Sad to say this but our tradition of bashing yet-to-be-released movies of a Christmas theme continues. You could say we are compelled to put the screws to the new Nutcracker coming out this fall.
Hollywood just gives us no choice.
This time, as other times in the past, the maker of a holiday stinker is none other than Disney.
Out now are some truly bizarre trailers of a butchered Nutcracker story that Disney calls The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.
The story is a childhood fantasy run amok:
We see them in a typical 19th century Christmas setting around a tree and about to receive their Christmas gifts. In waltzes the Toymaker, who impresses them with all manner of wonderful playthings only to put them away for safekeeping while the children go to bed.
As if to satisfy them a little, the toymaker breaks out The Nutcracker, a small wooden device made for cracking nuts that is ingeniously made to look like a little man.
The two central children characters – Fritz and Clara – immediately take to the Nutcracker and Clara in particular is quite smitten with it until Fritz seems to break it.
Worried, she gets up in the middle of the night to check on it, and wanders back into the room with the Christmas tree as the clock strikes midnight and witnesses the Christmas tree grow to a magical height and the Nutcracker transforms into a life-sized man – and he’s come to life.
Soon Clara finds herself a witness to chaos as the room fills with Mice and Gingerbread Soldiers, who have come to do battle before her. The fantasy continues, as a lot of little girl fantasies do, involving a prince, dancing fairies and love everlasting.
That’s the classic-story-turned-Christmas tradition set to Tschaikovsky’s world famous score and one you would think Disney would embrace in their princess-film traditions.
But these are different times.
It has been nearly a century in the making in America and the story is known and loved like few ballets ever produced.
But nearly every movie version of The Nutcracker bombs. Seriously. Name one that you can remember, much less call good.
Maybe that’s why Disney is breaking the bank in producing a hybrid Nutcracker story that mashes up the classic tale of Clara with…I don’t, know…a combination of Narnia, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings sprinkled with a little Marvelesque pixie dust.
How far does Disney stray from the traditional Nutcracker?
Well, they replace Tschaikovsky with some emo pop tune by No Doubt titled “Just a Girl”.
That’s a clue.
They have taken what is brilliant and replaced it with a slick, inauthentic and plastic Christmas-themed franchise formula fantasy that not only is designed for multiple sequels but to also brainwash you with feminist messaging that will, in the end, sap any hope of Christmas spirit.
It’s got Morgan Freeman — inexplicably cast as the very German toymaker — looking like Mufasa.
Already you can see that this movie cannot decide what it wants to be.
Disney already has a library of really bad Christmas movies: Jim Carrey’s A Christmas Carol, The Santa Clause 3, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, and Santa Paws 2.
This one could be the worst of them all.