Following Disney's nostalgic voyage back to the Hundred Acre Wood in this summer's Christopher Robin, the studio will continue pulling on childhood heartstrings with the release of Mary Poppins Returns. Much like Pooh Bear's latest adventure with a middle-aged Christopher Robin, Mary Poppins isn't getting the remake treatment that many other Disney classics have on the way. It will be a full-fledged sequel continuing the story of a certain magical nanny and the Banks family, who now have a new generation of children. Now Disney has released another look at Mary Poppins Returns that's much more musical. Check it out:
With Mary Poppins Returns coming out in a little under two months, this latest look from Disney Studios features footage of a big musical number that starts with the routine of a bath. As you know, when Mary Poppins is around something so mundane won't do for long. How practically perfect!
In the special look, Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins is with the new Banks children, likely unenthused by taking a bath until she puts her magic touch on the situation. Mary seems to have a certain bubble bath we've never heard of, because a cute dolphin peeks its head out while she is getting it ready. The children, who are previously crossing their arms, notice the smiling dolphin and are immediately intrigued by stepping into the bubbles.
We then get an idea of what happens next as Emily Blunt's uses her sweet singing voice to start a musical number about the undersea spectacle they find themselves in: an ocean full of giant rubber duckies and jumping dolphins. It's just a short sneak peek into the number, but it seems in the vein of "A Spoonful of Sugar" since Mary is helping make a sometimes detestable activity for children a pleasant one full of magic and fun. The scene is beautiful and dreamlike, using the realistic 3D CGI animation completely unavailable in the '60s when the original made its way to theaters.
From the first trailer for Mary Poppins Returns and this new footage of the Disney release, it seems like the sequel is using the framework of the original to create new musical number, but with a new spin on it. For example, the upcoming movie will also include a scene with a mixture of 2D animation and live-action as they did during the songs "Jolly Holiday" and "Super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious," and will have a big number with Lin-Manuel Miranda's gang of lamplighters in a "Step in Time"-inspired number instead of Bert's chimney sweeps.
This is a clever move to for Mary Poppins Returns to find the right mixture between the nostalgic spoonful of sugar we haven't had with the beloved nanny since the '60s and still let the sequel set itself apart from what many see as a flawless Disney classic. Mary Poppins Returns flies into theaters on December 19.
