The Magic Kingdom Project: Bolt 2008

 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.

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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.

The Magic Kingdom Project: Meet the Robinsons 2007

The Honouring of a Legacy

At the dawn of the new millennium, the management of Walt Disney Company was in utter chaos and morale amongst the ranks at its animation studio was disastrously low. After a string of box office failures, the days of traditional animation were over and then-CEO Michael Eisner was fumbling his way through Disney’s transition to computer animation, while also mishandling negotiations with then-Pixar CEO Steve Jobs over the future of Disney’s distribution deal of Pixar titles.

In late 2003, Eisner and his board of directors rejected the request of then-chairman of Walt Disney Animation Studios Roy E. Disney for an extension of his term as a member of the board, leading to Disney’s resignation on November 30. After his departure, Disney issued a scathing letter criticising Eisner’s mismanagement of the studio, particularly his neglect of the animation division, the souring of the studio’s relationship with Pixar, and his failure to focus on the languishing attendance at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Disney also reprimanded Eisner’s blunt refusal to establish a clear succession plan and declared the CEO had turned the company into a “rapacious, soul-less conglomerate.”

With his business partner, Stanley Gold, Disney established a second external “Save Disney” campaign similar to the one that had forced fellow Disney family member Ron Miller out in 1984. The pair launched the website SaveDisney.com with brutal information regarding Eisner’s failures of recent years and a petition to remove him as CEO, which drew thousands of signatures. Disney began rallying support for his campaign amongst shareholders and Disney fans alike, with the calls for Eisner’s removal growing louder by the day.

Meanwhile, in January 2004, talks between Eisner and Jobs broke down, with Jobs in disagreement with Eisner’s insistence Pixar sequels would not be counted against the number of films required in the studio’s new distribution deal. This clause essentially gave Disney free rein to produce sequels to Pixar titles without their involvement or approval. While Jobs began shopping for a new distribution deal with studios including Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, Eisner established Circle 7 Animation, a division of Disney’s Feature Animation department which would exclusively produce sequels to Pixar films.

As criticism of Eisner intensified in the wake of the collapse of the Pixar negotiations, the company held its annual shareholders’ meeting on March 3, 2004, with 43% of shareholders voting to oppose Eisner’s re-election to the board of directors. While a dejected Eisner would remain as chief executive, George J. Mitchell was elected to replace him as chairman. But the writing was on the wall for Eisner, and, on March 13, 2005, he announced he would resign as CEO on September 30, a full year before his contract was due to expire.

After successfully campaigning for Eisner’s removal, Disney and the Walt Disney Company agreed to put their differences aside and Disney rejoined the board as a non-voting director emeritus and creative consultant on July 8 and shutting down SaveDisney.com on August 7. The board quickly approved the appointment of then-president of The Walt Disney Company Bob Iger to the position of chairman and CEO. Iger immediately resumed negotiations with Jobs, and, on January 24, 2006, Disney announced it had acquired Pixar for a staggering $7.4 billion and had subsequently shut down Circle 7 Animation.

Upon a review of the entire animation department, Iger commented he had no idea “how broken Disney Animation was.” In dire need of new leadership, Iger instated Pixar co-founder Edwin Catmull and former Disney animator turned Oscar-winning Pixar director John Lasseter as President and Chief Creative Officer, respectively, of both Walt Disney Feature Animation and Pixar. While there were initial discussions with shutting down Disney’s animation department, Catmull and Lasseter were confident they could revitalise the ailing studio and set about rebuilding morale of the Feature Animation team.

Now, you may be asking why this exhaustive backstory has been provided in an article intended to focus on Meet the Robinsons. In the midst of all this chaotic executive change, director Stephen Anderson was attempted to craft a loose adaptation of William Joyce’s children’s book A Day with Wilbur Robinson, which was originally scheduled to be released in 2006. After receiving approval on the production from Eisner in 2004, Anderson and his team had been working on the film for the better part of two years

THE STORY

Lewis is an aspiring 12-year-old inventor who grew up in an orphanage, whose inventions have been scaring off potential parents. He works all night on a machine to scan his memory to locate his birth mother, who abandoned him at the orphanage when he was a baby. While taking the scanner to his school's science fair, Lewis meets 13-year-old Wilbur Robinson, a mysterious boy claiming to be a time cop from the future. Wilbur needs to recover a time machine that a man wearing a bowler hat has stolen. Lewis tries to demonstrate the scanner, but it has been sabotaged by the Bowler Hat Guy and falls apart, throwing the science fair into chaos. Lewis leaves while the Bowler Hat Guy, with the help of a robotic bowler hat named Doris, repairs and steals the scanner.

