The Disney Animated Canon: From Small Beginnings to House of Mouse: Beauty and the Beast

Disney. No one name holds as much power over business and the world of Animation as much as Walter Elias Disney. Whether it was making the first animated motion picture in the English world, further revolutionizing the field of animation, or making one of the most powerful media companies in the world, Disney managed to become a titan of industry and media. Nowadays, we joke about the House of Mouse and its’ lasting impact in today’s world…but without Disney, much of the animated world today…well…wouldn’t be.

Beauty and the Beast: Disney made, Academy almost approved.

The Most Beautiful Love Story ever Told. Beauty and the Beast has homages to both the classic fairy tail and the 1946 film, but has enough of its’ own nuances to be its’ own film.  Beauty and the Beast was originally in development hell since the 1940s, as Walt couldn’t figure out how to get the second act to work. This movie would be the only one of the Disney canon, along with the only traditionally animated film to ever be nominated for the academy award for Best Picture, losing because all the support it got vanished with the typical excuse of “It would be embarrassing if a bunch of drawings won over a flesh and blood actor”. This film would also be the last film that Howard Ashman worked on.

The Plot: Long ago, in France, there was a selfish prince who lorded over the area. One day, he was approached by a beggar on his front door who asked for shelter. He sent her away, even though she said looks could be deceiving. After another rejection, she revealed herself to be an enchantress (possibly a fae). The prince pleaded for forgiveness, but received none. Instead, he and his entire castle were cursed. He was cursed into a beast, and his servants into inanimate objects. He had until his 21st identity to learn compassion, signified by a rose in his west wing. If he learned compassion, he would become human again with his servants. If not, he would  be doomed to be a mindless beast forever.

Cut to further down the line, and we meet a young woman named Belle, who is very interested in reading…and considered by the townsfolk to be pretty odd because of it. Midway through her song, we meet the local hunter, Gaston (insert your memes here), and his lackey Lefou. Gaston believes himself to be the best thing of the town and wants to marry the most beautiful woman in the town…who he believes to be Belle. Belle is not interested in Gaston in the least because of his beliefs that women should not read and should stay in the kitchen. He…and the rest of the town also do not think highly of Belle’s father, Maurice, the local eccentric inventor.

Maurice leaves town one day for an invention contest and takes a wrong turn to end up at a suspiciously familiar and creepy castle, only to find it has no human occupants at all. Instead, the inanimate objects make him at home. Lumiere, a candelabra, Mrs. Potts and Chip, a teapot and cup wish to make him at home because of him being lost, ignoring Cogsworth’s warnings that it would upset the master. True to form, the beast enters and is not happy at Maurice’s intrusion…so he locks him up in the dungeon.

Belle dodges a marriage attempt from Gaston (along with accidentally humiliating him publicly) and her and Maurice’s horse returns to her to warn her about Maurice being lost. Belle takes the horse and follows it to where it last saw Maurice and she begs the beast to let her father go. The Beast decides to do so in return for her to take his place. The Beast allows her free reign of the castle except for one room, the West Wing. With this, Belle befriends the servants of the castle, who treat her to a magnificent dinner. All is going well until Belle finds the rose in the West Wing…and Beast goes ballistic, scaring her into the woods. A pack of wolves decides to halt her running away until the Beast saves her from them, taking a bunch of wounds in the process.

Belle nurses him back to health, and eventually, they genuinely begin to fall for each other. Meanwhile, Maurice tries to get help to save Belle from the Beast, and his words fall on deaf ears. Gaston, hearing this (after his memetic song about himself), decides to coerce Belle into marrying him by having Maurice sent to an asylum if she doesn’t. After a romantic dance with the Beast, he gives her his magic mirror that can see anyone, and she discovers her father collapsed in the woods. Beast lets her go, despite knowing she may never come back again, dooming him into being a beast.

Belle, meanwhile, nurses Maurice back to health…only to find Gaston and the townsfolk prepared to send Maurice away if she doesn’t marry him. Belle pointedly refuses to marry Gaston and proves the Beast’s existence…only for Gaston to decide right on the spot to hunt him down with the rest of the town over Belle’s objections. Belle and Maurice are locked in their cellar while the townsfolk mobilize to hunt the beast. The castle’s servants decide to defend the castle on their own, as the Beast has resigned himself to his fate.

Chip ends up rescuing Belle and Maurice so that Belle can save the Beast. The townsfolk are successfully repelled, and Gaston tries to rile the beast up to fight him. He eventually succeeds and finds out that he is hopelessly outmatched until Belle arrives and asks her to spare him. Beast does so…and while he is distracted by Belle, Gaston stabs him in the back…before falling off the roof into the abyss below. With his last breath, the Beast tells Belle that he loves her and is relieved that she came back for him. Belle confesses her love for him, saving his life and turning him and the rest of the castle back to its’ old glory at the very last second. And everyone lived happily ever after…except for Gaston.

