I'm Not A Master, I'm A Director
Chapter 400: The Animated Version Is Not Only Better, It's Shorter Too!
"It's starting."
Sitting in the very front row of the theater, Robert Iger couldn't suppress a trace of excitement as the giant screen slowly lit up.
Middle-aged men loved horse racing and card games.
Young people loved gacha pulls.
These forms of chance—half gambling, half destiny—always brought a thrill no less intense than the rush of romance.
And for those who worked in the film industry, nothing was more exhilarating than seeing their own movie rise onto the big screen and receive thunderous applause.
Even Robert Iger—the "Smiling Mickey Mouse" himself—was no exception.
If he truly felt nothing toward his own films, he wouldn't have stayed in this business for so long.
"I just hope everything goes according to plan…"
He turned around for a brief glance, searching for a certain someone's reaction.
Although he hadn't seen Shinji Matou in the VIP lounge, he knew the young Japanese director had attended the premiere.
At this very moment, that man must be seated somewhere in the back rows, quietly watching the film.
"…It's too dark. I can't see his expression."
Robert Iger shook his head with a hint of regret.
Shinji was a director with an extraordinarily sharp sense for the commercial side of cinema.
If he could observe Shinji's face during the screening, he might be able to infer a thing or two about Cinderella's future box office performance.
Yes, that was the real reason.
It wasn't because he wanted to see a defeated, dejected look after Shinji was overwhelmed by Cinderella. That was both unrealistic and unnecessary.
Having reached middle age, Robert Iger no longer clung to the youthful obsession of "settling the score" with Shinji or savoring the sight of that blue-haired young man grinding his teeth in frustration.
On this matter, he was far more pragmatic.
Beating Shinji would undoubtedly feel amazing, but the probability of Cinderella surpassing Fate/Apocrypha in total box office was honestly very low.
Disney's expectation was simply this:
Use Cinderella's opening-weekend box office to challenge Fate/Apocrypha's second weekend.
That kind of "victory" would be more than enough for the newspapers to hype up.
But it was still far from a true, face-slapping triumph over Shinji.
A win that couldn't make the other side acknowledge defeat wasn't a real win at all.
Only when Disney produced a film that genuinely surpassed Shinji Matou would Robert Iger stand before him and declare victory.
With that thought, he turned his gaze back to the screen.
The movie that would be crucial to Disney's development over the next several years had finally begun.
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At the same moment the screen lit up, Shinji ended his quiet conversation with Cloris and shifted his attention forward.
This was the film that might open the door for Disney's live-action adaptations of their classic animations.
To be honest, before his transmigration, Shinji had never actually watched the live-action Cinderella.
He only knew that the film itself wasn't particularly outstanding, its strong commercial performance largely owed to the solid foundation laid by the animated version.
Despite Disney's raking in profits from live-action animated films, Shinji had only seen two of them.
Beauty and the Beast—because the female lead was Emma Watson, and he watched it out of respect for the Harry Potter series.
The Lion King—because the girl his family had set him up on a blind date with wanted to see it, so he accompanied her.
And after finishing both films, Shinji had fallen into a full thirty minutes of existential contemplation:
Why the hell didn't I just watch the animated versions instead?
Ironically, the girl who had gone with him to The Lion King thought the movie was pretty good.
Which prompted Shinji to instinctively fire back:
"The animated version is the real classic!"
He then launched into a thirty-minute lecture about the superiority of the original animation.
And after that…
There was no "and then."
He never saw that girl again after that "date."
Of course, Shinji wasn't petty enough to blame his failed blind date in his previous life on Disney's films.
But it did highlight one of the defining traits of Disney's live-action remakes—
Their reception was extremely polarized.
Audiences who had never seen the original classic animation would almost certainly rate this series as "good" or higher.
But for veteran movie watchers like Shinji, giving it a passing score was already an act of mercy.
Unfortunately for Shinji, whether Cinderella succeeded or failed had nothing to do with this minority of seasoned viewers—nor with Disney's confident employees.
The ones who would truly decide the film's fate were the most inconspicuous group of all:
The ordinary audience.
If it were his own movie, Shinji had a hundred different ways to highlight its strengths in front of the public.
But when it came to someone else's film, finding a reliable method to turn "good" into "bad" was nearly impossible.
Disney wasn't some small company. Every legitimate tactic he could use had a countermeasure prepared by their PR department.
As long as the film's reputation exploded and audiences kept buying tickets, there was nothing he could do.
Unless he could somehow make the Queen of England get pregnant on the spot and divert the world's attention, otherwise, forget it.
Of course, there was no way Shinji would go for something that heavy.
And even if he did want to get someone pregnant, he'd definitely choose the King of Knights instead of that particular monarch.
After all, both were rulers of Britain.
The effect shouldn't differ too much… right?
As for using magecraft to pull some underhanded trick—
If he actually did that, the Clock Tower would be the first to clean house.
In the end, the viewing experience of the vast majority of ordinary moviegoers was the true key to determining Cinderella's outcome.
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Thanks to the massive promotional platforms of Warner and Disney, combined with the influence of the classic animation, Cinderella had already attracted enormous attention before its release.
At the very least, the premiere was completely sold out.
The audience had come expecting a wonderful fairy tale.
After all, since the last truly classic animated film—The Lion King—Disney hadn't produced a single animated movie that was genuinely recognized by audiences.
Works like The Lion King 2 were widely considered a disgrace to the original.
So even though this Cinderella was a remake of an old classic, it was still a brand-new production.
