Saving Mr. Banks Is a Corporate, Borderline-Sexist Spoonful of Lies
In reality, Travers was a feisty, stereotype-breaking bisexual — a single mom who adopted a baby in her 40s, studied Zen meditation in Kyoto, and was publishing erotica about her silky underwear 10 years before Walt had sketched his mouse. Now that’s a character worth slapping on-screen, instead of this stiff British stereotype determined to steal joy from future generations of children. With her longtime girlfriend and then-adult son erased, this frigid Travers seems like she may not even know how babies are made. Maybe Mary Poppins could sing her a song about it.
Why does it matter that Saving Mr. Banks sabotages its supposed heroine? Because in a Hollywood where men still pen 85 percent of all films, there’s something sour in a movie that roots against a woman who asserted her artistic control by asking to be a co-screenwriter.
And if you think that’s just sour grapes, I’ve got news for you.
After the break, Harlan Ellison.
All of this ties in with my earlier post today, about the grave-robbing Lisbeth Salander book.
And, god, I hate the TV ads for that fucking movie. Hanks does not look like Disney, does not move like Disney, and spouts lines that wouldn’t have been said back at that time. Emma Thompson may well earn an Oscar for her portrayal, but this is not any movie I am eager to see.
Mike Cane’s xBlog 
A bit of depressing trivia: the film was originally based on a 2003 script by Australian TV writer Sue Smith (who penned the excellent ABC miniseries Borderland) for the BBC, focussed mainly on Traver’s early years in Queensland and New South Wales. But Disney threatened legal action to shut down production until they signed up as a production company in 2011, and hired Kelly Marcel to make it politically correct and “Oscar-worthy”. Furthermore, the aforementioned ‘childhood’ sequences were reduced to mere flashbacks, and were filmed not in Australia, but in Simi Valley, CA (which looks NOTHING like the Queensland outback).
Go figure.