As mentioned earlier, this was the last movie that Howard Ashman worked on. He literally worked until his last days while he was bedridden from AIDS, and he even managed to fit in what having the disease felt like in one of the songs (the mob song, for curiosity). As this was the 90s, anyone with AIDS was considered a social pariah, no matter how they got it. Because of this, and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s impatience with the medium, they moved production to be closer to Howard Ashman, and the entire team was given no vacation time and strict scheduling to get the movie right. It resulted in  a few marriage failures, and much of the team up and quit. Katzenburg realized this was a pretty poor way to do things when he saw how miserable his staff was, and wisely decided never to do anything like that again.

Many fans might also recognize that Gaston looks more than a little similar to Bruce Campbell. The title song was also sung in one take. It was originally going to be a sort of rock ballad, and Angela Lansbury thought she was a poor fit for it…until she brought the whole studio to tears in one take for how good it was. Tony Jay also nailed all his lines as part of an audition…and Disney decided it was perfect the way it was, and paid him for those lines.

One of the songs, “Human Again” was cut from the final product because Jeffrey Katzenberg thought it was redundant and felt that having “something there that wasn’t there before” was a better fit because it gave pacing to the love story. Be our guest was also originally going to be sung to Maurice…until someone brought up “Hey…Isn’t Belle our main character? Shouldn’t they be singing to her?”Also, this was the movie that solidified Disney’s strategy for the next few years of making big budget fairy tail musicals (except for Lion King, which is basically Hamlet in Africa. More on that later)

 

The Disney Animated Canon: From Small Beginnings to House of Mouse: The Rescuers Down Under

 

Disney. No one name holds as much power over business and the world of Animation as much as Walter Elias Disney. Whether it was making the first animated motion picture in the English world, further revolutionizing the field of animation, or making one of the most powerful media companies in the world, Disney managed to become a titan of industry and media. Nowadays, we joke about the House of Mouse and its’ lasting impact in today’s world…but without Disney, much of the animated world today…well…wouldn’t be.

The Rescuers Down Under: The First Sequel

After the Little Mermaid, the Disney animation department was feeling pretty good about itself. With their first big success in the Renaissance, they decided to try something relatively new: making a sequel movie. While this was considered pretty commonplace at the time, Disney’s movies had never done any sequels. After this, making sequel movies would be common, but none of the so called “Disney sequels” would be added to the canon until 2018. Rescuers Down under was the first sequel and it was the first movie made entirely digitally, as well as the first movie to have the “evil poacher” villain archetype. Unfortunately as a result of low advertising, and opening right with Home Alone, the movie bombed, only grossing $5 million in its’ opening weekend and making $10 million less than its’ budget of $38 million. This combined with Eva Gabor’s death pretty much destroyed any further plans for sequels for the Rescuers in terms of movies.

The Plot: In the Australian outback, a young kid named Cody wanders far from home and befriends a Golden Eagle (although it’s far bigger than any golden eagle you’ll find in the wild) named Marahute after freeing her. She shows him her nest and eggs and later he falls into an animal trap set by a wanted poacher, Percival C. McLeach (voiced by George C. Scott, who is clearly having a blast voicing him). When McLeach rescues him, he finds one of Marahute’s feathers in Cody’s backpack and reveals that he’s the one that killed Marahute’s mate…and then kidnaps him so he can figure out where Marahute and her eggs are.

The live mouse bait for the trap runs to an outpost for the Rescue Aid Society, and wires them an SOS so that someone will help rescue Cody. Meanwhile, Bernard and Bianca have moved up quite a bit since we last saw them in Rescuers. They’re now among the elite agents and Bernard is in the middle of trying to propose to Bianca…an attempt that hilariously goes off the rails until they get put on the case. They try to rendezvous with Orville, the albatross who helped them last time only to meet up with Wilbur, the Albatross’s brother (voiced by John Candy). Wilbur is a bit hesitant to fly in a blizzard until he hears a kid is in trouble…and then agrees without any further delay.

The landing is tough, but they make it and meet Jake, a hopping mouse and their field operative…who immediately gets infatuated with Bianca. Wilbur ends up twisting his spine as well and they send him to an ambulance for some slapstick healing. Meanwhile, at McLeach’s hideout, Cody is being imprisoned for refusing to tell McLeach where Marahute is. He nearly escapes…until he is thwarted by Joanna, McLeach’s pet Goana. McLeach eventually figures out that he’s protecting her eggs, and convinces Cody that Marahute was killed by someone else…setting him up to go back to Marahute and following him there so he can bag Marahute.

Bernard, having been at the right place at the right time, thwarts Joanna from eating Marahute’s eggs and convinces Wilbur to sit on them while they rescue Marahute. Having finally caught Marahute, McLeach attempts to feed Cody to some crocodiles near a waterfall, only to be tossed in by Bernard riding a razorback pig. Joanna escapes, Cody is rescued, and McLeach fends off the crocodiles…only for him to plummet down the waterfall to his death. Afterwards, Bernard finally proposes to Bianca, who eagerly accepts, Jake salutes Bernard…and Marahute’s eggs hatch to Wilbur’s chagrin.

