She Will Set the World on Fire

Disney, with their desire to turn every one of their animated classics into live-action remakes, only has so many stories they can tap into. They could make new movies, with new stories, based not on old intellectual properties but new ideas, but those are risky. Hollywood doesn’t understand how to make new ideas anymore; it’s much safer for their bottom lines to make remakes, reboots, and sequels off of “proven” IP because, “that’s what audiences want.” And it’s hard to argue that point when so many of their live-action remakes have massively over-performed their budgets.

You could trace the idea back to 1996’s 101 Dalmatians remake, which brought in a solid $320.7 Mil against its $67 Mil production budget. But the real culprit was really 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, a “remake-quel” that managed to pull in a staggering $1.025 Bil against its $200 Mil production budget. Because of that film, Disney put a whole host of new live-action remakes into production. Some, like Maleficent, did gangbusters at the Box Office and became instant classics in their own right. Others, though, underperformed (at least in comparison) and then faded from memory, with audiences all but forgetting these stories existed at all.

That seems to be the fate of Cinderella, the 2015 remake of Disney’s 1950 animated original, which had a decent performance at the Box Office ($543.5 Mil take against a modest $95 Mil budget) before then fading away from the cultural consciousness. Was it a problem with the film, or simply the fact that, unlike so many other characters in Disney’s stable, Cinderella simply didn’t have the staying power. Were audiences already bored with Cinderella before her film even came along for consumption? I honestly don’t think it’s the fault of the film itself. This is a handsome piece of filmmaking with a solid cast, good production values, and a decent story, leading to a pretty solid remake all around.

The live-action version fleshes out the story, giving the characters more agency and more development. Ella (Lily James) was the daughter of a wealthy merchant. She spent her days loved by her parents (played by Ben Chaplin and Hayley Atwell), a warm and happy girl who thought the best of everyone. But her mother’s quick and sudden death cast a pall over their household. Her father eventually found love with a new woman, Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchette), and they were soon married, giving Ella a new stepmother along with two step sisters, Drisella and Anastasia (Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger).

When her father dies on one of his trips, that leaves Ella in the care of her stepmother, a woman that doesn’t care much for the young and beautiful girl. In fact, the Lady despises Ella for all the represents, hope and joy and a future the Lady can no longer access herself. So she treats Ella like dirt, demoting her to living as a servant, taking care of everything around the house while the Lady and her two daughters enjoy a life of luxury. But when the Prince announces a ball for all the eligible women of the country, Ella hopes that she can go as well. Not to meet the Prince, but because she has a friend, Kit (Richard Madden), who is an apprentice at the castle. Little does she know that Kit might be more than just a mere apprentice, and that this fateful ball could be just what Ella needs to escape her stepmother once and for all.

One of the big complaints I had about the 1950 Cinderella was that we didn’t get much development for Cindy or Lady Tremaine. Cindy was basically a doormat, letting her family walk all over her, while Lady Tremaine was a petty bitch, acting mean to Cindy for absolutely no reason we could see. This film does a better job fleshing both characters out so that, at least to a certain extent, we can understand them better and see why they are the way they are.

Ella was taught by her parents to be kind and considerate, so she tried to act kindly to her new stepfamily because that was what would keep the peace. Her father also made her promise to be nice to her stepfamily and take care of them in his absence, and after his death she took that promise to heart. No matter what they threw at her, how they acted, or what kind of misery they dished out, Ella continued to be sweet and kind. Maybe it made her a bit of a doormat, but at least there was reason for it.

Meanwhile, Lady Tremaine (who is played so well by Cate Blanchette) is jealous of Ella. Not just because she’s young and beautiful (although that’s also a stated reason late in the film) but because Ella was the apple of her father’s eye. She represents the life the merchant had before he met Lady Tremaine, his first happy marriage and the hope he had. The Lady couldn’t give him that and she held it against him, and then his daughter, and it grew to be a rotten little core inside her, giving her reason to do the awful things she does. Even more than Ella’s development, I like what they did with Lady Tremaine here.

The only issue is that this isn’t an original take on the material. While this is more than we got in the 1950 Disney original, a very similar version of this story was told in 1998 in the film Ever After. That film, also an adaptation of Cinderella, made its heroine, Danielle, into the daughter of a merchant, the apple of her father’s eye, who then becomes the sole focus for her stepmother’s jealousy when her father dies. While not a beat-for-beat remake of Ever After, there’s enough similarity here that I couldn’t help but feel like I’d seen all this before. Sure, there’s only so much you can do with the Cinderella narrative, but I would have liked to see Disney do something more than copying Ever After’s homework.

That’s not a small quibble, but it doesn’t completely derail the film. There is still a lot of fun to be had, with this live-action remake doing a lot to repurpose the elements of the animated original, making them work in this new format. The animal companions are here, but they mostly squeak and titter, making them far less annoying than they were in the original film. The Fairy Godmother (played fantastically by Helena Bonham Carter) steals the scenes she’s in, and at least she’s given some run-up in the story so it doesn’t feel like a hard left turn when, suddenly, magic appears in the tale. And I do like the bit of misdirection the Prince does with Ella, letting them meet cute without the pressure of a royal engagement. These moments make the film more interesting, more grounded and less like a half-baked fairy tale.

Plus it comes on the back of a very pretty production. The film feels like it sits in a very weird time period, partially 1930s but also older, with a lot of Baroque flair to the artistry. It’s strange, but it works, and it lets the set designers and costumers follow their flights of fancy wherever they lead. This leads to wonderful sets, delightful set-pieces, and fantastic ballgowns. For a film that only cost $90 Mil to make, this feels like one of Disney’s richer live-action productions. They likely didn’t have to spend nearly as much on CGI here as in other works, so they could put all that money into the cast, sets, and clothes, and it shows.

The only other strong quibble I have is that despite all these changes, Ella still doesn’t feel like that active of a player in her own film. Especially in the last act, things happen to her instead of because of her. I would have liked to see Ella try to help herself a little more, rescue herself from her stepmother’s machinations, but that doesn’t really happen. It takes a fairy godmother to help her get to the ball, and then it takes her mice to save her from a life locked away in a tower. Ella was taught to be sweet and nice but she wasn’t taught to be useless, and in the last act she feels a tad useless. She could do more, but the film doesn’t seem to care about that. Some lessons could have been learned from Cinderella III: A Twist in Time.

Still, overall this is a decent live-action remake. It’s not one of Disney’s best, but it’s a darn sight better than most of the CGI-laiden slop the House of Mouse has cranked out in recent years. It was good enough that it could be the version most Disney Cinderella fans would prefer to watch as it has the magic and whimsy of the original married to a solid production that tries to make everything work in a realistic setting. It’s not the best version of this story I’ve ever seen (I do think Ever After is much better), but for a Disney remake, this slides higher on the list than I initially expected. It’s a fine effort that respects the original film, and its audience as well.