The Forgotten Film
With the much-maligned Michael Eisner gone and the highly-respected Bob Iger now in charge of The Walt Disney Company, spirits within the studio began to rise again in 2006, particularly amongst the animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation. For over a decade, Pixar had been the envy of the animation industry, and now two of its leaders, Edwin Catmull and John Lasseter, were at the helm of leading Disney animation through the difficult transition from traditional animation to fully computer-generated films.
Both Catmull and Lasseter were passionately determined to save the legacy of the department Walt Disney had established in the 1930s, particularly in the wake of several years of box office disappointments and downright failures. While Catmull was adamant in keeping Disney and Pixar distinctly separate studios (projects and personnel were not to be shared), the newly-minted president did bring Pixar’s ethos of a “filmmaker-driven studio” as opposed to the “executive-drive studio” Disney had become under Eisner’s leadership.
In recent years, directors, producers, and animators were subjected to mandatory notes and changes from higher-ranking development executives, which Catmull and Lasseter felt stifled the creative process. Under their new leadership, Disney productions would now receive constructive and, more importantly, non-mandatory feedback from fellow filmmakers, which was how Pixar had operated since its inception in the early 1990s. Lasseter also established a weekly routine of personally meeting with filmmakers and delivering instant feedback, particularly as films entered their final year of production.
To streamline the production process, Catmull removed many “gatekeeper” midlevel executive positions, which he felt simply slowed down the entire animation operation and created an environment of too many cooks in the kitchen. Lasseter set about rehiring a number of veteran Disney filmmakers who had left the studio in recent years after struggling with Eisner’s management style, including directors Ron Clements and John Musker and animators Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn, Andreas Deja, and Chris Buck.
But the most daunting task facing Lasseter was assessing Disney’s current slate of films in various stages of development, including Meet the Robinsons, an adaptation of E. D. Baker’s fairy tale The Frog Princess, and a completely original film centred on an adorable white dog. Under the working title American Dog, the project was the brainchild of director Chris Sanders, the man responsible for Lilo & Stitch, which stood as one of Disney’s few box office successes of recent times.
In Sanders’ original narrative, American Dog focused on a famous TV dog named Henry, who finds himself stranded in the middle of the Nevada desert with an oversized, radioactive rabbit and a grouchy, one-eyed cat, which Henry mistakenly believes is merely the plot of the latest episode of his television series. As he did with Meet the Robinsons, Lasseter requested a test screening of American Dog to access its progress. And, just like Meet the Robinsons, Lasseter was not impressed with what he was shown and subsequently provided Sanders with a lengthy list of constructive changes.
By all accounts, Sanders was not impressed with Lasseter’s feedback and bluntly refused the proposed changes, leading to his removal from the project in December 2006. In March 2007, Sanders negotiated an end to his contract with Disney and joined rival DreamWorks Animation, where he would direct the hugely successful animated titles How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods. In a curious twist of fate, Sanders’ 2020 live-action directorial debut Call of the Wild would ultimately be distributed by Disney, after the studio’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019.
With Sanders gone, Lasseter assigned screenwriter Chris Williams and animator Bryon Howard to co-direct the languishing project. Williams was chosen due to his history with successfully saving The Emperor’s New Groove from development hell, while Howard had been working as a supervising animator on American Dog and keenly understood the project. Despite the fact computer-animated films generally required four years to develop and animate, Lasseter informed Williams and Howard they had only 18 months to complete the project.
The Forgotten Film
With the much-maligned Michael Eisner gone and the highly-respected Bob Iger now in charge of The Walt Disney Company, spirits within the studio began to rise again in 2006, particularly amongst the animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation. For over a decade, Pixar had been the envy of the animation industry, and now two of its leaders, Edwin Catmull and John Lasseter, were at the helm of leading Disney animation through the difficult transition from traditional animation to fully computer-generated films.
Both Catmull and Lasseter were passionately determined to save the legacy of the department Walt Disney had established in the 1930s, particularly in the wake of several years of box office disappointments and downright failures. While Catmull was adamant in keeping Disney and Pixar distinctly separate studios (projects and personnel were not to be shared), the newly-minted president did bring Pixar’s ethos of a “filmmaker-driven studio” as opposed to the “executive-drive studio” Disney had become under Eisner’s leadership.
In recent years, directors, producers, and animators were subjected to mandatory notes and changes from higher-ranking development executives, which Catmull and Lasseter felt stifled the creative process. Under their new leadership, Disney productions would now receive constructive and, more importantly, non-mandatory feedback from fellow filmmakers, which was how Pixar had operated since its inception in the early 1990s. Lasseter also established a weekly routine of personally meeting with filmmakers and delivering instant feedback, particularly as films entered their final year of production.
To streamline the production process, Catmull removed many “gatekeeper” midlevel executive positions, which he felt simply slowed down the entire animation operation and created an environment of too many cooks in the kitchen. Lasseter set about rehiring a number of veteran Disney filmmakers who had left the studio in recent years after struggling with Eisner’s management style, including directors Ron Clements and John Musker and animators Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn, Andreas Deja, and Chris Buck.
