Month / May 2024

by The Disney Purist

#38 Fantasia 2000 (1999)

  1. BACKGROUND
  2. STORY #1: SYMPHONY NO. 5:  BEETHOVEN
  3. STORY #2: PINES OF ROME: RESPIGHI
  4. STORY #3: RHAPSODY IN BLUE: GERSHWIN
  5. STORY #4: PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2, ALLEGRO, OPUS 102: SHOSTAKOVICH
  6. STORY #5: THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS FINALE: SAINT-SAËNS
  7. STORY #6: THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE: DUKAS
  8. STORY #7: POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE – MARCHES 1-4: ELGAR
  9. STORY #8: FIREBIRD SUITE – 1919 VERSION: STRAVINSKY
  10. PRODUCTION
  11. RECEPTION
  12. LEGACY
  13. FINAL THOUGHTS
  14. REFERENCES

BACKGROUND

Fantasia 2000 was released almost sixty years after the release of Walt Disney’s musical and artistic extravaganza, Fantasia (1940), becoming the final movie of the “Disney Renaissance Era”.

Walt’s initial vision for Fantasia was for the movie to be re-released in various forms throughout the years, adding in new sequences whilst removing others, so that the programme was always changing. However, when Fantasia didn’t return a profit and annoyed or confused some audiences, this idea was shelved.

Attempts to revive Fantasia had been in the works for years afterwards, with a 1970s version coming the closest, a new concept called Musicana, which would’ve featured stories and music from different countries. This was again not moved forward as it was felt another Fantasia-type of film would not be profitable.

In the 1990s, Roy E. Disney felt like the time was right for a sequel to finally be produced, as the Disney Studios were releasing hit after hit with their “Renaissance Era” movies. Roy wanted this to be a tribute to his uncle, Walt, and all of the work that went into his original Fantasia, which was seen to be a “passion project”.

Because I don’t like Fantasia, I did not hold out much hope that I would enjoy the long-awaited, or perhaps not-even-asked-for, sequel of Fantasia 2000.  

I’m not sure if I’d ever seen Fantasia 2000 before, perhaps once, so if I did, I obviously didn’t think much of it! When I came to watching it again, I was pleased to see that Fantasia 2000 is only around 75 minutes long, so 45 minutes shorter than the epic that is Fantasia, so at least I knew the pain of enduring the film would be limited.

But I’m glad to say that I actually quite enjoyed it. Not every section – some were a bit long and a bit strange – but others I very much liked, for both the music and the animation. After the second section started, I found that I was no longer feeling like this was just a film I had to get through and that actually, it might be good! 

Like Fantasia, Fantasia 2000 consists of eight sections, mixing animation and classical music pieces together. The main differences between the two films are, obviously, new choices for the short sequences, as well as the use of computer generated imagery, in amongst the traditional animation techniques, which was becoming a more prominent part of animation, and a more popular technology.

The eight sections are:

  1. “Symphony No. 5”: Beethoven
  2. “Pines of Rome”: Respighi
  3. “Rhapsody in Blue”: Gershwin
  4. “Piano Concerto No. 2, Allegro, Opus 102”: Shostakovich
  5. “The Carnival of the Animals Finale”: Saint-Saëns
  6. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”: Dukas
  7. “Pomp and Circumstance – Marches 1-4”: Elgar
  8. “Firebird Suite – 1919 Version”: Stravinsky

STORY #1: SYMPHONY NO. 5:  BEETHOVEN

Fantasia 2000 begins on a background of outer space, with images from the original Fantasia flying across the screen. One of these is archive footage of Deems Taylor’s original introduction from Fantasia; Deems Taylor was the Master of Ceremonies in the film. In this introduction, Taylor explains that there are three types of music within Fantasia: music that tells a definite story; music that paints a picture; and music that exists for its own sake. He states that the first piece is this last kind.

We then move to the stage where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has been tuning up and James Levine, the conductor, has been getting ready. They then launch into Symphony No. 5, using Beethoven’s music of the same name, which may not be known to the general viewer by name, but it begins with the most well-known few notes in classical music, so you’ll definitely have heard of it before.

Much like the first section of Fantasia with Toccata and Fugue, Symphony No. 5 is another abstract animated piece. It starts by following flashes of light in the sky, resembling lightning strikes which move with the musical notes, before moving on to a flurry of coloured triangles dancing over the screen like butterflies. The landscape begins to resemble a volcano, with more dark triangles erupting out of them that then chase the colourful ones, becoming a battle between the two, with the light winning out over the dark in the end.

Symphony No. 5 is computer generated, with some elements hand-drawn and scanned into the computer system, making a collaboration between the new and old technologies. It looks good, seeing all the triangles moving together like a flock of birds, but this is my least favourite of the eight sections, because it lacks a story. I do prefer it to Toccata and Fugue from Fantasia though.

STORY #2: PINES OF ROME: RESPIGHI

In a difference from Fantasia, Fantasia 2000 has celebrity guests to introduce each of the sections of the film. These introductions were directed by Don Hahn, who produced many of the movies of the “Disney Renaissance Era”.

Pines of Rome is introduced by Steve Martin, who makes a couple of jokes about Fantasia, like how we should all be glad that Fantasia was renamed from its original name of The Concert Feature, and explains how Fantasia was meant to be added to after its release, before attempting to play the violin, instead throwing the bow across the room. It then moves over to Itzhak Perlman, who actually is a violinist. Perlman introduces the piece properly, saying how Disney thought a completely different story for this music to the lush landscapes that the title of the music might bring to mind.

Pines of Rome follows a pod of humpback whales – that can fly – particularly focussing on a young whale who gets trapped in an iceberg, before being helped to safety by its mother, with the whole pod flying off together soon after. It’s a bit of a random story, but still, I like it, though the music is the standout for me here. I also thought these whales seem to resemble the “space whales” that would be seen in Disney’s Treasure Planet in 2002.

Pines of Rome is an impressive use of computer-animation, something that Disney Animation had only been using sparingly in their predominately hand-drawn 2D animated movies of the 1990s. Fantasia 2000 gave the animators more freedom to experiment with this new technology, which would help them with the movies that were to come from the Disney Studios from 2005 onwards.

STORY #3: RHAPSODY IN BLUE: GERSHWIN

Quincy Jones then explains that we’ll be heading to New York City now, with inspiration from Al Hirschfeld for the animation style, and the music of George Gershwin as a background. Jones also introduces pianist Ralph Grierson.

This third section is Rhapsody in Blue, which is potentially most people’s favourite segment from Fantasia 2000, for its artistic merits. I think the animation is clever, especially the beginning where one line draws the whole New York skyline, and I like the overall plot of the piece, following four people through their time during the Depression in the 1930s: one stuck in a boring job, wanting to be a drummer; another out of work and down on his luck; a child wantomg to spend time with her parents; and a husband struggling to find joy in his life.

Rhapsody in Blue’s animation style resembles the work of artist Al Hirschfeld, who was happy for his work to be adapted and gave notes during production on the piece. Eric Goldberg was the lead animator behind Rhapsody in Blue, and approached Hirschfeld specifically about helping with this idea, as he was a huge admirer of Hirschfeld’s work, even using some stylistic elements in his work on the character of Genie in Aladdin (1992). The colour blue was used heavily in this sequence, naturally, given the title of the musical piece, with this even being the case with the skin colours of the human characters; different shades of blue and purple hint at differences in skin tones. It was an experimental piece of animation which worked well.

Since Rhapsody in Blue is drawn in the style of Hirschfeld, it seemed right for the name “Nina” to be incorporated into this sequence. Hirschfeld inscribed this name into much of his work as a reference to his daughter. “Nina” pops up three times here: once on the toothpaste tube, then on a coat’s fur collar, and again in a woman’s hair. Also, the bespectacled character, “Flying John” was based on animation historian John Culhane, who was also the inspiration for the character of Mr. Snoops in The Rescuers (1977)[1]. 

Goldberg was given the opportunity to make Rhapsody in Blue as a standalone short. However, during a screening of Fantasia 2000, which had a combination of new sequences and ones from Fantasia, they found that some of them just weren’t working well together. Roy E. Disney then asked Goldberg if he thought Rhapsody in Blue would be ready in time for Fantasia 2000; Goldberg said it would be, so it made it into the film after all[2].  

