Song of the South

Song of the South was Walt Disney's first foray into doing a full fledged live action story, with a little help from animated segments. The studio had made other hybrid films before this, but the live action segments acted as bumpers. What began as a nostalgia-fueled film about Uncle Remus and his tales of Br'er Rabbit for Walt, ended up being the studio's most controversial and infamous movies that they ever made. Though Disney has re-released it in theaters a few times since it premiered in 1946, the last time being in 1986, the studio has never released it on home video in the U.S. That in itself makes the movie infamous, as the only way you can watch it is on bootleg versions of the various overseas versions that have been released. Disney itself has basically acted like the film never existed, though it continually uses the popular song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" in its media and has a ride based around the animated segments of Song of the South at its theme parks around the world. So what is all the fuss about? What could be in this movie that would cause the powerhouse that is Disney to decide to lock away in the vault for the foreseeable future? Well, it all started with a man named Joel Chandler Harris.

Story Background

Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia in 1848 to an Irish immigrant mother and a father that he would never know. His father abandoned the family shortly after he was born, and Joel would carry the shame of being an illegitimate child his whole life. Though Harris went to school a short time, he would quit to work at a plantation in 1862 as an apprentice in printing for the newspaper, The Countryman. It was here that he was first introduced to the animal tales that the slaves told after long days of work. Harris would spend most of his free time at the plantation in the slave quarters taking in all the stories, language, and inflections of the slave story-tellers. His employer had encouraged him to read and write as much as possible, so once he left the plantation he was well equipped to find a job at other newspapers as a writer. Not long after his professional career started, he began to write down the animal stories that he had heard while working at the plantation. He did this to "preserve in permanent shape those curious mementos of a period that would no doubt sadly be misrepresented by historians of the future". His collected stories, the first volume being called Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, which released in 1880,  told the adventures of Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and Br'er Bear, among other animals, through the wise, old former slave, Uncle Remus, who tells his stories to a young white boy. Br'er Rabbit being weaker and smaller than Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear, would have to find ways to outsmart his much larger foes. The tales were told in the dialect that Harris had heard from the slaves at he plantation he worked at, in a way to add authenticity to the stories. Harris had transplanted the animal tales he had heard and put there settings in the Reconstructionist South. Harris would go on to release seven total volumes of Uncle Remus tales, and would become one of the most widely read authors of his time, behind Mark Twain. Harris would pass in 1908 before his 60th birthday, but his tales would remain popular for quite some time into the 20th century. While authors like Mark Twain has lasted the test of time, Harris has largely been forgotten. His reputation and legacy took hits over the years after the general public began to re-assess the use of slave dialect in the stories, the problematic character of Uncle Remus, and the plantation setting. Harris's reputation would later be tied to Walt Disney's version of his stories, called Song of the South, which unfortunately didn't do him any favors.

Production Background

Walt Disney was a very nostalgic person, especially when it came to growing up in the Marceline, Missouri in  the early 1900's. Walt even based Main Street U.S.A. in Disneyland on his boyhood home, recreating the small town America that he had remembered. Walt, like many growing up in his time, read Harris's Uncle Remus stories and the tales had stuck with him through his life. He had long wanted to adapt the stories, but didn't have a good way of doing it, as he felt that Uncle Remus and the young boy he tells his stories to should be played by live actors. Walt purchased the rights to the Uncle Remus stories in 1939 and set about a way to tell the story to his satisfaction. With The Three Caballeros successfully mixing both live action and animation, Disney felt he finally had found a way to tell the stories. Though Walt was confident in the picture and its potential, the production was not without its bumps. Roy, Walt's brother and co-founder of Walt Disney Pictures, didn't like the idea and didn't think that it was bankable enough to be spending over a million dollars on the production. The Walt Disney Studios had just dealt with a major labor strike in 1941 and the war had significantly affected the studio's output in the early 40's. Too many financial misfires could put Disney into hot water if they weren't careful. Walt also had trouble with the writers of the live-action portion. He hired Southern-born writer Dalton Reymond to write the screenplay, though Reymond wasn't a professional screenwriter, so Walt also hired Maurice Rapf, who had been writing for live-action films at the time. Reymond wrote up a treatment for the film, but Walt needed Rapf to turn it into something shootable. Rapf was also hired because he was to be the ying to Reymond's yang. Walt feared that the southern Reymond would insert some bias into the film, and Rapf, who was an outspoken left-winger and someone who feared that the film would be too "Uncle Tomish", seemed to be the best person to keep him in check. Rapf ended up only working on the film for seven weeks until a personal dispute with Reymond would see him being removed from the production. Filming of the live-action scenes were done either at Samuel Goldwyn Studios or, interestingly enough, Phoenix, Arizona.

