Disney remakes ‘Cinderella’ with impressive changes and its classic magic

With all the live-action remakes of traditional fairy tales in recent years, a retelling of “Cinderella” was only a matter of time. Where others like “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Maleficent” changed quite a bit for a fresher story, this version of “Cinderella” changes little. And what was changed or added only helped the movie become the best Disney remake yet.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh, best known for his Shakespeare film adaptations and “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” the story follows the fortunes of young Ella (played by Lily James) whose merchant father remarries following the tragic death of her mother. Ella welcomes her new stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and her daughters into the family in order to support her loving father.

When her father unexpectedly passes away, Ella finds herself at the mercy of a jealous and cruel new family, eventually reduced to nothing more than a servant girl covered in ashes, spitefully renamed Cinderella.

Despite the cruelty inflicted upon her and her dwindling hope, Ella meets a dashing young stranger in the woods, and unaware that he is really the prince (Richard Madden), she feels she has met a kindred soul. It appears as if Ella’s fortunes may finally change when, shortly after their meeting, the prince sends out an open invitation for all maidens to attend a ball, raising her hopes for another encounter with him.

I hope you know the rest of the story from here. If not, I won’t spoil it.

After only 10 minutes, it seemed like this fairytale had taken life and become real. The production value and look of the movie impressed me from beginning to end. Everything from the costumes, hair and makeup to the set design and cinematography blew me away in how realistic and beautiful they were in every shot while still appearing realistic.

And yet the scenery was enhanced even more by the excellent cast.

James (“Downton Abbey”) portrays a Cinderella more backstory than the 1950 version’s had, helping give her more character which in turn helped the audience feel more for her situation. James takes these added scenes and makes them her own, showing just how caring and strong Cinderella can be in the face of losing her parents and dealing with her awful new family.

Speaking of her family, Blanchett portrays a very devious stepmother with virtually no redeemable features. While Blanchett (“The Lord of the Rings” series) is renowned for playing more complex characters, the evil stepmother is just plain evil. And her expanded backstory, though it does fill in some holes, just supports how simply evil she is, and Blanchett takes the role and runs with it. She made the stepmother as revolting as possible, and the character sticks with you because of it.

The amount of time and character development given to the prince was the biggest and nicest change of all. Where the 1950’s prince had maybe three lines and virtually no character, this prince is a key player in the plot, and we actually get some depth from him. Madden (“Game of Thrones”) is no stranger to playing royalty, but his portrayal of the prince is joyfully hammed up. He fits that stereotypical fairytale prince who’s always charming and always smiling with a sparkle in his eye, and it works because of the deeper story going on.

This directly ties into the king’s and the duke’s stories. In the 1950 version they are just there. No profound motivation—no character outside comic relief. Here, they’re involved in a Disney-fied political thriller. The king (played by Derek Jacobi) is dying of an unnamed respiratory disease and wants his son to marry before he passes.

Meanwhile, the duke (played by Stellan Skarsgård) has ulterior motives of taking power away from the prince unless he does exactly as the duke advises for “the good of the kingdom.” The suspense between the king and the duke each trying to rule the kingdom as they see fit ads more to the story than just fairy dust.

Speaking of fairy dust, Helena Bonham Carter plays the fairy godmother, and oh boy is she goofy. This is the point where the serious aspects of the story took a dive into just making kids laugh. There are one liners and snarkiness, and they’re all fun, but definitely aimed at impressing preschoolers in the audience, not about furthering the plot, even if the magical scene is needed.

This movie is a gem that had me hooked from “Once upon a time” to “they lived happily ever after.” It’s beautiful to look at, the actors are honest and real while having the time of their lives hamming it up and the overall message shines through. I say Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo yourself to the nearest theater and see it for yourself.

“The Hobbit” trilogy comes to an end, but not nearly soon enough

I can see why Peter Jackson wanted to make “The Hobbit” into three movies instead of two. Besides making 50 percent more money, much more character development happens and the story feels more complete—a beginning, a middle and an end.

But it didn’t need to be three movies. It didn’t even need to be two. Nevertheless, we got a third Hobbit movie anyway, and for the most part it was not bad.

“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” is the third installment of the Hobbit movie franchise and sixth Middle Earth movie co-written and directed by Peter Jackson. Beginning almost immediately where the previous film left off, the vengeful dragon Smaug is destroying the peaceful hamlet of Laketown as Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and the dwarves lay claim to the Lonely Mountain.

But their celebration is short-lived as Thorin (Richard Armitage) grows obsessed with finding the Arkenstone and keeping all the treasure inside for himself and his relatives. Meanwhile, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) is rescued by his elven and wizard friends where an unexpected emergence of Sauron, the main antagonist of “The Lord of the Rings,” occurs.

Unfortunately for all involved the struggle has only just begun, because armies of dwarves, elves, orcs, humans and goblins converge at the base of the Lonely Mountain, all with a plan to take the treasure inside. The fight for the future of Middle Earth has only just begun.

First of all, Martin Freeman is Bilbo Baggins. No other actor has captured the character or what a hobbit is supposed to be except for Freeman, though Ian Holm came close. Freeman’s acting wasn’t underwhelming or over-the-top, but spot on. The subtlety and sincerity in every move he made and word he said showed a deep and vulnerable man—or hobbit—that makes these movies worth it.

However, when a movie by the same people who made “The Lord of the Rings” looks like it’s trying too hard to look like “The Lord of the Rings,” something is wrong. It may be the 48 frames per second, it may be the new cameras and 3D or it may just be the special effects crew, but sometimes this movie looked more fake than Fellowship of the Ring did 13 years ago.

The actual battle with the five armies tries to be as big and exciting as the battle in Return of the King, but it just looked like a bunch of CGI and green screen in 3D. Even the soundtrack sounded more like a parody of the Lord of the Rings scores than a serious score for The Hobbit.

The story, for the most part, is okay. Everything that was actually in the novel, or was very much in the spirit of the novel, worked wonderfully. But everything that came from the appendixes or other Middle Earth books and was shoe horned into these movies was distracting and wasteful…except for Sylvester McCoy as the wizard Radagast. He was fun.

Ian McKellen was great as Gandalf, which should be no surprise to anyone. All the actors who portrayed the dwarves, elves, Laketown men and orcs were just fine. I’m surprised that in three movies clocking in at eight hours total, I didn’t really care about what happened to any one of the supporting characters. Honestly, their stories weren’t very interesting and their motivations not very impressive. So for what script they had, everyone was good.

What we needed was more Bilbo. If we were given two three-hour movies with every scene that had no direct connection to Bilbo cut out, the movies would have been better. It is called “The Hobbit,” after all. Shouldn’t Bilbo be the central hero with the story surrounding him? He is the narrator and “writer” of the book in Lord of the Rings. He wouldn’t have known what was going on in nearly 30 percent of what we saw in this trilogy.

At least there were some short scenes with British and Australian greats like Hugo Weaving, Christopher Lee, Cate Blanchett and Benedict Cumberbatch as the voice of Smaug. The first three are extremely important in the Lord of the Rings films, so seeing them encounter Sauron does give an insight into their character in the later stories/earlier films. And Cumberbatch is a great actor voicing Smaug, an equally great villain.

If you’re a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, then you will like some parts of this movie. If you like fantasy and action/adventure, you will like some parts of this movie. In the end, it’s the final Middle Earth installment that could have been so much better, but without Peter Jackson in charge it could have been so much worse as well.