Film of the Week: Dumbo (Specifically, the Pink Elephants Scene)

Disney’s Dumbo, released in 1941, featured the famous scene when the main character, Dumbo and his best friend, Timothy Q. Mouse, started hallucinating pink elephants. The scene itself was a lucid, fluid couple of minutes of wacky animation accompanied by a bouncy soundtrack and strong vocals. It was intended to scare the main characters, so of course it weirded out us viewers. It was the one scene that people remembered the most of the entire film, and is still recognised as one of the best pieces of animation in Disney’s achieve.

Disney is now going through a rather peculiar phase where they are updating their most famous animations into live-action films. When it was announced they’d be updating The Lion King, it just didn’t make any sense. For Disney, I can sort of see their point of view. They’re allowing new audiences to enjoy their classic stories in higher quality – and with technology in the film industry advancing astronomically quickly each year, reinventing their classic stories doesn’t seem all that bad of an idea, especially if it gets the newer generations enjoying the much beloved classics. The Lion King was released in 1994, the year I was born, so I would not have consciously enjoyed it for a least 4 to 5 years later; but my point is that was the only version of that film I could enjoy. Dumbo was released in 1941, so it was out a good few years before I sat down and watched it; but my point is that was the only version of that film I could enjoy. With The Lion King being reimagined, I do feel as if it is a little unnecessary.

The Lion King is a beautiful masterpiece. It’s majestic soundtrack, it’s epic, emotional rollercoaster of a story – surely they best way to get the newer generation to enjoy the likes of The Lion King is to sit them in front of the original, not update it – maybe remaster it in HD, but not renew it with computer animation.

My opinion is unchanged with Dumbo. However, my curiosity was caught when I heard who was directing it. Tim Burton, known for his weird and wonderful imagination – who likes to put a wacky spin on his films. Dumbo features a wonderful imaginative scene, with a wacky spin, known as the Pink Elephants scene. Putting the mind of Tim Burton in charge of revamping that scene did sound intriguing. How was he going to do it? What effect will it have on the viewer? It certainly needed to aim high to even be on par with the original. Revamping anything comes with the sense of knowing your version will be compared to that of the original no matter what, and prepare yourself for many people to state the original is better for many reasons.

This isn’t going to be a standard movie review, this will be my opinion on that specific scene, The Pink Elephants scene. And I’m going to start off with stating how disappointed I felt with it. It was flat, hollow, and not near enough to anything the original scene conveyed. I have acknowledged a couple of times that the world of animation does allow for higher limits to that of live action as more can be achieved with animation than with live-action, but the Pink Elephants scene was entirely CGI anyway, and with the billions of pounds Disney makes in a year, with them wanting to impact the newer generation with their classic stories, I would’ve thought they’d put much more into what they did. Even if that particular scene cost hundreds of millions of pounds to make, more than any other part of the film combined, I’m confident it wouldn’t have mattered because people would’ve enjoyed it, they would’ve liked the effect that scene had.

The original was filled with pure imagination and wondrous, never before seen weirdness, the live-action tried to acknowledge that, but all we were given to acknowledge that scene was a few sentient bubbles in the air. Sure, sentient bubbles in the air does sound weird in of itself, but the scene doesn’t last that long, those bubbles don’t do much, and there are too many breakaways to Dumbo and the circus performers casting the bubbles. What would have made the scene much better is if they replaced Dumbo and the performers with more bits of the sentient bubbles dancing in the air, we would’ve had a few seconds more animation and therefore possibly a better effect.

The director known for his wacky films, vivid imagination; all we see is a few bubbles in the air, dancing about. Dumbo is proving why no studio should revamp any of their classics, or at least, if they really, really want to revamp, then make sure the film is a synonym; not identical, but a film that gives off the same vibe. If Disney wants to give the newer generation a chance to enjoy the originals, then you’ve essentially got to recreate the originals. Not frame by frame, because then that really would be unnecessary, but to create the same effects we had when we were younger, watching that for the first time. What Disney should have done is made that Pink Elephants scene just as powerful as the first, so the revamped Dumbo is their classic for when they grow up into adults. Instead, all we get is a Dumbo that didn’t live up to any expectations and forced us adults to get the newer generation to sit in front of the original and prove to them that it’s superior, because it is.

It’s the same with Beauty and the Beast – God knows how that made a billion at the box office – and Lion King, and now Dumbo. They should at least give the impression that they want to convince us all of them were a necessary move.

And that concludes my rant.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)