Cast

Walt went through many people to portray the titular Uncle Remus, including Rex Ingram, Eddie Anderson, and Tiny Bradshaw who all turned it down because they found the character to be too demeaning. The eventual choice for Uncle Remus was actor James Baskett, who was only replying to an ad in the paper that was looking for a voice for a butterfly. After hearing his voice, Walt wanted to meet Baskett personally and have him audition for Remus. Not only did he get the role of Remus, but also provided the voice of Br'er Fox and even Br'er Rabbit in the Laughing Place scene when Johnny Lee was called away to do promotion for the film. Disney was extremely fond of Baskett and considered him to be "the best actor, I believe, to be discovered in years". Baskett played much older in the film, as he was only 41 at the time of filming. When doing the voice for Br'er Fox, animators had trouble with syncing up Baskett's voice to the animation because he talked so fast. Baskett was also the first African American hired by Disney to act on screen for them.

Rounding out the rest of the animated cast was the aforementioned voice of Br'er Rabbit, Johnny Lee, a singer, dancer, and actor who would later go on to play Algonquin J. Calhoun in the TV and radio versions of Amos and Andy. Br'er Bear was voiced by Nick Stewart, who would also go on to play a character on TV's Amos and Andy. Stewart would be asked after the film had come out if he felt degraded for playing Br'er Bear. He responded that he did not and that Disney had treated all the colored actors like gold. Stewart would  go on to start the Ebony Showcase Theatre with the money he made from the picture, which helped black performers get better roles than servants.

For the live action actors, the other main characters were Johnny and Ginny, voiced by Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten, respectively. Bobby and Luana would go on to be in numerous films for Disney, but this was both of their first times with Disney. Bobby and Luana had both also been in films before this point, but were noticed by Walt himself and they became the first two actors to be contracted by Disney. Glenn Leedy played Toby, his only acting credit. He was chosen for the part after being seen by a talent scout while he was playing at his school playground in Phoenix, Arizona. The only other significant member of the cast is Hattie McDaniels as Aunt Tempy. McDaniels famously portrayed Mammy in Gone With The Wind, a role which won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first African American to win an Oscar.

Music

The most famous song from Song of the South is "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah". Sung by Baskett to help introduce the audience to the first animated segment, it also shows how far Disney had come in its technical wizardry. There is some disagreement on where the term came from, as some claim that Walt came up with it himself, though the more believable explanation is that it was influenced by the pre-Civil War folk song "Zip Coon", a "Turkey in the Straw" variation: "Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day".Composed by Allie Wrubel with lyrics by Ray Gilbert, the song would go on to win the Oscar for Best Song at the 1948 Academy Awards. The song has become a staple for Disney in general, being used for the opening of The Wonderful World of Disney, among many other videos and promotions. The two other songs sung during the animated sequences are less well known, unless you've been on Splash Mountain at one of the Disney Parks. "How Do You Do?" and "Everybody's Got a Laughing Place" are just as catchy as "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" but haven't had as much play outside of the movie. All three are present on various Disney Sing-Along Songs VHS tapes. Other songs from the movie are sung by either the Hall Johnson Choir, or the Disney Studio Choir. Besides the infamy surrounding the movie and the theme park attraction based off the movie, about the only other thing keeping the film in the public consciousness is the songs, mostly "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah".

Story

Song of the South tells the story of Johnny, a little boy who is visiting his grandmother's plantation in Reconstruction times. Soon after arriving he meets Uncle Remus, a former slave who tells him stories about Br'er Rabbit and his antics trying to outwit Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear. Through these tales he learns valuable lessons about life and is able to apply them to his own experience. The three main stories that Uncle Remus tells Johnny are Br'er Rabbit Runs Away, Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby, and Br'er Rabbit's Laughing Place. In Br'er Rabbit Runs Away, Johnny learns that you can't run away from trouble, thus realizing that he should not run away from the plantation to seek out his father in Atlanta. In the second story, Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby, Johnny learns that cleverness can be a saviour for the small and weak, helping him outwit the neighborhood bullies. In the final animated segment, Br'er Rabbit's Laughing Place, Johnny learns how to find his happy place after the bullies ruin his birthday party.


Release

The film premiered on November 12th, 1946 at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. Walt himself was present at the premiere and even made a few remarks before the film, but left right after as he didn't like to see unexpected audience reactions to his films. James Baskett was not able to attend the premiere as Atlanta was racially segregated and he wasn't even able to get a hotel room. To help promote the film, the comic strip Uncle Remus, distributed by King Features, was launched a full year ahead of the film's debut. While Disney had done this in the past for film's like Snow White, those were one-off publicity stunts. Uncle Remus would end up running weekly until 1972.

