I caught a bit of one of Disney’s recent “Tinker Bell” movies on the Disney Channel last week. I’m not even sure which one it was, but I liked what I saw. I just got distracted from the program during the commercials, and forgot to check out the rest.
I know I would have loved the movie when I was younger; just about any fantasy story appealed to me, and the few minutes of the Tinker Bell movie I saw contained an entertaining blend of fantasy, humor, action/adventure, and a good balance of time between its male and female leads.
The only thing I might have had trouble with, and which I’ll be honest still befuddles me a bit, is reconciling this new Tinker Bell with the one I knew growing up. “Peter Pan” was one of my favorite stories as a child, and I devoured any version I could find: the Disney movie, of course, the original J.M. Barrie text, the Mary Martin stage production that aired on television and which my parents taped for me, and even an after-school Peter Pan cartoon that I think was produced by Fox and no one I know has ever heard of.
In all of those stories Tinker Bell’s character was consistent. When she wanted, she could be a sweet and playful friend. But she balanced that out with plenty of moments of childish cruelty; for most of the story she clearly hates Wendy, even going so far as to incite the Lost Boys to kill what they think is a Wendy Bird.
Children’s story action heroine that is not, at least not without some serious character development I don’t think the new movies incorporate. It’s like Disney decided that one of the new brands it wanted to create for girls would feature fairies, and they obviously can’t make a fairy franchise without using Tinker Bell, but her character really didn’t work as a lead. So they changed it.
Apparently Disney did attempt to smooth the transition a bit. They commissioned Gail Carson Levine, the author most famous for “Ella Enchanted,” to write a series of books featuring the adventures of Tinker Bell and her fairy friends in Neverland. The Tinker Bell animated films did not begin to appear until after Levine’s first Disney tie-in novel, “Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg,” appeared in 2005.
Learning this leaves me even more confused as to what to feel about all of Tinker Bell’s recent development. I admire Disney for orchestrating the story tie-in between literature and film, especially when they published the books first. Also, “Ella Enchanted” is still one of my favorite books from my childhood, so I am inclined to trust stories from Levine.
I also think it’s good that Tinker Bell’s character is getting developed from that of an often-petulant woman whose character revolves entirely around that of Peter Pan’s, into an independent figure with her own agency. What’s still stymieing me is the transition; I think Disney ought to acknowledge who Tinker Bell was while allowing her to grow in their new stories, instead of just rebooting her character.
Stay tuned for a review of Levine’s first Tinker Bell book, where I’ll attempt to discover if such development did occur. And fans of the Tinker Bell movies should also look forward to September 21, when the newest film in the series, “Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue,” comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray.
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