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The project held significant meaning to Anderson, as the director was an orphan himself and keenly understood Lewis’ yearning for a family to adopt him. When Lasseter took control of the creative direction of Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006, he requested an early test screening of Meet the Robinsons, which was roughly 85% completed. By all accounts, the test screening did not go well. While Lasseter was impressed by the film’s daring vision of the future and its connection to the legacy of future-obsessed Walt Disney, he felt the villain wasn’t threatening enough, the storyline wasn’t particularly entertaining, and the ending lacked the heart so often found in Pixar’s animated films.

Anderson was terrified Lasseter would cancel the production, but Lasseter instead pushed the release date back one year to allow the director enough time to salvage the project. Over the next ten months, almost 60% of the original film was scrapped, with entire sequences requiring reanimation and the narrative reworked to focus more heavily on the emotional resonance of Lewis’ character arc. Anderson paid closed attention to Lasseter’s advice regarding Bowler Hat Guy, with the villain reimagined as a homage to both Wacky Races villain Dick Dastardly and the arch enemy of Dudley Do-Right, Snidely Whiplash.

MY VERDICT

Meet the Robinsons offered a fresh perspective on a young orphan’s quest for his identity and the complicated process of accepting the pain of the past and pushing towards a brighter future. The film is littered with plot holes, particularly surrounding its time-travel plot, which often makes very little sense. But Anderson clearly took Lasseter’s advice to rework the ending, with the film’s conclusion standing as one of the most unexpectedly emotional resolutions Disney animation has ever offered.

With numerous playful nods to Walt Disney’s bold vision of the future (how can you not chuckle at seeing Disneyland’s Space Mountain building in an area called Todayland?), you’d have to imagine Meet the Robinsons would be the kind of film Walt would have adored, especially knowing his very words were the driving force behind the plot. It’s a beautiful moment to see his quote appear on-screen and inform an audience they’ve essentially just witnessed a 94-minute tribute to the man who started it all.

Is Meet the Robinsons a Disney Classic? No one will call it a Disney Classic anytime soon.

The Magic Kingdom Project: Chicken Little 2005

The Fumbled Launch of a New Era

When production on Disney’s last traditional animated film Home on the Range finished in 2002, then-CEO Michael Eisner laid off most of the employees at the Feature Animation studio in Burbank, downsizing the department to a single unit. The Paris studio closed in 2003. Walt Disney Animation Florida followed suit in 2004. And, with that, Disney was officially out of the business of producing traditional animated feature films.

With the company now solely focused on producing computer animation productions, morale in the studio plunged to a level not seen since the mid-1980s, especially when Eisner began literally selling off Disney’s traditional animation equipment, some of which had been at the studio for decades. But Eisner was unperturbed by the growing dissent over his decisions, particularly given he had now filled the executive ranks of the studio with loyal subjects who wouldn’t dare question his leadership.

But there was still one vocal opponent to Eisner’s authority in the form of then-chairman Roy E. Disney, who was deeply concerned over the direction and style of Eisner’s management and the studio’s sharp exit from the art form his uncle had defined six decades earlier. In the midst of Disney beginning to craft his campaign to remove Eisner from power, the studio began production on its first fully computer-animated feature film, Chicken Little.

The idea for Chicken Little first began in September 2001 when The Emperor’s New Groove director Mark Dindal commenced development on the project. Initially, Dindal envisioned the title character as an overly-anxious, pessimistic female chicken (to be voiced by Holly Hunter), who is sent to a summer camp called Camp Yes-We-Can by her concerned father to help build her confidence and save their relationship. While at the camp, she would uncover a dastardly plot by her camp counsellor (to be voiced by magician Penn Jillette) to destroy her hometown.

After working on the project for eight months, including preliminary recording sessions with both Hunter and Jillette, Dindal was called into Eisner’s office and bluntly informed Eisner didn’t think audiences would accept a female chicken as an action hero, nor would they warm to the plight of a young girl attempting to repair her relationship with her father. Eisner also felt a male-centric film was more likely to be a box office hit, with his theory that young girls will see films about boys but young boys won’t watch movies about girls. As such, he demanded the Dindal rework the project with a male chicken protagonist in the lead. Michael Eisner, ladies and gentlemen.

Despite Hunter’s recording sessions progressing enormously well, the actor was let go from the project (and subsequently snapped up by Pixar for the female action lead in The Incredibles), as Dindal set about adapting the project to Eisner’s tastes. While Dindal had originally pitched the project as a traditional animated feature, Eisner’s announcement in 2002 of the cessation of the art form spun the development on its head and suddenly Chicken Little was greenlit as the studio’s first fully computer-animated film.

In early 2003, there was a change of leadership at Walt Disney Feature Animation, with then-president Thomas Schumacher leaving the studio to run Disney Theatrical Group and then-president of Walt Disney Television Animation David Stainton appointed as his replacement. Stainton immediately asked for a progress report from Dindal on Chicken Little. What he was shown did not impress the new president.

