It may not be too surprising that Walt Disney Pictures, in its ongoing attempt to stay relevant with younger audiences as well as adults, has chosen to revisit its own past. The children of the 1990s who are now adults with their own kids in tow grew up with animated adaptations of classic fairy tales, such as Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin. (Only The Lion King, among those films in the Disney Renaissance, wasn’t a direct adaptation of one specific story; instead, it’s inspired by such classics as Shakespeare’s Hamlet.) And the children of the 1960s and 1970s, who would go on to be parents of those 90s kids, grew up with adaptations of stories like The Jungle Book, Sleeping Beauty, and the King Arthur legend. So the idea that the Walt Disney Company would mine the past for its new films is, by now, standard operating procedure. However, the key (and not-so-minor) difference is that Disney used to look to fairy tales of old for its inspiration; now, to its detriment, it looks to itself. [Read more…]