As mentioned earlier, there were further plans to make another rescuer movies until this movie bombed and Eva Gabor (Bianca’s voice actress) died. This would also be the first animated movie to popularize the “evil poacher” villain type, paving way for more like Gaston, Clayton, and Lord Victor Quartermain (from Wallace and Gromit). Also, this movie is one of two sequels acknowledged in the Disney canon (with the only other one being Wreck it Ralph 2: Ralph breaks the internet). This movie also briefly killed interest in any animated movie that didn’t involve singing until Dinosaur was released followed by Atlantis (mentioned later).

 

The Disney Animated Canon: From Small Beginnings to House of Mouse: The Little Mermaid

  Disney. No one name holds as much power over business and the world of Animation as much as Walter Elias Disney. Whether it was making the first animated motion picture in the English world, further revolutionizing the field of animation, or making one of the most powerful media companies in the world, Disney managed to become a titan of industry and media. Nowadays, we joke about the House of Mouse and its’ lasting impact in today’s world…but without Disney, much of the animated world today…well…wouldn’t be.

The Little Mermaid: Start of the Renaissance

With the modest successes of Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Company, Disney began its’ great animated comeback on November 17, 1989 (Regardless of what it says on the poster for this picture). With that, Disney started its’ best period of movie making that stretched from 1989-1999. They started with going back to Disney Princess movies, and in particular with Hans Christian Anderson’s story of the little mermaid…which turns out a little differently in this case.

The Plot: We open with the grand premier of a concert held under the sea by a crab named Sebastian in King Triton’s honor. The star of the show, Ariel, who is one of Triton’s daughters…fails to show up and embarrasses nearly everyone involved. Instead, Ariel is in an abandoned shipwreck to hunt for artifacts from the human world…while narrowly escaping being eaten by a shark. Triton is quite upset with her, mostly because contact with humans is forbidden.

One night, she drags her friend Flounder and a very unwilling Sebastian up to see a human ship, where the nearby prince of a kingdom is celebrating his birthday. Ariel falls in love with him almost immediately. A storm sinks the ship and Ariel saves Prince Eric’s life. She leaves after singing to him and all Eric can remember about her is her voice. Eric wants to find the woman who saved him, and Ariel wants to find a way to be a part of his world. Triton finds out…and is very unhappy about it. He destroys Ariel’s gallery of gathered human artifacts, believing it will make her come to her senses. It doesn’t. Instead, two eels named Flotsam and Jepsom persuade Ariel that someone might be able to help…a witch by the name of Ursula.

Ursula decides to help Ariel by striking a deal with her. Ariel has 3 days to get Prince Eric to fall in love with her and kiss her…or she will belong to Ursula forever. The price for her legs is her voice. After nearly drowning, Ariel is helped up by Sebastian and Flounder and they decide to help her in her deal. Unfortunately for Ariel, much of what she knows of human culture (taught to her by a seagull named Scuttle), is…very flawed. She very nearly manages to get Prince Eric to kiss her…only to be sabotaged by Flotsom and Jepson (without her knowledge). Upon finding out that all that Eric can remember of the woman who saved him is her voice though…Ursula decides to take a more direct approach in things: by turning herself into a human and brainwashing Eric with Ariel’s voice.

Eric, having completely forgotten about Ariel, is set to marry Vanessa until Scuttle finds out she’s Ursula in disguise. With this, the denizens of the sea disrupt the marriage and give Ariel her voice back…only for the last day to end before she can kiss Eric. With this in place, Triton finds out about everything and takes Ariel’s place to make up for how horribly he treated her. Having been turned into a polyp, Ursula takes Triton’s place and channels her inner Cthulhu, wielding the power of the trident and growing much…much larger. Eric fells her by ramming her with a fallen ship and spearing her, and with her gone, everyone who was cursed by her returns to normal. Triton blesses Ariel and Eric’s marriage, and Ariel is allowed up in his world to live her life.

Believe it or not, Ursula was based on a real Drag Queen named “Divine”. She was going to be voiced by them…until they died of an enlarged heart. Disney was also planning on making the Little Mermaid as early as 1930s…and it was put into development hell until 1989. It also was released around the same time as All Dogs go to Heaven, which had many similar themes with the original story (and even the original story’s ending to boot). Believe it or not, again, “Part of your world” was nearly cut from the movie. Jeffrey Katzenberg gave the animators grief for it because he found it boring and during a test sequence, he heard a kid drop a popcorn box in the middle of it. After testing the sequence again with an adult audience, Katzenberg decided it was alright to leave it in (although he’s still embarrassed about that today). Popular voice actor, Melissa Fahn (Yes, from Invader Zim, Digimon, and Hyperdimension Neptunia, to name a few) was very nearly cast to be Ariel. Jodi Benson got the role instead.