Stainton felt the summer camp setting ultimately lacked charm and was unlikely to work in territories outside America. He knew this film needed to succeed on a global scale and prove Disney could compete with the likes of Pixar and DreamWorks. As such, he allowed Dindal three months to revise the script and create an entirely new narrative around the titular male chicken protagonist.

While Dindal set to work on rehashing Chicken Little, Stainton was dealing with an even larger problem; an animator revolt. By April 2003, the Disney animation department had settled into two opposing groups; those with skills in computer animation and those who refused to adapt to the new technology. On April 4, veteran Disney animator Glen Keane organised a meeting of 50 of his colleagues to discuss the future of animation, which soon became a heated debate between the two groups, with some arguing computers should not replace hand-drawn animation, while others express their fears they would be forced to draw by hand.

After the meeting, Stainton called Keane into his office in an attempt to solve the brewing war. Keane had been with the studio since 1974 and Stainton knew the strength of having such an influential animator on his side. Keane used the meeting to pitch an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Rapunzel, which the animator had been sitting on since 1996. Stainton offered a solution; rally the animators to adopt computer animation and the studio would greenlight the Rapunzel project.

With Keane on board, the revolt slowly fizzled and those animators who survived Eisner’s layoffs were put through a rigorous 18-month training program to learn computer animation technology. Meanwhile, Dindal had been furiously rewriting Chicken Little with Steve Bencich, Ron Anderson, and Mark Kennedy.

THE STORY

In the small town of Oakey Oaks, which is populated by anthropomorphic animals, Chicken Little rings the school bell and warns everyone to run for their lives. This sends the whole town into a frenzied panic. Eventually, the Head of the Fire Department calms down enough to ask him what is going on, and he explains that the sky is falling because a piece of the sky shaped like a stop sign had fallen on his head when he was sitting under the big oak tree in the town square; however, he is unable to find the piece. His father, Buck Cluck, who was once a high school baseball star, assumes that this "piece of sky" was just an acorn that had fallen off the tree and had hit him on the head, making Chicken Little the laughingstock of the town. A year later, Chicken Little has become infamous in the town for being prone to accidentally ruin everything. His only friends are outcasts like himself: Abby Mallard (nicknamed "Ugly Duckling"), Runt (who is an extremely large pig), and Fish Out of Water (who wears a helmet full of tap water). Trying to help, Abby encourages Chicken Little to talk to his father, but he really only wants to make his dad proud of him. 

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Dindal then set about finding the right voice to bring the titular chicken to life, with over 40 actors auditioning for the directing including Michael J. Fox, Matthew Broderick, and David Spade. But the director was impressed by television star Zach Braff’s audition, with the actor able to elevate the pitch of his voice to sound like a junior high schooler. Braff also brought the right balance of energy and awkwardness to the character that perfectly fit how Dindal saw the protagonist, and the actor was offered the role.

For the role of Chicken Little’s best friend, Ugly Duckling, Dindal originally considered casting Will & Grace star Sean Hayes in the role. However, the character was soon re-written as a female love interest known as Abby Mallard, with Dindal initially considering numerous actors for the role including Jamie Lee Curtis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Geena Davis, and even Madonna, for some bizarre reason. But the director wanted the character to be more inherently comedic and offered the role to Joan Cusack for her innate ability with natural comedy.

MY VERDICT

First thing I should say is that the characters in this film are mostly HORRIBLE, especially the father who all but abandons his son to the mockery and ridicule of their whole town. Secondly, the animation is incredibly primitive. Thirdly, the story is quite forgettable and you’ll need to watch it a number of times to remember it, if you can bear that.

Is Chicken Little a Disney Classic? It may have been the beginning of a new phase in Disney history, but it was done in a horribly disappointing way. The story is forgettable, the characters are horrible and the animation is primitive. The film opened the door to more possibilities, but it would still be some time yet before the studio would craft a computer-animated Disney Classic.

Magic Kingdom Project: Home on the Range 2004

The Signalled End of Traditional Animation.

When big-budget animated space blockbuster Treasure Planet debuted in 2002, it was hoped the film would herald a new age of traditional animation for the Disney studio. After its spectacular failure at the box office, the polar opposite occurred and the Disney executive team could no longer deny the inevitable end of traditional animated feature films had finally arrived. Audiences had moved on, and, sadly, it was time for Disney to follow suit.

As such, then-CEO Michael Eisner made the difficult decision to cease development on any further traditional animated projects that weren’t already in the works. Over six decades after Walt Disney created the first feature-length animated film, the studio who defined the very art form of hand-drawn animation was putting it to bed. Despite the outcries of chairman Roy E. Disney, who valued the legacy of his uncle’s work more than anyone at the studio, Eisner’s mind was firmly set.

