The Greatest Stories Ever Re-Told: Adaptation and the Public Domain

It doesn't take long in someone's acquaintance of me for them to realize that among my foundational loves are fairy tales and musicals. This means, naturally, that I am a huge Disney nerd, because how can you not be when you love both fairy tales and musicals? Disney practically is the reason I fell so hard for both those things as a child.

I think a lot about Disney movies - if that wasn't abundantly obvious from previous blog posts, like where I ranked Every Best Animated Feature Winning Film - but more than that, I think a lot about the source material these movies were based on. Overwhelmingly, Disney films adapt well-known stories, such as fairy tales, often stamping them with such a general sense of Disney-ness, that they become the de facto versions of those stories in our heads.

For example, what animals do you first picture when you think of Cinderella getting help? 

Is it mice? 

Because in the Brother's Grimm version, it's doves who serve as her friends and guardians. Cinderella, in fairness, is a very popular story structure, with countless versions around the world and an array of animals that help her. But that's the thing - it could have been fish or lizards as easily as mice, yet Jacques and Gus-Gus are the ones that jump to mind for anyone raised on Disney films. 

I like to imagine this is a Marvel movie and
in a post-credits scene, Cinderella asks the bluebirds
to please peck out her step-sister's eyes.
For the Grimm Brother's purists! Real fans KNOW!

But it's not just the fairy tales Disney has used to build its collection of classic movies. Everything from Bambi, to The Aristocats, to Pocahontas has some children's book, short story collection, or grievous misunderstanding of American history to pull inspiration from. The first full-length Disney film that could be considered an "original" story is probably The Lion King. I'm inclined to say the development of that movie was too chaotic for it to be thought of as actually "based" on Hamlet (frankly, they could have saved themselves years of trouble if it was), but the studio did gradually note the similarities as the film came together. For those keeping score, that's thirty-one Disney movies before anyone bothered trying to write an original screenplay. And it was several MORE years before anyone wrote anything original, good and not resembling Shakespeare - Lilo and Stitch, Disney's 42nd feature-length animated film. That movie's a trailblazer, man.

Granted, not all Disney movies are based on fairy tales. In fact, there's a very enjoyable film called Saving Mr. Banks about the rather arduous journey Walt Disney had to go down in order to convince author P. L. Travers to sell the film rights to her beloved children's books, the Mary Poppins series, to his studio. Disney used to purchase the rights to contemporary novels frequently, including 101 Dalmatians and The Rescuers among their adapted works. I wouldn't mind seeing them try their hands at animating recent books again. If nothing else, I would love to see them do the Prydain Chronicles justice. The books are super charming, but Disney's The Black Cauldron is (unfortunately) a mess.

Still love the design of this poster.

For the majority of their output, however, their animation has focused on older stories. Once copyright expires on a creative work, it enters what is known as the public domain, where no one entity can make legal or monetary claim on the use of a particular work. Copyright laws vary widely around the globe, but they generally protect a work from unlicensed use for some length of time from either the publication date or the author's death. This way, the author of a work enjoys the right to fiscally benefit from that project during their lifetime and has some creative control over how the work is presented to the public. Overall, copyright is a good thing that protects the livelihoods of working artists, but there is something special about the stories in the public domain. Because when a story is old enough to go into the public domain it belongs to everyone.

There have been so many versions of Robin Hood over the years, and it's not just because it's a beloved folk tale. It's because legally, there can be. Ever wondered why Jane Austen remains so popular with people today? Well... there aren't a lot of other famous romantic comedies that absolutely any artist can riff on and then sell their version without paying royalties to someone's estate. Disney gradually became incredibly good at taking these well-known stories and reshaping them for animated film. So good, the techniques they used could be their own blog post. (Foreshadowing?) I think particularly of the Disney Renaissance, when Disney really pivoted away from using copyrighted characters, like they had in earlier decades, and focused instead on their classic fairy tale roots.

Disney is not in the habit of having original ideas. Well, they do so MORE often now, but... is that actually for the better? A good number of their "original" stories are among the most underwhelming Disney movies. Brother Bear and Raya and the Last Dragon are not awful, but I can't shake the feeling they would both be better if they were based on actual indigenous stories rather than a rough smooshing together of various cultural traditions. The best films to come out of the "original story era" like Moana and Encanto might not be pulling from specific stories, but they do at least have much more specific points of inspiration. For instance, Moana teams up with Maui! An actual legendary figure! Arguably, it is still an adaptation, in the same vein of Hercules a generation earlier. (Encanto is a unicorn of a film, but as mentioned, it is specific. It's set in Colombia and doesn't shy away from referencing the country's history with civil war.)

