With the release of Disney's take on "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," Victor Hugo no doubt flipped in his crypt. While the story lends itself well to song and spectacle, both of which are abundant here, the novel is just too sad to pass through the Disney prism unreformed.
Gone is all reference to Quasimodo's deafness. Gone is the poet/playwright; much of his role is commandeered by Phoebus. A vain, shallow jerk in the original, who thinks Esmerelda is a piece of a$$, Phoebus, in Diz, becomes the romantic hero, if something of a jock. (He also has an inclination to pun, as when he commands his horse, "Achilles! Heel!" -- or when, regarding Esmerelda's goat, he says, "I didn't know you had a kid.") And, of course, both Esmerelda and the reconstructed Phoebus survive in the Diz version; in the novel, Frollo murders Phoebus and successfully frames the girl, who is executed for it. (So a Diz movie has a happy ending. Don't try to tell me that's a spoiler.)
The unspeakably sad conclusion of the novel is supplanted by cartoon Quasi's emergence into the sunlight, at Esmerelda's urging, to be hailed as the toast of Paris. The theme, fortunately, isn't so much the hackneyed lesson to "accept people no matter how they look," and more the question of what makes a monster and what makes a man (i.e., a retread of the core concern of the Diz "Beauty and the Beast"). Still, when Mel Brooks finally gave Frankenstein's monster a long-overdue happy ending, at least he had the sense to do it in the context of a satire.
Then again, there ARE those gargoyles.
Gone is all reference to Quasimodo's deafness. Gone is the poet/playwright; much of his role is commandeered by Phoebus. A vain, shallow jerk in the original, who thinks Esmerelda is a piece of a$$, Phoebus, in Diz, becomes the romantic hero, if something of a jock. (He also has an inclination to pun, as when he commands his horse, "Achilles! Heel!" -- or when, regarding Esmerelda's goat, he says, "I didn't know you had a kid.") And, of course, both Esmerelda and the reconstructed Phoebus survive in the Diz version; in the novel, Frollo murders Phoebus and successfully frames the girl, who is executed for it. (So a Diz movie has a happy ending. Don't try to tell me that's a spoiler.)
The unspeakably sad conclusion of the novel is supplanted by cartoon Quasi's emergence into the sunlight, at Esmerelda's urging, to be hailed as the toast of Paris. The theme, fortunately, isn't so much the hackneyed lesson to "accept people no matter how they look," and more the question of what makes a monster and what makes a man (i.e., a retread of the core concern of the Diz "Beauty and the Beast"). Still, when Mel Brooks finally gave Frankenstein's monster a long-overdue happy ending, at least he had the sense to do it in the context of a satire.
Then again, there ARE those gargoyles.