With only two projects currently in production, Eisner determined these would be the final two traditional animated films from the studio, with Disney now switching focus to computer animation in a desperate bid to beat Pixar at the very game it invented with Toy Story in 1995. One of those films in development was the adorable animal flick Brother Bear, while the other was a western-themed project that had been stuck in development hell for close to five years.

After completing work on Pocahontas, director Mike Gabriel pitched a supernatural western concept (yes, a supernatural western concept) to then-Feature Animation president Peter Schneider, who, for some unknown reason, loved the idea. Under the working title Sweating Bullets, the film would tell the story of a timid cowboy who visits a ghost town and confronts an undead cattle owner named Slim and his herd of ghost cows. After Gabriel spent over a year reworking the story treatment, including changing the film to a coming-of-age tale centred on a shy bull named Bullets, Schneider felt the project simply wasn’t coming together.

In an attempt to salvage the languishing production, Schneider enlisted story artists Michael LaBash, Sam Levine, Mark Kennedy, Robert Lence, and Shirley Pierce to develop a new storyline from Gabriel’s initial pitch. LaBash suggested adding three female cow protagonists to the film and the team of writers reworked the narrative to centre on the farm animals’ attempts to save their beloved farm from foreclosure. By 2000, Schneider was still unhappy with the film’s progress and removed Gabriel from the project.

The project was then assigned to animator/director Will Finn, who had recently returned to Disney after defecting in the late 1990s to join Jeffrey Katzenberg’s DreamWorks Animation, where he co-directed their animated flop The Road to El Dorado. In his time with Disney, Finn had worked on films like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, giving him a keen sense of the Disney production process and the studio’s animators.

As such, Finn was confident he could steer the beleaguered production in the right direction and agreed to co-write and co-direct the film with screenwriter John Sanford. Utilising storyboard workshop meetings with key members of the production team, Finn and Sanford reworked the film for the umpteenth time.

THE STORY

Maggie is the only cow left on the Dixon Ranch after Alameda Slim (a wanted cattle rustler capable of stealing 5,000 cattle in a single night) stole all the rest of Mr. Dixon's cattle. Dixon sells Maggie to Pearl Gesner, a kind, ageing woman who runs a small farm called Patch of Heaven. The local Sheriff arrives to tell Pearl that her bank is cracking down on debtors. Pearl has three days to pay the bank $750, or her farm will be sold to the highest bidder. Hearing this, Maggie convinces the other cows on the farm (Grace, a happy-go-lucky character, and Mrs. Caloway, who has had leadership go to her head) to go to town to attempt winning prize money at a fair. While the cows are in town, a bounty hunter named Rico (whom Buck, the Sheriff's horse, idolises) drops a criminal off and collects the reward. Stating he needs a replacement horse to go after Alameda Slim while his own horse rests, he takes Buck. When Maggie find out that the reward for capturing Slim is exactly $750, she convinces the other cows to try to capture him to save Patch of Heaven.

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In the casting of the three cow protagonists, Finn and Sanford sought actors who could perfectly encapsulate the unique character traits of each bovine. Maggie was written as a brash and boisterous character, which led them to television star, and Trump supporter, Roseanne Barr, whose entire persona matched that of Maggie’s. For the role of Grace, the filmmakers approached Jennifer Tilly, who felt like the perfect choice for the ditzy and somewhat vain character who consistently sings off-key. And for the matriarch role of strait laced and uppity Mrs. Calloway, the team offered the role to Dame Judi Dench, who genuinely stunned the filmmakers by agreeing to the role. It’s a decision that still confounds the mind these days.

For the role of Alameda Slim, the filmmakers turned to Randy Quaid, who they knew could bring the outlandish character to life. Veteran Disney animator Dale Baer was assigned the task of animating Slim and spent hours watching Quaid in the recording studio for inspiration in Slim’s character designs. Quaid often physically acted scenes out while he was reading his lines, utilising wild gestures and expressions to essentially transform into the character. Baer used video recordings of Quaid’s lively recording sessions as reference for much of his animation work, particularly during Slim’s yodelling musical performance “Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo.”

MY VERDICT

This is, without question, one of the two worst films in animated Disney history. It was rare to find Disney crafting an animated movie exclusively targeted at children, but Home on the Range is nothing more than a 76-minute distraction for little ones, and even then, it’s hard to say if it will actually succeed at doing so. Unless you have some insane urge to hear Judi Dench voicing a cow, or to hear Randy Quaid yodelling, or to simply turn your brain off for 90 odd minutes, there are very few good reasons to see this film. Though admittedly, one of those reasons is an occasionally very good playlist of songs, including the aforementioned yodelling song which, while very strange in the same way that the Pink Elephants from Dumbo are strange, is still a very catchy song with some brilliant animation. And also, a few scenes with Judi Dench’s character (Jesus Christ, Judi, thank you, but why??). Aside from that, though, this film is a mess that even six writers could never clean up.

