Friday, November 20, 2009

At What COSTume?

Hey, look, it says here in the book he’s supposed to be wearing leaves.
Oh. Okay. Put some on at the last minute.
Wait a sec. We’ve got his tunic way too short. With those tights? It’s obscene.
Ah, yeah. Okay, put some shorty shorts with hasty jaggedness.
But he doesn’t wear shorts.
Who cares?
I wish we could jazz up his outfit some.
Yeah, yeah, all right. We’ll throw on some hideous stitching down the front and stuff.
In the movie he’s got pointed ears. We should give him -
Eh, s’good enough. Just send him to the parade.
But -

Even as a child, I’d been a stickler for making characters look the way they’re supposed to in the film. For instance, I rarely wanted plush Disney characters because the rendition just didn’t look the same as the character I loved. More like an unreasonable facsimile. Sure, I understand that it doesn’t always “translate,” so to speak, as a toy or real-life outfit. But to me it looked like they never even tried. “Eh, s’good enough.” Not that I wanted it perfect, but I didn’t want something that only vaguely resembled the character either.

So here we have Disney’s Pan at the park, spruced up a little? I think it not only looks ridiculous, but the inconsistency is troublesome for me. (Imagine that!) They could at least have given the actor pointy ears! There’s bound to be some precocious child who’s disappointed as hell.

(Of course, Peter Pan doesn’t really have pointy ears. See here.)

6 comments:

Lewelyn-H said...

Here's an interesting fact for you: in Disneyland Paris in the dark ride "Peter Pan's flight", Hook's hook is on the *right* hand :)
http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/548/peterpanandhook.jpg
(the Hook walking around in the parc has it on the left hand though...)
The Peter in Paris is also much closer to the Disney version... No stitchings or weird shorts ^^

But I don't think children would notice that. I myself have never paid attention to the differences between the park characters and the ones in the films. What I do notice is the way children's faces lit up when they see them :)

Danielle Filas said...

Well said, Moira! I also must admit that I secretly enjoy when the kids freak out, too. "AAAAHGH! GIANT TIGGER!!!"

btw- wotd-- typoodpo

Peter Von Brown said...

Moira -
Oh dear! That's terrible!
The irony of course is that by having it incorrect as per their own version, they now have it right! (You probably knew that as per your *'s)

And I'm sure a lot of children don't care or notice. But I just mean some must. I've seen/heard kids (though not with Disney characters in the park) point out discrepencies before. And as I mentioned, I'm fussy enough to have done it as a kid.

Danielle -
I almost commented myself on that... but from the 'other direction.' It bothers/bothered me that say, Chip n' Dale were as big as, say, Pluto. Not that I don't see WHY they are... but seriously, they're HUGE and they're not supposed to be.
It's just not right. :)

[epsistra]

Lewelyn-H said...

I actually asked a cast member why that had happened, he couldn't tell me... I'll investigate! (I only noticed it a few months ago, after doing the ride like, 26 times. Shame on me)

I guess I'm just used to seeing those characters as big as us, I grew up near the Paris park, so I always disassociated the ones in the park from the ones in the films.
Now I work there, nothing surprises me any more ^^

Lewelyn-H said...

Damn you, tomorrow I'll be staring at all the characters trying to figure out what's wrong with them ^^

Anon said...

Forget size problems--how about the fact that the characters in costume don't even TALK? That always got me as a kid until I realized it was people in suits who weren't even the actors who do the voices.... :P

And I was the kind of kid who noticed inconsistencies as well and was annoyed by them (still am)....