Top 10 Fairytales that Need Disney Treatment

Since times forgotten, mankind has exercised the skill of storytelling. All the age groups including the  children never missed a chance to listen to any of the mythological tales. Talking about children, there was a time when they enjoyed the good-old bedtime stories recited to them by their elders. With the cycle of time clogging many years to its record, the children have become hooked to late night movies than ‘waste their time’ with fairy tales. Yet there are a few whose sincere efforts have reinstated the belief that ‘legends never die’ be it real life or stories. SmashingLists lists the 10 best fairy tales that still stand the test of time and allow us once more to bring out the one hidden in all of us—the child, since they need a disney treatment for the ‘modern’ kids.

 

10. The Swan Princess

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As children, Prince Derek and Princess Odette are forced to spend their summers together by their widowed parents, who hope that the two will eventually fall in love and marry, so that the kingdoms of the two will be united. As children and adolescents, Derek and Odette can’t stand each other, but as young adults they begin to see each other in a different light and fall in love with each other. But one night things take a bad turn when Derek unintentionally offends Odette, who then refuses to marry him if he can’t prove that he loves her for who she is and not just her beauty. Odette and her father are then attacked by Lord Rothbart, a vengeful sorcerer who was cast out of William’s kingdom when he plotted against the king. In the form of a beast, Rothbart mortally wounds William, and kidnaps Odette then places her under a spell. Now it is up to Derek to rescue Odette by showing his undying love.

 

9. The Girl Without Hands

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Frankly, the revised version of this fairy tale is not a great deal better than the original, but there are sufficient differences to include it here. In the new version, a poor man is offered wealth by the devil if he gives him whatever is standing behind his mill. The poor man thinks it is an apple tree and agrees – but it is actually his daughter. The devil tries to take the daughter but can’t – because she is pure, so he threatens to take the father unless the daughter allows her father to chop off her hands. She agrees and the father does the deed.

 

8. Roverandom

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“Roverandom” is a novella written by J.R.R. Tolkien, originally told in 1925. It deals with the adventures of a young dog, Rover. In the story, an irritable wizard turns Rover into a toy, and Rover goes to the moon and under the sea in order to find the wizard again to turn him back into a normal-sized dog. The author wrote Roverandom for his son Michael Tolkien to amuse him upon the loss of his favorite toy — a little lead dog.

 

7. The Tin Soldier

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A fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. A wooden toy soldier falls in love with a ballerina, but a jealous troll pushes him off the windowsill. The tin soldier then has a number of adventures to try and get back to his love, including a ride on a paper boat and being eaten by a fish.

 

6. Farmer Giles of Ham

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“Farmer Giles of Ham” is a Medieval fable written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937 and published in 1949. The story describes the encounters between Farmer Giles and a wily dragon named Chrysophylax, and how Giles manages to use these to rise from humble beginnings to rival the king of the land. It is cheerfully anachronistic and light-hearted, set in a fantasy Great Britain of long ago, with mythical creatures, medieval knights, and primitive firearms. It is only tangentially connected with the author’s Middle-earth legendarium: both were originally intended as essays in “English mythology”.

 

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