventure- a staple of animated comedies.
Beastly, an upcoming film based on the fairy tale, Beauty and The Beast, is yet another case study.
Set in the present as opposed to the medieval era of the fairy tale that inspired it, Kyle Kingson (Alex Pettyfer) is a handsome but extremely arrogant young man, who seems to be living the life until he gets on the nerves of Kendra Hilferty (Mary-Kate Olsen), an eccentric schoolmate who is a witch in disguise.
Kendra then places a curse on him, which renders his physical appearance grotesque, much like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast.
To break the curse, Kyle has to find true love. Who should come along but his heart’s desire, Linda Taylor (Vanessa Hudgens), who is supposedly the Beauty of this film.
Lest you think these new breed of fairy tale films are all about love and sunshine, think again.
Red Riding Hood is an upcoming movie based on the all too-familiar Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, which stars Amanda Seyfried as Valerie, the girl in the scarlet cape.
If you were only half paying attention while watching the trailer, you could be forgiven for mistaking it to be the latest installment of the Twilight series.
Valerie and Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) are star-crossed lovers who live in village terrorised by a werewolf and famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) warns that the wolf takes human form by day and could be any one.
This combination of adolescent love and supernatural in Twilight, and judging from Red Riding Hood’s trailer, director Catherine Harwicke, who incidentally also helmed Twilight, seems to have borrowed those tried-and-true elements that audiences love for the film.
These three films are prime examples of how fairy tales have been treated to appeal to the masses.
The filmmakers’ attempts seem to be working too, with average moviegoers whom we spoke to saying that the revamped versions of their childhood fairy tales were much more realistic and believable.
“Instead of the usual Prince Charming and his white horse that we are used to, today’s fairy tale movies put a twist on the story and give modern day traits to the characters,” said Alger Chua, 18.
The second-year Logistics Management student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic felt that this made the films more relatable, and thus more attractive.
Others, like Vinna Yip, 19, are glad that the films aren’t wholesale adaptations of the fairy tales.
“I think a few tweaks here and there would make the movie more attractive as a whole,” said Vinna, who is reading law at the National University of Singapore.
She adds, “Adopting the fairy tales wholesale might result in a more boring film, as we are already familiar with the original fairy tale.” Of course, there will be purists who argue that this reinvention ruins the fairy tales that the movies were based on.
Kelvin, however, says that because the films in question are “still based on the principles and fundamentals of the fairy tale”, they do not spoil the fairy tale. “These films provide inspiration as to how far we can stretch the original story to fit the modern world,” says Kelvin.
With upcoming flicks like Beastly and Red Riding Hood set to hit cinemas in 2011, this trend of re-invented fairy tale movies sees no sign of dying down soon.
Bring on the popcorn.