Dumbo’s Back

I watched the original Dumbo once as a kid and it terrified me in a way that made me never want to watch it again. The mother, the abuse, those characters in the hallucinatory beer-drunk sequence. A helpless little elephant with these oversized ears getting put through everything. I was maybe seven or eight. One viewing was enough to make me lock that film away.

Now Disney’s making a live-action version with Tim Burton directing, which could go either way—disaster or something genuinely interesting. The cast is strong: Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Alan Arkin, Eva Green glowing like she always does. But Burton’s in that place where his films all seem like variations on the same idea. Twisted enough to register as Burton, but there’s nothing underneath anymore. Beetlejuice had something. Edward Scissorhands had something. Nightmare Before Christmas actually landed somewhere real. Anything since Alice in Wonderland just feels like the same gesture repeated.

Looking at this trailer—and it is very sad, which makes sense—I can’t tell if the sadness is intentional or if he’s just forgotten how to make something that breathes. Maybe melancholy is what he has left now. Maybe that’s fine.

Part of me thinks I should finally go back and watch the original, face down whatever grabbed hold of me thirty years ago. The rational move. The other part is happy leaving that memory exactly where it is, a door I don’t need to open. So I’ll probably wait for this new one and see if Burton’s found any reason to care about something again.