Nutcracker and the Four Realms

(Highlight the text in brackets to see potential spoilers.)

Although this movie did very badly (and deservingly so for changing the story beyond all recognition…if they’d just called it The Four Realms and use different names, I think they’d have done better), the costumes are gorgeous, and the sets are stunning. You have no idea how annoyed I am that such amazing designs were basically wasted on a movie that isn’t good. When I saw the promotional photos and the dolls and the other pretty stuff, I hoped so hard that they wouldn’t mess it up.  Just look at these.  Wow.  No joke on that part.  Almost any single still shot looks like an individual piece of art.

But when it turned out that the only things this movie has in common with the VERY-well-know version of the story we absolutely all know practically from birth is that a girl gets a gift {one gets a Nutcracker, the other an egg}) on Christmas Eve, and ends up in a magical world {(one really through a dream/”The prince takes her”, and the other through a wardrobe…like Narnia}, and the names, I knew it wasn’t going to end well.  And it hasn’t.  And those are all it has in common.  Period.  The Nutcracker stand-in is a {human} from the get-go, the gift came from a different person{(a gift from her dead mother)}, a relative in the story we know is {dead (her mother)} and there’s another relation who has no point {(she has an older sister)}…

I’ve read summary after summary, from several different reviewers, and the summaries are pretty consistent, and sounds like it could have made a semi-interesting story if it had been treated as its own original story to begin with.  Don’t offer someone warm chocolate brownies, and then give them an icicle and tell them it’s your version of brownies.  The icicle may be good, but after anticipating that brownie, it’s a let-down.

I’m still trying to decide if I want to spend $16.50 to see this movie when it would be just for the costumes.  If I went, the worst is I’d be out $16.50, which is less than Disney’s $110-mil loss so far (plus promotional expenses) (it’s made about $20mil worldwide on a budget of $130mil).  There’s no rush to decide.

But I do want to recreate some of the gowns.  So far, I haven’t seen any fan-names.   I also haven’t seen many people consider themselves to be fans of the movie.  So blue dress, queen dress {(she finds out she’s a queen…yes, a queen)}?  And Sugarplum’s costume name is obvious. She has one. And she’s Sugarplum.

So I will be attempting something of a costume study on them. Regardless of the story, I suspect there will be people wanting to cosplay, or who are just plain interested in more.

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