The film would only end up grossing $3.3 million in its first run against a $2.125 million budget. The film was not the smash hit that Walt had been hoping for, and most of that had to do with his timing, though naivety may have also played a part. The film was released in the wake of the Double V campaign, which sought to promote victory over racism in the U.S. and its armed forces, and victory over fascism abroad. Americans were becoming more sensitive to race and didn't take kindly to Disney's southern-living nostalgia film. Walt had been warned that due to the subject of the film that he would be threading the needle and was likely to upset a lot of people. Walt had known to some degree that the film would be controversial, as he sought out prominent African American writers to give advice on the film. The Hays Office, which dictated what was allowed to be in films during this time, even pressured Walt to include a title card that elaborated that the film takes place after the Civil War to avoid further controversy, but apparently Walt didn't take the advice to heart. Due to this, there was enough confusion about when the film took place that Walter Francis White, the executive secretary of the NAACP, telegraphed major newspapers decrying the film for portraying dangerous slave condition stereotypes. The NAACP would go on to boycott the film, and many movie houses were picketed by both blacks and whites. All this bad publicity led to the less than stellar box office return. Walt had planned on making it into a whole series of films based off of Uncle Remus and his stories, but the reaction to Song of the South made it impossible.

Controversy

Criticism of the film were centered on Uncle Remus's characterization, his relationship with his former owner, and his servile manner in general. The idyllic relationship between the former master and slaves drew the most ire, harkening back to the major tenant of The Lost Cause, that slaves liked being slaves and had good relationships with their masters. Though the temporary screenwriter, Maurice Rapf, had tried his best to eliminate the "Uncle Tommish" characterization for Uncle Remus, it still shows pretty prominently. Uncle Remus has also been found in more modern times to be an example of the "Magical Negro" archetype, which is defined as a stock African American character who uses special insight powers or powers attributed to the supernatural to help the white protagonist get out of trouble. What gives this evaluation more credence is the fact that the film ends with Johnny miraculously surviving being gored by a bull after Uncle Remus tells him another story about Br'er Rabbit and his Laughing Place. The inclusion of the "African-American English" dialect in the animated segments also drew ire, something that was equally rallied against in Harris's books as time went on. Even the animated segments weren't spared from outrage. The inclusion of the "Tar Baby" rubbed many the wrong way, and it's existence has only been replicated twice since then, as a very fast cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the "House of Scrooge" episode of House of Mouse. The other problematic animated segment was Br'er Rabbit Runs Away, in which the overall lesson is that you should be happy exactly where you are in life and that you can't run away from trouble. Suffice to say, there was no shortage of reasons for audiences to find the movie offensive.

Legacy

Though Song of the South didn't end up being the smash hit Walt was hoping for, he was still going to market the hell out of it. Besides the numerous comic strips that came out of the movie, there was also a Giant Golden Book called Walt Disney's Uncle Remus Stories in 1946, and comic books that would be released over the years. While the film itself proved controversial, "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" was an insanely catchy tune and nothing was going to keep it from winning the Best Song Academy Award in 1948. Walt and several others in the industry would argue for James Baskett to get an acting Academy Award, which he would ultimately get, though it was a special Academy Award "for his able and heart-warming characterization of Uncle Remus, friend and storyteller to the world in Walt Disney's Song of the South". Baskett would pass away from a heart attack brought about by diabetes only a few months later at the age of only 44. Luana Patten and Bobby Driscoll were in talks to receive Academy Juvenile Awards, but the Academy decided not to award any that year. Unlike the other categories at the Academy Awards, the Juvenile Awards were only given out on special occasions.

Disney re-released the movie in theaters in 1956 for the movie's ten year anniversary, in 1972 for the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney Productions, in 1973 as a double bill for The Aristocats, in 1980 for the 100th anniversary of Harris's first Uncle Remus collection, and for the last time in 1986 for the 40th anniversary of the film's release. Starting in the 70's, the movie didn't do too bad in theaters, thanks to the young generation who had grown up with the Giant Golden Book, listening to "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" on records, and episodes of Disneyland showcasing the animated segments. There was a sort of nostalgia that blinded the overt offensiveness of the film and caused it to gross a total of $65 million over it's numerous releases. Though Disney was brave enough to release the film in theaters over the years, they had decided not to release the movie on home video, and still haven't to this day in the U.S. It was released on VHS in the U.K. in 1982 and 1991, and on VHS and Laserdisc in Japan in 1985, with another Laserdisc addition in 1990. The film has also never been released for home video in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Most bootlegs of the film have come from the U.K. release, though there are other versions floating around in other languages thanks to the distribution in other European, Asian, and Latin American countries.

Disney has gone back and forth on whether they would eventually release the film, but currently they have kept it locked up for fear that the film could tarnish their reputation. Many film archivist, historians, and even celebrities have called for Disney to release the film. Most recently, Whoopi Goldberg, giving a speech at the D23 Convention in 2017 after becoming a Disney Legend, asked the Disney Corporation to release the film so we could start a dialogue about the film, where it came from, and why it came out. While many who advocate for the release of the movie want it for educational reasons, there are others who want it released because they find nothing wrong with the film. People on the other side claim that the movie would be too damaging to impressionable young minds and the company has been right to keep it locked away. If you feel so inclined you can watch the film at archive.org.

