The recent spate of Disney live-action/CGI remakes have differed in how loyal they remain to their source material: for example, while Tim Burton’s Dumbo changed a great deal from the 1941 animation, Beauty and the Beast more or less stuck to the script from the original.
The latest film to get the remake treatment from the House of Mouse is Pinocchio, with Robert Zemeckis directing a new version of the take of the wooden boy starring the likes of Tom Hanks, Luke Evans and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
But how closely does it stick to the tremendous 1940 animation? Read on for everything you need to know.
Pinocchio on Disney Plus changes
The new film is actually more or less a direct remake – with the script following just about the exact same narrative as the 1940 film, which itself actually differed rather a lot from it’s Italian source material.
Once again, Jiminy Cricket is the way into the story, and many other key moments – the emergence of the Blue Fairy to bring the puppet to life, the menacing appearance of Honest John to tempt Pinocchio, and the trip to Pleasure Island complete with nightmarish donkey transformations – all happen as they did in the first film.
“We use the 1940 Disney version as a template and an outline for our story,” Zemeckis explained in the film’s press notes. “So it follows pretty much the same adventure that Pinocchio follows in the animated version. We modernise the storytelling because there was a different sort of pacing in movies then than there is now, but we basically kept the spirit and the tone and the theme of the first movie.”
That said, there are a couple of changes, including the addition of a new female puppet character and her owner Fabiana (Kyanne Lamaya) who likes to vicariously dance through her – as evidenced in one of the film’s new musical numbers, I Will Always Dance.
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In total, there are four new songs in the Pinocchio 2022 soundtrack – all written and directed by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard, including two sung by Tom Hanks as Geppetto and one by Luke Evans as the sinister Coachman.
Meanwhile, there are also a couple of changes to the surviving songs carried over from the original: whereas Jiminy Cricket sings the iconic When You Wish Upon a Star in the original version, here Cynthia Erivo’s Blue Fairy performs it – with Zemeckis and co-writer Chris Wietz believing it made more sense from the standpoint of the story to have her sing it.
Some other changes to the script include updating the dialogue to reflect the 21st Century – there’s a name drop for Chris Pine and a mention of influencers, for example – while the scenes in Pleasure Island are also changed to reflect modern times.
Whereas the original saw Pinocchio guzzle beer and smoke cigars in these key scenes, this has been removed from the film this time around, which producer Andrew Miano explaining that they wanted to “make Pleasure Island tempting and scary in ways that are relevant to parents and kids today”.
He said: “In the original film, they were drinking beer and smoking cigars, whereas now they are on a sugar rush drinking root beer, and we also include elements like bullying and social media.”
Perhaps the biggest change of all, however, comes at the very end of the film when it is left ambiguous whether the puppet really does turn into a real human boy after all. Zemeckis explained that this came about as a way to avoid spoonfeeding audiences.
“He may or may not have,” he said. “It makes the story more personal to the viewer, so that everyone can go on Pinocchio’s journey in a way that is pure, in the sense that we’re not telling the audience what they have to feel or what they have to think.
“Audiences today are way more sophisticated, and they don’t want to be spoon-fed. They want to be able to think for themselves.”
“Pinocchio doesn’t have to turn into a ‘real’ flesh-and-blood boy,” added Weitz. “He is real in that he has learned his lessons and grown a conscience, but there is no need for him to end up a certain way physically for him to prove that. Geppetto has gone on a journey himself and realizes that Pinocchio is a person in his own right and is as ‘real’ to him as any flesh-and-blood boy.”
Pinocchio is streaming now on Disney Plus – sign up to Disney Plus for £7.99 a month or £79.90 for a year. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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