Is Home on the Range a Disney Classic? No.

The Magic Kingdom Project: Brother Bear 2003

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.

The Magic Kingdom Project: Treasure Planet 2002

The Passion Project That Flopped Spectacularly

Ever since 1985, John Musker and Ron Clements had been begging for approval for an adaptation of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson set in space. But four times they were denied and given another project to work on, namely, the Great Mouse Detective, the Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Hercules. The reason they kept being denied is because they were the only ones who had any faith in this project whatsoever. Everyone else, including Michael Eisner, Chairman Katzenberg and Peter Schneider, thought it was a terrible idea. When their contract was up for renegotiation in 1995, Musker and Clements were considering walking away from Disney and taking their pitch somewhere else. With Katzenberg having gotten the boot the previous year, the directors requested a deal: Upon the completion of Hercules, they would stay at the studio if they were given a stipulation that they could direct Treasure Island in Space. Eisner agreed and the duo signed a new seven-year contract.

However, even after Katzenberg’s ejection, there was still dispute over the project in 1997 when the time came for green lighting new projects. Especially from Peter Schneider. By this point, Musker and Clements were fed up and bluntly reminded the executives that they had now made four successful animated films and deserved what they were promised. So finally, Eisner relented and Treasure Planet was greenlit.

The pair teamed up with their Aladdin screenwriters Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott to flesh out a story outline, taking elements of Stevenson’s original novel and modernising their adaptation to be appealing to a teenage audience. In Stevenson’s book, the protagonist Jim Hawkins was written as a young boy of around 12, but Clements and Musker felt the film would work better from the perspective of a troubled adolescent trying to find his place in the world. 

As such, their adaptation placed greater emphasis on Jim’s search for a father-like mentor, with his backstory revealing Jim’s father abandoned his son at a young age. They combined the characters of Squire Trelawney and Dr. Livesey into a new character Dr. Delbert Doppler, who would serve as Jim’s closest ally and moral compass. To strengthen Jim’s quest for a mentor, the relationship between the teenager and John Silver was emphasised further, with the pirate standing as another father figure for the troubled teen. 

To further modernise the adaptation, the story team rewrote Jim’s trusty skipper Captain Alexander Smollett as a female protagonist named Captain Amelia, who was the commander of the hybrid spaceship/water ship RLS Legacy, with those three letters obviously standing as a tribute to the novel’s author. While Jim would remain a human character, practically every supporting character was rewritten as various species of anthropomorphic animals or futuristic robotic creations. 

Dr. Doppler was written as a dog, while Captain Amelia was cast as a cat, with the pair forming an unexpected connection despite their differing species. John Silver became a cybernetic human with a mechanical arm, leg, and eye, which were the result of an unknown accident many years earlier. Silver’s arm served numerous purposes, including morphing into cooking implements, a sword, and a pistol, while his eye allowed the pirate to improve his aim during combat. The original Stevenson character of Ben Gunn was rewritten as an eccentric robot named B.E.N., who literally lost his mind after being marooned on the titular island.

THE PLOT

On the planet Montressor, young Jim Hawkins is enchanted by stories of the legendary pirate Captain Nathaniel Flint and his ability to appear from out of nowhere, raid passing ships, and disappear in order to hide the loot on the mysterious "Treasure Planet". 12 years later, Jim has grown into an aloof and isolated troublemaker due to his father abandoning him and his mother. He reluctantly helps his mother Sarah run the family's Benbow Inn, and derives amusement from "Alponian solar cruising": skysurfing atop a rocket-powered sailboard. One day, a spaceship crashes near the inn. The dying pilot, Billy Bones gives Jim a sphere and tells him to "beware the cyborg". Suddenly, a gang of pirates raid and burn the inn to the ground while Jim, his mother, and their dog-like friend Dr. Delbert Doppler flee. At Doppler's study, Jim discovers that the sphere is a holographic projector containing a star map, leading to the location of Treasure Planet. Despite Sarah's reluctance, Jim and Doppler decide to travel to Treasure Planet in order to gain the funds to rebuild the inn. Doppler commissions the ship RLS Legacy on a mission to find Treasure Planet. The ship is commanded by the feline Captain Amelia along with her stone-skinned and disciplined first mate, Mr. Arrow. The crew is a motley bunch, secretly led by the half-robot cook John Silver, whom Jim suspects is the cyborg he was warned about. Jim is sent down to work in the galley, where he is supervised by Silver and his shape-shifting pet, Morph. Despite Jim's mistrust of Silver, they soon form a tenuous father-son relationship. 