But the bedrock of the Disney brand - one of their most underrated skills - is adaptation. And I cannot overstate how much I freakin' love a good adaptation. Adapting a story across genre of media and generations is an artform, that might make you look like an idiot when it's botched (what moron thought James Franco should play the Wizard of Oz???) but when it's done right, it's just so satisfying. (Oh my heart! Glinda and Elphaba used to be friends!)

They're only angry because they love each other!
(insert crying emoji)

One advantage of adaptation is that it invites the audience to compare various versions of the same story and let them speak in conversation with each other. Wicked, for instance, uses The Wizard of Oz as a jumping off point for the superficiality of how evil is often perceived. In a story where "evil" was seemingly baked into Elphaba's skin color and very name (The Wicked Witch of the West), what hope did she ever have of people treating her otherwise? That kind of barebones morality is a reoccurring feature (problem?) in children's literature, with The Wizard of Oz being just being one of the more blatant examples.

But as in Wicked, in real life, the villain might just be the Wizard himself. Sometimes the person ruining everything for everyone is the seemingly friendly, great and powerful entity that provided you with your first entry point into the story. Sometimes, an over-long Wizard of Oz metaphor turns out to be a segway into me complaining about how public domain law changed in the 70s and went from protecting artists, to just making life difficult for everyone.

The Wizard is Disney. Disney is the bad guy. Wow, what a twist.

Copyright Run Amok

I keep mentioning The Wizard of Oz, because it's one of the oldest classic books currently in the public domain. The series of books, published from 1900 - 1920, began dribbling into public domain over the 20th century, as US congress passed numerous Copyright Act amendments that slowed the release of the full series (and all other intellectual property) into the public domain. You can actually track the progress of The Wizard of Oz series into the public domain based on the release dates of various derivative works. Like, did your childhood have a day that was traumatized by the 1985 film, Return to Oz, "sequel" to the MGM musical classic? Well, you can thank the fact that Disney was trying to cash in on the rights before the copyright (which they had purchased) expired. And then there's Wicked - not the musical, but the novel it was based on. It came out in the 90s, after most of the Oz material was finally free to use. I like to picture Gregory Maguire writing Tik-Tok into the background of one scene, then raising a fist skyward and shouting "NO ONE CAN STOP ME!!!!"

Tik-Tok. Real fans KNOW!

As mentioned earlier, copyright laws vary worldwide, with the United States having some of the most stringent laws. Being the capitalist giant it is, this effectively means that if anyone wants to adapt anything for free and distribute it in English, it's gotta be in the US public domain. Unfortunately, the US public domain was effectively frozen for decades thanks to none other than Disney. Yes, those great abusers of the public domain themselves - master adapters of Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin, and Mulan - joined a few other media megacorps and Sonny Bono (unexpected villain twist!) in lobbying the US government to extend copyright protection for an obscene amount of time, and that's why The Wizard of Oz and it's sequels spent years as the newest, shiniest story anyone could take a shot at adapting. 

 At this point, US copyright for works published before 1978 is 95 years. The thing is, while I'm all for copyright protecting a creator's right to profit from their work, 95 years is a freakin' long time. At the turn of the century twentieth, copyright laws averaged around 25-50 years. 50 years seems like a perfectly reasonable extension to me, since it's effectively the length of one's "working life" in North America. During that time, creators should have the ability to profit off their works, control their distribution, and create whatever other derivative works they want. But beyond that, I kinda don't see the point. 

50 years later, it won't be the original creators making work based on these classic stories, but someone else. In other words, extensions like these really only benefit corporations, not people. They gatekeep works so that only certain people get to adapt stories - the ones with pockets deep enough to pay for rights. This is why any time Sony and Disney fight with each other over how to divvy up profits from Spiderman movies, I can NEVER root for Disney. Spidey would be in the public domain by now, if Disney hadn't lobbied so hard to avoid ever letting anyone but them legally use Mickey Mouse. Sure, Sony is also a soulless megacorp and probably supported the Sonny Bono (booooo!) laws too, but hey. They're not the villain-protagonist of this story.

Just think. With better laws, we could ALL make our own Spiderman.
Though some fear that would be... too many spidermen. 

Return of the Public Domain

Thankfully, mercifully, those protections are finally beginning to expire and stories are getting added again, as the prescribed time elapses. Yes, it is finally more than 95 years since the 1920s. We now have culturally relevant, modern icons like flappers, suffragists and pre-depression era venture capitalists to relate to. So current!

