Disney's The Nutcracker

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Disney's The Nutcracker

Post by Dacey » March 5th, 2016, 1:28 pm

So Disney's apparently doing a live-action Nutcracker movie...

http://www.slashfilm.com/nutcracker-live-action-disney/

Of course, after seeing the 2010 version (which didn't come out in 2009, as the article says), I'm not sure how much Nutcracker I can really take. It was literally one of the worst movies I've ever seen, with Nathan Lane as a singing and dancing Albert Einstein being the least terrible thing about it.



That minor tangent aside, though, it's odd that Disney's pursuing this. Has a theatrical Nutcracker movie ever worked? I know there was an animated version done in the late 80's that was a huge bomb, but I've never seen it.
Last edited by Dacey on March 5th, 2016, 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Disney's The Nutcracker

Post by ShyViolet » March 5th, 2016, 2:58 pm

There was also a 1993 version with Macaulay Culkin. From what I understand it wasn't so great, either. Never saw it.
You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!

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Re: Disney's The Nutcracker

Post by Dacey » March 5th, 2016, 3:04 pm

Wasn't that version essentially just the ballet filmed?
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Re: Disney's The Nutcracker

Post by ShyViolet » March 5th, 2016, 3:16 pm

Could be. I really can't remember. :?
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Re: Disney's The Nutcracker

Post by Ben » March 5th, 2016, 4:46 pm

Yes, and yes. It's never worked well on screen. The animated version is a mess.

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Re: Disney's The Nutcracker

Post by EricJ » March 6th, 2016, 12:35 pm

Dacey wrote:So Disney's apparently doing a live-action Nutcracker movie...
Of course, after seeing the 2010 version (which didn't come out in 2009, as the article says), I'm not sure how much Nutcracker I can really take. It was literally one of the worst movies I've ever seen, with Nathan Lane as a singing and dancing Albert Einstein being the least terrible thing about it.
Or "Crack-Nutter 3D", as those unfortunate enough to see it (the 3D version was streaming on Vudu VOD, although the disk was snubbed in NA) dubbed it. :shock:
(Rats in Nazi uniforms who want to black out the sky by burning the children's toys in huge smokestacks towering over Vienna? Yes, nothing says the holidays like "Schindler's Nutcracker".)
That minor tangent aside, though, it's odd that Disney's pursuing this.
Not really, we know where it comes from: Disney's interest in pursuing Robert Zemeckis pretty much began and ended at wanting him to deliver another holiday-season Polar Express on demand.
The '09 Christmas Carol was going to be their big flagship movie, and when it turned looney and tanked at the box office....Zemeckis had outlived his purpose. (He had already been fired two months before Mars Needs Moms came out.) Had he succeeded, the next big Zemeckis movie would have been, yes, ANOTHER Christmas movie.
Guess they didn't throw away the memo.
Has a theatrical Nutcracker movie ever worked? I know there was an animated version done in the late 80's that was a huge bomb, but I've never seen it.
The Nutcracker Prince was cheap and Canadian, but not so worse than the other 90's Wannabes. (Except for the fact the studio mostly worked on Ren & Stimpy, and inserted a faux retro-kitsch Fractured Fairy Tales wannabe into the middle to explain the Hoffman-fairytale backstory. Which...sort of spoiled the mood.)

But worked? That would be the 1986 Carroll Ballard/Maurice Sendak "Nutcracker: the Motion Picture" (taken from the Pacific Northwest Ballet's hit version), available on MGM Archive--Always a mandatory classic at our house:

Can't show it to the kids though, as Sendak likes his stories creepy and psychological. (You will never see a creepier Drosselmeier, the weird 3D version included.)
ShyViolet wrote:There was also a 1993 version with Macaulay Culkin. From what I understand it wasn't so great, either. Never saw it.
It's...just good--like Dacey says, just the professional NYC version on film, nothing more or less--but given the alternatives, that's not a bad thing.
Just a product of Fox's battles with Culkin's greedy dad, but they wanted to keep their post-Home Alone Christmas money machine rolling, so that means Fox pitched it to be kid-friendly for the little 'uns, and Mac doesn't have to do much dancing but at least he's had lessons.
At least good enough for most of us to retire that cheapo Baryshnikov TV version from the 70's.

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Re: Disney's The Nutcracker

Post by Ben » March 6th, 2016, 7:19 pm

EricJ wrote:Had he succeeded, the next big Zemeckis movie would have been, yes, ANOTHER Christmas movie.
Funny. I don't remember Santa Claus in Yellow Submarine...

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Re: Disney's The Nutcracker

Post by EricJ » March 6th, 2016, 11:06 pm

That was Zemeckis's own movie--like the Roger Rabbit sequel, to be completed....whenever--but after they became company stiffs, Disney pushed a mocap Nutcracker ahead of the schedule.

This new project ("Four Realms"??) doesn't sound like the ballet, more like it got a bit hybrid-crossbred with their big-budget live-action fairytales. Like Deems Taylor said, nothing left of him but the title.

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Re: Disney's The Nutcracker

Post by Ben » March 7th, 2016, 5:32 am

Yellow Sub was the next Disney film to come to ImageMovers. It was in design and casting when IMD got shut down. Maybe another Christmas movie was on the cards after that, but we would have seen YS first. Even when Disney shut down IMD, YS was still being shopped around other studios as it was that far ahead.

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