We are all familiar with Disney version of The Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, and Snow White. They are all have been “Disneyfied” to meet the standards of family movies, so you and your children can watch it in your living room. But what you may not know is that these movies are the adaptation of old fairy tales, written hundreds of years ago. And the original stories might be a little bit different than what we know today.
The Little Mermaid
We all know about Disney version of this story: Ariel, a beautiful young mermaid who falls in love with human and trades her voice with legs so she can walk. She finally meets the prince and they live happily ever after. The original story doesn’t end quite happily. The little mermaid which has no name falls in love with a human. She goes to a sea witch to ask for a pair of legs. But the deal that’s given by sea witch is that she has to give up her voice, and whenever she takes a step, it will feel like she’s walking on a dagger. But of course, because she loves him, she is willing to take the risk. Unfortunately, the deal doesn’t end there. In three days she has to marry the prince, if not she’ll die. The sea witch also tells her, if she wants to go back to be a mermaid, she just needs to kill the prince. In short, after all the sacrifices she takes, the prince marries someone else. The little mermaid’s sisters come to the surface to give her a dagger to kill the prince. But because of the love she has for the prince, she chooses to die and becomes a sea foam.
Rapunzel
Rapunzel is a German
fairy tale which adapted by Disney in the movie Tangled. This movie is
one of my favourite Disney movies because everything about it is just perfect.
The humour, the songs and the characters are just brilliant. There are several different
versions of Rapunzel, but the most famous one is about a girl who has beautiful
long hair and she is kept in a tower by an enchantress. She shouts “Rapunzel,
let down your hair” and she’ll climb the hair to get into the tower. Rapunzel
then falls in love with a prince, but the enchantress finds out about it. She
cuts her hair and when the prince comes, she pretends to be Rapunzel. When he’s
climbing, the enchantress pushes him and he falls onto a thorny bush and goes blind
because the thorns pierce through his eyes. Blind and desperate, he wanders in
the forest for years, eating only roots and berries until someday he finally
meets Rapunzel again.
Snow White
Who doesn’t know
about the story of a girl who ate a poisonous apple, died and a true love kiss
saved her? Yes, that’s the story of Snow White. The original version isn’t too
far from how Disney created it. In the movie, the evil witch commands a hunter
to kill Snow White and bring her heart. However, the original version mentions
that she actually demands for Snow White’s liver and lungs for dinner. Yikes!
In the end of the story, which obviously isn’t there in the movie, the evil
queen has to wear a pair of glowing-hot iron shoes and forced to dance with the
shoes on until she drops dead as her punishment.
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