In February, SyFy announced that they are producing a series of movies that are based on fairy tales. Thomas Vitale, an official at SyFy, said, "It's exciting to take a treasured brand and put our own sideways spin on it. By turning familiar timeless stories inside out, we're creating an entertaining new genre for our popular Saturday night movie franchise." But from what I’ve read about the first movie, “Beauty and the Beast: A Dark Tale,” it really doesn’t seem that different from previous versions of the tale. There is a prince who has been cursed and beautiful girl who is not repulsed by his beastly appearance. But the refreshing thing about this version of the story is that it sounds like Beauty has a much more active role. Not only does she help the prince break the curse, but also to stop an evil nobleman from taking his throne AND taking on the evil witch that put him under the curse in the first place. This version of the story is definitely aimed at adults though, with lots of violence and sexuality.
SyFy's next fairy tale project will be called “Red” and will be based on "Little Red Riding Hood." The protagonist of this story, Red, is the descendant of the actual Little Red Riding Hood and her family hunts werewolves. A werewolf bites Red’s fiancé and her family insists that they must kill him, but Red attempts to save him. Again, this doesn’t seem that different from some of the versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” that we have read, specifically those by Angela Carter.
So far, SyFy plans to make three other movies based on fairy tales: “Aladdin,” “The 8th Voyage of Sinbad,” and “Hansel.” I personally think that “Hansel” sounds the most interesting and unique. It takes place twenty years after Hansel escaped from the witch. Apparently in this version of the story, Hansel and Gretel did not kill the witch. So Hansel returns to the forest to take revenge on her only to find that Gretel, who he thought was dead, has become her apprentice.
Even though these versions of the fairy tales don’t sound that different from some of the ones we have read in class, they are very different from the typical Disney versions that the general public is used to. Perhaps SyFy producing these darker and more mature versions of the tales will help to break the “Disney Spell” and make people realize that there are other versions of these stories.
I had not heard anything about this new plan to tackle fairytales in a new vein from SyFy before this post, but I have to say it is not that surprising. Despite my affinity for science fiction and fantasy genre movies and books, I rarely watch SyFy because I find most of their programming unoriginal and, to be honest, pretty horribly done. Thus, remaking fairytales seems perfect, since it allows them to simply take the majority of the script from a pre-existing story. Now, all of that said, SyFy products are typically best when this is the case, and they can spend their efforts on simply altering the project instead of having to actually create. So I hope that they will do a good job recreating these fairytales. If the network’s treatment of “The Wizard of Oz” is any indication of how these ‘new’ takes on the traditional fairytales will turn out, I suggest Gretchen begins working on incorporating them into the syllabus for the next time she teaches this class. (For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, go to your Netflix account and watch “Tin Man” instantly. Zooey Deschanel is great as always, and Neal McDonough, Alan Cumming, and Kathleen Robertson are all wonderful) The interesting thing, if the fairytales turn out at all like “Tin Man,” will be seeing how these new versions attempt to mix increased realism while trying to still maintain the presence of magic in the stories. All in all, I’m rather interested in seeing how these shows turn out.
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