(Featured Image: fanon.wikia.com – Author Unknown)
Yes, that seems to be the word on the grapevine! Sorry for passing on reviewing The Day of the Doctor, but I’ve been meaning to get to this topic for a while now, and I thought it would be more timely if I posted it to coincide with the theatrical release of a new Disney full-length feature, in this case Frozen. (Buckle up; this is gonna be a long one.)
Before we begin, I want to share a personal anecdote. Before my first semester at law school, I took a vacation with my girlfriend to Walt Disney World. I hadn’t been to Disney World in nearly a decade (the previous time being 2004), so I wanted to just experience that again before I would no longer be able to have fun (or so I thought at the time, anyway). It was so much fun, and not just because I was with my girlfriend or because it was a theme park where every inch of the place was carefully engineered for one’s enjoyment (or imagineered, as they call it). I was surrounded by childhood favorites such as Mickey Mouse, Aladdin, Scrooge McDuck, Pocahontas, and countless other unforgettable characters (including my all-time favorite, Mulan). I hadn’t had so much no-holds barred fun in a long time, and the Disney universe itself, not merely the attractions themselves, played a huge part in that. I suspect my Kingdom Hearts fanboyism at the time had a lot to do with it, and yet I’m not so sure.
The thing is, there were tons of people there at or around my age, and a large number of that group were like us: young couples. There’s no way I could ever completely pull away from The Walt Disney Company, who are a titan of media output. And given the large number of fellow college-age patrons at the parks, the regular appearances of Disney a cappella covers on YouTube, the massive amount of Disney fan art on DeviantArt and all across the web, Kingdom Hearts’ rabid fan following, and the number of young adult-centered attractions at certain areas as Epcot’s World Showcase and Downtown Disney, I think it’s no secret that I’m not alone in that respect. Clearly, the Mouse and his pals had a profound effect on my generation, the ’90s children (and kids before and after that I’m sure, but I don’t know with enough confidence to say). And how did that happen? Many believe a certain high period in Disney film called the “Disney Renaissance” had something to do with it:
I’m sure a lot of you remember it firsthand like me: Tarzan, Lion King, Hercules, The Beauty and the Beast, my much-beloved Mulan, and others. The Disney Renaissance was an unprecedentedly creative and successful period in the history of Walt Disney animated features, beginning with The Little Mermaid in 1989, and depending on who you ask, ending as early as 1995 or as late as 2005. It also benefitted from the parallel emergence of the relationship between Disney and Pixar with Toy Story and other such films (arguably, Pixar was able to maintain the box office success of the Disney brand by going it alone throughout the ’00s). Yes, many of us remember it as a time of innovative (and beautiful) traditionally-animated works, “I Want” songs, settings and plots derived from fairy tales and classical canonical works, a heavy emphasis on classical values clashing (sometimes head-on as in Hercules) with a modern presentation (and all that that implies), and so much more.
But in 2001, Shrek changed the game by openly mocking the magic paraded by the Disney canon for more than half a century before. And with the proliferation of 3D animation, although no longer new and unexpected, DreamWorks had finally proven that not all animation was Disney, or that all of it should be (admittedly, the arbiter in hindsight was non-3D The Iron Giant, although it was Shrek that really tipped the scale). For nearly a decade, Disney’s road proved a bumpy one as they lost TV to Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, and then lost their near-total dominance of movies to DreamWorks, Twentieth Century Fox, and others who jumped onto the 3D bandwagon. With that, 3D sounded the death knell of traditional 2D animation, with increasing use of 3D by both Disney and its competitors.
And yet there’s been talk in recent years of a Disney resurgent, with whispers of “the second Disney Renaissance” across the Internet. It began with Disney’s acquisition of Pixar and the rise of John Lasseter. This change resulted in the traditionally animated The Princess and the Frog in 2009, the first non-3D Disney movie since Home on the Range. It was well-received (not as much as it could’ve been, but it’s nevertheless a great film) and featured all those “I Want” songs and fairy tale elements people had come to expect from the Disney Renaissance classics. In quick succession, we then got Tangled in 2010, Winnie the Pooh in 2011, and Wreck-It Ralph in 2012. Bam, bam, and bam (I hear Winnie the Pooh wasn’t that great, but still).
Does that really mean Disney is having a second animated feature “renaissance?” What does that mean, anyway? And hey, might as well put it out there: does there need to be a Disney renaissance – I mean, do we need to call it that every time Disney gets its groove back?
From the foregoing discussion, being in a “renaissance” could mean a couple of things. The first possibility involves higher production quality, just like the “original” Disney Renaissance. In other words, they sport a combination of great story ideas, and the really smart choices that result in successful execution upon those stories (see Exhibit A). It’s very likely that this, rather than financial success by itself, is what we mean when we look at these last couple years as a possible second Disney Renaissance. Of course, it can’t be that simple, but it clearly plays a huge role in the revival. I was planning on treating all the possible meanings of a Disney Renaissance separately, but it looks like I’ll have to combine them all in order to explain this.
