The new Dumbo movie does not fly…


Keegan Honig

Camron Troyer is not a fan of the new movie “Dumbo”.

Emily Harrier, Staff Writer

Disney’s remake of the classic film, Dumbo, fell short in its debut at the box office. Many industries predicted the film would bring in 50 to $58 million, but the film only brought in an estimated $45 million.

Tim Burton, who is mostly known for his dark twists on films, put his own twist on the classic Dumbo movie that many people have enjoyed for years. The American filmmaker recreated multiple classic movies, such as Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Although many of his other movies have topped the charts, Dumbo just did not live up to expectations that many moviegoers had for the film.

“I remember watching Dumbo as a little kid, and I really liked it. After hearing about Disney remaking Dumbo, I really wanted to go see it,” Autumn Bradbury said.

To start, the CGI (or computer-generated images) used in the film were absolutely terrible. While watching the film, you could easily tell what parts were CGI animated and what parts were live-action. This is very disappointing to see, especially when you’ve been waiting so long to see this film. Additionally, I feel like Burton needed to do is spend less time developing unimportant characters and spend more time improving the quality of the CGI animated characters.

“I was really disappointed by the poor CGI in this movie. I really thought it could have been better,” Julie Findley explained.

Another thing that made me dislike the movie was how much Burton added to the original storyline. Burton focused more on the human characters in the film than on Dumbo as the main character. He added in characters such as Holt Farrier (who is played by Colin Farrier), a former circus star who finds himself without an arm after he gets back from fighting in World War I. The film mostly follows him and his two children, Milly and Joe. This makes it seem like Dumbo’s involvement in the film is just a side plot.

Also, Burton made the film into a horror movie. He involved many unsettling topics such as animal abuse/mistreatment, war, and death. There is a scene in the film when Mrs. Jumbo, Dumbo’s mother, is being beaten by one of the elephant trainers. This results in the death of the trainer. This is just one of the many dark twists that Burton added. Also, this film certainly has some scenes that are too spooky for young children. Even at 16 years old, I got creeped out by certain scenes in the film.

In my opinion, the Dumbo movie should not have been remade. They should have left the original film alone and not have replaced it with something so dark and sinister. Even though the original film is 80 years old, it is still an absolutely great movie that is child-friendly. It has a light-hearted storyline and brings a form of magic to the viewers, unlike this remade version.