The Arrival a Decade Too Late
After the death of Walt Disney in 1966, the Disney studio found itself desperately attempting to find a winning formula to continue creating successful animated films without their fearless leader. When The Aristocats proved to be a surprise smash hit in 1970, the studio felt they’d uncovered the secret to success; talking animals. For the next two decades, the studio would almost exclusively focus on releasing animated films starring a menagerie of adorable animals.
Despite the staggering success of The Lion King, it was a formula Disney had mostly strayed from in the 1990s, choosing instead to craft more serious human-centric stories with the occasional talking animal thrown in as a comedic sidekick. But as the box office results of Disney animated films began to tumble, then-CEO Michael Eisner pushed his creative team to craft another animal-centric project in an attempt to echo the huge profits (and merchandise dollars) of Simba and co.
Inspired by a 19th-century Albert Bierstadt landscape painting of the untouched American West the CEO had recently purchased, Eisner suggested a North American backdrop, with the star of the film to be a grizzly bear. The initial idea was to loosely base the film on William Shakespeare’s King Lear, with the film centring on an old blind bear who journeyed through the forest with his three daughters.
In late 1997, veteran animator Aaron Blaise learned of the project and asked then-president of Walt Disney Feature Animation Thomas Schumacher if he could direct the film with his fellow animator Robert Walker. Blaise was a highly respected animator at the studio and Schumacher felt he could make a great director. However, Blaise wasn’t a fan of the plans for a King Lear adaptation and wrote his own two-page treatment with producer Chuck Williams, which now stood as a father-son story in which the son is magically transformed into a bear, inspired by Native American transformation myths. After reading the revised story, Schumacher immediately approved the project to enter development and proclaimed, “This is the idea of the century.” Schumacher selected perennial Disney screenwriter Tab Murphy to write the film’s draft script under the working title Bears and assigned the entire project to Walt Disney Animation Florida. While the division was responsible for the entire animation of Mulan and Lilo & Stitch, this would mark the very first (and last) time the Orlando-based division created an animated feature from its very inception.
When Bears was officially greenlit in 1999, Blaise, Walker, and key members of the animation team embarked on an extensive research trip to Alaska, which had been chosen as the film’s setting. The team visited the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, Kodiak Island, and the glaciers of Denali National Park, and the Kenai Fjords National Park. The co-directors were so inspired by the majesty of the latter location, they chose to name their protagonist Kenai.
The team also took additional research trips through Montana’s Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming’s Grand Teton, and California’s Sequoia National Park for further inspiration for the film’s background animation. While Bears would technically be set in Alaska, Blaise wanted his animation team to craft imagery from various locations of North America to create one “idealistic” view that captured the sheer vastness of the entire country and featured “the best of everything.”
By the year 2000, the story of Bears now featured a new older bear character named Grizz, who took Kenai under his wing and guided the transformed human along his journey. The role was offered to Michael Clarke Duncan, who attended the studio for preliminary test recordings, while Grizz’s initial character designs mirrored Duncan’s huge stature in the form of an imposing black bear with a heart of gold.
While Duncan’s performance was working well, Blaise felt Kenai’s journey would prove more endearing if the roles were reversed and Kenai was the mentor to an adorable bear cub named Koda. This adjustment ultimately reworked the entire storyline of the film, with the character of Kenai’s father eliminated and the plot now focusing more closely on the notion of brotherhood, both between Kenai and pseudo-brother Koda and Kenai and his two human brothers, Sitka and Denahi. As such, the film was soon retitled Brother Bear.