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For the casting of Jim, the filmmakers conducted an exhaustive audition process in New York, Los Angeles, and London. After months of auditions, the role was offered to Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was coming to the end of his run on the hugely popular television show 3rd Rock from the Sun. Musker felt Gordon-Levitt brought the right balance of determination and vulnerability to the character, which were exactly the qualities found within Jim characterisation. 

For the roles of Dr. Doppler and Captain Amelia, Clements and Musker had specifically written the characters with David Hyde Pierce and Emma Thompson respectively in mind. As Pierce was currently in the Disney studio recording his dialogue for Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, the directors met with the actor to show him the script and their preliminary drawings. He immediately accepted the role. Thompson also leapt at the opportunity, namely due to being pregnant at the time and knew the role would allow her to play an action heroine without the need to physically exert herself. 

After their success with the now-obligatory Disney comedic sidekick character voiced by a famous comedian in both Aladdin and Hercules, Clements and Musker knew the role of B.E.N. needed to echo this tradition. As such, the filmmakers offered the part to comedian Martin Short, who, coincidentally, had just finished voiceover work for my favourite DreamWorks film, The Prince of Egypt. In a similar fashion to Robin Williams’ Genie, Short adlibbed numerous recording sessions, with the actor’s manic performance style mirrored in the animation of his character.

MY VERDICT

Over the course of this project, there are several films that I have called incredibly ambitious. But none of them have even come close to the levels of Treasure Planet. Musker and Clements spent FIFTEEN YEARS trying to get this passion project greenlit. They actually reached for the stars. But they turned out this bizarre blend of humans and aliens in 18th century clothing in sailing ships flying through space, and half human half cyborgs and robots. It just doesn’t mesh well. Plus the fact that this was a time when hand - drawn animation was truly digging it’s own grave and by 2002, audiences had generally moved on. Animation studios like Pixar and DreamWorks were coming up with their 3D CG films, and this style of animation was clearly what the people desired. If this film had been released during the Renaissance, perhaps it could have done better. As it is, it remains one of Disney’s most disappointing films to date.

Is Treasure Planet a Disney Classic? This is another case of style over substance. It was undoubtedly an admirable project with the greatest of intentions that sadly failed to understand the changing climate, and thus failed itself. It has recently attained cult status for some people, but not nearly enough to consider Treasure Planet a true Disney Classic.

The Magic Kingdom Project: Lilo and Stitch 2002

 

Proof That Disney Still Had It.

By the late 90s, Disney’s animation department was back on the chopping block. Despite several artistically impressive animated features, the box office results continued to dwindle. With Pixar continuing to capture huge audiences with its 3D computer animation, CEO Eisner was beginning to think the days of traditional animation were ending. Plus the studio already had several big-budget titles in the works, with few looking likely to make the same profits of the Renaissance. Inspired by a decision from Walt in the 40s, Eisner would ultimately push his team to create something incredibly cheap, but ultimately enormously profitable for the studio. Back in the early 40s, Walt Disney was facing the unprecedented collapse of his animation studio after the devastating commercial failures of both Pinocchio and Fantasia. So he had no choice but to quickly construct a hastily organised animated feature to be made as cheaply as possible, in the hopes its low margins would result in the high profits that would keep the company afloat. Thus Dumbo was born. In the wake of other commercial failures like Pocahontas and Hunchback of Notre Dame, Eisner felt the best move for the modern-day Disney studio was to create its own Dumbo; something quick, cheap, and profitable. Under Eisner’s instructions, President Thomas Schumacher approached head storyboard artist and Mulan co-writer Chris Sanders to pitch an idea to fit Eisner’s brief. Back in ’85, Sanders had created a destructive alien character named Stitch for a children’s book project which never came to fruition. Sanders felt the character was perfect for an animated feature and reworked the concept into Lilo & Stitch, which centred on the alien crash landing in Kansas and taken under the wing of a lonely young girl. While Schumacher and Eisner loved Sanders’ pitch, they balked at the Kansas setting, feeling the state’s rural surroundings wouldn’t exactly lend itself to colourful animated sequences. As such, Sanders moved the film’s setting to the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, which changed the outlook of both the film’s visual aesthetic and its plot. Eisner loved the idea, especially given no Disney animated film had ever been set in the island state.