Today the film lives on through the controversy, various Disney Sing-Along Songs releases, and strange enough, a log flume ride. Splash Mountain, located in many of the Disney parks around the world is uniquely themed to Song of the South, though only its animated segments. The ride was dreamed up by Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter in 1983 as he was trying to think of a ride for the often empty Bear Country area of Disneyland. The idea of having a log flume ride int eh parks had been floated around for years, but nobody could think of a good theming idea to keep it from being too much like regular theme park offerings. Disneyland had just closed the attraction America Sings, and was looking for a place to put all the animal animatronics that were collecting dust. Baxter realized that Song of the South would be a perfect fit for the Bear Country area and would be easy to theme around a log flume ride, so the Imagineers got to work on was to be called Zip-A-Dee River Run. The name was changed to Splash Mountain after Michael Eisner's ignored request to use the ride to instead promote the movie Splash. The ride does not include the Uncle Remus character in any way, instead focusing on the familiar Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and Br'er Bear, among other animals. While the different scenes of the ride were based off the movie, one element had to be changed. In the film, Br'er Rabbit is captured after engaging with the "Tar Baby". Disney wisely decided not to include this aspect of the movie and changed it to a beehive full of honey that Br'er Rabbit gets stuck in. The dialect from the movie is also noticeably toned down in the ride. While both Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear are currently voiced by African-Americans (in Disneyland's case, they used the original voice of Br'er Bear, Nick Stewart), Disney chose to have veteran voice actor Jess Harnell voice Br'er Rabbit, and even Br'er Fox at first (Harnell is most known for providing Wakko Warner's voice on Animaniacs). The ride also features the songs "How Do You Do", "Everybody's Got A Laughing Place", and of course, "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah". The ride is among one of the most beloved in the parks and has avoided controversy thanks to Tony Baxter and the Imagineers. The most interesting thing about the ride is that many that ride it believe the animated characters to be original to the park, when instead they are part of a movie that may never officially see the light of day ever again.

Live Action Disney

So our next foolhardy writing series is going to be detailing all of Disney's live-action movies from the 20th Century. The purpose of this is the same reason for why we covered the different animation studios and Disney's animated films: to shine a spotlight on productions that are outside of the public consciousness and to give some little-known information about productions that are much more well known. While we may go into the 21st century eventually, we felt that most of the movies released in the last nineteen years were still pretty fresh in everyone's mind. There will be a few exclusions for this list, as Disney has made different kinds of live action movies throughout the years. We will not be covering anything that is not feature length and we will not cover any documentaries or nature films. This doesn't shorten the list that much, but it's just a different kind of movie, so we're not going to go into them here. We will include Disney's hybrid movies, that is, their movies that combine both animation and live action, except for the package films of the 1940's like The Three Caballeros and Fun and Fancy Free, which are considered part of the animated canon. Since both myself and Anne have children and jobs don't expect these to be coming as frequently as some of the series have in the past. Hope everyone enjoys and look for our first post coming soon about Disney's first hybrid film, Song of the South. Yes, we are starting with the most controversial film Disney has ever released. Wish us luck!

-Demosthenes and Little Orphan Annie

Moana

Ron Clements and John Musker have directed some of the greatest Disney movies of all time, including The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. They have also directed some of my personal favorites, Hercules and Treasure Planet. They have a great track record, and Moana is no different. After they finished The Princess and the Frog, they wanted to adapt Terry Pratchett’s Mort, but necessary film rights kept it from happening. To avoid this, they pitched three original ideas, one of which was a movie based around Polynesian culture. Musker had started reading about Polynesian history and the god Maui, and he thought it would make a great movie. Musker and Clements traveled to many different islands in the Pacific to learn as much as they could, with the plan that it would be a movie solely about Maui. After the initial trip, however, Clements pitched that it should instead focus on the daughter of a chief. They learned during their trip that Polynesians had stopped voyaging about three thousand years ago, then picked it back up again a thousand years later. No one is really sure why that is, so Clements and Musker saw this as a great story background and set it at the tail end of that non-voyaging era. The film itself took about five years to develop, partially due to re-writes. Clements and Musker recruited people from all over Oceania to consult on the film and make sure it was as accurate as possible and would not offend anyone from the film’s locale. Moana became the duo’s first CG movie, having only worked with traditional animation before. Disney stopped doing traditional animation after Winnie the Pooh and the water animation would have taken forever if done traditionally.