THE STORY
In post Ice Age Alaska, the local tribesmen believe all creatures are created through the Great Spirits, who are said to appear in the form of an aurora. A trio of brothers, Kenai, the youngest; Denahi, the middle; and Sitka, the eldest, return to their tribe in order to receive their totems, necklaces in the shapes of different animals. The particular animals they represent symbolise what they must achieve to call themselves men. Unlike Sitka, who gained the eagle of guidance, and Denahi, who gained the wolf of wisdom, Kenai receives the bear of love. He objects to his totem, stating that bears are thieves, and believes his point is made a fact when a Kodiak bear steals their basket of salmon. Kenai and his brothers pursue the bear, but a fight ends on top of a glacier, during which Sitka gives his life to save his brothers by dislodging the glacier, although the bear survives the fall. After Sitka's funeral, an enraged Kenai blames the bear for Sitka's death. He hunts down and chases the bear up onto a rocky cliff, fighting and eventually slaying it. The Spirits, represented by Sitka's spirit in the form of a bald eagle, show up and transform Kenai into a bear after the dead bear's body evaporates and joins them. Denahi arrives and, believing that Kenai was killed by the bear from earlier, vows to avenge Kenai by hunting it down. Kenai falls down some rapids, survives, and is healed by Tanana, the shaman of his tribe. She does not speak the bear language, but advises him to return to the mountain to find Sitka and be turned back to a human, but only when he atones for his actions; she vanishes without an explanation. Kenai quickly discovers that the wildlife can now speak to him, meeting a pair of moose brothers named Rutt and Tuke. He gets caught in a trap, but is freed by an outgoing bear cub named Koda. They make a deal: Kenai will escort Koda to an annual salmon run and then the cub will lead Kenai to the mountain. What happens next, I will not spoil.
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For the role of Kenai, the filmmakers auditioned over 100 actors in a bid to find a performer with the right voice qualities to capture the character’s vulnerability. But the role was proving difficult to cast, especially given Kenai stood as both the film’s hero and pseudo-villain and needed to earn an audiences’ sympathy even in the midst of some terrible character choices. After seeing Joaquin Phoenix’s complex performance in Gladiator, Blaise felt they had found their Kenai.
But Blaise assumed Phoenix would never accept the role, particularly after the actor received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as the nefarious Commodus. Much to the entire team’s surprise, Phoenix leapt at the opportunity and immediately signed on to the project. In a later interview, Phoenix exclaimed, “Oh, forget the Oscar nomination. The real pinnacle is that I’m playing an animated character in a Disney film. Isn’t that just the greatest?”
For the role of Koda, the team chose to listen to rejected audition tapes for the role of Nemo in Pixar’s upcoming production, Finding Nemo. It was here they discovered 11-year-old Jeremy Suarez and fell in love with his unbridled energy and playful attitude. As was Disney tradition, the filmmakers crafted two comedic sidekick characters in a pair of goofy moose brothers named Rutt and Tuke, who were voiced by Canadian comedians Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis.
MY VERDICT
As with several Disney films, Brother Bear has been mostly forgotten in time, mostly by virtue of being released six months after one of the biggest animated films ever made. Much like every traditional animated film of this era, Brother Bear arrived in a cinematic landscape that had all but moved on from this style of animation. While animated films from the likes of Pixar and DreamWorks were pushing the genre into new territory, Brother Bear felt like little more than a relic of the past.
It doesn’t help anything that some things they do with this film are genuinely frustrating. Let me put it this way; as the film begins, you might start thinking, as I did “My God, this is what they should have done with Pocahontas”. The people and their genuinely intriguing histories and stories were getting me invested. And then our main character is turned into a bear. This is where everything stumbles. Specifically, the language of the human characters is mostly timeless. But the animals speak in modern colloquialisms. They pinky swear, and say things like “dude” and “high five”. Just take out my eardrums now, please. Basically what I’m saying is, the beginning and end of this film are terrific. The middle can get lost.
One piece of praise I will give is that, like the Lion King before it, this film is possessed of an INCREDIBLE opening number. Yes, it was written by Phil Collins and he has recorded his own version, but the version in the film is sung by Tina Turner. Enough said.
Is Brother Bear a Disney Classic? Brother Bear is no masterpiece, but it’s far from the worst animated film Disney ever pumped out, that will come later. If the film had arrived a decade earlier, it would have been a breath of fresh air. As it stands, it’s little more than a passive attempt to recycle the past and far from a true Disney Classic.
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