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Mary PoPPins returns
What’s to Happen all Happened Beforevery aware of how fragile it is and how dark
it is. And we want to be reminded 54 years
later that you can find in darkest times – and
this family is experiencing a dark time – the
joy and the childlike energy and feeling
of life and unity. And she does that in this
wonderful way of never taking credit for it
and brings them to life and then is gone, and
they heal in a beautiful way. So it’s a tiny
story in a way, it’s one family, but it has a
huge scope to it, because it says a lot about
the world and trying to heal the world and
heal it in a very simple way.”
When talks of another Mary Poppins film
first started, Disney was never interested in
simply remaking the classic film. The studio
always envisioned something new, and with
eight PL Travers Poppins books published
there was plenty of material to work from.
However, the stories acted more as vignettes
that had to be stitched together to create a
narrative as intriguing as the first film.
“I knew the other PL Travers books
because my kids read them all,” explains
Platt. “[Rob and I] had a love for the
character and the original film.”
Conversations about a new film started
years ago, after 2010’s Alice In Wonderland
but way before Disney’s live-action Beauty
And The Beast. “[It was] a way for us to
tell our version that was true enough to the
integrity of the original, but could take all of
us on a new journey and a new adventure,”
Platt continues. “So the bar was very high...
We didn’t say yes until we knew we could.
“It’s wonderful and a gift to the world
to take an animated film like Beauty And
The Beast and do a wonderful job with it
and do such a beautiful, magical film –
and obviously the world was ready for it,
because it made a billion-and-a-half dollars,
whatever it was, I don’t know. But for us,
what’s exciting is, we get to do something
even more challenging and a little bit
more unknown, which is to take a familiar
character that is beloved, but to take the
audience with that familiar character on a
very unexpected journey into unfamiliar
territory. And if we do our job well and we
do it with love and affection and magic, then
I think we could have, and we think we will
have, an exuberant, memorable new classic,
that will live on in this century. That’s what
we are trying to do.”
Though Jane and Michael are both now
grown, the magic of Poppins still touches
them. “I always feel that with this film, Mary
Poppins takes the everyday life, and makes
it extraordinary,” says Marshall. “So a walk
to the park or a bath in our film becomes an
adventure. Cleaning up your room, a chore,
becomes something wonderful. It’s how you
perceive life. And she finds that without ever
commenting on it or taking credit for it, anddenies that it ever happened.”
“This is the wonderful thing about this
film, I think is that there’s so much magic
in it,” adds Platt. “And there’s a little magic
where people do things that you can’t
imagine are possible, there’s magic in
the chemistry of the cast, there’s magic in
the music, there’s magic in the sensibility of
the world... What’s really wonderful about
this particular film is that there’s magic for
every age.”
According to Platt, it’s a film for
everybody, which is something that doesn’t
come around that often: “If you are old like
me with a deep love and nostalgia for the
original film, you can’t [wait] to see it, and
you are curious, and Dick Van Dyke is in it.
If you are a millennial, you grew up on the
film. And if you are a child who might not
know the original and you grew up in the
world of Pixar and all the animated films,
you might know the character from the
theme parks or a song or two, but you get
to discover it all over again. And if you are
a parent, you get to discover it through the
eyes of your child. And that is why this is a
film for everybody. And it starts with magic,
which is really what we need in the world
now more than ever.”Mary Poppins Returns is in cinemas on
21 December.Emily Blunt is just the
perfect choice for Mary.