The Turning Point For Disney Animation
When Michael Eisner announced the end of traditional animation in 2002, he almost caused a rebellion amongst the studio’s animators. Several of the animators who survived Eisner’s extensive layoffs weren’t entirely convinced computers should replace the art of hand-drawn animation, causing a fierce divide amongst the team between those already experienced in computer animation and those resistant to the idea of adapting their skills.
Desperate to resolve the situation, then-president of Walt Disney Feature Animation David Stainton begged veteran (and highly influential) animator Glen Keane to help convince the entire team that computer animation was the way of the future and it was ultimately in the animators’ best interests to evolve with the changing times. Keane agreed but with one important condition; if he successfully resolved the rift, Stainton would greenlight an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Rapunzel the animator had been developing since 1996.
After joining Disney in 1974, Keane was taken under the wing of legendary animator and member of Disney’s Nine Old Men Ollie Johnston. The young animator quickly became one of the most prominent figures of the animation team and a leading figure in Disney’s Renaissance period of the late 1980s and 1990s. Throughout his illustrious career, Keane created numerous iconic and beloved characters including Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Beast from Beauty and the Beast, and the titular characters of Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Tarzan.
During the production of Tarzan, Keane began to feel the studio was wrong to move away from the fairy tale adaptation that had proven so successful in the early 90s and began developing an animated musical adaptation of Rapunzel. Walt Disney himself had considered adapting the Brothers Grimm tale in the early 1940s, but shelved the idea when World War II forced the studio to cease production on new feature-length animated films.
After creating an initial story treatment and preliminary sketches, Keane pitched his idea to Eisner in 2001. Eisner immediately approved the project, but insisted the film had to be fully computer-animated, with the then-CEO clearly already prophesizing the eventual demise of traditional animation two years later. However, Keane was resistant to the idea, feeling like computer animation was still not as fluid or organic as traditional animation. So the project was put on hold while Keane wrapped up his work animating John Silver in Treasure Planet.
When Keane successfully managed to quell the animator revolt, Stainton stuck to his word and greenlit Rapunzel Unbraided in October 2003, with Keane approved to direct the film. Despite Keane’s initial reservations, the pair agreed to produce the film with computer animation and set a release date target of late 2007. At the time, the studio was still pushing further away from fairy tale adaptations and encouraged Keane to develop Rapunzel Unbraided as something wittier and more humourous in the same vein as DreamWorks Animation’s mega-successful Shrek.
At one point, Eisner had suggested setting the film in modern-day San Francisco before Rapunzel is magically transported into a fairy tale setting, but Keane couldn’t make the idea work. After spending over two years on the project, Keane was still struggling with finding the right tone and angle for the film. In late 2005, Eisner pushed Rapunzel Unbraided back to a summer 2009 release in an attempted to give Keane more time to work on the story.
By January 2006, the studio wasn’t convinced the film was feasible, especially the complicated animation of Rapunzel’s gargantuan hair. Much to Keane’s disappointment, the project was subsequently shut down. However, when Pixar’s Ed Catmull and John Lasseter were placed in charge of Disney Feature Animation just one week later, they reviewed the cancelled project and saw the potential in Disney returning to the fairy tale genre. So one of their very first decisions was to restart the Rapunzel Unbraided project and instruct Keane to keep trying.
But Keane was still anxious over the idea of Rapunzel Unbraided being animated by computers, especially given Disney was still in the early stages of crafting its first fully computer-generated animated feature, Chicken Little. In an attempt to quell his fears, Keane held a seminar called “The Best of Both Worlds,” where he gathered 50 of Disney’s animators to discuss the pros and cons of computer animation. During the meeting, it was agreed the Rapunzel project would be made with 3D CG animation, but in a way that felt more like an extension of the fluid traditional “hand-drawn” 2D animation, with inspiration taken from The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation, a book written by legendary Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston.
