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.

The Disney Animated Canon: From Small Beginnings to House of Mouse: Oliver and Company

  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.

Oliver and Company: A Dickensian send off of the Dark Age.

The 1980s were a very tumultuous time for the Disney Studio. With the mass exodus of animators to Don Bluth’s studio, new management coming and going, and the rise of CGI, this was a new frontier for animation, and Disney was in the middle of revamping its’ animation department after the Black Cauldron bombed pretty hard. They decided to make their next movie a more modern take of Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”. It was originally supposed to be a follow up of the Rescuers, with the main human originally being Penny…and then it wasn’t. It didn’t help that the Co-director, Peter Young, died after the first few months of production at the age of 37. The next director didn’t get along well at all with the Disney Execs and was promptly fired as a result (I mentioned Richard Rich in the post about the Black Cauldron), which resulted in George Scribner, the other director, heading the movie all on his own, a relative first for a Disney movie. Oliver and Company came out on the same day as Land Before Time, and just a little earlier than All Dogs Go to Heaven, both movies by Don Bluth (with the latter one having a somewhat similar theme to this one). While Oliver and Company did better than them in theaters, it has become largely forgotten while the other two became long living franchises.

The Plot: On Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a young kitten was put up for adoption with his brothers and sister…and he was the only one left behind. He eventually meets a dog named Dodger, voiced by Billy Joel, who helps him steal some food from a hot dog vendor (voiced by the man of million voices himself, Frank Welker). After being double crossed by Dodger, the cat (who will eventually be named Oliver), tracks Dodger down to a boat in the harbor. Dodger shares his meal with his fellow dogs in their gang: Tito the Chihuahua (voiced by Cheech Marin), Einstein the Great Dane, Francis the Bulldog, and Rita, a Saluki under the ownership of a petty thief named Fagin (voiced by Dom DeLuise). Unfortunately for Fagin, he is indebted to a particularly scary loan shark named Sykes, whose two Dobermans, Rosco and DeSoto are…for lack of a better word, pretty psychotic. Oliver ends up scratching one of their noses in self defense and Sykes gives Fagin a pretty scary ultimatum: Pay up in 3 days or else.

Oliver, having become part of the gang by standing up to one of the Dobermans, helps the gang in petty theft so that Fagin can pawn things off and get the money he needs. They end up stopping a Limousine with a wealthy girl in, and when the theft goes awry, Oliver ends up getting adopted by the lonely, wealthy girl, Jenny Foxworth. Despite this, their Park Avenue penthouse’s other inhabitant, Georgette the Poodle (voiced by Bette Midler) is quite disgusted by Oliver’s being there…enough to allow Dodger and the gang to take him back. Fagin recognizes the collar Oliver has, and he attempts to ransom Oliver back to his owner. Oliver, meanwhile, calls out his gang for taking him when he was happy.

The entire string of events backfires on Georgette when Jenny decides to get him back after getting the ransom note. Fagin, not knowing that he was ransoming a little girl, gives Oliver back without taking the money…only for Sykes to drop by, take Jenny and declare Fagin’s debt paid. Dodger rallies the other dogs and they rescue Jenny from Sykes, who is making an attempt to ransom her for her parents’ money. Fagin saves them from the attempt with his scooter and Sykes and his Dobermans give chase into the Subway tunnel where the Dobermans get electrocuted on the third rail and Sykes catches a train…while still in his car…and is pushed into the East River. Oliver and Fagin’s gang remain friends, Tito is scared off by Georgette after she attempts to bathe and groom him, and our story ends.

This is probably one of the darker Disney movies out there. It shows New York in a very different way than most pieces set in New York usually do. New York looks amazing…but we also get a pretty good look at the seedy underbelly of New York in this movie (this movie is based on Oliver Twist, and Dickens covers this sort of thing for the most part in his works, so it’s expected…just not in an animated movie). Sykes is also considered one of the scariest Disney villains out there as well…mostly because he’s a very realistic loan shark who suffers a pretty brutal on screen death. Compared to the last two movies, there is much more CGI…and it’s definitely more noticeable compared to the sparing use in Black Cauldron and Great Mouse Detective. This movie was also a favorite of Dom DeLuise’s and he improvised many lines for it.

With this movie done, and Don Bluth’s studios giving them stiff competition, the studio decided to get serious and beefed up their animation department, kickstarting the biggest successful era in Disney Studio history and making big strides in pushing animation even further: the Disney Renaissance. It started with the Little Mermaid, bringing back Disney princess movies and making one of them so well, that it nearly got an academy award (That’s Beauty and the Beast there…and didn’t get it on a frustrating technicality…more on that later).

The Disney Animated Canon: From Small Beginnings to House of Mouse: The Great Mouse Detective.

  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 Great Mouse Detective: Meanwhile…Progress.

Around the same time Disney was working on The Black Cauldron, Disney also started work on an adaptation of Eve Titus’ Basil of Baker Street (Itself an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes…sort of). Jeffrey Katzenberg thought this movie would be no good and focused most of his time on the Black Cauldron, even though he thought the Black Cauldron had issues (and boy, was he right on that one). The only thing he changed on this movie was the title, which earned much derision at Disney that it even got mentioned on Jeopardy. This movie was also the directorial debut of  John Musker and Ron Clements, who would really make their names by kickstarting the Disney Renaissance and directing a bunch of strong movies (Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, Princess and the Frog, and Moana). This movie would succeed where Black Cauldron faltered and convinced the higher ups that the Disney Animation department still had a future (History would repeat with the first part when they thought Pocahontas would do better than Lion King).