Moana’s story evolved over time to become what we know today. Originally focusing on Maui, it shifted to Moana. Moana originally had five or six brothers, with her being the youngest sibling and her dealing with issues of gender. While there is a rough animated sequence in the special features of the video release, this story-line was quickly abandoned, with the directors feeling the movie should be about Moana finding herself. Another draft of the story had Moana’s father as the one who wants to start voyaging again, but they eventually found that it cast a shadow over Moana, so instead they created Moana’s grandmother. Her grandmother would encourage her to voyage, while her father would try to keep Moana on the island at all costs. Another story idea focused on Moana going to rescue her father who was lost at sea. The only part of that idea that stayed was a small part of Moana’s father’s backstory involved having an incident at sea which caused him to ban voyaging. Production started in earnest and it wasn’t until 2015 (a year before it was supposed to be released) that the team realized there were major story problems. Don Hall and Chris Williams, who had just finished directing Big Hero 6, were brought in to help iron out the story at the late stage in development. Musker and and Clements were already working 12 hour days, 6 days a week, so the help was welcome. Luckily, production wrapped in time for the late 2016 release.

The entire cast of Moana is from somewhere in the Oceania, like Samoa, New Zealand, and Hawaii, except for current Disney mainstay, Alan Tudyk. Tudyk is from Texas. Close enough? With representation becoming more and more important in movies, it was a no-brainer for Disney to go after people who are actually from the locales they are representing. The filmmakers went through hundreds of auditions to find the perfect Moana, ultimately finding it in 14 yr old high school freshman, Auli’i Cravalho. Production had already modeled Moana’s character, so the fact that Cravalho looks like Moana was pure coincidence. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was an obvious choice for the cocky and seemingly selfish demi-god Maui. While he pulled off the character well, his singing sort of leaves something to be desired, but it’s not Russell Crowe levels in Les Miserables. The only other “stars” cast were Jermaine Clement as hoarder coconut crab, Tamatoa, and Alan Tudyk as Moana’s unwitting stowaway, Hei Hei. Yes, Disney paid Tudyk to just make a bunch of chicken noises. Genius, right?

Something that got people’s attention early in Moana’s development was the inclusion of Lin-Manuel Miranda for the film’s music. This was announced right in the middle of Hamilton-mania, so people legit freaked out, as they should have. Incidentally, Miranda was hired on before Hamilton became big, and instead was brought on for his work on In The Heights. Not everything was done by Miranda, as Mark Mancina and Opetaia Foa’i were also brought on to round out Moana’s songs, with the score being done completely by Mancina. Songs in the movie range from English, to Samoan, to the little spoken Tokelauan. How Far I’ll Go is the movie’s “I Want” song, and clearly shows that the filmmakers were going for traditional music mixed with Broadway sensibilities. Songs that are completely in Samoan or Tokelauan were done by Foa’i with Miranda and Mancina doing most of the rest in conjunction. One song done completely by Miranda, Shiny, was inspired by a Flight of the Conchords tribute to David Bowie at the Aspen Comedy Festival in 2004 and Miranda listening to Bowie non-stop after the artist’s untimely death. How Far I’ll Go was nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars, but ultimately lost to City of Stars from La La Land. If Miranda had won, he would have achieved an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) at the young age of 37. To put that in perspective, only 12 people have achieved this feat, and it took some of them over 40 years to do it. Miranda has won all the others in less than ten. What I’m trying to tell you is that Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius and everything he touches is gold. I’m fully on the Miranda hype train, so I’m admittedly a little biased. Getting back to the soundtrack, it’s very good. Good enough that I’ve listened to it at least 100 times and haven’t gotten completely sick of it. My son is obsessed with Moana and demands to listen to it everyday, and my wife and I usually don’t mind going along with it.

Moana was a smash success for Disney, and along with Zootopia, made 2016 a very good year for Disney in general. The film grossed $642 million against an estimated $150 million budget, marking the fourth straight Disney animated film that went over the $500 million mark. The movie was a hit with critics, garnering a 96% on rotten tomatoes. Critics were happy to see a powerful female lead and good story to back it up. The animation was also lauded along with the character development. This is a solid Disney musical, on par with the Disney Renaissance and is up there with Tangled for me in terms of newer Disney musicals. Disney has continued their trek to create a strong female character that isn’t defined by the men around her. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best they’ve done in that respect. Moana feels like a real person, not a caricature or a character without fault. Moana makes mistakes and she even gives up hope at one point. Moana is led to believe that Maui is the only one that can restore the heart to Te Fiti, but in the end she realizes that it is up to her to restore the heart and save her people. She cannot and should not depend on Maui for that. Maui is an integral part of saving the day, but if you think about it, there is a way that Moana could have achieved everything she needed to do without him. It would help that she knew how to sail, though. Moana serves as Maui’s redemption, allowing him to realize that he is more than just his hook. The Ocean (yes, it is a character in this film) chose Moana to not only to restore the heart, but to also save Maui. Also something that is refreshing is that Moana isn't the same as Ariel, who is trying to be somewhere else. Moana is going outside the reef to save her people. She leaves and doesn't badmouth where she came from. She loves her island, her people, and still wants to be their leader someday. Getting off the island had nothing to do with just getting away or just to disobey her father.

