The Production From Hell
In the midst of the Renaissance, Disney’s executives felt that the formula for success with animated films had finally been cracked; take a sweeping story, add in a comical supporting character or two, and add in some extravagant musical numbers. The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King followed this formula and their box office results proved that this was Disney's path.
So, when Roger Allers, director of the Lion King, and his collaborator Matthew Jacobs pitched an idea in 1994 they called the Kingdom of the Sun which still followed that formula, Michael Eisner got very excited. After Allers’ success with the Lion King, Eisner pretty much gave him free rein to do anything he wanted with this project. Sadly for him however, this particular incarnation of the film would never see the light of day and the studio would suffer through of the most chaotic productions in their history.
With Eisner’s goodwill, Allers and Jacobs began development on Kingdom of the sun in 1995, with the film starting as a loose adaptation of the Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (forgetting the studio had already made a short adaptation of that very book five years earlier, which had been fine). Set in the time of the Inca Empire of pre - colonial Peru, the film was about a greedy, selfish emperor named Manco (to be voiced by David Spade) who switches places with a peasant named Pacha (to be voiced by Owen Wilson) to escape his imperial duties and have fun with his life. But when the evil witch Yzma (to be voiced by Eartha Kitt) discovers this plan, she turns the emperor into a llama and blackmails Pacha to help her carry out her plan to summon the god of death, Supay.
The story also contained two love stories, with Pacha falling for the emperor’s betrothed fiancé Nina (to be played by Carla Gugino) and Manco is taken in by a kindly llama - herder named Mata (to be voiced by Laura Prepon) who helps him undo Yzma’s plan and form a close kinship with the emperor in the process. For some additional comedy, Yzma was helped by her sarcastic sidekick Hucua (to be voiced by Harvey Fierstein), a talking talisman who advises her.
After Sir Elton John’s Oscar - winning success on the Lion King, Allers personally reached out to Sting to write several songs for Kingdom of the Sun. The musician agreed on the sole conviction that his wife, Trudie Styler could document the entire production for a feature - length documentary to be released either on the bonus features of, or separately from the finished film. What she ended up with was called the Sweatbox (might get to that at some point) which ultimately document an extremely turbulent production.
With his songwriter partner David Hartley, Sting worked closely with the animation team to echo Disney’s earlier music films by writing songs to form part of the narrative and were linked to the plot and characters. Eight songs were ultimately written, and either sung by the film’s characters or Sting himself.
In early 1996, key members of the production team travelled to Machu Picchu, Peru to study ancient artefacts and architecture, plus the ruins of the landscape.
The team took extensive pictures and film footage to document Inca culture to use as reference for the animation team. Upon their return, they were told that the Disney executives were worried about the similarities they saw between this and box office flops like Pocahontas and Hunchback of Notre Dame. So, comedy director Mark Dindal was enlisted to co - direct with Allers to add more comedy to the storyline.
After almost two years of pre - production work, Eisner was furious that the film was lagging in development and the storyboards and scripts weren’t funny. He stormed into producer Randy Fullmer’s office and warned him that the production was close to being shut down, since it was costing the studio lucrative promotional deals with McDonald’s and Coca - Cola tied to a summer release.
In a meeting with Fullmer, Allers admitted the production had fallen behind, but he felt his team was crafting something special and only needed more time to put it all together. He begged Fullmer for a six to twelve month extension on the release date, confined his team complete the film by then. But Fullmer was confident that Eisner would never agree to such a delay and denied Allers’ request, leading Aller to walk away from a passion project he’d been working on for almost four years. Despite production costs amounting to somewhere between $25 - 30 million and around 25% of the film already animated, on 13/10/98, Eisner officially put the film on hold, giving Fullmer two weeks to completely retool the entire project or shutting it down completely. Over the next six months, Fuller and Dindal overhauled the narrative with help from comedy writer David Reynolds, who reworked the storyline into a buddy comedy, now called the Emperor’s New Groove, that rewrote every single character in the original project.
THE STORY
The Inca Empire is ruled by a selfish, egotistical boy named Kuzco, who wallows in luxury, does whatever he wants whenever he wants and cares nothing about anything else. One day, he again discovers his elderly advisor Yzma at her bad habit of attempting to run the empire behind his back, so he sacks her and her right hand man Kronk, just before meeting with a village leader, Pacha, about a perfect sunspot on the hilltop that Pacha’s family has inhabited for six generations. He then reveals that he plans to destroy Pacha’s entire village to make way for his new summer home and throws Pacha out when he protests. Meanwhile Yzma plans to kill Kuzco in revenge for firing her and take over ruling the empire herself. She invites him to have one last dinner with her to say goodbye. But it ends up being a botched attempt to poison him, which ends with him being turned into a llama. From there, I won’t spoil anything.
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Apparently, The Sweatbox documentary, named after the screening room at the Disney studio in Burbank, tells us everything we need to know about the tumultuous production process. Styler got unprecedented access to the cast and crew and used it to chronicle the early days of the process’ through Allers and DIndal gushing over the bold direction their project was heading in before everything spun out of control. It’s an intimate look at the surprisingly complex process of filmmaking that also offers a glimpse at what is essentially a studio in free fall.
MY VERDICT
In many respects, this is a huge departure for Disney, which probably explains why it was a financial failure. After a decade of films rooted in music, they began the new millennium with two films that had hardly any songs at all. Dinosaur was a bigger success than first anticipated, but a buddy comedy with a talking llama voiced by David Spade clearly wasn’t what anyone was looking for, and that is the film’s biggest problem.
For most of this film, Kuzco is an AMAZINGLY unlikeable character. He is arrogant and selfish, which is a first for Disney animation. In previous films, the protagonist was flawed and complex, but you could make the argument that Kuzco is almost a secondary villain for two thirds of this film. I mean, it’s almost refreshing to approach a Disney film like that, but it’s also very jarring. Oddly enough, you may find yourself sympathising at times with Yzma because despite her lust for power for seemingly personal reasons, she’s clearly far more capable at ruling an empire than a selfish egomaniac like Kuzco. The emperor is so busy living his extravagant self-indulgent lifestyle, perhaps Yzma simply had no choice but to rule in his absence, making her dismissal actually feel almost unfair. Plus, it doesn’t help anything that Eartha Kitt in this film is sort of like Jeremy Irons in Dungeons and Dragons. She can’t help but steal every scene and make us laugh HARD in the process. Plus this is the first time I’d ever heard of Patrick Warburton and considering some other stuff he’s done that I’ve seen pieces of since, let’s just say I’m glad he’s at least been in this.
Considering the turbulence of the production process, I’m glad that this movie exists at all, let alone the fact that it’s incredibly funny and entertaining. It could easily have been an incoherent mess given all the setbacks and rewrites, but it’s a testament to the production team they were able to deliver an entirely enjoyable final product.
Is the Emperor’s New Groove a Disney Classic? In the twenty years since its release, this film has grown a huge fanbase. It certainly stands out as something wildly unique in the annals of Disney history, especially its lack of musical numbers. If a Disney animated film has aged remarkably well over two decades, one has to consider that a Disney Classic, right?
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