A teaser trailer was released for an upcoming Pinocchio remake.
My initial takeaways:
- Jiminy Cricket had CGI surgery
- Tom Hanks
And Mr. Hanks seems to have had his reversed.
Watched the original with my wife a few weeks ago and I had never realized just how useless (but well meaning) Jiminy is. Maybe in this one things will be different, but everything else will likely be worse. The live action remakes have been remarkably bad.
Jiminy is as effective as anyone acting like a conscience for someone else.
Thanks to the “Disney Vault” phenomenon I’ve only seen the original film once. I only remember the part where the kids are turned into donkeys as it was used in some kind of disney special combined with stuff like Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman. I tell you as an impressionable kid it worked on me I did not want to try drinking or smoking after that.
Pinocchio is one of my favorite Disney films and is arguably its darkest TO DATE. The thing about Jiminy that the film only implies (and what films today would overly explain or show flashbacks of) was that he was a mere tramp with a scrappy edge. This cricket has been around the world and seen the worst of it which makes him a non-believer at first. He flirts, was probably a cheat because he knows one when he sees it, and most sinful of all, he’s gone a few rounds “playing pool!” No wonder he is the perfect conscience for a living puppet who has no concept of right or wrong. He might treat the position as some sort of dodge that gets him a fancy suit and a gold badge, but he starts to take it seriously as he comes to care for the wooden boy. By the end, his worldview has changed, and he gets his big gold badge not because he asked for it in the beginning, but because he earned it. In a way, the film is just as much about him as it is about Pinocchio.
I’m getting carried away again, lol. Anyway, I love the director Robert Zemeckis, and Tom Hanks can never do wrong. The CGI could be distracting, but I hope Disney goes The Jungle Book route here and allows it to be its own film rather than a remake that leans to heavily on the source material like The Lion King did.
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In the book Pinocchio smashes Jiminy Cricket with a wooden mallet immediately upon meeting him.
Nobody is perfect
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Can’t blame him, because tbf there’s plenty of crickets I’ve wanted to smash with a wooden mallet.
Like, say, every single one of the little fuckers to ever 1. get into the house somehow, and then 2. decide that right when I’m trying to go to sleep is the perfect time to start singing the song of his people.
Don’t mention crickets to Wiggles 