In late 2008, tragedy struck when Keane suffered a serious heart attack, forcing the director to step back from the project he had been slaving over for five years. Lasseter handed directing responsibilities over to Bolt director Byron Howard and storyboard artist Nathan Greno, while screenwriter Dan Fogelman was enlisted to rework the troubled screenplay, with the title now shortened to Rapunzel. After Keane’s recovery, he would eventually return to the project as an executive producer and animation supervisor.
While Fogelman kept the roots of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, in that it would still feature a beautiful young woman with long golden hair who is trapped inside a tower in the middle of the woods, the storyline was drastically altered to create something more akin to a typical Disney animated adventure.
THE STORY
Long ago, in medieval Germany, a drop of liquid sunlight sprouted a magical healing flower. For centuries, a witch named Mother Gothel used the flower to retain her youth, until soldiers from a nearby kingdom plucked it to heal their ailing and pregnant queen. Shortly afterward, the Queen gives birth to a princess she names Rapunzel, whose golden hair contains the flower's healing properties. Gothel tries to steal a lock of Rapunzel's hair to use the power once again but discovers that cutting the hair renders it inert. She instead abducts Rapunzel and raises her as her own in a secret tower. In order to keep the confined, isolated Rapunzel content, Gothel teaches her to fear the outside world and its people. Each year, the King and Queen release sky lanterns on Rapunzel's birthday, hoping for their daughter to see them and return.
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During Keane’s initial development of Rapunzel Unbraided in 2004, Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth was cast in the titular role, while Reese Witherspoon was enlisted to voice an unnamed female character who Rapunzel would meet on her journey to Corona. However, Witherspoon departed the project in 2008 due to creative differences in regards to the script changes, with her agent stating the project is “no longer the film Reese had originally signed on to do.” After the numerous production delays, Chenoweth was now 40 and the filmmakers felt she was simply too old to voice the 18-year-old Rapunzel, with the actress departing the project in early 2009.
The filmmakers began the search for a suitable replacement and insisted on avoiding the now-common practice of merely stunt casting an A-list celebrity in the role. After an exhaustive search of dozens of young actresses (including Chenoweth’s Wicked co-star Idina Menzel), singer and actress Mandy Moore won the role after impressing Howard with her down-to-earth, girl-next-door quality that perfectly fit his vision of the heroine. Moore auditioned for the role twice, including performing a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me” to display her vocal abilities. The actor has been a huge fan of Disney animated films and later described her casting as fulfilling her “ultimate childhood dream.”
For the role of Rapunzel’s love interest Flynn Rider, the production team auditioned dozens of young male actors including Dan Fogler, Santino Fontana (who would later voice Prince Hans in Frozen), and American Idol alum Clay Aiken, for some odd reason. After an enormously impressive audition, television actor Zachary Levi was cast in the role, with the filmmakers feeling he perfectly captured Flynn’s cocky nature while still being entirely endearing. Levi performed James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” during his audition to showcase his background in musical theatre. Flynn was initially written as a British character, requiring Levi to adopt a British accent for his audition and during early recording sessions. This was later dropped and Levi was allowed to use his natural American accent.
In the key role of the film’s antagonist Mother Gothel, Greno and Howard turned to Tony Award-winning Broadway veteran Donna Murphy, who blew the production team away with her audition performance of “Children Will Listen” from the musical Into the Woods. Howard felt Murphy brought “something extra” to the role and was particularly impressed by her innate charisma and intelligence, which were key attributes to Mother Gothel’s characterisation.
MY VERDICT
This film ended up marking a turning point in Disney animation, with the studio proving it could craft a stunning, narratively impressive CG animated film. And despite the mind - boggling Oscar snub (shame on you, Academy), the film is a clear indication that Disney were ready to play against, and probably beat, Pixar at their own game.
Is Tangled a Disney Classic? A combination of the old and the new, Tangled broke new ground for a studio genuinely struggling with the dawn of a new style of animation. Without this film, Disney may have simply abandoned the art of computer animation and surrendered to their Pixar rivals. It paved the way for the next decade of Disney animation, which unquestionably makes Tangled a Disney Classic.
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