The movie is not without its faults. Pua, Moana’s pet pig, kind of gets the shaft in this movie. He’s in the very beginning and then disappears until the very end. It doesn’t hurt the movie that much, but it just makes it seem like the character is just around to sell toys. Hei Hei turns out to be integral to the plot, but a funny looking chicken will sell a lot less than a cute piglet. The second gripe I have with this movie is that sometimes the jokes fall flat. This has been a problem with Disney since the 2000’s, with a few movies escaping it, but most have a few moments that just make me cringe, and I can’t explain why. Maybe I’m just getting older, maybe I’m looking too hard at movies that some would consider are made for kids. I’m talking about any moment that took me out of the movie, including the “tweeting” joke and Moana eating the pork in front of Pua. They didn’t do it for me, that’s it. These are nitpicks in an otherwise excellent movie. If you’ve been out of Disney for a while and are wondering if the movies have gotten better since the 2000’s, yes they have. Disney has been on a roll since around 2008 or 2009, depending on who you ask. I’m sure it won’t last forever. Every animation company goes through some lulls and Disney is no different. Disney took a break for 2017 and will be returning in 2018 with Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2. This is followed by Frozen 2 in 2019 and Gigantic in 2020. If you’re keeping score, that’s two sequels in a row for a studio that has rarely done official sequels. Sure most of the Disney movies have a sequel, but they are released on video only and are not part of the canon. Before Ralph Breaks the Internet, Disney had only three sequels released in theaters as part of the canon: Rescuers Down Under, Fantasia 2000, and 2011’s Winnie the Pooh. This is a disappointing trend for Disney. Pixar has fully committed to doing sequels so it’s too late for them, but hopefully Disney realizes quickly that people want original material, not re-treads. I’m looking at you live-action remakes!

Zootopia

Co-director of Zootopia, Byron Howard, has been with Disney for quite some time. He first served as an inbetweener for the Pocahontas production, then animator for Mulan, before becoming supervising animator for the short John Henry, Lilo & Stitch, and Brother Bear. He then graduated to co-directing, working on Bolt and Tangled before working on Zootopia. He was pitching ideas for a new movie to John Lasseter, and three of them happened to be about anthropomorphic animals. The first was an adaption of The Three Musketeers, the second, a 60's themed story about a mad scientist cat that turned kids into animals, and a bounty hunter pug in space. None of those ideas worked out, but the animal theme was consistent. Howard wanted to create a movie in the same vein as Robin Hood. It's a story filled with animals, but the animals aren't living in the human world, its their own world. Lasseter encouraged him to make something that kind of combined the 60's theme from the mad scientist cat story with talking animals. Out of that, Howard pitched the story titled Savage Seas, a spy film centered around a rabbit named "Jack Savage" who was somewhat like James Bond. Jared Bush joined on to help write the story, and they tried to flesh out more of the details of the movie. They soon learned that the most interesting part of their proposed movie was the city that was filled with animals, and over time the 60's were dropped for present day, and the spy story was changed to a police procedural. Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps were created at this point, but both were cops from the get-go and Nick was the main character, not Judy. They had started work on that version of the story, but again, they changed it to reflect on Judy Hopps instead of Nick Wilde, as that would create a better dynamic. What we ended up with was a story about a bunny cop that has to solve a mystery with the help of a grifter fox.

The animators took a lot of care in creating a world that is populated by talking animals. Zootopia is laid out in different districts, for the most part, and contains areas that any animal would be comfortable in. Like all films with animals, animators traveled the world to get inspiration on how to properly animate the inhabitants of Zootopia. Zootopia itself was modeled after several different major cities, including New York City, Shanghai, Paris, San Francisco, Hong Kong, Brasilia, and Las Vegas. Animators had to create a whole new piece of software to create the fur for all the animals, as they hadn't had a CG film with animals since 2008's Bolt. The IT engineers created iGroom, which gave character designers precise control over the brushing, shaping and shading of fur and made it possible to create a variety of eccentric character styles for each animal.

The cast of Zootopia is headed by Ginnifer Goodwin as Judy Hopps, and Jason Bateman as Nick Wilde. They could not have cast this better. Bateman plays a smart aleck very well, and Goodwin plays Hopps well as a somewhat naive, yet determined, cop. The rest of the cast includes Idris Elba (he is in everything these days!) as Chief Bogo, Jenny Slate as Dawn Bellwether, Bonnie Hunt as Bonnie Hopps, JK Simmons as Leodore Lionheart (pssst...he's a lion), Octavia Spencer as Mrs. Otterton, Alan Tudyk as Duke Weaselton, and Shakira as Gazelle. There are two things I really like about the naming of characters in this movie. The first is that the missing otter, Mr. Otterton, is named Emmitt. If you happened to watch obscure Christmas specials from the 70's, you may recognize the name as an homage to Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas, a Jim Henson TV special from 1977. The second thing is Alan Tudyk's character being named Duke Weaselton, an obvious joke about another character Tudyk voiced in Frozen, the Duke of Weselton. 

