The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)

“The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” (2018) shared many things with world-famous “The Nutcracker” (1890) ballet: the lead was a girl named Clara, there was a nutcracker, the nutcracker was Clara’s bodyguard, it took place during winter, there was no rat king, Clara’s mother died, her father was inconsolable, there was at least one fairy and she was crazy, there were clockwork monsters inside a clock, Clara’s mother was actually a queen, Morgan Freeman, spy-owls, and it all took place in almost-steampunk London.

Wait. 
Hold on. 
Sorry, I meant to say “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” shared almost nothing with the “The Nutcracker” ballet. Clara was the main character, there was one ballet dance number, and “The Nutcracker’s March” played once in the background as an afterthought.

When Disney made “Frozen” (2013), it was originally going to be their take on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” but took a hard narrative pivot after the songwriters belted out “Let It Go.” From there, Disney made the movie we’re all quite familiar with. There are certainly still parallels we can see in the story, but at no point did Disney try to title it with something like “Hans Christian Andersen’s Frozen” or “The Snow Queen of Arrendelle” or anything similar. They clearly recognized that they strayed quite far from the source material and labeled it appropriately. There’s still a “based on the story by...” tag line in the credits, but the movie doesn’t pretend to be Andersen’s story.
“The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” however, did not follow the same behind-the-scenes self-awareness discussion. Had Disney simply called it “Clara and the Four Realms” and included a bunch of the music from the ballet, it would have been just fine. It was one of those times where taking gross liberties with a public domain story could have been really cool if they hadn’t insisted on tying it so closely to said source material. 

Disney also moved the setting from St. Petersburg to London, which didn’t really make any sense as most of the movie took place in the Four Realms, and the castle there had those onion-dome-topped towers (“lúkovichnaya glava”) that you recognize from old Russian buildings.

So anyway.
Clara (Mackenzie Foy) was a tween girl with a recently deceased mother and a passion for Rube Goldberg machines. Her godfather (Morgan Freeman) was a tinkerer of gears and clockwork toys who somehow knew that the one thing necessary to help Clara find resolution to her mother’s death was to send her to Narnia to take her place as queen. Or fight the kingdom’s usurper. It was never clear nor clarified which objective she needed to accomplish to feel complete, so she did both for good measure.
Clearly, she didn’t go to Narnia via a wardrobe. Instead, she went to the Four Realms via a creepy hallway that turned into a hollowed-out log. Duh.

Clara was almost immediately greeted by Captain Philip Nutcracker (Jaden Fowora-Knight), who made for a decent sidekick, then by Sugarplum (Kiera Knightly), the de-facto leader of the Four Realms while Clara’s mother had been off dying in the real world.
Sugarplum was so sickly-sweet that within maybe five minutes of her character introduction, I turned to Megan and said “she’s the bad guy.”
Completely telegraphed plot twist: she was! 
I actually would have been more surprised if they’d kept her as a good guy who just happened to follow that particular tell-tale trope of evildom.
So Sugarplum tricked Clara into stealing something from Mother Ginger (Hellen Mirren), who, obviously, turned out to be the good guy the whole time.

Somewhere during production, an executive said “No, we can’t include a multi-faced rat king like the ballet has - that would traumatize the children. Instead, we need nightmare clowns that can split open their torsos at will, that’s much more unsettling, yet somehow family friendly. Also, I want to include a giant mouse made of a swarm of regular sized mice that you can’t kill or harm in any way while it tries to get you.”
And those, unfortunately, are what we got. 
Despite Mother Ginger seemingly being fully aware that Sugarplum was evil and purposefully misguiding Clara, Ginger still sent her horrifying clown goons and mouse golem to kidnap the girl, followed by Ginger monologuing stupidity instead of cutting to the chase to tell Clara what’s up about Sugarplum.

During the theft quest, Clara found the true meaning of Christmas and discovered that Santa had left the power of self-confidence inside her from the get-go.
Or whatever message you take away when your mother’s final gift to you is a pocket mirror.

Remember up top where I mentioned that Clara like mechanical devices?
Yeah... that never actually paid off. Despite the fact that they introduced Clara by showing her activating her latest device, and that many things in the Four Realms were mechanical and/or clockwork in some way, that never mattered to the story. Sugarplum was not ultimately defeated by a device Clara invented, but simply by a tool that someone else had made that was turned on her.

The movie was rated PG for “some mild peril,” which I think meant “we showed Clara climbing a cliff without a safety harness, please make sure your children are smart enough to realize how bad of an idea that is in real life, and rating it ‘G’ might mean that kids too young/stupid will see it and try.”

The soundtrack, while not just a running score of “The Nutcracker” orchestral pieces, was pretty good. There were samples of various pieces from the ballet, but otherwise the movie was pleasantly scored by an orchestra just making nice orchestra sounds. Nothing to write home about, but fitting.

The special effects, however, where terrible. This was made by Disney, who own Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), who animate all the bonkers shenanigans for whatever the latest “Avengers” movie is. For a 2018 theatrical release, there’s absolutely no excuse for the CGI to be anything less than flawless.

This originally did release in theaters, but I watched it on Netflix with Megan. Had I seen it in theaters and expected it to be anything like the ballet, I would have been quite mad (seriously, get your titles right).
That said: seeing it for free on Netflix at my own comfort and convenience was just about right for the quality of this movie.
If you’ve got a few spare hours at home this holiday season, this isn’t a terrible choice, as long as you actively remind yourself that it just coincidentally shares a title with a ballet and orchestra track that you remember fondly.