You know what? I feel like telling you all a story. A story from my childhood. One that has stayed with me for almost two decades now… And NOT for the right reasons either!

When I was a child and still in Primary School for a couple of years towards the end of the 2000’s there was this theatre group that would always come to a neighbouring town near our school. They didn’t come to the town where my school was because well, it was a really, REALLY small town that only had a school, a pub, general store, a couple of houses, a silo and a football field. And every time they did come our school would always go there to see them preform. Specifically, the three times we did go and see them they did re-enactments a few Disney movies and every year was a new movie.

Or at least, I assumed it was Disney movies they were re-creating because yes, I was one of THOSE kids growing up who wasn’t aware that pretty much every animated film by Disney (excluding those made by Pixar) were adaptations of already existing stories. Adaptations which at times would play pretty lossy goosy with how closely they followed the source material. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was an adaptation of an old Grimmdark fairy tale from Germany in 1812 just simply called Snow White. Yeah, it’s JUST called Snow White. I honestly didn’t know the Seven Dwarfs were not even referenced in the original stories title until I looked it up. Hercules was an adaptation of the story of the 12 Labors of Heracles from Greek Mythology. Yes people, it’s actually meant to be said as Heracles! NOT Hercules! Heracles is the original Greek name while Hercules is the name the Romans gave the character back when they were all “Hippity Hoppity, your country, people and culture are now our property!” And Aladdin is an adaptation of the folktale of the same name from the Book of the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. The fact I didn’t pick up on that as a child is even more egregious considering the title and choice lyrics of the very first song you hear in Disney’s Aladdin.

I bring these three stories up in particular not because there are some people who STILL don’t realize most Disney movies are just lifted from other sources (although that is part of the reason I guess) but also because these three plays we saw were retellings of these stories. I always thought that these plays were based of the Disney retellings though since aside from the Hercules one using the Roman name of the character it also depicted Hades as the villain despite the fact that not only was he NOT a villain in the story of Heracles but he was actually a pretty neutral God. That being said, instead of the climax being how it is in Disney’s version where Hercules is willing to sacrifice himself to save Meg only to be ascended to Godhood as he does, this play it just ends with a generic sword fight of Zeus vs Hades with Zeus being beaten and Hercules coming in last second to save his daddy. His daddy who will likely go on to breed with many, many, many, many, MANY more women around Greece. And I hope you aren’t expecting me to go over everything in these plays because I don’t remember a lot about them. I mean I did see these was I was between 10-13 so not everything from these performances is well remembered. However, stuff like how the Hercules play ended is one of the reasons why I’ve only just been recently thinking it might have been the groups own take on these classic stories instead of being recreations of the Disney versions.

No, the reason I personally remember these plays is because of how pandering they were! How do I mean? Well, a couple of main reasons. First one being, the pop culture references! Now again, I was only a child when I originally saw these, so I don’t remember everything from them but the way they tried to pander to us I do. One of these plays, I don’t remember if it was the Hercules or Aladdin one specifically though I vaguely remember it being the Hercules one, but… Hades was a gamer! No really, there was actually a point in this play where Megura talks about how Hades has regularly gotten a six star wanted level on Grand Theft Auto followed by Zeus walking in and Meg going “BUSTED” as an obvious reference  to getting busted in GTA. Putting aside the fact that out of all the games they could have referenced they picked the one that most of the kids in my class were not allowed to play remember that generic sword fight ending I mentioned earlier? Yeah, you want to know what they had blasting in the background of that fight? Duel of the Fates from the Star Wars prequels. Was I super into both of those things growing up? Yes! Yes I was! Did that make the attempts to pander to us any less painful to put up with? No. No it did not!

Now some may be thinking of stopping and telling me “But wait, isn’t one of the most popular characters in any Disney movie, the Genie from Aladdin, also a pop culture referencing machine?” Yes but Genie is usually let off the hook by most people, myself included, for several reasons. Like with some early Simpsons episodes most of the references are pretty obscure and reference stuff that’s pretty old or that older audiences would get and even if you do get them the film isn’t shoving those references down your throat anyway. Plus, Robin William’s performance as the Genie is so entertaining to watch just on it’s own anyway and is regarded as one of the best performances in the film! There’s a good reason some people were hesitant to Will Smith playing the character in the live action remake.

But the pop culture references were not as bad as the OTHER reason I remember from these plays for the wrong reason. Because these plays also had music numbers. And instead of doing covers of classic Disney songs they instead did parody versions of random popular songs from around when we saw these plays. You know where I’m going with these, they were just as painful as the pop culture references. You could argue that they couldn’t do covers of the Disney songs but I mean, have you seen the amount of covers of those songs are up on Youtube? The one I remember the most was during the Aladdin play where Jafar suddenly started singing a parody of Kanye Wests Stronger only he was singing about his plan to over throw Sultan Vinegar and how “I need the lamp now!” Oh yeah, I forgot to mention but what I just called the Sultan just now wasn’t a joke I just made up on the spot either, THAT WAS ACTUALLY WHAT HE WAS CALLED IN THE PLAY! SULTAN VINIGER! EVEN THOUGH THE SUTAN IN BOTH THE ORIGINAL AND DISNEY VERSION OF ALADDIN (at least according to the Disney Wiki) HAS A NAME AND IT’S SULTAN HAMED BOBBOLONIS II OF AGRABAH! And that’s not even counting how these plays end either because after the final scene all the actors decide to get out onto the stage and sing a cover of Reach of the Stars by S Club 7 which, okay yeah that’s a good song but did every one of these need to end on that song? You know how some people give modern animated films crap for ending on a dance party ending? Yeah, this was that but in real life!

The worst part about these plays however is only a day or two after we saw these plays our teacher would actually play for us the Disney versions of these movies and I seriously can not tell you how much better these were to watch compared to those plays! They were actually fun and didn’t make me want to do something very illegal just from watching it! Many people often give Disney shit for the live action remakes they do of there classic films which feel like they are solely being made just to cater to people who hate animation as a medium. And while I am by no means defending them especially as someone who loves animation himself, these plays were no better than what Disney has been trying the past decade.

So yeah, that’s just a little story from my past I’ve had on my mind a lot lately and thought I’d share.