In all seriousness though, I am grateful. Wonderful, classic stories get added each year and one of my favourite traditions is checking the list of what's entered the public domain in January. And sure enough, as famous stories begin to drop into public domain, new adaptations are taking off as well. The big news of late has been Blood and Honey, a slasher film centered on............ Winnie the Pooh. Huh.

Look, I don't plan on seeing that film, but I am honestly THRILLED that something like this can exist now. I want it all. The weird stuff, the goofy stuff, the scary stuff, the pretentions high-brow stuff. I want us to be able to engage with and easily adapt the stories of the past. Because you never know, right? You never know what creative people are going to do when they finally get their hands on stories we love. For instance, right now Florence Welch is spearheading a Broadway musical version of The Great Gatsby and there's some serious Wicked or - dare I hope - Hadestown upside with a project like that. And now that the butt-munchers holding the copyright to the last Sherlock Holmes short story collection can no longer litigate people within an inch of their life, we might get more indie creators trying their hands at adapting the world's most famous detective.

But the real cherry on top is that after all these years, time has finally come for Disney. Next year, on January 1st 2024, Mickey Mouse, as he appears in Steamboat Willie, enters the public domain. Get ready to slap this fella on some T-shirts, people! Oh, but don't give him gloves. Or pupils. Those weren't invented yet. 

Mickey, gleefully sailing into the Public Domain.

Public pressure caught up with the Disney company in the internet age. As the story of how they and the likes of Sonny Bono (Team Cher and Cher only for life!) destroyed our legal right to use old stories started to circulate online, Disney amended their stance so that they no longer are putting forward bills to stop the slow roll-out of works entering the public domain at the end of each calendar year. Instead, they're simply arguing that they hold copyright to later versions of the character, until cartoons that feature aspects like his gloves do enter the public domain. But whatever. Screw it. We're still getting the Mouse and whole boat. 

I'm perfectly happy to watch someone make a movie about Mickey and Minnie's adventures as pirates on the Mississippi River. Or that Winnie the Pooh horror movie team can make one about him strapping victims to a torture rack made from the steamboat wheel. Or maybe we'll get a crime drama about how Mickey's father died during a fire in Pete's glove factory and now he's now on a quest to destroy all gloves. Distributed widely. All without Disney's approval. I can hardly wait. 

We spent years stuck in the past but, finally, we're not in Kansas anymore.

Best Animated Feature and Why We Need a Best Children's Film Oscar

I've mentioned before on this blog that one of the - ahem - hallmarks of my family Christmas experience is my mother's taste in movies. Put simply, my mother has never met a Christmas film she didn't like, or at least find watchable. She's always on the hunt for pleasant holiday background noise while she sews or wraps presents. She's watched more than her fair share of made for TV movies and with the rise of Netflix, and the Netflix Christmas deluge we get each year, her numbers have only gone up.

Of course, what she really hopes for is that somewhere, buried in the pile of yellow Christmas snow, she'll stumble across a film that can join the likes of White Christmas, A Christmas Carol and Ernest Saves Christmas in the family's yearly holiday rotation. Still, she doesn't expect much from the average Christmas flick and I - who frequently gets dragged into watching these movies with her - have learned to hope for even less.

Which is part of what made this year such a treat. One Friday night in November, we fired up Netflix, hunting for a Christmas movie, and it immediately recommended a new animated film to us. It was, of course, Klaus, which is also the first foray Netflix has taken into producing feature length animation.

A few minutes into the movie, my father hadn't left the room in disinterest yet, mom had laughed at several jokes and I'd complimented the animation style roughly fifty times. At this point I looked at my mother and said, "wait... did we put a good movie on?"

I was just as confused as Jesper when I found myself enjoying this film.

Yes, Virginia. By some Christmas miracle, it turned out that we were watching a good movie.

A "New" Christmas "Classic"

Klaus isn't perfect, but there is so very much to like about it. The story offers a fun, new take on the story of Santa Claus, with enjoyable characters and a plot that, while predictable, really strikes the heartstrings in the end. WHEN HE WALKS OFF INTO THE SNOW, GUYS! WHEN HE WALKS OFF!!!! (Insert crying face here). Still, where the film really shines isn't so much in the story department as it is the visuals.

Sergio Pablos directed the film and spent years developing its style and story to be exactly as he wanted it, but for a long time, couldn't find a studio willing to back it. It was risky for several reasons, the Christmas content among them. Most recent film studios haven't been able to make much money off of Christmas theater releases, due to the stiff competition from the likes of Disney and other headliner movies. To give an idea, if Klaus had been in theaters during this same time frame, it would have faced off against Frozen II and likely fallen flatter than a pancake.

