Hey, guys. Lately, I've been spending my spare time working on a fan theory connecting all of the Disney Reinvention films like Alice in Wonderland. I tried posting it on Reddit, but I, how you say, failed miserably. The place is a labyrinth. LABYRINTH I SAY. So I figured that since Blogger is my jam, I could put it on here with great ease. I'll try to to find some other easier forums to post it on, too. Enjoy, webster populous! (WARNING: some spoilers inside.)
THE DISNEY REINVENTIONS THEORY
Hey, people of the internet. Do you know Disney Reinventions? Those live-action reimaginings of classic Disney properties, such as Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella? Well, it seems like these magical, generally critic-bashed flicks are not linked at all other than being revamps. To this I say nay. For I have developed a theory that all the Disney Reinvention movies exist within a multiverse and are connected through several people and things featured in the series. It may sound crazy. But really. After theories about nuclear Spongebob and imaginary Ferris Beuller, why wouldn’t you believe this?
How is it possible?
Good question, slightly larger lettering. Well, It starts with one little room in 2010's Alice in Wonderland:
The Long Hall, as it is called, is an important part in the story of curious Ms. Kingsleigh and her psychedelic adventures. (Maybe not as flashy as the Rabbit Hole scene, but important nonetheless.) In this part, Alice falls into a circular room covered wall-to-wall with fancy doors, one of them being her pint-sized passageway to Wonderland. It’s a cool set and a cool scene, but there’s much more to it than meets the eye. The Long Hall is an interdimensional gateway. Each door leads to a different land featured in a DR (Disney Reinvention) movie. Think about it. How are we supposed to believe that the good folks of Underland just whipped up this room of complex mystic science on the fly as part of a test to see if Alice is Alice? The Mad Hatter is not a genius. An impressive wordsmith and gibberishsmith maybe, but not a genius.
Here is my timeline of the films for visualization:
Maleficent
Cinderella
Alice in Wonderland
Oz the Great & Powerful
Now that we have all this clear, let’s take some time to connect these movies and bring in some within-theory theories of mine (WARNING: you might want to skip one if you are fond of the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella).
We start our timeline with Maleficent, the magic-filled tale of how the Mistress of All Evil wasn’t actually, well, all evil. This film takes place on good ol’ planet Earth, right on what I think is the border of Scotland and England (still not sure if I should give Earth its own door or if the Rabbit Hole itself counts). It features my personal fantasy crush Aurora, the heir to the human kingdom who chose to rule the Moors instead. Awkward. Completely the right choice, but awkward. While the kind gal may have become queen of the Moors, she may have eventually given up the position to live a simpler life with her family:
Seriously, guys. Think about this.
Cinderella’s mom believes in fairy godmothers (which Aurora thought Maleficent was off the bat).
She believes that animals can understand English (Diaval sure could).
She looks kinda like Aurora.
She preaches kindness, which Aurora was chock-full of in the movie.
She’s even got the fancy-shmancy British accent that makes her seem better than you.
Nuff said. Plus, it doesn’t even have to mean that Cinderella's dad is Prince Phillip. In Maleficent, they already kinda proved that it wasn’t true love between those two crazy kids. This could work as long as the sequel doesn’t go screwing it up.
Now, on to Cinderella, another Earth-based DR flick that I just saw for the first time today in order to finish my big, wacky fan theory. Along with an older Aurora played by Agent Carter, the movie also featured the Fairy Godmother, played by a different Carter by the name of Helena Bonham. It might seem at this point that I’ve totally flubbed up my shared universe theory by not accounting for the same actress playing two characters. But slow your chill pill or however that goes, because I, being the meticulous geek that I am, have that covered:
If Anakin could do it, so can you, Helena! So can you. Really though, it isn’t so hard to believe that Iracebeth of Crims, having lost out on the queen position to her sister, finally found happiness in the Fairy Godmother gig. But after a horrible event probably involving someone betraying her trust (hence her current trust issues), she went dark. Now unstable, she took to Underland and seized the throne she had wanted from the beginning, becoming the Red Queen. This, too, could end up getting shattered by the franchise-building menace known as sequels, but it still works for now.
Now, we’ve come full circle. We’re back to the twisted 2010 flick with which we started. But there is still one more left in our timeline: Oz the Great & Powerful (a film tied for my personal favorite of this series). I was somewhat stumped on how to connect this film and Alice in Wonderland. I didn’t want to leave it out of the connection partay. So, I thought about it, and I finally found a very uncanny coincidence that worked almost too well:
Seriously. This could not be an accident. They even have the same little bellhop outfits for crying out loud! In Alice in Wonderland, these monkeys appear working for the Red Godmother, as I would prefer to call her, and then take off to parts unknown when the Jubjub scares the crud out of everyone. To be honest, these primate helpers really don’t bare a lot of resemblance to the ones in Oz. Well, except for one:
Explaining time. These monkeys from Underland, through some series of events, ended up in the Emerald City serving yet another evil royal brod. From what it seems, they were mystically modified by Evanora to be more of a threatening species, hence their new sets of wings and all-around nightmarish quality. The original monkeys branched off, but must’ve at some point cross-bred with the mutant “baboons,” creating a new kind: one keeping generally all the physical traits of the pure breed, but with a sweet pair of flyers. Boom. You’ve got Finley. Who/what got them to Oz remains a mystery though. Curiouser and curiouser . . .
So, there you have it. The DR slate is only getting more and more packed by the day, so I’ll have a lot to add in the upcoming years. Hopefully Through the Looking Glass will give me a character that could be responsible for the monkeys and their little road trip to Oz. Only time will tell. Until then:
PS, special thanks to my sister and my mom for helping me come up with some of the in-theory theories. Callooh callay! =D