STORY #4: PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2, ALLEGRO, OPUS 102: SHOSTAKOVICH

Moving on to Bette Midler, she shows some concept art of pieces that were intended for Fantasia but were never made, including a bug ballet, a baby ballet, and a piece inspired by music from the Weinberger opera Schwanda the Bagpiper. Midler goes on to explain that there was finally a success; Disney animators had wanted to do a piece following the story of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Steadfast Tin Soldier. They couldn’t decide what music to use, but finally settled on Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 2”, thanks to a suggestion from Roy E. Disney. The Steadfast Tin Soldier piece uses CGI characters with hand-painted backgrounds. It looks like a nod to the early work of Pixar Animation to me.

This fourth segment follows a tin soldier with one leg falling in love with a ballerina doll, originally because, when he first sees her, she is balancing on one leg so he thinks she is just like him. It’s fine though, it all works out, however, the evil jack-in-the-box in the room loves her too, so a fight ensues, with the soldier falling out of the window, into a sewer, then into the sea, where he is swallowed by a fish. That fish is then caught and brought to a fishmonger, and the soldier falls out of the fish’s mouth, returning to his place in the toy room, where there is another fight but this time the jack-in-the-box falls off the table and into the fireplace, leaving the soldier and the ballerina to reunite. What a weird story…But this version at least ends happily. The Hans Christian Andersen story has the tin soldier and the ballerina burn to a crisp in the fireplace…

This section of Fantasia 2000 is without a doubt the worst segment for me, purely because I have a fear of creepy dolls, puppets, clowns, anything with a human face that isn’t alive, so I do not like this story at all. That jack-in-the-box particularly freaks me out…

STORY #5: THE CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS FINALE: SAINT-SAËNS

On to the fifth section, which is introduced by James Earl Jones. He states that Disney animators have always had a history of drawing animals, so it would be only natural for Fantasia 2000 to include a piece inspired by “The Carnival of the Animals Finale” by Saint-Saëns. Jones says that this piece will answer the question “what is man’s relationship to nature?”, before being corrected by animator Eric Goldberg that actually this answers the age-old question “what would happen if you gave a yo-yo to a flock of flamingos?”

I love this piece, it’s my favourite in the film, because it’s so funny and silly; I also like the music. One flamingo is playing with a yo-yo, which is irritating the rest of the flock so they try to wrestle it away from him so he can continue doing the same as them, mostly just walking around in a line. This flamingo gets the better of them though, fighting against their attempts to make him conform, and the joke really is on them at the end, because he actually ends up having loads of yo-yos! This section is only two minutes long, which is palatable for anyone, but I feel like it could’ve been longer and still been just as enjoyable.

The original idea for The Carnival of the Animals segment was to have the ostriches from Dance of the Hours in Fantasia play with a yo-yo – this idea was devised by Disney story writer Joe Grant, who had worked on the original Fantasia – but instead of using the familiar characters of the ostriches, Disney ended up using the same idea but with flamingos, partly because they are more colourful[3]. This whole sequence was created in watercolours. Disney rarely used watercolours and when they did, it was mostly just for backgrounds, like in Dumbo (1941), or Lilo & Stitch (2002). It’s also interesting to see how the background colour frequently changes; when it is focused on the main flock, the background is orange, but when the “hero” flamingo is the focus, the background is green. That must have been quite difficult to keep track of[4]!

STORY #6: THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE: DUKAS

Of all of the Fantasia sections, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is easily the most well-known to the general public, so it made sense to add this segment to the program for Fantasia 2000, with this being the only story repeated from Fantasia. It is introduced by Penn and Teller, who do a couple of magic tricks for us, telling us that stage magic is all fake, but that Mickey is the “genuine article”, and that all of his magic is real. Penn then tells Teller that he is like the little sorcerer’s apprentice, with Teller then proceeding to cut Penn’s hair as revenge.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice shows Mickey using a magical hat to bring a broom to life so that it will fetch water for him, since he is so tired of doing his chores for the sorcerer. Eventually, things get out of hand though, as Mickey falls asleep and dreams that he is controlling the whole universe and all the oceans, clearly enjoying his power. When Mickey awakens, he finds that the room is flooded with water, and that he cannot stop the broom from collecting water. Mickey decides the best way to deal with the situation is to hack the unruly broom to pieces but that doesn’t work, and the wood shards come back to life, making more brooms than ever. They go back to collecting water and almost drown Mickey in the room. Finally, the sorcerer returns and is able to magic away all that water, though he is most annoyed at his apprentice. On returning to the orchestra stage, we then see Mickey shake hands with conductor Leopold Stokowski.

This story is the one that began the whole production of Fantasia, as Walt Disney wanted to make a new short cartoon that highlighted Mickey Mouse as the star attraction he is, and to give him an opportunity to act more expressively than he did in the short humorous cartoons. Mickey is obviously “the apprentice” here, with the Sorcerer being given the named Yen Sid, which is “Disney” spelt backwards. He is a strict man and one that is easily irritated. The disapproving look that he gives Mickey at the end of the story, with that raised eyebrow, was supposedly meant to be an imitation of the same disapproving look Walt Disney had[5]!

This story started out as a poem by Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, which was written in 1797, telling the tale of a sorcerer who leaves his apprentice with chores to do, however, the apprentice, fed up with having to do everything by hand, enchants a broom to do his work for him, but since the apprentice is not fully trained in magic, when things get out of hand, he is powerless to stop it. Eventually, the sorcerer returns and breaks the spell. French composer Paul Dukas then used this poem as the basis for his classical piece “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, which was first performed in Paris in 1897.     

STORY #7: POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE – MARCHES 1-4: ELGAR

The next section begins as Mickey goes over to conductor James Levine, asking him to stall as he can’t find Donald Duck, the star of this next sequence. Levine tells us that Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” is normally used for graduation ceremonies these days, but here it will be a twist on the story of Noah’s Ark. Mickey tells Levine that Donald is just getting out of the shower and will be ready soon, so he can get started.

The animation begins by showing numerous animals heading off, in pairs, over to the Ark. Noah then comes to Donald, as he is Noah’s assistant, to tell him that there will be a flood and that Donald needs to help herd all the animals into the Ark, with some going more willingly than others. Daisy also arrives to get on the Ark; however, Donald can’t find her, and thinks she hasn’t made it on board. He tries to look for her, but the flood waters come, and he gets back inside, believing Daisy to be lost forever. Daisy thinks the same about Donald as she cannot find him either. Once the flood waters have receded, the animals are taken off the Ark, with Daisy leaving sadly. She then realises she has lost her locket, which contains a picture of them both together. Donald is clearing up the Ark and finds the locket – at exactly the same time that Daisy comes to retrieve it. They kiss and leave together, reunited again.

Pomp and Circumstance was an idea brought to the table by Michael Eisner as he’d just been to a graduation and felt the music would be good for Fantasia 2000 as it is familiar and universal[6]. The decision to use a biblical story alongside Elgar’s music did not sit well with everyone though, but I really like it, and think the ending of Donald and Daisy reuniting is really sweet.

Originally, George Scribner, director of Oliver & Company (1988), was tasked with taking that music and designing a Disney Princess processional to go alongside it. It would have followed the princesses, starting with Snow White and ending with Princess Jasmine, marching alongside their princes and their children, with cameos from other famous Disney characters. Donald Duck was supposed to be causing problems and ruining the stately processional at the same time. The story reel of this version of Pomp and Circumstance was shown once, apparently, on the Disney Cruise Line in 2009, but doesn’t appear to have ever been shown again[7]. Though the Disney Princess version did not work out, thanks to the idea of having Donald wreaking havoc, this led to the Noah’s Ark concept.

STORY #8: FIREBIRD SUITE – 1919 VERSION: STRAVINSKY

Angela Lansbury narrates the final sequence, Firebird using the music“Firebird Suite – 1919 Version” byStravinsky from the ballet Firebird. She says that Walt Disney once described the art of animation as “a voyage of discovery into the realms of colour, sound, and motion”, and that Stravinsky’s “Firebird” encourages such a voyage, before telling us that what we are about to see is a mythical story of life, death, and renewal.  

