The critical response to Pinocchio has not been kind, and much of that appears to boil down to some bizarre changes made to the story during its transition from animation to live-action.
For example, Honest John never returns to leave Pinocchio in the clutches of the evil Coachmaster. At the same time, the Blue Fairy only appears right at the movie's start when she brings Gepetto's latest creation to life. That feels more like corner cutting than anything else, but it's the final few minutes which see this reimaging fall straight off a cliff.
In the 1940 classic, Gepetto and Pinocchio manage to escape from Monstro, only for the wooden boy to die when they wash up on shore. After Gepetto returns home with the marionette, The Blue Fairy revives Pinocchio as a real boy and makes those kids taken by the Coachmaster and turned into donkeys human again.
In this remake, it's Gepetto who can't be revived back on land. Pinocchio mourns for his father before a tear falls from his wooden eye (it appears to be imbued with Blue Fairy magic) that brings his father back to life.
They leave the cave, walking into blue light, presumably heading home. As they do so, Pinocchio's wooden limbs seem to slowly turn into real human flesh. However, a voiceover from Jiminy Cricket makes it clear Pinocchio may or may not have become a real boy, with the only thing that really matters being that he's real in his heart.
No one knows if his becoming a human really happened, while that plot thread about the kids taken by the Coachmaster (and the weird CG smoke monsters that work for him) goes completely unresolved.
It's something of a bizarre ending to the movie, and one that feels unnecessarily ambiguous. We're not sure what led to the change, but it does feel like when the decision was made to move Pinocchio to streaming, Disney chose to save some money by simplifying certain moments (thereby eliminating the need to bring back actors and use VFX).
What did you think about this new take on Pinocchio?