Personally, I like a lot of the stuff that came out when Disney was still in their slump (and just as they were beginning to come out of it): Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, Ice Age (…mostly) – those are all great franchises. And more power to those respective creators because they proved that great children and family entertainment does not have to come from Disney. They can get away with sneaking a lot more stuff under the radar and generally being more bitingly satirical, so that not only do adults enjoy themselves, but kids feel like they’re in on the joke as I did when I saw Shrek as a kid (although Nostalgia Critic may have a thing or two to say about that: see his Cat in the Hat review). Pixar really came into its own as well, with barely a hitch since.
Of course, the Princess and the Frog and Tangled are pretty solid, and Wreck-It Ralph for me stands a good chance of even knocking Mulan off its pedestal. But after a decade under the reign of the Disney brand, audiences got bored of it. Too much, even of a good thing, can get stale quick. DreamWorks and competitors provided a breath of fresh air to the animated feature medium, by providing an alternative to “Disney magic.” I can’t remember exactly the words used, but I remember in 2004, Universal Studios did an ad for Islands of Adventure, targeting those “tired of magic kingdoms and pixie dust” or something. Such an open taunt, and it actually worked! And also, I think somewhere along the way, Disney lost its mojo for a short time.
Non-Disney films from 1999 onward provided that alternative, but more importantly, they provided a meaningful alternative; anyone remember Cats Don’t Dance? The Don Bluth films? Whatever your own opinion of them, these films were not wildly successful the way Disney was during that time. Audiences can demand something different any time, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to gobble it up if different doesn’t also mean “at least as good.” Even Bluth’s successful ventures such as Anastasia were compared to Disney. What made non-Disney films like Robots successful in the next decade wasn’t merely that they weren’t Disney; they were finally of a caliber that they could compete with Disney. No, better than that – they didn’t have to compete; they became significant players in their own right, playing Disney’s game entirely on their own terms.
It is true that over the decade the weak links in Disney’s canon gradually cracked the glass (Pocahontas is often cited as the first), for reasons originating both inside and outside of Disney. So it might be better to say those other studios were finding their voice at the same time as Disney began to lose momentum – a case in impeccable timing. So is it just impeccable timing again that people were getting a little bored with the Shrek brand of animated features and yearned for good ole fashioned Disney again?
Maybe, but if Disney has a “second renaissance,” I doubt that will be the real reason, even if it seems that way. The truth is serious competition – the constant threat of being dethroned – has kept Disney on their toes, as much as it also gives DreamWorks and others a chance to shine. They temper each other in terms of what they can deliver to family and child audiences, but not just that: the lessons of the previous decade have rubbed off on Disney, even as they (and those of us who grew up with it) yearn for that lost time.
You know, this article was originally going to focus on Disney alone. Turns out hashing out what makes this new string of Disney successes different from (or the same as?) the previous one necessitates a look at its competitors. I’m not even going to get to talking about whether or not we even need to call this a “renaissance!”
The original Disney Renaissance was driven by two overriding goals: to put out a high quality Disney movie every calendar year, and to begin making musical movies again that would feel like actual musicals. And while these more recent efforts seem to heavily emphasize recapturing the magic of that earlier string of successes, they also seem to be intent on Disney-fying Shrek’s style of humor, and straying a little bit from the traditional way of adapting and modernizing fairy tales. That is, instead of merely giving those classic stories a modern flavoring (Aladdin, Hercules, etc.), stories like Tangled attack the time-worn tropes head-on, the way successful competitors did.
That doesn’t mean throwing out that model entirely – even Robots availed itself of some traditionally favored archetypes – but Disney’s showing a sort of newfound boldness in deconstructing formerly unquestioned tropes, or at least calling enough attention to them that the audience does the deconstructing. Wreck-It Ralph too has taken some cues from Pixar (it has been often called Toy Story for vidya games) – it’s a thrilling, funny, and heartwarming adventure that doesn’t involve talking animals (…strictly speaking) or pixie dust; it’s also set in the real world and a universally relatable story. I guess what I’m trying to say is it doesn’t feel like Disney right off the bat, which they’ve pulled off so well, and somehow that’s a really good thing for them to achieve. More importantly, it shows that Disney has learned from its mistakes from the last couple decades, including the time now fondly remembered as the Disney Renaissance, with one trend standing out among these latest efforts: diversity, diversity, diversity.
Question is, will Frozen be able to live up to these theories, or are we just jumping the gun? My first impression is that it looks like Tangled on ice, but honestly, the best answer I can give is we’ll have to just wait until tomorrow to find out. But early signs indicate that Disney has learned to spice it up every once in a while, while still being able to do it the Disney way. Everyone wins.
Whew! I’ve never used the name “Disney” so many times in one sitting. I’m glad I finally got all of this off my chest – I have been wanting to do this article for months, but I didn’t think I had the time. I hope this all made sense; I had a helluva time trying not to write a novel for you (this is pretty much the most concise I could get while still hitting all my points).
Regardless, this concludes this week’s dose of pop. Since finals are coming up and I need to get into 100% study mode (luckily I wrote this article a full month in advance), I’ll be taking a break from Hopped on Pop for a little while. I don’t know what Percy plans to do as far as his own posts, but I’ll return by stepping out of schedule temporarily to review the Doctor Who Christmas Special (on account of the fact that it debuts on a Wednesday; I’ll return to my usual Tuesdays after that)! Thanks for reading. See ya ’round.
Hopped on Pop 
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