The sequence follows a sprite, who accidentally awakens a volcano while she is turning winter into spring. This causes immense devastation to the Earth, which she then ends up rebuilding, making everywhere green and lush again, bringing life to the forest once more. I like the colour in the scene, and it had an obvious plot, which I like. I thought it was a good ending, and the music is incredibly powerful.

The “Firebird Suite” by Stravinsky had already been licensed to Disney, at the same time that another of his works, “Rite of Spring”, had been for Fantasia. Disney knew they needed an emotional ending to rival the Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria sequence from the original. It was based on a visit that Roy E. Disney took to Mount St. Helens post-eruption[8]. Many critics seemed to enjoy this section of Fantasia 2000, so I think it did the job of ending the movie on a high point.

PRODUCTION

Walt Disney’s Fantasia was released in November 1940, and received mixed reviews. Some liked the animation; others felt it was over long and tedious to sit through; music critics hated the orchestration and arrangement of beloved classical music pieces. It wasn’t at all what Walt Disney had hoped for, and the disappointing reviews stayed with him for a long time.

The whole idea for Fantasia was that the movie would be added to every so often, replacing some of the original sequences with new ones, making for a new experience every time. Some classical music pieces that were going to be included in later versions of Fantasia included Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” and Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”. But after the reaction to Fantasia, this concept was never moved forward.

In the 1970s, a new version of Fantasia, to be called Musicana, was in the works for a brief time, being worked on by veteran Disney animators Mel Shaw and Woolie Reitherman, which would have used stories and musical pieces from different countries to make a completely unique new Fantasia-style film. These sections included a jazz sequence set in the Deep South, a version of The Emperor and the Nightingale featuring Mickey Mouse, and the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, set to “Scheherazade” by Rimsky-Korsakov. Ultimately, this project was cancelled due to concerns over its profitability.

These attempts at reviving and revitalising Fantasia had not worked for decades, with the Disney Studios executives not wanting to take the risk of having a similar reception that Walt Disney received to his original film. It was actually because of a popular re-release of Fantasia in 1991 that Fantasia 2000 even came about. With the re-release, as well as the boom that The Walt Disney Company was experiencing in the 1990s both within Disney Animation and their theme parks, Disney had sufficient funds to look at making the sequel, and it boosted then-CEO Michael Eisner’s confidence in the project, though him and some other members of the Disney Company were not overly optimistic about it at times.

Fantasia 2000 had been the long-fought-for continuation of Walt’s Fantasia legacy. Walt’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, was the real champion of the project, though the original movie had never left the minds of the Disney animators. Production on the sequel was greenlit in 1992. The aim was to release the film in 1997, but it took almost a decade to complete Fantasia 2000, as work on the film was being completed between other work for the popular “Renaissance Era” movies. The original name for this sequel was going to be Fantasia Continued, but as the release date started to approach the Millennium it was decided to tie the movie in with the year 2000.

Originally, Disney had wanted to keep half of the original Fantasia programme, and only create fifty percent new footage. However, the amount of original footage being chosen became less and less the further Fantasia 2000 got into production. For a long time though, Dance of the Hours and The Nutcracker Suite were going to be included along with The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Eventually, Dance of the Hours was dropped and then The Nutcracker Suite was replaced with Rhapsody in Blue, leaving just The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which really did need to be included as it is such an iconic piece[9].

RECEPTION

Unfortunately, Fantasia 2000 wasn’t a box-office success, and in actual fact only just “broke even”. As Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was wrongly named “Walt Disney’s Folly”, perhaps it was more correct for Fantasia 2000 to be named “Roy Disney’s Folly”, as Michael Eisner supposedly referred to the film. Roy E. Disney had passion for the project, which was replicated by many of the animators who worked on Fantasia 2000, so that’s a harsh title. The movie is often overlooked, but I feel it has a place in Disney history.

In making a tribute to Walt Disney’s original Fantasia, given the initial response to that film in the 1940s, it was always going to be a risk to make a similar type of movie and release it in the 1990s. The 1990s were arguably Disney Animation’s best era, and potentially the best decade for The Walt Disney Company, and to have Fantasia 2000 be released at the end of the decade, it would seem a bit mediocre in comparison.

Fantasia 2000 premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York City on 17th December 1999, playing for three nights as part of a five-city concert tour, before moving to the Royal Albert Hall in London, and then to Paris and Tokyo, finishing in Pasadena, California on 31st December 1999. These consisted of James Levine conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra, whilst the animation was presented on a screen above the stage.

Fantasia 2000 was then released in theatres on 1st January 2000, becoming the first animated feature film to be presented in IMAX, so it broke new ground there, although it did limit its release to solely IMAX theatres, of which there were not so many at the time. In Los Angeles, the Disney Company built a temporary IMAX theatre to show the film for its first four months of release, from January to April 2000[10]. Fantasia 2000 was released widely in regular theatres later in the year.

Reviews for the movie were fairly positive. The release of the movie in IMAX was a positive note for many critics, who felt it fully immersed the audience in the animation and in the music, though many did say that this did not help The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which, despite being restored somewhat, looked grainy according to some viewers, especially compared to the rest of the sequences which were all new and relatively technologically advanced. Again, some sequences were popular, and others were not, with Firebird, and the artsy look of Rhapsody in Blue being two of the best sequences, and the abstractness of Symphony No. 5 being one of the least popular. Everyone has different opinions on these.

Fantasia 2000 did win four Annie Awards for its technical achievements. One of these was to Eric Goldberg for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Character Animation on The Carnival of the Animals; another was to his wife, Susan McKinsey Goldberg for Production Design on Rhapsody in Blue[11]. It lost the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature to Pixar’s Toy Story 2 (1999). The soundtrack was also nominated at the Grammy Awards for Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture.

LEGACY

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given this is the never-ending story of Fantasia, there was supposed to be a sequel to Fantasia 2000. Some sequences had already been completed, or were close to being finished at the time that this sequel, to be named Fantasia 2006, was cancelled. It did not proceed potentially due to concerns about the commercial prospects of another feature film like Fantasia. Although Fantasia itself did prove itself to be an icon of Disney movie history eventually, that has not happened for Fantasia 2000. With its mixed reviews, as well as having to follow the greats of the “Disney Renaissance Era”, it was never going to give much confidence for Disney executives to green-light a further Fantasia project. However, we did get to see some of these completed sequences as standalone short films, so all was not lost.

The Little Matchgirl made its appearance in 2006, first at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France in June 2006, before being added as a bonus feature on The Little Mermaid Platinum Edition DVD, also released in 2006. Both The Little Matchgirl and The Little Mermaid are Disney takes on Hans Christian Andersen stories. The Little Matchgirl short film was directed by Roger Allers, who had also co-directed The Lion King (1994) by this point, and produced by Don Hahn, who produced many of the hit Disney films of the 1990s including Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994).

The story follows a young homeless girl attempting to sell matchsticks to people on the streets of St. Petersburg to make some money for herself, however, no-one will buy any. Wanting to get out of the cold, the girl hides away in a snow-filled alley. To keep herself warm, the girl begins to strike her matches, each time seeing visions of happier Christmas times, with a house, a fireplace, good food, and her grandmother. But each time the match burns out, the girl is brought back to her reality of freezing alone on the streets. The next day, the girl is seemingly found in the alley by her grandmother, although, we soon see that the grandmother is a spirit and that the girl must have died in the cold… Not the happiest of tales. Apparently attempts were made to give it a happier ending, but none of these worked.

The story was first intended to be set to Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”; a piece of music that had been considered for the original Fantasia. It was not used, with Borodin’s “String Quarter No. 2” being chosen instead, and performed by the Emerson String Quartet. The Little Matchgirl was nominated for Best Animated Short at the Academy Awards, but lost to a Norwegian short titled The Danish Poet (2006)[12].

One by One was directed by Pixote Hunt, who was the Art Director for The Rescuers Down Under (1990) and created the Symphony No. 5 section for Fantasia 2000. It was released in 2004 as a bonus feature on the DVD release of The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride.

