The new Disney’s version of ‘Pinocchio’ doesn’t follow the same script as the animation. We don’t hear the full song ‘When you wish upon a star’ until the end. And the message is different too.
Another main difference is the fact that Gepetto (played by Tom Hanks) made Pinocchio to remind him of a real little boy, most likely his son. We do not know his son’s name but we learn that his mother’s name was Constanza. We even see the boy’s picture and find out that it’s his birthday that day. It looks like Gepetto’s wife either took the boy and left him or they died. Either way he obviously misses them and their company. So he wishes for his little boy to come back. Instead, the Blue Fairy brings Pinocchio to life and explains to him that ‘the most important part about being real isn’t what you’re made of. It’s about what’s in your heart’. And knowing right from wrong. Lastly, of course proving to be brave, truthful and unselfish.
Both films suggest that maybe everything that happened from the moment Jiminy Cricket goes to sleep till the end of the film was just his dream. Unlike many versions of Pinocchio’s story though, from which children are supposed to learn that lying is bad, here Pinocchio gets the key to the cage thanks to his lying. However his nose gets smaller only after he apologizes so the guidance is still that we shouldn’t lie. Then Pinocchio starts believing in positive thinking and that’s when he starts to finally navigate in the ocean of life. But it looks like he had to get really scared to become a ‘good boy’. It didn’t happen until his ears changed into donkey’s ears and he got a donkey tail. But when he decided to give up his career and find his father, his donkey ears and tail disappeared.
In this version Pinocchio and Gepetto are swollen by the sea monster together when they are about to reunite. Finally, here it’s Gepetto who seems to be drowned after they escape and it’s Pinocchio who has to wish for him to still be alive. The Blue Fairy makes his wish come true and wakes Gepetto up. She maybe even changes Pinocchio into a real boy but that’s another story. So here the message is that he has saved Gepetto because he sacrificed his dream to be a real boy and exchanged it for a wish for Gepetto to survive. And in the end Gepetto tells Pinocchio that ‘There isn’t a single thing I would change about you’. So he doesn’t care if he is a real boy or not. For him he is real.
The moral of the story is that even when we make mistakes, we can still make things right by apologizing and amending our behavior. And making mistakes only makes us human, just like sacrificing our dreams for the good of others. And only then our dreams can also come true.
