The ouroboros was an ancient iconographic depicting a snake or a dragon biting on it’s own tail, and used to symbolize a mad variety of concepts in different cultures: birth, death, the continuity of life, disorder, yin and yang, infinity, circular reasoning, elements of alchemy … basically, a handy and interesting picture of some kind of circular concept. The notion of an organism busily munching down on it’s own substance also occurred to me on contemplating the likely movie disaster that will be the live-action version (with CGI-generated dwarves, so exactly how live-action is it, really?) of Disney’s Snow White. Which hotly-anticipated disaster is finally lumbering into the port of general release this week, where it is expected to crash into the dock and immolate. Not only may it likely crash and burn itself, but also the future career of Rachael Zegler … who might be able to sing and dance, but otherwise off-screen seems to have all the charm and tempting appeal of a liverwurst sandwich forgotten in the back of the employee’s break room refrigerator for a month or so.

So, no – won’t be darkening the door of the multiplex anytime soon for this expensive and much-delayed botch job, or waste hours watching when it goes appears on streaming video (as it probably will, and in record time.) As a somewhat creative person, who has long been in the business (if you can call it that) of providing diversion and entertainment, I have often wondered … why? Why go through the long, expensive process of doing a live-action movie version of an animated feature film anyway; following a carbon-copy of the script, duplicating the animated characters with actors which sort of resemble them, and copying the background scenery and setting with artfully designed sets.

Well, obviously, doing a live-action version of a popular animated movie must have paid off in the past, or Disney wouldn’t have done it more than once. Someone in the accounting department of the House of Mouse must have tallied up the expenses and projected profits and calculated a win. I guess there is also an element of proving that yes, it can be done. It probably also makes sense to remind the audience of Disney-created characters, images and stories, a decade or so after an animated feature has made bank, and to get another bite of the merchandising apple … but creating a world through animation has really no limitations. Even movie magic can only go so far, in a live-action duplication.

There is another downside to the live-action restyling of animated movies, and I wonder if anyone at the higher echelons at the House of Mouse has considered it. And that would be the routine practice of a live version, rather than putting the creative energy and the expense into a new animated creation, rather than just retooling a past product. There is a whole world of folk tales out there, heroes and heroines, stories, fables, amazing deeds and colorful backgrounds for original and new creations. To be fair, Disney has dabbled with a few of them. They did so very well with Mulan, with Moana, Encanto, Coco, and the Lion King; why not come up with more stories based on international folklore and backgrounds, rather than burn money doing live-action versions, as they did and are with the first two named? How long can the creative serpent come around and consume itself in reworking older creations? How long can the serpent continue, when there is nothing original and new? Discuss, if you are interested.

(Jamie the Wonder Grandson loves Moana – so did my niece and nephew, when they were his age … and no, not the least interested in the live-action version, if it is ever completed and released.)