After her father dies, young Ella (Lily James) is forced to serve her evil stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and selfish stepsisters.
Enter a handsome prince (Richard Madden) and a fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter)...
I ended up checking out this movie because of Cliffhanger.
Well, the news that Lily James would be headlining a remake/reboot.
It sounded interesting, and it also made me realise that while I knew the name, I had missed a big chunk of her career.
The first of Disney’s live-action remakes under the Bob Iger regime, Cinderella is a more important movie than I remembered.
As with everything Iger touches, this was an idea from somewhere else - in this case, from inside the (Mouse) house.
His predecessor Michael Eisner had started the ball rolling with remakes of The Jungle Book and The 101 Dalmatians.
Those films had been relatively successful, but that was a different period for Disney. The Renaissance-era animated films were behemoths, getting massive recognition from audiences and critics that the studio had not seen in decades.
By the 2010s, Disney was in the process of shifting from its bread-and-butter of animated films to live-action blockbusters. While its own animation wing declined, it was also struggling to make ground with live-action blockbusters.
Pirates of the Caribbean was a massive success, but later attempts (Tron Legacy, John Carter and The Lone Ranger) failed to spark similar success.
The studio made a calculation and shifted from trying to generate new original material, to buying up proven quantities - first, Marvel in 2010, then Lucasfilm in 2012.
One of Disney’s biggest hits from this time period showed another potential treasure trove, one that was not owned by another studio that they would have to buy: Alice in Wonderland.
It then made the pivot into its own back-catalogue, starting with 2014’s Maleficent, which combined an iconic animated villain with an iconic star in Angelina Jolie. It cost a fortune but made enough to be considered a success.
Together these three franchises would help the studio dominate the box office for the rest of the decade.
While Maleficent at least had a unique hook, Cinderella was a straight remake of its source.
And it became a big hit.
I did not see it when it came out. I remember it getting good reviews but Cinderella was never my favourite Disney, and there was nothing about it that made me want to check it out.
Watching it a decade later is to see its success magnified and distorted.
The original is a tight 70-something minutes. I had not watched it since I was in single digits. It is beautifully animated, and its narrative is ridiculously economical. If it has a flaw, it is the characterisation of the title character, who is so perfectly put upon, she comes across bland. as with a lot of classic Disney animation, it is the villain, the evil stepmother, who steals the show.
The 2015 version expands the story by another half hour, and to its credit, this extra screen time is used to add context and definition to the characters.
Underpinning the central romance is a darker story about gender roles and the socio-economic pressures behind them.
The step-mother is no less calculating, but her hatred of Cinderella seems defined by jealousy, and a fear that her tenuous grip on her husband’s diminished domain will slip away - a fear also, for her daughters’ futures, as they lack both Ella’s talents and empathy.
In the lead role, Lily James is a born star.
She has been in movies since this one, but I either missed them, or forgot she was in them (she’s great in Little Woods).
Watching her in this, I was enraptured.
She has an effervescence that is infectious. Even in the film’s darkest moments, she gives Ella this unstoppable sense of compassion - even for the people who are trying to break her.
While leavened with melancholy, James gives the character a sense of optimism that never comes off as cloying.
In a world where movie stars were nurtured, James would no doubt be more prominent than she is.
Not to say she has disappeared. She got good notices in this, the Mamma Mia sequel, and playing Pamela Anderson in a miniseries, but it feels like it’s been a minute.
The pandemic did not help, but the death of middle-tier (budget) genres like the romantic comedy and the thriller have probably not helped.
In the past, studios would cast up-coming actors in a variety of genres to test their appeal.
Nowadays, the focus is on franchises and established intellectual property, limiting opportunities for performers. People who might have become movie stars (think Chris Hemsworth) are only successful when matched to a specific character.
Looking back at her career this far, James seems to have ducked that trap. Aside from Cinderella, she has not been in any similar big budget movies. Instead she has been in smaller but still commercial films like The Darkest Hour, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Yesterday.
I also cannot escape the nagging feeling that James’s thunder was muffled a little by the arrival of another Disney Princess in Daisy Ridley’s Rey in The Force Awakens, which came out the same year as Cinderella.
Maybe this is just me, but it always seems like both actresses are occupying a similar space in Hollywood (James was the original casting choice for Young Woman and the Sea, before Ridley took the role).
Somehow playing over-the-top, but with a sliver of humanity, Cate Blanchett is a great match for Cinderella.
Rather than the diabolical schemer of the original, Blanchett’s interpretation is a mask - she is a hard-edged woman who is obsessed with maintaining status at all costs.
While not made explicit, there is an underlying fear to the step mother’s malice. If she loses any more status, she will lose what power she has left.
Her cynical view of humanity is the exact opposite of Ella. And her hatred of the younger woman seems to be based (at least partially) in jealousy - Ella has not allowed her misfortune to curdle her view of the world, or how she treats other people.
Is it better than the original?
I would not go that far, but its choices do nothing to break the story. They enrich existing elements, but do not supplant them.
I am not the biggest fan of Kenneth Branagh as a filmmaker. There is something overwrought about his work.
It is a bit of cliche to refer to someone who started in theatre as having a theatrical sensibility, but there is something I bump up against.
He has a good handle on the material, and that slightly florid sensibility works for the heightened world of this film.
After a decade the seams are showing in the digital backdrops and creature effects. It says something for the movie that the dramatic bones are solid enough that even though I was never fully immersed, I was at least invested in the character.
Watching Cinderella ‘15 without an in-depth awareness of its successors, it felt novel. Knowing it was the first of a series of remakes was slightly depressing.
I have not seen many of the other live-action remakes. The only one I have seen was Aladdin, which was a stiff, bland recreation. It did not make me excited to see any of the other ones.
Cinderella felt like it was made with a specific angle on the material. The filmmakers see something missing from the original, or to be more precise, an aspect of the original that could be expanded upon.
It feels like there is nothing unique to these late remakes. All big budget movies are intended to make money, but what I take away from Aladdin, and the clips I see of the other modern remakes (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and The Little Mermaid) is a complete lack of originality. These are movies intended to boost Disney’s market share, nothing more.
I cannot see these movies enduring, and it would be a pity if Cinderella ‘15 is dragged into the memory hole with the others.
It is not great - it probably works best as a companion to the animated original. But it is at least trying to be a movie that stands on its own. And as a showcase for Lily James, it deserves a watch.