THE STORY

Dr. Jumba Jookiba, an extraterrestrial scientist, is arrested by the Galactic Federation for illegal genetic experimentation, as evidenced by "Experiment 626", a small blue sentient alien with unparalleled strength and intelligence, but also a propensity to cause chaos. The Grand Councilwoman sentences 626 to banishment on a remote asteroid. However, 626 is able to escape with his wits and strength and randomly flees toward Earth. The Councilwoman then sends Jumba and Agent Pleakley, the Council's Earth 'expert', to recapture 626. Upon landing on Hawaii, 626 is knocked unconscious by three trucks and is taken in by an animal shelter. Meanwhile, on Kaua’i, Hawaii, a young woman named Nani Pelekai works as a waitress. One day, social worker Cobra Bubbles expresses increasing concern whether Nani is able to take adequate care of her rambunctious, disobedient, and lonely younger sister, Lilo. Since Lilo has been ostracized by her hula classmates, Nani decides to let her adopt a dog. At an animal shelter, Lilo immediately takes a keen interest in 626, who is impersonating a dog. In spite of Nani's doubts, Lilo calls 626 "Stitch", and shows him around the island. What happens next, I won’t spoil.

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In a major departure for the studio, Lilo & Stitch would focus one of its core relationships on that of two sisters; something Disney had never attempted before and wouldn’t again for another eleven years. With Nani’s difficulty with maintaining guardianship of Lilo, the film also presented a portrait of a dysfunctional family that tapped into the real-life struggles many Hawaiians were facing after the then-recent economic downturn following the U.S. recession of 2001. 

Following a search of dozens of female child actors, Daveigh Chase was cast in the lead role. Fun fact – Chase would later play Samara Morgan aka the evil girl from the well in The Ring. After initially being considered for the titular role in Mulan (the film’s poster can curiously be seen in Nani’s room), Tia Carrere was selected for the role of Nani, with Jason Scott Lee cast as Nani’s love interest, David. As both Carrere and Lee are of Hawaiian descent, they assisted Sanders and DeBlois with rewriting dialogue with proper Hawaiian colloquial dialect and slang terms. While Sanders provided Stitch’s voice during pre-production, this was initially intended to be used as nothing more than a reference point for early animation designs, with plans to hire an actual voiceover artist later in production. But everyone within the studio felt his performance perfectly captured the rambunctious spirit of the little alien and the decision was made to keep his work in the final film. Despite leaving the Disney studio in 2007, Sanders continues to voice Stitch in all official Disney media to this day. Fun fact, my biggest party trick is my ability to mimic him. Or Gollum from Lord the Rings. Depending on requests.

Lilo is a complex character, filled with anger, grief, and pain over her parents’ death. It’s obvious that she loves Nani, but acts like all petulant children do when faced with the difficult task of adapting to change, especially a confusing situation where your sister is no longer your best friend but rather a stern replacement parent. As Nani struggles with dealing with Lilo’s outbursts, we feel endless sympathy for her, as she desperately attempts to stop the authorities from taking Lilo from her. In the hands of lesser artists, Lilo could easily have been seen as a selfish brat who audiences would instantly reject. But Sanders and DeBlois craft her with deft care, allowing audiences to empathise with her plight and keenly understand her behaviour is nothing more than a product of a painful loss. Many likely dismiss Lilo & Stitch as just a wacky alien-out-of-water comedy, but it’s ultimately one of the deepest and emotionally resonant narratives Disney has ever delivered. Stitch is a highly divisive character to say the least. Some say he’s very overexposed, others say he’s adorable. But he can’t help but steal every single moment of this film. In an era beset by dull disasters and overly ambitious flops, Lilo & Stitch stands tall as one of the greatest achievements of this difficult era in Disney animation. Sanders’ performance as Stitch is now iconic in Disney folklore and has rightfully become one of the studio’s most beloved icons. Lilo & Stitch proved Disney still had the ability to both entertain and capture your heart with one of its animated film, but its a talent they will soon lose complete control of.

MY VERDICT

This film is a very good reminder that without a good story, a big budget means less than nothing. Which Disney has forgotten many times in the past and, in many cases, still seems to forget today. Many of Disney’s artistic failures have simply lacked any real heart, which this film has in spades.

Is Lilo & Stitch a Disney Classic? It has endured like no other film of this era and still offers a supremely enjoyable viewing experience almost 20 years later. Lilo & Stitch is one of few films of the early millennium you can consider a true Disney Classic.

The Magic Kingdom Project: Atlantis, the Lost Empire 2001

The Unique Visual Aesthetic

In the early years of the new millennium, Disney animation was turning away from the lavish musical spectacles which put the studio back on top in the early 90s. After the relatively disappointing box office results of films like Pocahontas and Hunchback of Notre Dame, studio executives pushed their creative team to deliver unique projects to help stave off the uprising of both Pixar and DreamWorks. While Disney animated films were still naturally performing well with family audiences, few teenagers would be caught dead in the line for the studio’s latest animated title. Desperate to tap into the teen market, Eisner went looking for an animated project he could easily sell to teenagers who grew up with Disney films but had outgrown love stories and talking animals. And he would turn to the team responsible for one of the most successful Disney animated films of all time.