Zootopia continues Disney Animation's recent domination, honestly putting Pixar to shame. Considering that John Lasseter runs both, I'm sure he's doing just fine. Financially, they are both doing great, but critically, I feel that Pixar hasn't put their best foot forward in quite a few years. Inside Out is their only certifiable hit critically, but it's a movie that is surrounded by sub-par sequels and a dinosaur movie nobody watched. Both Finding Dory and The Good Dinosaur were not even nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. Zootopia has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and has been praised as an important movie in the Disney canon for its message (more on that later). Financially, the movie grossed $1.024 billion dollars against a $150 million budget. I'd say they made quite a bit of money. It is currently sitting at 5th for highest animated film gross (not adjusted for inflation) just below Finding Dory, Toy Story 3, Minions, and the mighty Frozen. Zootopia went on to win Best Animated Feature Film from the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, the Annie Awards, and the Critic's Choice Awards. It was nominated at the BAFTA's but lost to Kubo and the Two Strings. 

While not a perfect allegory for how we are dealing with bigotry and prejudice in present day, Zootopia attempts to show what can happen when our fears get the better of us. In present day Zootopia, mammals all live in harmony, but it wasn't always this way. In the distant past, predators hunted and ate their prey, hearkening back to a more savage time for animal kind. Times have changed an all seem to live in peace, though it doesn't take much for a large amount of the population, animals that would traditionally be considered prey, to begin to fear predators again when they think they are going feral. Things get worse when it is incorrectly surmised that it is in the predator's DNA to be savage and violent, and therefore they could snap at any moment. It is only when Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde uncover a larger conspiracy that everyone realizes how silly they've been acting, including Judy herself. This film has humor, mystery, action, and some of the most nuanced characters to come out of Disney in a while. This is definitely a new Disney favorite for my family and I couldn't recommend it more. 

The Low-Output Animation Studios

There were a few studios that had only one, or very few movies and I didn’t want to write them all separate and have them be really short, so I just combined them into one post. Some of these studios are just starting out, some just couldn’t hack it, but for whatever reason, they haven’t produced much yet.

ToonBox Entertainment

Animation studio that got its start in 2008 and is headquartered in Toronto. The studio started out by doing TV shows, namely Bolts and Blip and The Beet Party. They have two movies under their belt currently and are working on one more. Their first, and most well known is The Nut Job. Boasting a cast including Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Maya Rudolph, and Liam Neeson, it focuses on woodland creatures trying to steal some nuts. If the premise sounds thin, critics thought so too. The film was panned by critics, but grossed a serviceable $120 million against a $42.8 million budget. A sequel, The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature will be out this August. Their second movie, Spark: A Space Tail, steals An American Tail’s pun and for that, this movie should be punished. Punished it was, making only $196,458 in theaters. Coming out just two months ago, it didn’t get a wide release and was not advertised, so that most likely doomed the movie from the start. Reviews were even worse than The Nut Job, so I guess the movie got its due. Unless Nut Job 2 ends up being a complete reversal from their fortunes, I don’t see ToonBox lasting very long.

Assemblage Entertainment

Assemblage, along with Splash Entertainment, released 2016’s Norm of the North. It’s Rob Schneider voicing a Polar Bear that goes to New York City. It has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. There is nothing else that needs to be said about this movie.

Tim Burton Productions

Again working with Disney, Tim Burton wrote, produced and directed Frankenweenie, the remake of his infamous live action short from the 80’s. The movie wasn’t released until 2012, but it had been planned since 2005. Burton took many of the animators from The Corpse Bride crew and used them for Frankenweenie, another stop-motion film. Burton was able to take a short story and add to the story without making it feel tacked on or making the plot seem too thin. The cast was rounded out by actors that had previously worked with Burton, including Martin Landau, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Martin Short. The film was critically praised, and it managed to make a little over twice its budget, which is probably all that Disney could have hoped for.

C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures

Talk about a poorly timed movie. The Wild came out in 2006, just one year after Dreamwork’s Madagascar came out. According to some, it had been in development longer, but corporate espionage kept The Wild from coming out soon enough. Nevertheless, The Wild was not a success the same way Madagascar was, even if they do have a lot of similarities. Critics mostly didn’t like The Wild, though some said it was much better than Madagascar. It barely made more than its budget, so it was clear that audiences didn’t need more than one movie about talking zoo animals in New York. Let’s all keep in mind that both movies are terrible, so it doesn’t really matter who came out first. This is another film that people hem and haw over it being part of the Disney canon, but if it wasn’t made by Disney, it ain’t canon!