This short film takes place in a town in South Africa and sees us follow a colourful feather as it flies into this town. A young boy finds the feather and, inspired by it, calls for his friends to fly kites with him. All the children of the town find materials they can use to make their own colourful kites, and walk in procession up to the highest hill. One boy lets his kite go first and then tells everyone else to do the same, with the whole sky awash with colourful kites. One by One takes its name from the song of the same name written by Lebo M. It was originally intended to be included in The Lion King (1994). This song was cut from the final movie, but was later used in the Broadway musical of The Lion King.

Another completed sequence was Lorenzo. Work had begun on this short back in the 1940s, but was revived and completed for Fantasia 2006. After Fantasia 2006 was cancelled, Lorenzo was instead released in 2004 after premiering at the Florida Film Festival in March of that year. It was directed by Mike Gabriel, who was the co-director for The Rescuers Down Under (1990) and Pocahontas (1995).

Lorenzo is a pampered cat who comes across a stray, street cat with no tail one day, proceeding to show off how fluffy and wonderful his own is. The street cat then curses Lorenzo so that his tail will have a mind of its own, making him dance all over the streets with it. Lorenzo then finds himself in a fountain and tries to drown his tail. That doesn’t work, so he then tries to break his tail off by slamming it in a door. That also doesn’t work, so Lorenzo ties his tail down to the train tracks, but the tail is too smart for that, and manages to untie itself. Lorenzo tries to electrocute his tail, but instead only harms himself. The street cat from earlier then gives Lorenzo a knife so that he may cut his tail off. A fight then ensues, with Lorenzo ultimately succeeding in removing the tail. That’s a bit of a gruesome story…

But the music is quite good. Gabriel chose a piece of tango music for the short, which works well here, giving it some suspense and drama. The music chosen was “Bordoneo y 900”, by Osvaldo Ruggiero, performed by Juan José Mosalini and his Big Tango Orchestra. Lorenzo was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the Academy Awards, but lost to Ryan (2004), a short animated film about Canadian animator Ryan Larkin.

Whilst working on Fantasia 2000, Roy E. Disney uncovered a project that had begun in 1945, a collaboration between his uncle, Walt Disney, and Spanish artist Salvador Dalí entitled Destino. This is the final completed sequence for what could have been Fantasia 2006. It was instead released separately in 2003 at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France in June of that year. It was later released theatrically in 2004.

In the mid-1940s, Dalí was invited to work on this short film at the Disney Studios, completing plenty of concept art in his iconic surrealist style alongside John Hench, who went on to lead various projects as part of Walt Disney Imagineering. The story follows a young woman named Dahlia struggling to find her long-lost love, Chronos, the personification of time, as she travels across various strange landscapes, reminiscent of famous Dalí paintings. It’s not entirely clear to me what happens here, or whether the two are reunited in the final scene – let’s assume they do! The film is set to a piece of music called “Destino”, written by Armando Dominguez, performed by Dora Luz, who performed the song “You Belong to My Heart” for Disney’s The Three Caballeros (1944).

Destino was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the Academy Awards, losing out to the claymation short film Harvie Krumpet. Of these four completed sequences meant for Fantasia 2006, Destino seems to be the most remembered and praised, having been shown as part of numerous Dalí exhibitions around the world ever since its release in 2003.

At the Coronado Springs Resort at Walt Disney World, Destino plays in the main lobby of its building Gran Destino Tower, which opened in July 2019. Its Dahlia Lounge area was named after the heroine of the film, and photos of Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí appear on the walls of the lounge[13].

At the All-Star Movies Resort also at Walt Disney World, two buildings of the hotel are themed to the two Fantasia movies: one features the brooms from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence which appears in both films, and the second building is themed to The Steadfast Tin Soldier section of Fantasia 2000, complete with giant statues of the creepy jack-in-the-box, the ballerina doll, and of course, the one-legged soldier. Since Fantasia 2000 wasn’t released until a year after the All-Star Movies Resort opened in January 1999, Roy E. Disney, Chairman of Feature Animation at the time and producer of Fantasia 2000, had to give special permission for the movie to be referenced[14].

There are few references at the Disney Parks that specifically relate to Fantasia 2000. Apart from those two hotels, one other is that the Spring Sprite from the Firebird sequence has featured in a couple of shows and parades. One of these was Tokyo Disneyland’s 25th anniversary parade, Jubilation!, where the Spring Sprite was added to the top of one of the parade floats; this parade ran from 2008 to 2013. The Sprite also appeared during the original World of Color show at Disney California Adventure. The music “Pines of Rome” has also been used in a few nighttime shows, including Epcot’s New Year’s Eve Fireworks, and World of Color. The whales from Pines of Rome also appear briefly in the finale section of the Wonderful World of Animation show at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

There are no character meet-and-greets here for specific Fantasia 2000 characters, although at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World, you can meet Sorcerer Mickey at Meet Disney Stars at Red Carpet Dreams, located just outside of the ABC Commissary quick-service location, and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice scene appears in the Mickey’s PhilarMagic show which currently operates at all of the Disney Parks except for Shanghai Disneyland. Sorcerer Mickey merchandise is also likely to be the easiest to find, with anything specific to Fantasia 2000 most likely to be made for a milestone anniversary.

In recent years, Disney have gone back to their idea of making Fantasia into a concert experience. This is the touring concert Disney Fantasia: Live in Concert, where a live orchestra plays the classical pieces of music, whilst a screen shows the animated segments. The program contains a mixture of sequences from both Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, although the program seems to change. It is unclear to me when Disney Fantasia: Live in Concert first began showing, with the earliest date I can find going back to 2012. It is currently still touring in 2024.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It’s great that Disney agreed to make Fantasia 2000, and I think I’ve found a new Disney animated film that I like. There are pieces of music I will certainly be listening to now, so Disney have succeeded in winning me over there. I surprisingly found myself getting teary at times: at the ending with the sprite, Donald and Daisy reuniting, the whales flying off into space, so that shows how much I enjoyed the film. I’m still thinking about it a few days later.

This film was much funnier, much less stuffy, and less serious than Fantasia, and it felt generally more familiar, with the music choices and animation stylings. I hope others join me in giving this one another go, even if Fantasia is too much for them!

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘Fantasia 2000 (1999)’, pp. 112-114.

[2] Credit: D23, ‘The Fantasia Legacy: A Conversation with Eric Goldberg’, Disney D23 YouTube Channel, 16th November 2020.

[3] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘Fantasia 2000 (1999)’, pp. 112-114.

[4] Credit: D23, ‘The Fantasia Legacy: A Conversation with Eric Goldberg’, Disney D23 YouTube Channel, 16th November 2020.

[5] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature (2000).

[6] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: Fantasia Continued (2000).

[7] Credit: Jim Hill, ‘Why For: The Disney Princess royal processional that you almost got to see’, JimHillMedia.com, 29th April 2011.

[8] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: Fantasia Continued (2000).

[9] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: Fantasia Continued (2000).

[10] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘Fantasia 2000 (1999)’, pp. 113.

[11] Credit: D23, ‘The Fantasia Legacy: A Conversation with Eric Goldberg’, Disney D23 YouTube Channel, 16th November 2020.

[12] Credit: Disney, “The Little Matchgirl (2006)”, from The Little Mermaid (1989) 2-Disc Special Edition DVD (2006).

[13] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: Gran Destino Tower’, YourFirstVisit.net, date unknown.

[14] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: All-Star Movies’, YourFirstVisit.net, date unknown.

by The Disney Purist

#3 Fantasia (1940)

  1. BACKGROUND
  2. STORY #1: TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR: BACH
  3. STORY #2: THE NUTCRACKER SUITE: TCHAIKOVSKY
  4. STORY #3: THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE: DUKAS
  5. STORY #4: THE RITE OF SPRING: STRAVINSKY
  6. STORY #5: INTERMISSION / MEET THE SOUNDTRACK
  7. STORY #6: THE PASTORAL SYMPHONY: BEETHOVEN
  8. STORY #7: DANCE OF THE HOURS: PONCHIELLI
  9. STORY #8: NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN / AVE MARIA: MUSSORGSKY / SCHUBERT
  10. PRODUCTION
  11. RECEPTION
  12. LEGACY
  13. FINAL THOUGHTS
  14. REFERENCES

BACKGROUND

Walt Disney was an appreciator of both art and music. Despite not being a musician himself, Walt understood the importance of music and song in his film-making.

