The Little Mermaid is usually credited with kick-starting Disney’s first animation renaissance, but this often-discussed period started 3 years prior with The Great Mouse Detective. Similarly, Disney’s second animation renaissance has been credited to Frozen and Tangled when it started years earlier. While it is convenient to think that all Disney needed was Idina Menzel and a great power ballad to rediscover their movie musical roots, the path that led to Frozen’s nearly $1 billion box-office gross worldwide has been rough and messy with one major loss for the company along the way.
Good – The Princess and the Frog
In many ways, The Princess and the Frog serves as a bridge between The Little Mermaid and Frozen. The story is based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. For casting, they chose actors like Anika Noni Rose and Michael Leon-Wooley who are better known on Broadway than for work on the big screen, a strategy that worked with Paige O’Hara in Beauty and the Beast and Jodi Benson in The Little Mermaid. Ron Clements and John Musker, best known for their work on Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, were also brought on to direct and write the screenplay. All these elements are reminiscent of the first renaissance, but looking back, there are small touches woven throughout the film that indicate that Disney was aware of their public image and needed to change it.
The Walt Disney Company had been criticized in the past for its lack of racial diversity in their princess line-up, but it ramped up during the decline of Disney animated features. Even the Disney princesses were under scrutiny. Ariel from The Little Mermaid was once seen as a strong-willed Disney heroine, but in 2009, many wondered if she should be a role model for young women with her immature teenage angst and obsession over a man she barely knows.
Enter Tiana, a blue-collar Disney heroine. She isn’t a princess, and she has no desire to be one. Her dream is to open a restaurant in New Orleans, which sounds simple, except Tiana is a black woman living in the South in the 1920s. Still, she works hard and plans ahead so one day, when she saves enough money, she can see her dream come true. Tiana’s disinterest in romance sets her apart from previous Disney heroines, and her disdain for people who trust in a wishing star instead of working for their dream makes her revolutionary for a Disney character, princess or not. While her happy ending does include a wedding, the real triumph is Tiana sharing a dance with her true love on the deck of her newly-opened restaurant.
Going forward into Tangled and Frozen, Disney continued perfecting this hybrid of fairy tales, infusing classic stories with more complex heroes and heroines. Unfortunately, this, and the underseen Winnie the Pooh, are the last hand-drawn animated features Disney’s made, as Tangled and Frozen used computer animation. It is sad and strange that in this second renaissance of animated features at the Walt Disney Company, the biggest change so far has been phasing out traditional hand-drawn animation.
Best – Frozen
If The Princess and the Frog was a compromise between old and new Disney, Frozen was a complete redefinition of what a Disney movie could be. The central conflict was not a romance but a broken sisterly bond. There is a relationship between an ordinary person and royalty, but instead of a prince rescuing a lowly common girl, it is a princess and an ice harvester who fall in love. In Frozen, women hold real power that goes beyond hosting balls, wearing a crown, and sitting still so a pretty dress doesn’t wrinkle. Elsa serves as the queen of Arendelle, and in the midst of her coronation, no one asks if she plans to marry or worries that Arendelle will collapse without a king. When a curse needs to be broken with an act of true love, it isn’t a kiss or a romantic gesture from a man that saves the day but rather a young woman sacrificing her life for her sister. The more the layers of Frozen are peeled back, the more extraordinary it is that this film came from Disney, of all places.
Some critics of Frozen have complained that for all these advancements in storytelling and female representation, all the leading characters in Frozen and Tangled have been thin, white, and straight. While these are valid concerns for the Walt Disney Company as a whole, it isn’t necessarily helpful to pin all of them on Frozen. In getting upset over what Frozen is not, people might miss out on what Frozen has to offer and what makes it so revolutionary in subverting the Disney story formula. Considering the box office returns on Frozen, it is likely that this is the direction Disney Animation will take moving forward, and if it means more empowered characters, a wider variety of relationships, and new kinds of heroes, this promises to be a very exciting time in Disney history.
Worst – Planes
In the same year that Frozen took a huge step forward, Planes was a huge step back. It wasn’t the worst movie produced during this time, but the theatrical release of Planes represented a terrible new strategy by the Walt Disney Company. Planes was not produced by Pixar, as many mistakenly believed, but DisneyToon Studios, the creative teams responsible for Disney’s direct-to-DVD/Blu-ray films. It was released in theaters because the direct-to-DVD/Blu-ray profits have been declining in recent years, and more money could be made by releasing Planes theatrically. Considering the cost for one of these DVDs is typically less than the cost of one child’s ticket to see Planes in 3D, the company stands to make a lot of money, and the average family stands to lose a lot both in money and in the quality of Disney films.
Honorable Mention – Meet the Robinsons
Meet the Robinsons wasn’t a huge success in theaters, but it is a sweet, odd little tale of time travel, family, and the promise of the future. The film’s oft-repeated mantra “Keep Moving Forward” was a great message of hope for all ages, encouraging kids to embrace their failures and learn from them. In retrospect, “Keep Moving Forward” also represents Walt Disney’s vision of his company as something constantly growing and changing. Looking back over the eras from Pinocchio and Mary Poppins to The Princess and the Frog to Frozen, it is appropriate that Walt Disney’s legacy was leaving behind a company that did take chances and reinvent itself through the years.
In the words of Walt himself, “Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
— Rachel Kolb