Cartoon Network Studios

While Nickelodeon has made numerous movies over the years, Cartoon Network didn’t go for that as much. They have released two movies theatrically, and the second was only in a few theaters. The Powerpuff Girls Movie came out in 2002 and served as a prequel to the television series. The movie got decent reviews, but was a box office disappointment, only grossing $16 million against an $11 million budget. Regular Show: The Movie is basically a TV movie, but they decided to release it in a few theaters. There is no critical reception or box office gross available.

Jumbo Pictures

Doug, first shown on Nickelodeon, was later taken to ABC, which is owned by Disney. The Disney version of the show proved to be very popular, so a movie was made. Doug’s 1st (and last) Movie was created by Doug’s animation company, Jumbo Pictures. Jumbo was founded by Jim Jenkins and David Campbell in 1990 and went on to create Allegra’s Window, 101 Dalmatians: The Series, and PB & J Otter. Jumbo went defunct in 2001, with Jenkins creating a new studio, Cartoon Pizza. It was thanks to The Rugrats Movie's success that Disney decided to release Doug’s 1st Movie in theaters as opposed to direct-to-video. They lucked out with that, grossing almost $20 million against a $5 million budget. Like all movies meant to be TV episodes or straight to video, critics blasted it for being too much like the show and not its own thing, animation and story-wise. If you’re going to make a movie out of your TV show, give it a reason to exist!

Big Red Dog Productions

Clifford's Really Big Movie was based on the Clifford the Big Red Dog TV show which ran from 2000-2003, with the movie being released in 2004. Made by the same animation studio that did the TV show, the movie grossed $3.3 million and got so-so reviews from critics. It was like a long TV episode and nothing more.

Toon City

Toon City is the overseas studio that works on most of Disney’s TV shows. They, along with Disney Television Animation created the Teacher’s Pet movie. Not sure why this show of all of Disney’s shows was made into a movie. I remember watching a few episodes, and besides having Nathan Lane voice the main character, there wasn’t anything particularly special about it. The movie served as a series finale for the show, being released a year after the show ended in 2002. While the movie received mostly good reviews (Leonard Maltin is a big fan), it failed at the box office, not even matching its budget.

Fathom Studios

Delgo, released in 2008 and directed by Marc Adler, held a record only recently broken. More on that in a minute. Adler was convinced that he had a masterpiece on his hands. This wasn’t a stupid animated comedy like Shrek. This was a serious drama for kids that dealt with real issues. It just happened to not deal with humans at all, but humanoid aliens. Fathom had been working on this movie since 1999 and were convinced that their animation was going to be the new benchmark. Adler was sure that his movie would be even bigger than Shrek’s gross. This wasn’t a typical Hollywood animated film, instead being made by a small CG animation studio and distributed by an independent film studio. Though it took forever, they finally released the movie in December of 2008. People had much better things to watch around Christmas that year apparently, because Delgo broke the record for least amount of money made when playing in over 2,000 theaters. The average was two audience members per screening. Yeah, that’s really bad. The record would be broken four years later by The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure. Delgo, in the end, grossed somewhere between $600,000-$900,000. The movie’s budget was $40 million and they didn’t even make it to $1 million. Ouch. Reviews were scathing, ultimately sweeping this into the dustbin of history. Heck, if I didn’t remember seeing ads for this, I wouldn’t have included it.

Sparx Animation Studios

Igor is Sparx Animation and Exodus Film Group’s only animated feature. Sparx, a French animation studio, has mostly worked on TV shows, including taking over Star Wars: Rebels. Igor, like most animated movies, has an all-star cast, including Steve Buscemi, John Cusack, Eddie Izzard, Jay Leno, Arsenio Hall, Molly Shannon, and Christian Slater. Producer Max Howard remembers being surprised that so many stars signed on, as they were just a small independent studio. They sent the script out to a bunch of actors and Steve Buscemi signed on almost immediately. After that, all the other spots filled up quickly. Unfortunately, the film didn’t do well when it was released in 2008, grossing just $30 million against a $25 million budget. Critical reception was also not great, thus burying any hope Sparx had for continuing in the movie business.

That is my animation studio series! I had a lot of fun researching all of these, and it just shows how many people out there are trying to make it in this business. We are currently super flooded with animation studios right now, and there are plenty more outside the U.S. I did hit on a few in Canada, Europe, and Australia, but wanted to keep it to ones that had releases in the U.S. That is one of the reasons that Studio Ghibli wasn’t part of the series. I may still do a write-up on those movies, but I’d like to watch all of them first. I’ve seen a good portion, but not enough to feel I can write about Studio Ghibli as a whole. Hope you liked the series and let me know if there’s something you would like me to write about!