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orchidsangel · 11 months ago

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what are your thoughts on the short lived live action netflix winx show queen?

i personally couldn’t get past the outfits 😔

I loooooove questions like this that let me ramble about my interests outside of dc, also sorry it took so long to post. I hope you're still around to see it <33

Okay, so I vividly remember when the news that a live-action Winx was coming, and everybody was soooooo stoked (including me), and there was the craziest surge of fancast tweets ever. Like, I literally fought with someone on Twitter who fancasted Madelaine Petsch as Bloom, and I was like...well, no! Either way, the role went to Abigail Cowen, who actually plays Dorcas in 'Chilling Adventures of Sabrina', which is a part of the Riverdale universe that Madelaine Petsch is also in because, well, she's in Riverdale. And then K-pop stans were fighting over whether or not Twice's Momo or Blackpink's Lisa would be a better Musa; it was just a crazy day. Understandably so; it's always a big deal when beloved animated shows are adapted into something more real. I personally was jumping for joy.

And then the promo pics were released, and everybody very quickly went, "wtf?" (including me)

Good god, those outfits were so fucking awful. No, they weren't, actually, they were pretty normal, but when you take into account the source content, it was actually pretty fucking bad. That was only a part of the outrage, though; a lot of it came from the whitewashing of Flora's character, which actually wasn't whitewashing but a completely new character named "Terra." Which. Is so...! they ended up introducing Flora later, but I feel like that was due in part to the outrage because, similarly to Bratz, Winx was partially so popular due to its diverse range of characters and cutting out the Latina character to replace her with a white one with the EXACT SAME POWERS is absurd.

Also, they whitewashed Musa, a fully Chinese character. The actress that plays her is part Singaporean, which, yes, is Asian, but they're not interchangeable. Even crazier is she's mostly European and very white-passing, so it's like, uhhhhh.

I do love the dark-skin representation with Aisha, tho, like they ate that ONE thing.

Okay, so now for MY thoughts. I don't hate the show, not in the slightest. I only watched season 1, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, and the only reason I didn't watch s2 is because when it came out, I didn't have the steam to watch something entirely new, and I ended up just forgetting about it. I don't think the show is bad; I just think that when you remember the name it's attached to, it becomes very, very bleak in comparison to its source material.

There's been a very big trend within the past ten or so years where big media companies are "rebooting" childhood favorites but with darker and more mature plots, which was cool the first couple of times, like Riverdale s1, absolute gold (before it devolved into whatever tf it became) and the early seasons of chilling adventures of Sabrina. It was something new and fresh like Twin Peaks meets your beloved animated characters from when you were kids, but it very quickly started to feel like it was an easy way to gain an audience. Fate: The Winx Saga could've been something good had it not been attached to the Winx brand. But then it would've run the risk of failing (which it did anyway) instead of being an overnight smash hit solely because of the namesake. Even if people hate watched it, those are still views, and those company execs get their paychecks.

Like I said, I'd have no qualms about it if it was an original series, and oftentimes I forgot that it wasn't one. But that's the problem, it wasn't.

Making live-action versions of cartoons will always prove to be difficult because those cartoons aren't necessarily meant to translate into real life; that's the whole point. They're not real. They're different and original and have special powers, unrealistic proportions, and weird stances!! When those cartoons are made into life action shows, they try to make them as natural as possible bc, duh, a real person doing those things would look dumb as hell, but also, those shows were enjoyed because of all of those little things that don't translate well in real life. At least that's why I enjoyed them.

I feel like I'd be doing a disservice to even compare the shows because, in my head, they're not even remotely similar. Like it was beyond "making it darker," it really was just an entire show; there was even some continuity between the Archie comics and the bizarre acid trip that was Riverdale. I know I probably sound like a broken record saying how drastically different it was, but the laundry list of differences is so insanely long.

I've rewatched the original Winx many, many times. I know the pilot episode like the back of my hand and all of the major plot points of the first few seasons (bc I abandoned it once that 3d animation came into play). I supposed this is how people who watch movie adaptations of books feel, pointing out details that are "minor" but don't feel minor when you know the source material so well.

Here's a list of differences I can think of off the top of my head from the first season alone because I didn't watch the second in its entirety, so this is just from my understanding:

alfea is in Solaria, which...ughhh, don't piss me off. It's located in Magix in the OG series, along with the Cloud Tower (school for witches) and the Red Fountain (school for specialists), which, btw, were both axed as far as I know.

Witches are kinda sorta a thing? Instead of witches going to a whole different school and having their own unique powers, they live in hiding and are called blood witches because they blood bend.

There are no Trix, just Beatrix. Who is a fairy and an annoying evil one at that?

They are all British. Everyone is British. I don't understand why Bloom is the token American. I don't understand why she is the sole American to go to that school; it doesn't make sense to me in the slightest. Like, if it's a school for all fairies, then...why? And if it was only for British fairies, then...why?

Sky and Stella date, there is so Brandon; in fact, most of the specialists have been axed. (Helia plz come back to me, bae. I took you for granted last time)

Obviously, there's no flora until season 2...which. Don't pmo.

Ummm, the whole "the burned plot"? Which is interesting, I'll admit.

No transformations except that weak ass one they had in s2 that I saw on Twitter and closed the app in a fit of rage

Stella is a bitch?????? She's literally the definition of a girl's best friend, fashion icon, willing to die for the people she loves, and big golden retriever energy. And they just. They made her so awful. She does have a redemption arc, but it's just so...

I can't think of any more off the top of my head, but those are the ones that really stuck with me well over a year after I've seen it.

so what does this mean? This means...well, idk what this means. Like I said previously, the show, if it was standalone, would be absolutely fire i think, but the moment they attached the Winx name to it, it suddenly had really big shoes to fill, and it just couldn't do it, not with those major changes. So many beloved aspects of the original show were taken out for a bunch of new things to be added in, making it feel like something completely new.

If the show wasn't advertised as a Winx show and someone approached me saying, "Hey, ro, if you like Winx, you'll like this show because it's like a darker, more mature version of it." I'd be interested. But the moment it became "Hey, ro, have you seen the new winx show?" it became something else, something with expectations, which often doesn't fare well for live adaptations.

Sorry, this got so long, and sorry I took so long to post it. I hope this jargon made sense, I got carried away.

tldr: I fw it when I forget it's Winx

#☆ seated for real cinema ☆#orchidsangels

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