Within the Silly Symphony series of cartoons, the Disney Studios began to use music to enhance their story-telling, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) went one step further by having the songs move the narrative forward, at a time when musicals revues, shows that consisted of numerous singing and dancing numbers that did not come together to form an overall plot, were all the rage.

After the success of Snow White, Walt wanted to go further with both music and animation, deciding to set classical music to animated sequences in an experience like no other. Something that was more of a concert than a feature film.

With the help of a famed conductor, the Disney Studios released Fantasia, hoping for very positive reviews. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way for Walt’s project, with many audiences and even some critics confused by this strange movie.

I’m not ashamed to say that I am one of those people. I have never liked Fantasia.

It’s not that I don’t like classical music, though I cannot say I am anything close to a connoisseur, and it’s not that I don’t like the animation, although some of the pieces are quite abstract and bizarre. The main problem I have is that Fantasia is just so long.

With a runtime of a little over two hours, Fantasia is the longest of all the Disney animated classics. That’s not to say that I have a short attention span because I don’t think I do; if I’m fully focused and interested in the subject, then I can easily watch a movie of two hours, sometimes more. But I started to lose interest about halfway into Fantasia, around the time of the Intermission, because of the lack of an overall story, and by the end of the movie, I just felt relieved it was over.

Fantasia is split into eight individual, standalone animated sections with a corresponding piece of music being played by an orchestra in the background. These segments have no relation to each other, and are of varying length.

These eight sections are:

  1. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”: Bach
  2. “The Nutcracker Suite“: Tchaikovsky
  3. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice“: Dukas
  4. “The Rite of Spring“: Stravinsky
  5. “Intermission/Meet the Soundtrack“
  6. “The Pastoral Symphony“: Beethoven
  7. “Dance of the Hours“: Ponchielli
  8. “Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria“: Mussorgsky/Schubert

Fantasia does not follow any traditional story-telling format. Instead, the film showcases how animation and music can work in harmony with each other. It does succeed in that mission, but I don’t know if anyone can honestly say that every single section of Fantasia interests them, or that they enjoy every piece of music.

STORY #1: TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR: BACH

The introduction to Fantasia sees the viewer watching as the live orchestra prepares for their “concert”, getting to their seats and tuning up their instruments. Deems Taylor, the Master of Ceremonies for Fantasia who introduces each section of the film, then welcomes the audience, explaining what they are about to see in this feature film. Taylor explains that there are three types of music within Fantasia: music that tells a definite story; music that paints a picture; and music that exists for its own sake. He then introduces conductor Leopold Stokowski, who takes his place on stage.

The first sequence, Toccata and Fugue, is the third type of music. It has no story and is instead purely artistic, showing a series of abstract designs that are suggested by the classical piece itself. It begins with silhouettes of the orchestra, highlighted in different colours, before moving on to show lines and shapes mimicking the orchestra’s movements. These shapes combine to create forms and landscapes. It ends by returning to Stokowski and his orchestra on the stage.

Walt Disney wanted to have an animated abstract piece here that had no story, something that was experimental in nature. The work of German artist Oskar Fischinger was used as inspiration for this sequence. Fischinger was known for using lots of geometric patterns in his work and because of his experience, he was asked to help the artists with this sequence at the Disney Studios, however, he left the Studios because he did not like the fact that his designs were being altered by the Disney artists to fit their overall vision; Fischinger was used to working as an individual, not being within a collaborative work environment.

Toccata and Fugue is certainly abstract, and not exactly the best way of enticing an uncertain audience into enjoying Fantasia, if you ask me. I don’t enjoy the animation and I struggle to pay attention throughout this sequence. It is at least matched with a fairly well-known piece of music though.

STORY #2: THE NUTCRACKER SUITE: TCHAIKOVSKY

Pretty much everyone is familiar with “The Nutcracker Suite” music, or at least parts of it. However, instead of this sequence following the popular story of The Nutcracker ballet, something that has become a staple part of Christmas entertainment in many countries, Disney decided to move away from this and have their version tell a story of the changing seasons, featuring fairies, leaves, flowers, and mushrooms.

The Paint department experimented with new techniques for this piece, such as dry brushing, as they wanted it to be a spectacular piece of artwork and something that provoked an emotional reaction, so it took longer than normal to complete.

I really like the music of “The Nutcracker Suite” and I try to watch a version of the ballet on television every Christmas if it is airing. My favourite parts of Disney’s The Nutcracker Suite are the dancing mushrooms, with the little one that gets frustrated by being out of step with the others being the best part of it – apparently, his name is Hop Low[1] – and the dance with the thistles. Art Babbitt, the animator who designed the Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Geppetto in Pinocchio (1940) animated the dancing mushrooms, and despite that “dance” only be a couple of minutes long, it is perhaps the most memorable in The Nutcracker Suite.

The colour, changing scenery, and familiarity of the music of this sequence help to keep the viewer interested here.

STORY #3: THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE: DUKAS

Of all of the Fantasia sections, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is easily the most well-known to the general public, probably because it stars Mickey Mouse as the apprentice. It also popularised Dukas’ music. It helps that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is one of the more interesting segments, actually telling a complete story. It is definitely my favourite section.

It shows Mickey using a magical hat to bring a broom to life so that it will fetch water for Mickey who is so tired of doing his chores for the sorcerer. Eventually, things get out of hand though, as Mickey falls asleep and dreams that he is controlling the whole universe and all the oceans, clearly enjoying his power. When Mickey awakens, he finds that the room is flooded with water, and that he cannot stop the broom from collecting water. Mickey decides the best way to deal with the situation is to hack the unruly broom to pieces but that doesn’t work, and the wood shards come back to life, making more brooms than ever. They go back to collecting water and almost drown Mickey in the room. Finally, the sorcerer returns and is able to magic away all that water, though he is most annoyed at his apprentice. It’s a good thing this happened to a sorcerer who could magic all the water away; imagine the insurance documents we’d have to fill in if our basements flooded. I doubt many companies insure against enchanted brooms… On returning to the orchestra stage, we then see Mickey shake hands with conductor Leopold Stokowski.

This story is the one that began the whole production of Fantasia, as Walt Disney wanted to make a new short cartoon that highlighted Mickey Mouse as the star attraction he is, and to give him an opportunity to act more expressively than he had done in his short humorous cartoons.

Mickey is obviously “the apprentice” here, with the Sorcerer being given the named Yen Sid, which is “Disney” spelt backwards. He is a strict man and one that is easily irritated. The disapproving look that he gives Mickey at the end of the story, with that raised eyebrow, was supposedly meant to be an imitation of the same disapproving look Walt Disney had[2]!

Sorcerer Yen Sid first spoke in a 1971 episode of The Wonderful World of Disney, as Fantasia contains no dialogue within the animation. The episode was called “Disney on Parade” and the character was voiced by Michael Rye[3]. Yen Sid also appeared in other Disney projects, such as House of Mouse (2001-03), the video game franchises Kingdom Hearts and Epic Mickey, as well as in the interactive game Fantasia: Music Evolved.

STORY #4: THE RITE OF SPRING: STRAVINSKY

The Rite of Spring takes us through the origin of life on Earth, including the lifespan of dinosaurs. It begins by taking us through space, through the galaxy, before descending on Earth where volcanoes bubble, lava flows, and oceans cascade over the ground. Then, we see the dinosaurs, and how they live in this environment alongside each other. Obviously, things don’t remain harmonious when a Tyrannosaurus Rex comes in to terrorise all the other dinosaurs, and a battle ensues between it and a Stegosaurus, with the Stegosaurus ultimately losing… The whole ground dries up, leaving no food or water for the dinosaurs. Eventually, they all die. But there’s no meteor shower here to finish them off; they just collapse and become extinct.

