The Magic Kingdom Project: Tangled 2010

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.

********************

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.

The Magic Kingdom Project: the Princess and the Frog 2009

The Second Renaissance

Since the revival of Disney animation in the late 1980s, the studio had (occasionally) strived towards crafting animated films featuring more diverse characters to juxtapose the decades of exclusively white narratives of Disney’s past. While the animation studio had delivered their first Asian and Native American heroines in Mulan and Pocahontas respectively, the studio had yet to produce an animated feature film headlined by an African American, either male or female.

To put it mildly, Disney’s history with its depiction of people of colour was far from stellar (Song of the South, anyone?), yet the studio still hadn’t made any inroads with correcting the mistakes of the past. When Disney launched its wildly popular Disney Princess merchandise line in 1999 (which originally featured Esmerelda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame until she was unceremoniously dumped in 2004 due to poor sales), it was obvious the range of products lacked one important element; a black princess. It would take another decade before her arrival.

In 2002, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner announced the end of the studio’s commitment to producing traditionally animated feature films, with 2004’s Home on the Range intended to stand as Disney’s final film created in the classic “hand-drawn” style. Animators were fired or retrained in computer animation. Equipment was dismantled and sold off. And fans mourned the painful loss of an art form Disney had defined 65 years earlier.

But when former Disney chairman Roy E. Disney’s “Save Disney” campaign successfully removed Eisner from power in 2005, many hoped incoming CEO Bob Iger might feel differently towards Disney’s tradition animation legacy. When Roy returned to the studio as a creative consultant, he begged Iger to allow the animation department one more attempt at resurrecting traditional animation. In 2006, newly-minted Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Feature Animation John Lasseter agreed with Roy and convinced Iger to reverse Eisner’s decision.

With the traditional animation department reinstated, Lasseter rehired many veteran Disney animators who had left the studio in recent years, including Eric Goldberg, Mark Henn, Andreas Deja, Bruce W. Smith, and Chris Buck. As fate would have it, both Disney and Pixar were currently developing projects adapted from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale The Frog Prince. However, Disney’s adaptation was based on E.D. Baker’s 2002 children’s novel The Frog Princess, in which the titular princess kisses a prince-turned-frog and becomes a frog herself.

Lasseter decided to cancel Pixar’s project and greenlight Disney’s adaptation and began the hunt for someone to direct the studio’s return to hand-drawn animation, with his sights firmly set on a pair of directors who had fled Disney one year earlier. After the cataclysmic failure of their 2002 big-budget animated space adventure Treasure Planet, directors Ron Clements and John Musker had resigned from Disney in September 2005, after then-president of Walt Disney Feature Animation refused to greenlight their next project, Fraidy Cat.

While Treasure Planet was an unfortunate misstep, Clements and Musker had directed two of Disney’s most successful animated films in The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, and Lasseter was keen to bring the pair back to the studio to co-write and co-direct The Frog Princess. When they both agreed, Lasseter offered them the choice of producing the film in either traditional animation or CGI, with the duo unsurprisingly choosing the former.

While the majority of Disney’s princess films were set in Europe, Clements and Musker wanted to craft an American fairy tale, with the directors choosing to set the film in New Orleans as a tribute to the city and its magical qualities. In Baker’s original novel, the titular princess was named Emma, but the directors felt a New Orleans “princess” would work best as an African American female, thus creating Disney’s very first black princess in the form of a chambermaid named Maddy.

At The Walt Disney Company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in March 2007, Clements and Musker presented early story concepts, sketches, and songs for The Frog Princess, which were met with immediate criticism from African-American media outlets. Many felt the name Maddy was too similar to the derogatory term “mammy,” which was the racist stereotypical archetype applied to female black slaves who worked for white families in the early 20th century. This was only further compounded by Clements and Musker’s decision to have Maddy work as a maid. Some journalists also questioned if it was appropriate to set a film in New Orleans in the wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. And some even felt the title could be misconstrued as a slur on French people.

While Disney rarely bowed to feedback from outside its studio walls, Clements and Musker understood the project needed to be reworked to avoid facing further backlash over the concept. As such, the title was changed to The Princess and the Frog and Maddy’s name was altered to Tiana, who would now be a hard-working waitress and chef, with dreams of one day opening her own restaurant. The pair even hired television legend and equal rights activist Oprah Winfrey as a technical consultant in a bid to avoid further racial problems with the film’s narrative and setting.

