Film ► Stuff Disney left out of their adaptations

[Sonofjafar]

Just a thread for people to give fun little tidbits about the stuff Disney decided to keep out of their takes of literary classics. I’ve got a ton of them I know myself but I’ll settle for the one that inspired this thread.

In Bambi’s source material, a character named Friend Hare is shown to have a wife and child that were killed by Man. Thanks to dialogue from the movie mentioning Thumper’s father, we can infer that Thimper dies in the book

 

[MATGSY]

Big Hero 6 in the Marvel comics were based on Japanese superhero/sci-fi tropes & was definitely less kid oriented.

"Fred" for example was an actual kaiju here. Baymax was a cyborg clone of Hiro's dead father. X-Men characters Sunfire & Silver Samurai were founding members of the team with Silver Samurai as the original leader. Honey Lemon's purse was an interdimensional pocket that allowed her to pull out all sorts of things.

Wasabi's a chef & samurai who channels his ki into energy blades. The team was formed by the Japanese government & most of the members like were drafted rather than enlisted. Go-Go for example was a criminal who basically got the Suicide Squad recruitment treatment (also her civilian name's Leiko Tanaka).

Oh, & 1 of their enemies is Everwraith, the spiritual embodiment of everyone that died in the atomic bombings. Yeah.....

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

Uh…The Little Mermaid turned into sea foam at the end of the story.

Also over time literary researchers have come to accept the belief that the story is an allegory for being closeted and having unrequited feelings for somebody that is unobtainable due to existing in different worlds.

 

[LoneFox]

Long time ago, I don't remember exactly how old I was, but old enough to know that Disney usually gets the music right in their products. Disney's Cinderella was on TV, and I was quite excited about it. I was of course familiar with the story from a non-Disney source, where the stepsisters try to cheat by cutting of pieces from their feet, and then a bird points this out to the prince by singing. I had learned the lyrics of that song, and wanted to know how the melody is supposed to go. So, can you imagine how disappointed and cheated I felt when the movie turned out to not have that scene at all... ?

 

[WaltK]

It's hard to choose any specific differences with the fairytales since there are so many, and not every fairytale has a single version.

It's no secret that the original versions of the princess fairytales where super fucked up. Things like

Spoiler Show

Snow White's prince being a borderline necrophile, Cinderella's stepsisters hacking their toes and heels off so the slipper will fit, the prince in Sleeping Beauty being an adulterous rapist, etc.

On a lighter note, one detail from the original Winnie the Pooh books that frequently gets overlooked in the Disney adaptations is that Rabbit and Owl are literal animals rather than stuffed toys. I remember there was one episode of New Adventures where Rabbit runs away and ends up for sale in a toy shop window and I was like lol that's wrong.

 

[Sonofjafar]

It's hard to choose any specific differences with the fairytales since there are so many, and not every fairytale has a single version.

It's no secret that the original versions of the princess fairytales where super fucked up. Things like

Spoiler Show

Snow White's prince being a borderline necrophile, Cinderella's stepsisters hacking their toes and heels off so the slipper will fit, the prince in Sleeping Beauty being an adulterous rapist, etc.

On a lighter note, one detail from the original Winnie the Pooh books that frequently gets overlooked in the Disney adaptations is that Rabbit and Owl are literal animals rather than stuffed toys. I remember there was one episode of New Adventures where Rabbit runs away and ends up for sale in a toy shop window and I was like lol that's wrong.

why would Christopher Robin play with a living bird of prey?

 

[WaltK]

why would Christopher Robin play with a living bird of prey?

…because it's a story?

 

[Zettaflare]

While The Fox and the Hound movie ended on a bittersweet note, it was far happier than the original book it was based on.

story ended with Todd being ran to death by Copper and the hunter while the hunter eventually shot Copper cause his retirement home didn't allow dogs

 

[Sonofjafar]

While The Fox and the Hound movie ended on a bittersweet note, it was far happier than the original book it was based on.

story ended with Todd being ran to death by Copper and thr hunter while the hunter eventually shot Copper cause his retirement home didn't allow dogs

what kind of psychotic asshole would do that.