Apparently, The Rite of Spring as a single short film was used as an educational film for school science classes in the 1950s and 1960s, which makes sense, as it is kind of informative. I, sadly, find the length of the short, at just over 20 minutes, to be too long, and as I’m not overly interested in dinosaurs, I don’t particularly like it, but many do find this section of Fantasia to be one of the best ones.

Without computer animation, the Disney artists and effects team had to work out how to show the earliest times on Earth in an effective way. For example, the smoke clouds were created by setting oily rags on fire, and putting paint pots upside down in water created some of the smoke patterns. This adds drama to the piece, and these effects do make the sequence look impressive. Disney also wanted to make the dinosaurs as realistic as possible, studying dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History for hours to get the visuals right. Some of the science is not quite accurate, with some of the dinosaur species not co-existing together in real-life as they do on screen, but that’s getting a bit picky[4]. 

As well as the subject matter of evolution being quite daring, the choice of music was too. Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” was first performed in 1913, making it one of the “newer” pieces of classical music within Fantasia, but there was also a riot at the premiere of Stravinsky’s music, this being one of the most famous scandals in the art world. Some of the audience did not like the piece, or the primitive dance numbers that were choreographed to go alongside it. It was a shock to see, but there were also political tensions around the time that no doubt inflamed the people’s actions[5].

STORY #5: INTERMISSION / MEET THE SOUNDTRACK

Following on from that, we get to the Intermission, or Meet the Soundtrack as this section is also known. It is by far the most random part of Fantasia, even more abstract than Toccata and Fugue, feeling completely unnecessary to the overall feature.

It involves a short “jam session” with some of the musicians before moving us on to meet ‘Soundtrack’, a vertical white line, who moves to mimic the different instruments being played. I suppose Disney wanted to show how they can give an inanimate object a personality, and to give more of an insight into the musicians and performers. Luckily, it’s not much to sit through, but I feel like just showing the movie’s title card and playing a piece of calming music would’ve been more fitting for an Intermission.  

STORY #6: THE PASTORAL SYMPHONY: BEETHOVEN

The Pastoral Symphony depicts creatures from Greek mythology, such as centaurs and “centaurettes”, the female version of centaurs, where Disney artists had to make a decision over how much of their uncovered “top halves” should be exposed, according to Ward Kimball, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, as well as cherubs and Pegasus horses, just going about their day, relaxing, flirting, falling in love. Bacchus, the God of Wine, then shows up, seemingly drunk, and they all have a party. That is, until a dark cloud comes over, bringing a storm to the area. It turns out that it is Zeus, wanting to ruin the party, seemingly for no reason, other than I guess he was bored or was in a mood because he wasn’t invited, so he begins to throw lightning bolts at everyone below him, causing them to flee in terror. A bolt hits a huge barrel of wine and it floods the place. Zeus has had enough of causing problems for the day, and goes back to his business. The next day, the sun is out and everyone gets back to enjoying themselves once more.

The Pastoral Symphony is the most colourful of the Fantasia pieces, with the artists being told to be as free and creative with colour as they could be. According to Disney legend, background painter Ray Huffine was annoyed one day at not being able to find the perfect colour for some aspects of the scenery in The Pastoral Symphony. As he pondered what to do, he opened up his lunch and found that his wife had packed him a jar of boysenberry jam. It gave him an idea – by putting a light wash of jam on the cel, he had found the perfect colour[6]! Originally, Pierné’s music “Cydalise” was going to be used to accompany this section, however, it was decided that they needed something bigger and more dramatic for the sequence, so went with Beethoven.

The Pastoral Symphony happens to be the most controversial sequence within Fantasia. That is because it clearly introduced two stereotypical and caricatured African-American centaurettes, who are maids to the white centaurettes. The first of these is called Sunflower, who could be seen shining the white centaurettes hooves, and braiding flowers into their hair. Later on, another Black centaurette named Atika, who looks almost identical to Sunflower other than the fact she was given a slightly different hairstyle, could be seen holding a garland of one of the centaurettes and following behind her, as though Atika was picking up the train of a wedding dress. Sunflower also appeared later, unrolling the red carpet for the god Bacchus and attempting to help him into his seat. By the 1960s, these characters had been edited out of the film in the rise of the Civil Rights movement[7].

STORY #7: DANCE OF THE HOURS: PONCHIELLI

Dance of the Hours is perhaps the most fun section of Fantasia, and it is also relatively short so that’s helpful if your attention begins to wane at this point, like mine does. It starts with ostriches dancing to signal the start of the day. By the afternoon, we then see hippos dancing in the late day sun. In the evening, elephants can be seen dancing in the sunset; and then, the alligators appear in the dark of night, seemingly looking like they are up to no good, but one alligator dances with a huge hippo that he loves dearly. The piece ends with a big group number with all of the animals appearing.

Dance of the Hours was meant to be a parody of the highbrow dance numbers that had begun to become an essential part of motion pictures at the time. Although I do not know what films had been used as inspiration for this parody, I am well aware that many movie musicals of the 1960s have moments like this, where there is an overly long, largely unnecessary dance number that appears towards the end of the film, breaking up the main storyline, so I think I can understand this parody! Ponchielli’s music, the Act 3 finale of the opera La Gioconda, is also a familiar piece of music, so that contributed to the joke.

Since this is predominately a sequence of ballet dancing, animators studied real ballet dancers to get a sense of what accurate ballet dance steps would look like. They then used those movements to animate these animals as ballet dancers, to make a realistic, but comic, ballet. It is funny to see some of the least graceful creatures in the animal kingdom doing one of the most elegant dance styles in the world[8].

STORY #8: NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN / AVE MARIA: MUSSORGSKY / SCHUBERT

Night on Bald Mountain / Ave Maria, the final sequence of Fantasia, was envisioned as a classic take on the battle between good versus evil, and light versus dark.

It begins with the bat-like demon Chernabog summoning witches and evil spirits on Halloween night as he sits atop his mountain, overlooking a village. He begins to sacrifice some of these evil beings into the fiery pit of the mountain. Chernabog is them defeated by the next morning’s sunrise, cowering away from the light, and concealing himself into the face of the mountain again. Church bells ring as a procession of figures walk to see the sunrise in a perfect contrast to the horror just witnessed.

Animator Bill Tytla was the leading figure on this sequence for Fantasia, animating Chernabog, who was based on the God of the Night from Slavic mythology. Because of Chernabog’s status as one of Disney’s most powerful and terrifying villains, Night on Bald Mountain is regularly referenced by Disney on Halloween, making this another popular segment of Fantasia. Chernabog is also part of the Disney Villains franchise, appearing occasionally for Halloween events, as well as in the nighttime show Fantasmic! Chernabog is also a key villain in the Disney fiction series Kingdom Keepers. Although I find Chernabog and this whole story to be quite frightening and disturbing, I do like the music here.

For the Ave Maria section, they had planned to use the horizontal multiplane camera to shoot the procession as one continuous shot, even though it took days to do this. On their first attempt, they discovered that one camera lens was wrong, so they had to start again. Their second attempt was then interrupted by an earthquake. It was third time lucky though, as the third attempt successfully completed the shot[9].

PRODUCTION

Fantasia was a passion project for Walt Disney. Walt wanted to show that music and animation could complement each other, and that the two forms of art worked well together.

Previously, music in animated short cartoons had only been used to accompany the story or to highlight certain actions. This all changed with the Silly Symphonies, the short cartoons that the Disney Studios developed throughout the 1930s. One song in particular became very popular after the release of a short cartoon, and that was “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” from Three Little Pigs (1933), which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1934.

From this, the Disney Studios used music and songs to drive the narrative forward for their first full-length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). This soundtrack also became very popular with the public. But this time, Walt knew they could do something different – pair classical music with animated stories.

Fantasia began its life as just one short film. Mickey Mouse had been Disney’s star character, however, with the introduction of the easily-irritated, funny Donald Duck, Mickey’s star power was starting to decline, and it was becoming a struggle to find stories for Mickey to be a part of. Walt didn’t want his main creation to be sidelined, and he happened to come across the story of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

This story started out as a poem by Johann Wolfgang van Goethe, which was written in 1797, telling the tale of a sorcerer who leaves his apprentice with chores to do, however, the apprentice, fed up with having to do everything by hand, enchants a broom to do his work for him, but since the apprentice is not full trained in magic, when things get out of hand, he is powerless to stop it. Eventually, the sorcerer returns and breaks the spell. French composer Paul Dukas used this poem as the basis for his classical piece “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, which was first performed in Paris in 1897.