Luckily, Netflix isn't trying to fill theater seats. The Christmas movie crowd is more likely to want to watch something new while bundled up in cozy blankets, sipping cocoa. It was why Christmas movies were such a natural market for Netflix in the first place and Klaus's Christmas focus meant they could guarantee themselves an audience for their first, splashy foray into animated film.

Still, they could have gone the lazy way making this film, (as Netflix has been willing to be with some of their other Christmas fare), but everything about Klaus speaks to what a passion project it was. The last 2D animated film produced by a major Hollywood studio was Winnie the Pooh, an adaptation Disney put out in 2011. Before that, it was Princess and the Frog in 2009. Both of those movies have their fans, but their lack of box office domination led Disney to give up on their brief flirtation with trying to bring 2D animation back after its collapse in the early 2000s.

When Sergio Pablos made Klaus, he wanted to create something that wasn't such a nostalgic throwback, as Disney's last two attempts were, but instead had its own style that incorporated digital tools. By utilizing software to shade and light the characters, his studio created something that had the expressive, cartoony quality so loved about old hand drawn cartoons, while also benefiting from the depth and sense of three dimensional form that makes 3D animation so beautiful. And to do this, his team had to develop all the new software themselves.

I highly recommend checking out YouTube and the many videos that showcase the animation style of Klaus from test footage all the way up to it's released form. They provide a fascinating behind the scenes look at the production of animation and give some idea of how much work and thought went into this goofy Christmas flick.

I've wanted to write about Klaus for a while, but couldn't settle on the right angle, then Christmas came and went, making me sad I lost my chance. But lo and behold, the Blogging Gods must be looking out for me, because Klaus just faced off against Frozen II again and this time, it won.

Oscar Madness

As of the writing of this blog post, I have seen every Oscar winning animated movie ever. In fact, I even have ranked them, a list I plan on updating once this year's winner is announced. More than likely, I'm going to need to see this year's winner first, since I didn't get to many movies in theater during early 2019, due to a lack of wiggle room in my budget.

I've heard good things about all of the nominees. While I find any year that doesn't nominate at least one Japanese film a bit suspicious, I do think the list is a good representation of the diversity of films that North American and European animation studios are putting out. I'm not quite sure which horse I'm cheering for the most. By virtue of Toy Story 4 being in the mix, it's the default front runner, as the Academy historically bends to Disney and Pixar if they turn out a film that registers as "good." That's the problem of the Academy awards. More often than not, they award the big players who have deep pockets for "For Your Consideration" campaigns and private viewings with Academy voters.

So when the nominees were announced and Klaus beat out Frozen II to take the final spot on the ballot, I will admit, I cheered a little. The film had been snubbed at the Golden Globes, not just in favor of Frozen II, but also for that brown mush of a movie, Disney's new Lion King, which is nothing but a shroud of a better film. To be clear, I don't dislike Frozen II. It's fine. But it lacks the heart of the first movie and I can't say I came home from it feeling particularly much of anything. It certainly didn't illicit the same reaction I had at Klaus because WHEN HE WALKS OFF INTO THE SNOW, GUYS!!!!

If I had to pinpoint one reason why Frozen II didn't work for me, it was likely because none of the emotional stakes felt very real. The film didn't do the best job of setting up the emotional thrust of the film, unlike the first one, where you feel the ache of the sisters' loneliness within a couple short scenes. Frozen II spent a long time trying to establish its emotional heart of righting past wrongs, no matter the consequences. When the climax came, and Anna is making her pivotal choices alone and singing her song, my thoughts were more, "oh, so THIS is what the story was building to" rather than "OH MY HEART!!!" I also don't think the story was helped by the use of *SPOILER* a false death scene for Elsa or Olaf in it because, as an adult, I just couldn't believe this movie would kill it's characters. They make Disney too much money for that.

Into the Unknown: Where Elsa literally states that
she doesn't know why she's doing this movie.

Now, some of you might be going, "but it's a KIDS movie! My kid couldn't tell Olaf wasn't dead! That hit him super hard! You can't judge Disney for not meeting your cynical expectations as an adult viewer! It still deserved to be nominated for an Oscar!" To that I have two counter arguments.

1) Klaus is a kids movie too, that still manages tight emotional stakes, as evidenced by WHEN HE WALKS OFF INTO THE SNOW!!! SERIOUSLY!!!!!!

2) Here's the thing... the award is for best animated movie. Not best kid's movie.

