I’ve noticed that Hollywood has now adopted a copy-and-change-it-a-little attitude. I know movies are remade all the time but the rate at which they are remaking them and adding scary twists to them is just unacceptable. Every fairytale I read as a child is now being shoved in my face and not in the sweet and innocent way I remember them. I loved Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; it was a classic I was sure would never fade. But Hollywood is changing these wonderfully made classics into grisly stories, if Snow White and the Huntsman is anything to go by. The movie was so dark that it could damn near scare a child to death!  I watched Beastly (based on Beauty and the Beast) and almost committed suicide. Every time I watch Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1000 times and counting), it gives me those chills you get when you hear beautiful singing! Century Cinema at Kigali City Towers was showing OZ, The Great and Powerful, another remake based on the classic, The Wizard of Oz, which I want to watch out of sheer curiosity. Perhaps I’m determined to prove that nothing beats an original (WHO I’m trying to prove it to is a mystery since Hollywood can’t be bothered by my existence.)The first time it happened I thought it was going to be a one-time deal. I watched the trailer of Little Red Riding Hood and thought, this has got to be a joke! In the childhood story that I loved, Little Red was a sweet granddaughter who was too trusting and because of it her grandmother was eaten by a hungry and manipulative wolf (or if your parents fed you the tamer version, Little Red’s grandmother was in the closet the whole time). In the new Hollywood version, however, there was a love-triangle and people wearing wolf masks for no apparent reason. I’m not even going to waste my time on that.  My hopes that Hollywood would lay off the bad remakes was crushed when Hollywood continued to pour them out, one after the other. In Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Hansel is diabetic which is strange because the original never said anything about diabetes. Five year olds do not understand diabetes, and these stories were made for them– not to freak them out or talk about complicated health issues! The beauty of fairy tales is that even while they’re tragic, they are still light enough to make us happy.Now, there’s Jack the Giant Slayer, originally called Jack and The Beanstalk.  In the trailer, there are several giants instead of one, and I doubt any of them say the famous original line; Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman….That’s some classic #%*&!!