Walt felt that this story was perfect for Mickey and the animators set about animating the sequence. The animators began by updating Mickey’s look for this as he needed to be more expressive in the face and eyes since there would be no dialogue. The biggest change was in Mickey’s eyes. Previously, Mickey had only black oval shapes for eyes, but the animators decided to put pupils into those shapes, giving him eyes truer to real-life. The redesign of Mickey was led by animator Fred Moore, who had supervised animation on the dwarfs in Snow White (1937), and went on to animate Timothy Q. Mouse for Dumbo (1941).

As development on this piece was ongoing, Walt Disney happened to meet Leopold Stokowski for dinner. Stokowski was one of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th century and was a big celebrity, even outside of the classical music world. He became the director and conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1912, and was famed for his recordings and radio appearances from the 1910s. He appeared in two films in 1937, The Big Broadcast of 1937 and One Hundred Men and a Girl, and even appeared on the cover of Time for the 28th April 1930 issue, and again on the 18th November 1940 issue to promote Fantasia[10]. Stokowski was very interested in Walt’s idea of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice short cartoon and offered to conduct the music for it[11].

Stokowski and Walt assembled a 100-piece orchestra to record The Sorcerer’s Apprentice score, and the recording took place in January 1938 at the Pathé Studios in Culver City, allegedly between midnight and 3am, with excessive coffee drinking keeping everyone awake and alert. Roy O. Disney, Walt’s brother, was very concerned about how much time, effort, and money was being spent on this one short film. He knew that they’d never make their money back on this film, so Walt then decided that they’d put lots of similar short cartoons together to make a feature film, a concert of classical music with animated sequences. This project was then referred to as The Concert Feature for a while.

Deems Taylor, another famous celebrity of the music world at the time, having been a composer, radio commentator and music critic, was brought in to help Walt and Stokowski decide on the musical selections for The Concert Feature, alongside Disney story writers Joe Grant and Dick Huemer who went on to co-write Dumbo (1941). Taylor also appeared as the Master of Ceremonies in the final film. Many selections were considered and then discarded for various reasons, such as “Swan of Tuonela” by Sibelius and “Ride of the Valkyries by Wagner”, but eight pieces of music were eventually chosen for the film, and were recorded by the Philadelphia Orchestra with Stokowski as conductor.

It was later deemed that The Concert Feature was quite a mundane title for what would surely become a masterpiece. The name Fantasia was chosen for the film, as the word means a free-form piece of music, matching the imaginative nature of the movie.

Since Fantasia was always meant to be like a concert, Walt Disney wanted a roadshow attraction where audiences would have to buy a ticket to have a reserved seat like it was an actual concert or play. Two shows of Fantasia would run per day. As RKO, Disney’s movie distributor at the time, didn’t like the expense of this plan and didn’t believe it would work, Disney had to do it themselves.

They designed beautiful programmes and even wanted to change the typical sound system to suit their movie. Walt and Stokowski said the sound system had to be better than anything that existed at the time. They wanted the music to surround the audience and so Fantasound was created to enhance the movie, basically an early version of surround sound[12]. Walt didn’t want to just stop their either; he wanted his film to be in 3D and even had the idea of trying to get perfume scents to waft into the theatres at certain points during The Nutcracker Suite. Stokowski thought gunpowder would be a good smell for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Neither of these actually happened, however, we now know that 3D media is now quite commonplace and Smell-O-Vision continues to be developed.

RECEPTION

Fantasia first opened on 13th November 1940 at the Broadway Theatre in New York City, which happened to be the same theatre where the short cartoon Steamboat Willie (1928) debuted. The Fantasia roadshow later moved on to other areas, including San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ premiere had been held in December 1937.

Fantasia only managed to reach a select number of people as only 12 venues were fitted with the Fantasound system. This inconsistent release of the show hurt Fantasia’s reach, and with World War II in Europe, the movie was not going to be able to reach the overseas market. Not only that but many weren’t even interested in watching the film, since it was not an animated fairy tale, like Snow White or Pinocchio (1940), which audiences had come to know, like, and expect from the Disney Studios. Music critics didn’t like Fantasia at all, feeling that the movie ruined the classical pieces with its rearrangements, but film critics seemed to like the idea of the movie, although some of the animated sequences were not as appealing as others. Others said it was pretentious.

From April 1941, RKO took over the distribution of the film, cutting the movie down from its two-hour runtime to 80 minutes, editing out some of the more abstract, less appealing segments such as Toccata and Fugue, but it still failed to take off[13].

The reaction to Fantasia was definitely a disappointment to Walt, as he had put a lot of energy into his project. It was clearly an experiment from the Disney Studios, but Walt had hoped for more of a positive reaction anyway. Despite the lack of commercial and financial success, Fantasia did receive two honorary Academy Awards at the 1942 ceremony: one to Walt, William E. Garity and RCA for the development of Fantasound, and the second to Stokowski and his orchestra for the creation of a new form of visualised music. Segments from Fantasia were then later used in some of Walt’s television series in the 1950s, and the movie finally turned a profit in the 1960s thanks to some clever ‘psychedelic’ advertising, fitting of the time period, after being reissued theatrically every few years[14].

Fantasia slowly but surely gained popularity over the decades and more contemporary reviews of Fantasia are generally in agreement that this film is iconic and a real Disney classic, recognising the ambitiousness of the project.

LEGACY

It was hoped that Fantasia could constantly be added to, with new sections replacing older sections, giving movie-goers a new experience each time the film was re-released.

Because of the disappointing reaction to Fantasia, that didn’t happen, despite the fact some segments were already being worked on. These included a segment using Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”, another set to Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf”, and one using Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”. Luckily, during the late 1940s, a similar format of film to Fantasia was being created at the Disney Studios, now known as the “package features”. These featured animated short cartoons set to music that were packaged together to make a feature film, despite none of them being at all related to each other. “Peter and the Wolf” ended up in Make Mine Music (1946), with a swing version of “Flight of the Bumblebee” becoming Bumble Boogie in Melody Time (1948). “Clair de Lune” was meant to be used for the Blue Bayou segment of Make Mine Music, but a new song replaced it in the final film.

In the late 1970s, the idea of making a new Fantasia was revived by veteran Disney animators Mel Shaw and Woolie Reitherman. This new Fantasia was to be called Musicana and would have featured music and stories from other countries. Mel Shaw had been recruited by Walt Disney to do development work on Bambi (1942), and left the Studios shortly after to enlist in the army. He returned to the Disney Studios in 1975, where he did a lot of development work for movies at that time, including The Rescuers (1977).

Pieces of music were chosen, and stories were created for them. Some of these included a sequence of frogs playing jazz music in the Southern US, using a song by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong; a story based on Aztec and Incan folklore set to a song by Peruvian soprano singer Yma Sumac; a Mickey Mouse short retelling the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Emperor’s Nightingale, though it is unclear what music was planned to go alongside it; another using Sibelius’ “Finlandia” about an Ice god and a Sun god battling; and one more on the Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves tale, using the piece “Scheherazade” by Rimsky-Korsakov. Despite all this development work, the Studios passed on the project[15].

On screen, Disney Animation later did finally do a follow-up film to Fantasia, called Fantasia 2000 (1999), which I feel is more interesting and accessible to modern audiences; I also appreciate its shorter runtime of around 75 minutes.

In recent years, Disney have gone back to their idea of making Fantasia into a concert experience. This is the touring concert Disney Fantasia: Live in Concert, where a live orchestra plays the classical pieces of music, whilst a screen shows the animated segments. The programme contains a mixture of sequences from both Fantasia and Fantasia 2000, although the programme seems to change. It is unclear to me when Disney Fantasia: Live in Concert first began, with the earliest date I can find going back to 2012. It is currently still touring in 2024.

