Be honest. If you heard there was a movie called “Little Red Riding Hood” playing in theaters, you wouldn’t even look at the rating, you’d just bring your kid immediately. And it’s probably safe to say that the same thing goes for “Alice in Wonderland,” “A Christmas Carol” and a million other classic stories typically made for kids.
Starting now though, be very, very careful before you take your kids to the theater on reputation alone.
History has given us plenty of classic tales that – while aimed at children from an early age – resonate with everyone young and old. Characters and stories like “Cinderella,” “Hansel and Gretel,” or “The Three Bears” are universally thought of as family friendly in all mediums.
Well, now that Hollywood has mined virtually every novel, comic book and old movie for unoriginal ideas, they’ve begun to delve into these classic children’s stories. And they aren’t doing them in the traditional way.
Tim Burton (the director of “Beetlejuice,” “Batman” and “Edward Scissorhands”) is already hard at work at a retelling of “Alice in Wonderland” which promises to be much more scary just based on the director alone. Also being remade, for the umpteenth time, is Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” with Jim Carrey playing eight different roles thanks to performance capture technology. That film, directed by Robert Zemeckis, is also going to be darker than previous incarnations. (Remakes of the classic stories “Rapunzel” and “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” are also in the works.)
However, while both “Alice” and “Christmas Carol” are being made by Disney and will certainly be fine for most kids, there will certainly be some kind of age restriction due to scary content.
This week, the trend took another turn as Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company has become to develop a “Gothic reimagining” of “Little Red Riding Hood” according to Daily Variety. It’ll be written by the guy who wrote the current horror film “Orphan.”
An announcement like this marks another step in the maturation of classic children’s stories. One that, historically, isn’t that surprising. The fact of the matter is most of the versions of these stories we’re familiar with are actually watered down versions of the originals. For example, in the original “Little Red Riding Hood,” by Charles Perrault, Red Riding Hood is eaten at the end.
These stories have become canonized because they speak not only to kids, but to every one, with their universal themes of strong morals, individuality and following your dreams. In that vein, I don’t think they need to be limited to children’s movies.
Parents just need to look ahead and don’t simply rely on previous experience. Times, they are a-changing, especially on the big screen.