The Plot: One night in London, Hiram Flaversham, a Scottish Toymaker, is celebrating his daughter’s birthday when a particularly unhinged (and rather creepy) bat kidnaps him. His daughter, with no idea how to find him, decides that the only mouse for the job is Basil of Baker Street. That said, she has no idea where baker street is. Someone does though. Major Dr. David Q. Dawson, just back from a military campaign in Afghanistan (specifically from the Queen’s 66th regiment) comes upon her in the rain and offers to escort her there. They make it (and anyone who has read Sherlock Holmes should recognize the address of where Basil lives) and are promptly introduced to Basil of Baker Street (after he scares them half to death with a latex disguise and an experiment). Basil, initially, refuses Olivia Flaversham’s case until he finds out more about who took her father, the aforementioned Bat with a peg leg…and decides to take the case because it would lead him to the one being who has routinely eluded him time and time again. The Napoleon of Crime, Professor Padraic Ratigan (voiced gloriously by Vincent Price).

Meanwhile, we cut to Ratigan’s hideout in the sewers of London where he is having Flaversham make a clockwork contraption of…somekind. Ratigan convinces him to finish it by tomorrow after a futile display of bravado…by threatening his daughter. Ratigan then sends Fidget, the aforementioned bat on a few errands to get the last touches for his scheme, that he reveals to the other mice he has assembled: He’s going to usurp Queen Mousetoria on her Diamond Jubilee and become supreme ruler of all mousedom. One of his assembled, who has had a bit too  much to drink, interrupts the big Disney Villain Song (Still sung by Price, a man of many talents)…and it promptly sets Ratigan off. He hates being called a rat more than anything (fun fact, Ratigan was originally going to be just a very ugly mouse, but they decided making him a rat would be better), and promptly feeds the offending mouse to his Cat.

After going over the events as told by Flaversham’s daughter, Basil interrupts a kidnapping of Olivia and the game is afoot. Olivia tags along, despite Basil’s objections and they track Fidget with Toby, a bloodhound puppy. They track him to a toy shop where they are promptly ambushed by Fidget who makes off with all of what he needs…Olivia included (that one follows a pretty good jump scare too!). Basil and Dawson end up finding the list that Fidget was following and they hightail it back to the lab. Meanwhile, Ratigan reunites Hiram with his daughter before sealing her into a wine bottle…and then finds out that Basil is on the case. Ratigan briefly has a meltdown before realizing he can salvage the situation and turn it around.

After arriving and experimenting with the list, Basil and Dawson deduce that Ratigan’s secret hideout is near the water main, where they can go right into the sewers. Disguising themselves so they can infiltrate a pub, Dawson and Basil end up having their drinks spiked and the audience is treated to a Victorian burlesque show that Dawson briefly takes part in (because of spiked drinks) and they accidently cause a barfight that they escape from and make their way to Ratigan’s hideout. Ratigan surprises them and mocks Basil that he had expected him about 15 minutes ago before deflating Basil’s ego and putting them into an overly elaborate death trap that would make any James Bond Villain quite impressed (in his own words, he thought of many ways to kill Basil but couldn’t decide…so he decided to use them all). That said, because he was in a rush, Ratigan leaves before it can go off. Basil is humiliated and Dawson snaps him out of it right before the trap goes off, and they escape in Rube Goldberg fashion to warn the queen of Ratigan’s scheme.

They get there a little too late. Ratigan has had the queen tied up and nearly fed to his cat, and the clockwork duplicate has made him her second in command…until Dawson and Basil make it go off the rails and call him a rat in front of all of mousedom. Ratigan escapes with Olivia and Basil, Flaversham and Dawson give chase up into Big Ben, with Ratigan tossing Fidget overboard to lighten the load. Basil and Ratigan clash and Ratigan gets caught in the gears of Big Ben (the second use of CGI in an animated feature…and it still looks good even today!)…and Ratigan loses it and chases Basil…and proceeds to give him a brutal, no holds barred, beatdown the likes of which having never been seen on screen on a Disney film. The chimes of Big Ben knock Ratigan and Basil off of the hands of the clock and Ratigan falls into the Thames with Basil…until Basil pedals up using the remnants of the contraption. Basil and Dawson are knighted, the Flavershams are together at last, and the next case is afoot for the Great Mouse Detective.

There were quite a few changes to Ratigan from the book. He was originally going to be a very ugly mouse instead of a rat. And he was originally going to be rail thin and very tall…until they cast Vincent Price. Then they decided to make him bigger to reflect Price’s build…and also make him much beefier based on their then-head of studio, Ron Miller, who used to be a football player. Speaking of, Ratigan was Vincent Price’s favorite role he ever played. It helped that Disney gave him two villain songs and basically let him do his own thing for Ratigan. They even animated a few of his mannerisms into Ratigan!

There were originally going to be more celebrities in the movie as well. Madonna was planned to voice Mrs. Kitty (the mouse who puts on the Victorian burlesque show), and Michael Jackson was going to confront Basil before launching into song and dance (somewhere in the film…Eisner wanted that to happen). John Cleese and Michael Palin of Monty Python fame were originally considered to voice Basil. Cleese was actually the first choice! Finally, the Big Ben Sequence was originally not in the script. Originally, Ratigan’s ship would have crashed into Big Ben with Ratigan dying and Olivia and Basil surviving. Katzenberg decided that there had to be a showdown with Ratigan…and it remains one of the best parts of the film. Big Ben’s workings were an experiment in CGI and as mentioned earlier, they still look good even today!