To combat the negative reaction to the New Orleans setting of The Princess and the Frog, Clements and Musker became determined for the film to stand as a loving tribute to a city struggling to recover from its darkest moment.

THE STORY

In 1912 New Orleans, a girl named Tiana and her friend Charlotte La Bouff listen to Tiana's mother read the story of The Frog Prince. Charlotte, a believer in true love, finds the story romantic; Tiana declares she will never kiss a frog.

In 1926, Tiana has grown into an aspiring young chef who works as a waitress for two local diners, so she can save enough money to start her own restaurant, a dream she shared with her father, who, apparently, died in World War I.

Prince Naveen of Maldonia arrives in New Orleans to better his financial situation. After being cut off by his parents for being a philanderer and spendthrift, Naveen intends to marry a rich Southern belle, and Charlotte is the perfect candidate. Eli "Big Daddy" La Beouff, a rich sugar baron and Charlotte's father, hosts a masquerade ball in Naveen's honor. Charlotte hires Tiana to make beignets for the ball, giving her enough money to buy an old sugar mill to convert into her restaurant. Meanwhile, Naveen and his valet, Lawrence, meet a voodoo witch doctor, Dr. Facilier. Inviting them into his emporium, Facilier convinces them that he can make their dreams come true, but neither gets what he is expecting.

******************

Once the film was announced and it became evident Disney was on the hunt for someone to voice its first black princess, the studio was inundated with offers from black female actors and musicians to fill the role. Music superstar Beyoncé contacted Disney and asked to be considered for the role. However, when she refused to audition for the part, Disney politely declined. Everyone from Alicia Keys to Tyra Banks was considered for the part, but it came down to Dreamgirls co-stars Anika Noni Rose and Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson.

While Hudson had the vocal chops for the role, the studio felt Rose (whose vocals were equally impressive) perfectly captured the heart of Tiana in her audition and offered the actor the part. In a later interview, Rose called the opportunity to bring Disney’s first black princess to life “a dream I never thought would come true.” Mark Henn was assigned as the supervising animator for Tiana’s with the animator incorporating Anika’s trademark dimples into Tiana’s design. At Rose’s suggestion, Henn also made Tiana left-handed to match her voiceover artist.

For the role of the film’s voodoo bokor villain Dr. Facilier, Musker and Clements hired veteran Disney actor Keith David to bring the antagonist to life. The character’s design was crafted by Bruce W. Smith, who described the villain as the “lovechild” of Captain Hook and Cruella de Vil. For the role of the scene-stealing Cajun firefly Ray, the filmmakers turned to veteran Disney voiceover artist Jim Cummings, the voice behind iconic characters like Winnie the Pooh and Tigger. Cummings grew up in New Orleans and was able to easily create an authentic Cajun accent.

After initially joining the production as a creative consultant, Oprah was the natural choice to voice Tiana’s doting mother, Eudora. Veteran Broadway performer Jenifer Lewis was cast to voice Mama Odie, a blind, 197-year-old voodoo priestess. Mama Odie was partly inspired by iconic New Orleans storyteller Coleen Salley, who consulted on the film until her death in late 2008. Lewis based her eccentric performance on American stand-up comedian Moms Mabley. Animator Andreas Deja was assigned the task of creating Mama Odie and based her character designs on Mabley and, oddly enough, Yoda.

MY VERDICT

This film is brilliant in more ways than I can count. The animation is incredible, making New Orleans look like the party capital of the USA. The music is amazing, since it was written by Randy Newman, I’m not even surprised; though I am thankful he didn’t sing most of it. The voice cast is perfect. Anika Noni Rose plays Tiana with the determination, grit and yet incredible fragility and grace that befits a lady of that time period. Jennifer Cody as Charlotte aka ‘Lotte, is the comedic highlight of the film, almost everything she does, especially in the beginning, makes me laugh HARD. Keith David as Dr. Facilier… well... anyone who knows about Keith David’s past at Disney will agree he’s perfect for this role as well as why, so I don’t need to say anything more.

Is Princess and the Frog a Disney Classic? It wasn’t enough to revitalise the world of traditional animation, but it proved it was an art form still worthy of admiration. A groundbreaking work that kickstarted Disney animation’s second renaissance, The Princess and the Frog is undoubtedly a Disney Classic.

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.

****************

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.

*********************

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. 

*********************

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.

********************

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.

**********************

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.