Randall wrote:No-win? Yes, probably, in terms of failing to gain mass acceptance. But I give them a win for Burton's Dumbo already, based on the trailers. I've got a good feeling about that one; it has potential to be one of his better films, mixing the odd with some real emotion. I missed the mice in the Cinderella "remake," but I can do without "speaking Timothy" if I still get a new compelling story about a dad making his kids proud.
Cinderella was a central enough story that had already had dozens of versions, from the Sherman Brothers to Rodgers & Hammerstein, so Kenneth Branagh could have just as easily taken the D-word
off of his version, and it would still be entertaining--
They managed to redeem the character without going overboard on "feminist revision", nobody sings in the first place, and when Helena Bonham Carter's Fairy Godmother doesn't even
try to bear the same resemblance to Verna Felton's, it feels as if there's no point in jamming "Bibbidy Bobbity Boo" on the end credits at
all, except to push Corporate Entity into our heads.
The Disney connection felt as unnecessary as Christopher Walken suddenly breaking into Louis Prima songs in "Jungle Book".
There is no "Classic retold story" of Dumbo, OTOH--There's one version, the kids' story that was made into one corporate Disney movie, and it's got crows and a talking mouse in it...NON-negotiable.
If the Timster wants to put Michael Keaton and Eva Green in it--as (ahem, cough)
usual 
--and do his own personal childhood "tribute" to the Pink Elephants and Creepy Clowns, then we're back to agreeing to disagree on what happened with the Alice movies.*
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* - (And yeah, I know, "Alice" was supposed to be the videogame, but just for the sake of argument of everyone else thinking it was a "remake".)
