Disney is a movie company making merchandise to sell… well, more merchandise.īut in Mattel’s case, their reputation was on the line. What’s interesting about Mattel’s formula versus Disney’s is that when you break it down, they’re really just inverses of each other: Mattel is a merchandise company making movies to sell merchandise. Sure, their primary directive was to sell Barbie dolls, but in service of that goal, they had to make movies that little girls would actually watch. Meanwhile, Barbie in the early 2000s was somewhat emulating Disney renaissance films, particularly princess ones. They allllmossst did with Kingdom of the Sun, but it never really happened. Somewhat surprisingly, our Disney overlords never made a full-length adaptation of Prince & the Pauper, though everyone’s probably seen or heard of the Mickey Mouse one, but it’s like 25 minutes long so it doesn’t count! It’s a Mark Twain novel written in 1881!īut the plot is pretty much ingrained into every one’s cultural psyche like a fairytale, so I don’t think I have to do more than summarize the original: prince and pauper meet, realize they’re dopplegangers, and trade places, learning valuable lessons about the others’ lives. As in, it was not written by the Brothers Grimm nor our good friend Hans. I’m not talking about the story, as in, the writing, here (we’ll get into that in a bit) I’m talking about the way they chose to adapt this fairytale into a movie.īut first, allow me to shatter your reality: the Prince and the Pauper ISN’T A FAIRYTALE.
Or, in case you prefer to read, below is the video transcript (not verbatim, but close enough)! Part 1: The Adaptation