In October 96, directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, producer Don Hahn and screenwriter Tab Murphy got together to toast the release of Hunchback of Notre Dame. After the staggering heights of Beauty and the Beast, they were al hopeful their next film would be equally successful. After a smooth production run, they were keen to keep their team together for the next film.

After crafting two animated musicals, the group were interested in attempting something radically different, with their sights firmly set on producing an action-adventure inspired by Jules Verne’s classic 1864 sci-fi novel A Journey to the Center of the Earth. The team were keen to produce an action-heavy animated film set in the mythological lost city of Atlantis, which Verne’s work had only briefly touched upon. Trousdale soon approached Eisner with the pitch for Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which was greenlit on the spot, with the pair in agreement the film would not be a musical.

With a desire to craft a film that fully explored the city, the team heavily researched the mythology of Atlantis through various sources and were frustrated the city was consistently depicted or described as a mess of crumbled columns underwater. Trousdale and Wise made the decision to depict the city as a spectacular civilisation of the future with advanced technology powered by the “Heart of Atlantis,” a powerful crystal which also protected the city. The mystical crystal also provided the city’s citizens with healing powers and longevity of life, which was inspired by the work of Edgar Cayce, a late 19th-century clairvoyant.

THE PLOT

In 1914 New York, Milo Thatch is a young, ambitious Smithsonian cartographer and linguist who believes he has found the directions to Atlantis. But the museum board rejects his proposal of an expedition, and instead he calls upon an eccentric millionaire who not only funds it but finds Milo a team of specialists to accompany him.

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In a bid to truly depict Atlantis as its own unique civilisation, Trousdale and Wise were insistent on creating an entire spoken and written language for the Atlanteans. They turned to American linguistics expert Marc Okrand, the man responsible for developing the Klingon language for the Star Trek television series and its subsequent feature films. Okrand employed an Indo-European word stock for the Atlantean language with its own individual grammatical structure. Okrand worked for months on the language with a determination to create words that sounded nothing like any known language in existence.

The written components were designed by John Emerson, who crafted hundreds of random sketches of individual letters from which the directors chose those that best represented the vision for the language they had. The final designs generally featured swirled lines and dots to depict the Atlanteans close connection to the ocean and the earth. All written components were boustrophedon aka designed to be read left-to-right on the first line, then right-to-left on the second, and so on. This continual zigzag pattern was created to simulate the organic flow of water.

Trousdale and Wise yearned for the film’s visual aesthetic to be unlike anything Disney had done thus far, with the goal of creating something that truly looked like an animated comic book. So they approached Mike Mignola, creator and artist of  Hellboy. At first, Mignola was stunned to be approached to work on a Disney animated feature, but leapt at the opportunity after meeting with Trousdale and Wise, who described their bold vision for the film.

Mignola was hired to be one of four production designers, providing detailed style guides, character and background designs, and even working closely with Murphy on story ideas including the creation of mechanical flying-fish machines for the film’s conclusion. His influence over the entire production was immeasurable, with every visual element of the final film reflecting his unique style with sharp angular edges and deep lines, which mirrored the artwork of comic books.

At the height of its production, over 350 animators, artists, and technicians were working on the film. The services of Walt Disney Feature Animation in Burbank, Disney Feature Animation Florida, and Disney Animation France were employed, with designs either faxed, couriered, or digitally shared between the three studios to allow for consistency in the aesthetic. With more CGI than any other film thus far, Atlantis: The Lost Empire would ultimately include over 360 digital-effects shots that took more than three years to craft. Computer software was utilised to seamlessly join the 2D animation with artwork and object created in 3D, particularly in sequences involving the Ulysses submarine. The directors were also able to use a groundbreaking “virtual camera” which allowed the camera to effortlessly glide through a digital wire-frame set, with the background and details drawn over the frames in post-production.

MY VERDICT

Truthfully, I remember few things about this film. I remember the king of Atlantis, voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy who brings weight and gravitas to almost anything he does. The animation and visuals are incredible. And a few of the characters are memorably funny. But, the main hero is unbelievably flat and the main villain is monumentally cliched, the story is very dull and boring, since it’s another case of heroic young man coming to save the beautiful princess. In this case, in fact, the princess probably should have not only been named the hero of the whole film, but probably also added to the Disney Princess lineup at some point, though the studio seems determined to avoid that. Understandable, given the film’s poor box office performance. In short, this is another example of style over substance. It makes bold advances in animation, but the plot leaves much to be desired.

Is Atlantis the Lost Empire a Disney Classic? For all the film’s incredible artistry, the screenplay has issues that ultimately create a very dull film. Attaining cult status with some fans does not make a Disney Classic.