But the most daunting task facing Lasseter was assessing Disney’s current slate of films in various stages of development, including Meet the Robinsons, an adaptation of E. D. Baker’s fairy tale The Frog Princess, and a completely original film centred on an adorable white dog. Under the working title American Dog, the project was the brainchild of director Chris Sanders, the man responsible for Lilo & Stitch, which stood as one of Disney’s few box office successes of recent times.
In Sanders’ original narrative, American Dog focused on a famous TV dog named Henry, who finds himself stranded in the middle of the Nevada desert with an oversized, radioactive rabbit and a grouchy, one-eyed cat, which Henry mistakenly believes is merely the plot of the latest episode of his television series. As he did with Meet the Robinsons, Lasseter requested a test screening of American Dog to access its progress. And, just like Meet the Robinsons, Lasseter was not impressed with what he was shown and subsequently provided Sanders with a lengthy list of constructive changes.
By all accounts, Sanders was not impressed with Lasseter’s feedback and bluntly refused the proposed changes, leading to his removal from the project in December 2006. In March 2007, Sanders negotiated an end to his contract with Disney and joined rival DreamWorks Animation, where he would direct the hugely successful animated titles How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods. In a curious twist of fate, Sanders’ 2020 live-action directorial debut Call of the Wild would ultimately be distributed by Disney, after the studio’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019.
With Sanders gone, Lasseter assigned screenwriter Chris Williams and animator Bryon Howard to co-direct the languishing project. Williams was chosen due to his history with successfully saving The Emperor’s New Groove from development hell, while Howard had been working as a supervising animator on American Dog and keenly understood the project. Despite the fact computer-animated films generally required four years to develop and animate, Lasseter informed Williams and Howard they had only 18 months to complete the project.
With the assistance of screenwriter Dan Fogelman, Williams and Howard quickly set about reworking the entire concept. While the trio kept the concept of a television dog confusing real life for a fictitious production, they pushed the conceit further by moving the setting to a Hollywood studio where the pooch, now renamed Bolt, is purposely misled by the show’s director into believing he’s blessed with superpowers to achieve a level of absolute realness during filming.
THE STORY
A White Shepherd puppy named Bolt is adopted by an eight-year-old girl named Penny. Five years later, Bolt and Penny star in a hit television series called Bolt, in which Bolt uses various superpowers to protect Penny from the villain. To gain a more realistic performance, the show's producers have deceived Bolt his entire life, arranging the filming in such a way that Bolt believes everything in the show is real and that he really has superpowers, including a devastatingly powerful sonic scream-like “super bark". After a cliffhanger episode causes Bolt to believe Penny has been kidnapped, he escapes from his on-set trailer in Hollywood but knocks himself unconscious in the process and is trapped inside a box of foam peanuts which is shipped to New York City.
In New York, Bolt resumes his search for Penny and, much to his dismay and confusion, finds out the hard way that his "superpowers" are useless. He encounters Mittens, a feral cat who bullies pigeons out of their food. Bolt compels Mittens to guide him back to Penny — Mittens being convinced her captor is a lunatic — and the two start their journey westward by truck. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Penny is distraught over Bolt's disappearance but is convinced by the studio to continue filming with a less experienced lookalike dog.
****************
From the moment Williams and Howard took over the production of Bolt, the co-directors only had one voice in mind for the titular dog; John Travolta. When Travolta was offered the role, he leapt at the opportunity, with the actor having long-wished to voice a Disney animated character. For the role of Bolt’s owner and best friend Penny, the co-directors enlisted one of Disney’s biggest stars in Miley Cyrus, who was currently starring on the hugely - popular Disney Channel television show Hannah Montana. The pair also recorded an original song “I Thought I Lost You” to be played during the end credits, which was co-written by Cyrus with country music producer Jeffrey Steele.
For the role of Rhino the hamster, animator Mark Walton recorded temporary vocals to be used as references for preliminary animation. However, Walton’s lively performance fit the character perfectly, and Williams and Howard couldn’t imagine anyone else in the role. The co-directors kept their decision a secret until Walton was invited to a recording session for what he thought was merely more test vocals. When he was handed the script for his session, the directors had sneakily included the line, “…and Mark Walton is the voice of Rhino!”
MY VERDICT
Despite its critical and commercial success at the time, Bolt has strangely vanished from the pop culture zeitgeist over the past 12 years. Perhaps that’s due to the unfortunate virtue of the film being released in the same year as something so artistically groundbreaking as Pixar’s WALL·E or as staggeringly popular as DreamWorks’ Kung-Fu Panda. Bolt stood on the cusp of Disney’s second Renaissance period and it seems most have forgotten how the film laid the foundation for future success stories. Personally, when I first saw it, I was somewhat conflicted over it. Primarily because it has John Travolta, of whom I have been an almost obsessed fan for twenty two years. But on the other hand, it has Miley Cyrus, who at that point in my life in 2008, I DESPISED. No, I had nothing against her personally, because that would be petty and small. I just hated Hannah Montana, because it was a Disney Channel show that replaced all the brilliant cartoons I used to watch on Saturday mornings as a kid. To say nothing of the fact that I just disapprove of the Disney Channel in general. I have come to think better of this film in my more mature years, however, and now I see it as charming and fun.
Is Bolt a Disney Classic? Not quite, but it’s a solid little film that gave the studio the confidence to keep striving forward with computer animation.
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