So, um... What's that Oscar About, Anyway?

I have watched every single winner of the best animated movie Oscar and every one of them is appropriate for children. Rango might not be particularly interesting to younger children, but still, a kid over ten would have no problem with it.

The Academy still reflects the views of white North America towards film, despite its efforts to diversify. One of the consequences of that is a lack of appreciation or acceptance of animated films that are not made for children. Japanese animation is notably more diverse in terms of its intended audience, yet if you look at which Japanese anime films get nominated for Oscars, it's predominantly the ones that can be marketed towards children.

Occasionally, we get outliers. This year's nominees even includes one, a French film about severed hand titled I Lost My Body, which is conveniently also on Netflix, and next on my "to watch" list. But I can't imagine it has much of a shot up against the likes of Toy Story and... well, Toy Story. And not only does this seem unfair to movies like I Lost My Body, but I would argue, it's unfair to the likes of Toy Story 4 as well. How are you supposed to compare two films like that?

How are you supposed to compare Loving Vincent, a film painstakingly painted to resemble the work of Van Gogh to Coco, the movie it lost the animation Oscar to in 2018? In 2007, how did the Academy choose between an adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's memoir graphic novel, Persepolis, about growing up in Iran, and Ratatouille? The problem isn't that some of these movies aren't "good enough" or "deserving" but that their intended audiences have so little to do with each other.

Loving Vincent. This movie is still on my "to watch" pile and PLEASE!
Suggestions in comments on where to find it!

In the book world this year, no one is pitting Margaret Atwood's Testaments against Angie Thomas's On the Come Up. Just because Atwood won the Booker doesn't mean Thomas doesn't have a shot at the Printz award. And no YA novel is going to take the Newbery medal away from a deserving Middle Grade book (though there was the year a picture book won the Newbery, which was... a choice?).

Movie land, however, has no conceptual framework for distinguishing between media meant for children and media meant for adults. Television only came across the concept due to network programming, where certain shows could only air after sensitive eyes were likely in bed, and where commercial interests meant the after school slot was perfect for catching the ages five through twelve crowd.

I've talked before about how the rating system is often used to signal what audience a film is meant for, irrespective of actual content concerns. It's why La La Land contains exactly one F-bomb in an otherwise language, sex and violence free movie. It's not that the content was inappropriate, just that the movie was meant for adults and a musical with a G rating would have likely confused viewers.

AWARDS FOR EVERYONE!!!

One of the other major ways we signal "for children" in our culture is with animation. When I look at the list of winning movies, what I see isn't so much a list of the risky, artistically innovative animated movies. Instead, it's a list of generally solid children's films. Coco is a phenomenal children's movie, but I don't think you can call it more innovative to animation as an art form than Loving Vincent, the first fully painted animated movie ever. And it's a shame, because in a better world, they both would have awards. Loving Vincent for Achievements in Animation, which would now be a technical award, and Coco for Best Children's Film (or Family Film, though I would rather see the award focus on children so as to avoid the devaluing of "popular" movies that may or may not be for children, but lots of families see.)

Into the Spiderverse is another film I have a million thoughts on.
Sound off in the comments if you want a blog post on it!

On occasion, the two do collide. Last year, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse was both the most gorgeous and ground-breaking animated film and also a triumph of storytelling, appropriate for children. But we're fine with plenty of other films winning multiple categories, so why not these? Besides, having a category for Best Children's Film would open the door for great movies that don't meet the requirements of other awards. If I could retroactively create this award, there's no way any of the animated films of 1987 would win Best Children's Film, when The Princess Bride came out that year. It's a shoe in!

It also might correct some of the problems the Academy faced when they tried to create a "Best Popular Film" category. By focusing on intended audience by age, rather than reinforcing their own idea that "popular blockbuster movies are by definition not artistic," we might have a place to acknowledge some truly great films that are not aimed at adults. Clearly, there would still be a gray area for a lot of blockbusters aimed at teenagers, but I can't solve all the problems in this blog post. At the very least, I wish there was a space that acknowledged the range of films made for children and one that spoke to the diversity of the world's animation.

For now, Klaus is probably the stand-out as a technical piece, but is it the best story of the whole field? Is it the best children's movie? Klaus's claim to that is much shakier.

Regardless, I'm cheered by the animation nominees. Disney has such an iron grip on the category, it was nice to see their fingers loosened a little. With so little other positive news in this year's Oscar nominations, as far as diversity goes, at least the animation category wasn't owned by one company.

At least until Toy Story 4 inevitably wins them yet another award.