Surely it would stand on the shoulders of giants and climb even higher, allowing the classic to be remembered in a new way for a new era… right?
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Bill Merck was a film fan who loved fairy tales.
Even though he was a boy, the little girl in his heart had never disappeared.
In East Asia, boys like him—"maiden-at-heart otaku" who loved Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Pretty Cure, and other shōjo works—were everywhere.
But in the West, before that massive wave of "gender movements" rose in later years, Bill's hobby was something that couldn't be made public.
Even if others wouldn't understand, liking something was liking something.
From the moment he noticed Cinderella, he had been full of anticipation and had even dragged two friends along to the premiere.
Of course, to maintain his "straight male image," his excuse for inviting them was:
"Let's go look at the girls. The actress playing Cinderella is pretty cute."
"If we're going to look at girls, why not just watch FA again? The female characters there are way prettier."
Even with the cover story, one of his friends still complained.
"Is this Cinderella as good-looking as Jeanne?"
Of course she wasn't.
That actress's beauty still belonged to the realm of ordinary humans.
Jeanne, on the other hand—boosted by humanity's faith—had already reached a level unattainable by the living.
Not to mention she possessed the most classic face in the Nasuverse—
The face beloved by the Counter Force itself:
The Artoria face.
In any parallel Nasuverse, a woman with that face could achieve an instant, absolute victory.
"It's because this movie's online reviews are really good," Bill explained.
"A lot of people are saying it perfectly recreates the classic parts of the animation. I'm getting tired of all the fighting in FA. It's nice to change things up once in a while."
As a student limited by his age and experience, Bill still didn't know what "paid internet shills" were, nor did he understand the double meanings hidden in professional film critics' words.
"…Is that so?"
Bill's friend was still a little skeptical, but since they were already seated in the theater, there was no reason to leave early.
"Forget it. If the movie really is good, then attending the premiere isn't a loss," he sighed.
"Why does Type-Moon never hold premieres in North America? Plane tickets to Japan are way too expensive, I just can't bring myself to buy them."
However, reality soon proved that a critic's words should never be taken at face value.
"Perfectly recreates the classic parts of the animation" was not praise, it was sarcasm.
Because aside from inheriting the animation's legacy, Cinderella had almost nothing else to offer.
Was Cinderella a good film?
Perhaps under Disney's powerful PR machine, the media and critics would praise it to the heavens.
Perhaps for casual viewers who had never seen the original animation, it was passable.
But for a portion of the audience—
It absolutely wasn't.
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Less than thirty minutes into the screening, Bill—the boy with a heart of steel and lace—had already begun looking around in boredom.
He wasn't the only one.
Many viewers wore the same expression:
Impatient.
As if they were desperately holding in their need to go to the bathroom.
When he watched Cinderella being bullied by her two stepsisters—and the bullying itself was presented in a way so ridiculous it bordered on absurd—Bill's heart felt like a clam packing up and moving house.
What the hell is this?
Unfamiliar with the word "knockoff," Bill's verdict for Cinderella was simple:
A cheap, inferior version of the animation.
This didn't feel like a movie at all.
It felt more like a stage play with overly gorgeous sets.
The exaggerated acting, the awkward performances, and the stiff storytelling made Bill desperately wish that the next second the screen would switch to the animated version and cleanse his eyes.
By the time the film passed the one-and-a-half-hour mark, Bill was yawning nonstop, his eyes watering.
If it weren't for the sudden bursts of loud background music from time to time, he probably would have fallen asleep.
As for the two friends he had dragged along, one was chatting with his girlfriend on his phone, while the other was shaping popcorn into different forms before eating them, purely to kill time.
Neither had the slightest interest in what was playing on the screen.
As a shōjo-loving otaku, Bill stubbornly endured until the very end.
But this nearly two-hour viewing experience left him with nothing but disappointment.
As the film approached its conclusion, Bill thought back on everything he had just watched and couldn't help but curl his lips in disdain.
The plot was so clichéd it made his teeth ache.
It was practically a world where everyone had future sight.
You could guess the next line of dialogue the moment a character opened their mouth, or predict how every other character would respond.
Having an old, familiar plot wasn't really a problem.
Which one of Disney's classic films didn't have a story he could recite by heart?
And yet he still watched them over and over again.
What made those films timeless was their control of pacing and atmosphere—even if you already knew every twist and turn, you could still be drawn into the story and willingly follow it to the end.
But this Cinderella completely failed at that.
The rhythm was off.
The mood was off.
The awkwardness was so overwhelming it made people want to claw out a three-bedroom apartment from the theater floor.
Of course, Bill had to admit that the actress playing Cinderella looked absolutely stunning in the film.
But even if she became more beautiful than Jeanne herself, she still wouldn't be able to save this movie.
"I'm wasting my time," Bill muttered to himself.
"Why didn't I just stay home and watch the animated version? It would've ended sooner, too."
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"At least the costumes and set design are pretty decent, and the songs are nice."
Compared to Bill, who was so bored he felt like he was growing mold in his seat, Jeanne was actually enjoying herself.
At the very least, the maiden's heart she had treasured for so long had been thoroughly satisfied.
Hearing her comment, Shinji reached out and poked her, then mercilessly delivered the finishing blow:
"Jeanne, those songs were copied straight from the animated version. It's completely unchanged."
"…This movie really did take the easy route."
This time, even the French village girl couldn't hold it in.
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Tn: I updated the story once every 2 days, but if you want to see more chapter of this story ahead of time, please go to my Patreon.
Latest Chapter: Chapter 429: Another Poor Kid Who Gets Sold and Still Says Thanks[1]
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