Forget elves at Helms’ Deep! With Cat in the Hat and Grinch as desecrated classics, it was obvious that nothing was sacred. So, Disney is now adding a new human character to the Pooh cartoons, one that was never part of A.A. Milne’s original books - a little girl. See article in USA today. - sorry I don’t have a link.
PS - I’m not jparticularly upset about this, but I can see how purists would be.
Pooh.
I get the impression the Disney cartoons have long since left Milne’s books far behind, but still… isn’t this sorta like if they made a new Charlie Brown cartoon in which grown-ups appear?
With an actual girl there, does this mean Piglet will no longer have to be everybody’s bitch?
Did anyone complain about Lumpy the Heffalump, who made his debut this year? I remember reading that there were trepidations at Disney that he wouldn’t be well accepted, but I’ve heard no qualms.
The girl, as of yet unnamed, will appear in a new computer-animated Disney TV series My Friends Tigger and Pooh, which will premiere in 2007. link (Notice that Tigger gets top billing- he is now as popular, if not more popular, than Pooh himself.) The new series is part of the 80th anniversary of Pooh, who first appeared in the A.A. Milne books in 1926. Disney owns all rights to the Pooh characters.
Adults have appeared in some Peanuts animated specials and have spoken in some. Most notably is the miniseries This Is America, Charlie Brown, which seems to have been out of necessity- how could you teach about famous historical figures if they weren’t seen and/or heard?
“In 1863, Abe Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address.”
“Wah wah wah wah wah wah wah…”
Wait, they made a character example of a creature that only existed in the minds of Pooh and Piglet and the rumor amongst the other animals?
I can’t imagine really getting that upset about it, but it does sort of undermine an important point of that story.
'Bout damned time. Getting to be a regular sausage fest out there in the 100 Acre Woods.
I bet she’s played by Dakota Fanning. Damn kid gets everywhere.
Holy crap! Run away, this is all kinds of wrong!
I feel the love. I do.
But gah, adding a girl is one thing but entirely replacing Chris is just silly. If you’re trying to add something new and interesting to extend the story past everything done in the last 80 years, swapping out a girlish boy for a boyish girl doesn’t strike me as something that’s going to do it. Having both a girl and a boy and then you can get a whole new set of storylines never before possible–which is ostensibly the point.
Not to mention, girls already love Winnie-the-Pooh, but I’m afraid this is going to kill any interest boys might have.
Just wanted to give everybody the chance to read that again.
Disney has already crapped all over the concept; anything they do to it at this point cannot possibly flog it past the crumbling, decayed equine corpse they have made it.
It’s taken them this long to crap all over the concept? They managed it in just one film with The Jungle Book, though admittedly the songs were worth the price of admission in themselves.
Og, that’s awful. The animation is horrible. But what else to expect from Disney, who destroyed the charm of the Milne books so very long ago.
the nagging question is what will her disorder be?
Pooh is developmentaly disabled
Tigger has ADD
Eyeore is depressed
Rabbit is anxious
Piglet has OCD
Owl is a narcissist
Kanga and Roo appear relatively normal
Christopher Robin is destined for a psychotic disorder with all these hallucinations of talking animals.
No, they’ve been crapping over it pretty much constantly since the start. OK, maybe the first couple of animated features were in true earnest, but there is now quite a substantial patina of crap on it, as a result of sustained crapping on it over many years.
Oedipus complex.
I… don’t see it.
My name is Christopher.
So for years I’ve been called Christopher Robin (not my middle name thank Og.) I almost gave in and named my cats Pooh and Tigger. Now my insecure-has-nothing-but-imaginary-friends-alter ego is being replaced by a girl in a bicycle helmet! How disgustingly PC. Indeed! Why if this were the pit, I’d a have a hyperbolic word or two to say about that.
:::stomps foot and wonders off muttering about who should be riding the short bus, Walt is rolling in his grave at how cutsy everything has gone. Or his nitrogen tank, or whatever:::
(A few years ago the 100 acre lot of woods behind my house came up for sale. My friends gave me all kinds of grief over how cute it would be to buy the land. I’d love to but don’t have the cash.)