What is it about a poor girl losing her shoe at a ball that's intrigued us for so many years? Cinderella is hands down the most popular fairy tale of all time. Sorry, super feminists. You can't change that. Like most fairy tales, I can't remember a time where I didn't know the story. I have a theory that because we've read these fairy tales for so long, our children our just built with them in their brains before they're even born. Even the kids who didn't grow up with Disney knows the Cinderella fairy tale, and there are a lot of those stories. Almost every country has they're own version, and I'm here to rank the ten best Cinderella variations from books, movies, TV and others.
10. THE GLASS SLIPPER
The Glass Slipper is my least favorite version of the Cinderella Story. It's not bad or anything. It just didn't do anything for me. But one thing I did like about it is Leslie Caron's Cinderella. In this retelling, Cinderella is a very mucky looking servant girl living with her stepmother and two stepsisters who are known as the two most beautiful girls in the village, and it's bad enough that they treat her bad, but the entire village also looks down on her due to her filthy exterior. The only one who treats her nicely is the hermit woman who lives in the forest and the prince himself, making their romance much more believable.
9. YEH-SHEN: A CINDERELLA STORY FROM CHINA
Perhaps the first Cinderella Story EVER! Yeh-Shen tells the story of a girl who is a slave to her stepmother and Stepsister. Her only friend is a talking goldfish who lives in a nearby pond. Yeh-Shen's stepmother, being the cunt she is, catches the fish, kills him and gives Yeh-Shen the bones just for the sake of being an evil stepmother. Afterwards, it's revealed that the fish's bones are magic and give Yeh-Shen a beautiful dress and a pair of golden shoes to wear to a festival that her stepmother has forbidden her from going.
8. THE ROUGH FACED GIRL
This Cinderella Story comes from the Native Americans. A weak willed man has a wife and two stepdaughters who are cruel to his real daughter, like the original. The only difference is that where the original stepsisters make her sleep next to the fireplace, in this one, the stepsisters make her sleep on the fireplace, resulting in her rough skin.
7. INTO THE WOODS
Into the Woods is a musical consisting of the popular Grimm fairy tales. One of them is the Grimm's take on Perrault's classic Cinderella story. This Cinderella is a self aware maiden who's not completely sure she wants to be with the prince.
6. RAGS
Rags is like A Cinderella Story set in New York with a male lead. There's not much male Cinderella stories out there, but this one is a good one. Keke Palmer plays the gender swapped Prince charming to Max Schneider's Cinderella. And Drake Bell plays the Fairy Godmother character.
5. EVER AFTER: A CINDERELLA STORY
All right. Here we go. A Cinderella Story with a Feminist twist. When I first saw Ever After, I did not like it, mostly because I was a kid watching a Cinderella story with no magic, fairy godmother or Pumpkin coach. But now that I'm older, I really appreciate this movie. Instead of taking place in a kingdom far, far away. It takes place in renaissance era France. Drew Barrymore's Danielle still has the prince and the glass slippers, but this time, she is a strong, intelligent Cinderella. And instead of a Fairy Godmother, she has Leonardo Da Vinci.
4. A CINDERELLA STORY
Confession time. I Love A Cinderella Story. I really do. It's one of my favorite movies. I don't know what about it really attracts me, but if it's ever on TV, I will watch it. Hillary Duff is our Cinderella in this movie, and her Prince charming is the star football player. They meet on a chat room and are both attracted with each other because of their desires to go to Princeton.
3. RODGER'S + HAMMERSTEIN'S CINDERELLA
Rodger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella first began as a TV musical starring Julie Andrews. It was so popular that it spawned two other TV musicals. One starring Lesley Ann Warren in 1965, and one starring Brandi in Whitney Houston's critically acclaimed version in 1997. Finally, in 2013, this TV musical finally made it's home in Broadway, receiving a modern twist, but keeping all that Fairy Tale goodness in tact. In this version, Cinderella and the Prince are not the all perfect cardboard cut outs that they usually are. Cinderella is adventurous and funny, while the prince is kind of a dork who has a lot of girl problems. The Fairy Godmother actually makes sense in this one, in which she is disguised as a crazy beggar woman who has a long friendship with Ella, and only gives her the glass slippers because she was the only one who was generous to her.
2. WALT DISNEY'S CINDERELLA
Ah, the classic Cinderella! The one most of us are familiar with. This version is the one that cemented all those Cinderella tropes into the eye of the public. Blue ballgown, Glass slippers, ugly stepsisters, etc. It's also Disney's best classic fairy tale ever. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty? Pu-lease! Every girl fantasizes about going to a ball in a beautiful ballgown. Not cleaning up after midgets or talking a really long nap. This movie also introduced us to the scariest version of the Wicked Stepmother, named Lady Tremaine. In most versions, she's as cartoony as her daughters. But here, this woman is straight up evil.
1. CINDERELLA (2015)
Disney's recent live action remake of Cinderella is the best in my opinion, because it uses the previous versions of the Cinderella tale as inspiration and incorporates what was good in them into this movie, resulting in almost perfection. One other thing I really liked are the leads. Lily James' Cinderella doesn't know how to fight, but that doesn't make her weak. Her strength comes from within. And Richard Madden's too perfect Prince charming is a Frankenstein of all good qualities a man should have. Cinderella's dress might be blue, but Prince Kit's eyes are even bluer. The costumes and sets are so good it's ridiculous. Instead of CGI-ing it to death like what they did with Maleficent and Alice in Wonderland, the sets really makes you feel that you're in a fairy tale world, and If This movie doesn't win best costume and set design at the Oscars, I will flip every table in Illinois.
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