 

[WaltK]

Hunchback of Notre Dame has some interesting things that the movie deviated from.
-Esmeralda was a white girl who was abducted by the gypsies as a baby. She is briefly reunited with her birth mother before said birth mother is killed.
-Quasimodo was also mentally disabled and deaf.
-Phoebus was a class-A scumbag.
-And of course, Quasi and Esmeralda both die at the end.

 

[BufferAqua]

Pocahontas was in actuality a child and never had any romantic relationship with John Smith. But I’m sure everyone here knows how offensive that movie is lol.

Not like the story of a Native American woman is at all fictional literature but yeah.

 

[Sonofjafar]

-Esmeralda was a white girl who was abducted by the gypsies as a baby. She is briefly reunited with her birth mother before said birth mother is killed.

Gotta give Disney points for leaving that out

 

[WaltK]

Pocahontas was in actuality a child and never had any romantic relationship with John Smith. But I’m sure everyone here knows how offensive that movie is lol.

Not like the story of a Native American woman is at all fictional literature but yeah.

She also did historically marry John Rolfe, something Disney did try to allude to with the sequel only to subsequently sweep it under the rug because the historically inaccurate and borderline squicky ship sold more merch

 

[Elysium]

A lot of things come to mind. Like the stepsisters cutting off their toes in one version of the "Cinderella" tale in attempt to fit the slipper. Or sleeping beauty going home with the prince to her cannibal mother-in-law who tries to kill her. Or Rapunzel's prince being blinded by the witch at the end. Pan killing his Lost Boys when they would get too old.

The mermaid's grandmother is the main thing left out of TLM to me (I mean, aside from the tragic ending). Also the mermaid's sisters have more of a role, they attempt to save her at the end by trading all their hair to the sea witch for a chance for the mermaid to save herself but it would've required her to kill the prince and she couldn't do that. I love both the Disney film and the original tale in their own ways, there are a lot of differences mostly in tone, but I wouldn't change the Disney film either. If they'd included the grandmother, then the conflict between Triton and Ariel wouldn't be as extreme or as cathartic.

 

[Sonofjafar]

There is one time that I feel Disney improved the original source material: the 1940 Pinocchio. I get the point of the original was to show that rotten kids suffer but I honestly feel the Disney version works way better as a full story. Pinocchio’s far more relatable as a protagonist in Disney and Jiminy Cricket is a classic example of a new character inspired by previous stories becoming a beloved icon

 

[WaltK]

Or sleeping beauty going home with the prince to her cannibal mother-in-law who tries to kill her.

Not quite (unless there's another variation I haven't seen); the cannibal is the prince's wife, who tried to have the princess's two children killed to be eaten.

 

[Elysium]

I looked it up just now. I must've read the Perrault version where her changed her into the prince's mother to eliminate the adultery. He also made her an ogress, lol.

 

[WaltK]

There are a lot of downright bizarre elements in the earlier versions of Snow White besides the necrophilic prince.

In many versions, Snow White is still a young child when she's poisoned. Her body is kept in a coffin in which she continues to grow into adulthood, even in death, and the coffin seemingly grows with her somehow.

Most early versions have her waking from her sleep when the piece of poison apple is dislodged from her throat, in various ways depending on the version. In one, it happens when the prince's servants carrying her coffin trip. In another, the prince's servant is so infuriated with constantly being made to look after the comatose princess that he takes his anger out on the poor girl by propping her upright and smacking her in the back. Which I find hilarious because of how ridiculously convoluted it sounds.

 

[BufferAqua]

Not sure how accurate this is, but it was Howard Ashman who is the reason why the movie emphasizes that Beast has to take responsibility for his actions and his temper to change as a person and get closer to Belle

 

[vaderskywalker]

I like the Prince Of Persia The Sands Of Time movie, but there is no doubt that the game had more to it, for example The Sand Demons/Zombies where cut from the movie, instead of a Jafar type character, it is a Scar type character and instead of being an only child, the Prince had two brothers, and instead of being a Prince by blood, he was adopted, Im sure there's more, but this was all I could think of off the top of my head.