Another film released by Disney which is vaguely related to Fantasia is the live-action film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010), starring Jay Baruchel as “the apprentice”, Dave, and Nicholas Cage as “the sorcerer”, Balthazar. Although it takes its name from the Mickey Mouse short within Fantasia, and features a brief scene parodying the famous cartoon, except this time with the added danger of mixing electricity and buckets of water, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is based more on the legend of the magician Merlin, and has nothing to do with Yensid or Mickey Mouse. It’s a good film though.

At the Disney Parks, I was surprised to find that Fantasia is actually represented in all of the international Disney resorts, albeit some in quite small ways. For example, at Disneyland Paris, you can find two miniature scenes recreated from the film during Le Pays des Contes de Fées, the Paris version of Disneyland’s Storybook Land Canal Boats: one of these is Mount Olympus from The Pastoral Symphony, and the other is from Night on Bald Mountain, with Chernabog sitting atop his castle, overlooking the village below. These scenes do not feature in Disneyland’s version of the ride. Outside of the entrance to Disneyland Paris, as well as the Disneyland Paris Hotel, there is also a small landscaped area titled Fantasia Gardens, featuring topiaries of some of the characters from the film. There used to be the Café Fantasia inside the hotel, a bar area with subtle references to the movie, however, that has been rethemed.

At Hong Kong Disneyland, there is another landscaped area called Fantasy Gardens, which, like Paris, is subtly themed to Fantasia, with topiaries of some of the film’s most well-known characters. Fantasy Gardens can be found in Fantasyland, and is also a character meet-and-greet location. At Tokyo Disneyland, at the Disney Ambassador Hotel, guests can stay in the Fantasia Suite, which is, again, subtly themed to the film.

The Shanghai Disneyland Hotel also has some Fantasia-themed areas, such as the quick-service food location Ballet Café, inspired by the Dance of the Hours sequence, and the bar and lounge area Bacchus Lounge, appropriately named after the God of Wine who appears in The Pastoral Symphony. Inside Shanghai Disneyland, you can also find the Fantasia Carousel, which is a typical carousel that features the Pegasus horses from The Pastoral Symphony instead of normal horses. During their boat ride attraction Voyage to the Crystal Grotto, guests pass by a scene of Sorcerer Mickey attempting to control all those brooms with their buckets of water.

At Disneyland, there are a few references to Fantasia. One of these is the Primeval World section of the Disneyland Railroad. Although not specifically themed to The Rite of Spring sequence in Fantasia, it is believed that the Primeval World scene, originally created for the Magic Skyway attraction at the 1964-65 New York World’s fair, was inspired by the battle between the T-Rex and Stegosaurus in Fantasia, a scene animated by Woolie Reitherman, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men[16].The Christmas version of the World of Color nighttime show, World of Color – Season of Light, features a Fantasia section, utilising “The Nutcracker Suite” music, as well as projecting scenes of the Dance of the Hours ballet onto the water screens, and the Wondrous Journeys fireworks feature some clips of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. At Disney California Adventure Park, you can even eat at the Carthay Circle Restaurant, a fine dining experience residing inside a reproduction of the actual Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, where Fantasia was shown. At the Disneyland Hotel, some of the new 1- and 2- Bedroom Villas have been themed to Fantasia, using artwork from the movie to decorate. The hotel also has Disney’s Fantasia Shop.

Currently at Walt Disney World Resort, the most interesting reference to Fantasia can be found at the Fantasia Gardens Mini Golf course, located behind the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resorts. The 18-hole miniature golf course is elaborately themed to the movie, with sections of the course being themed to Toccata and Fugue, The Nutcracker Suite, The Pastoral Symphony, Dance of the Hours, and finally The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Clever verses introduce each hole, and you’ll find a few surprises as you make your way through the course. I love a good mini golf course, and this is one of the best ones I’ve done. On the opposite side of Fantasia Gardens, you can find the Fantasia Fairways, which is a more difficult course and does not feature much theming, only that the hole names are named after characters or sections from the film.

Some of the Walt Disney World Resort hotels also feature theming to Fantasia. One of these is the All-Star Movies Resort, where one of the resort pools and one of their hotel buildings is themed to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. At the Riviera Resort, the children’s water play area, named S’il Vous Play, is themed to the characters from the Dance of the Hours section of Fantasia. At the Contemporary Resort, their main shop is named Fantasia Market and they also have the Fantasia Ballroom meeting space.

All the Disney Parks, except Shanghai Disneyland, have the 4D show Mickey’s PhilarMagic. This is based on the story of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, except Mickey uses the hat to conduct the orchestra. During the story of Mickey’s PhilarMagic, guests follow Donald Duck as he goes through different Disney animated films to retrieve the hat that he used without permission, finding the magic too difficult to control – much like Mickey in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence. It also features a small section of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, where the brooms splash water onto the guests.

There were plenty of other references to Fantasia that have since left the Disney Parks. One of these was a small section of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice being shown during The Great Movie Ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios; another is the huge Sorcerer’s Hat that was placed in front of the Chinese Theater also at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for the 100 Years of Magic celebration in 2001. It became the park’s icon, until 2015 when it was removed, to the delight of some guests who felt it was a bit of an eyesore.

During the SpectroMagic parade that no-one seems to talk about for some reason, preferring to discuss the Main Street Electrical Parade that I certainly do not prefer over SpectroMagic despite some of those “SpectroMen” creeping me out, there was a Chernabog float. The creature would open and close his wings either to reveal or conceal himself in the mountain. It was a really cool float. There were also other floats featuring the dancing ostriches from Dance of the Hours and elements of The Pastoral Symphony. The SpectroMagic parade ran from 1991 to 1999, and then again from 2001 to 2010 at the Walt Disney World Resort.

There were even meant to be Fantasia attractions that sadly never came to be. One of these would have been housed within the Beastly Kingdom that never arrived at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, probably due to budgetary reasons. This land, that would have featured attractions themed to mythical and fantastical creatures, was going to have the Fantasia Gardens boat ride, a musical boat ride themed to Fantasia, passing by scenes of Mount Olympus and all the creatures from The Pastoral Symphony sequence, as well as going past a recreation of the animal ballet from Dance of the Hours[17].

At Disneyland, there were plans for a Fantasia boat ride to replace the Disneyland Fantasyland Motor Boats. It would have featured music and scenes from the films, using “water sculptures”. This concept was soon abandoned after Imagineers realised that noise from the nearby Autopia would drown out the soundtrack. This idea was then reconfigured to be a potential walkthrough attraction for Walt Disney World to replace the Swan Boats that operated in and around the Magic Kingdom hub and the Swiss Family Treehouse from 1973 to 1983. They wanted to fill this new area with topiaries of the Fantasia characters, but it was deemed too expensive and never proceeded, although Fantasia Gardens areas did come to be in some of the international parks in some form or another[18].

For character meet-and-greets, at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, you can actually meet Sorcerer Mickey, at Meet Disney Stars at Red Carpet Dreams, located just outside of the ABC Commissary quick-service location; Minnie Mouse also meets here. It is unlikely that any other Fantasia characters will be available to meet anywhere else, although Hyacinth Hippo and Madame Upanova Ostrich have been known to come out for Special Events at the Disney Parks. Sorcerer Mickey is not a usual meet-and-greet character, but the nighttime show Fantasmic! that currently operates at Disneyland and Walt Disney World does feature Sorcerer Mickey briefly for the grand finale.

Within merchandising, there are plenty of items featuring Sorcerer Mickey, such as plush toys, figurines, and pins, with the character also featured in Disney video games, such as Disney Infinity and Epic Mickey. Outside of that, any other Fantasia character merchandise will be harder to find, especially outside of a movie milestone anniversary, however, for the Disney100 Decades Collection for the 1940s, five of the Pegasus horses were released as plush toys.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Walt Disney struggled to get over the lack of financial success of Fantasia, but truly believed in the creation. The original plan had been for Fantasia to constantly have additional sections added, and others taken away, so it could be re-released year-on-year and always be a new experience. This never materialised during Walt’s lifetime. It wasn’t until the late 1990s when work on Fantasia 2000 would begin, thanks to Roy E. Disney, Walt’s nephew.

I am glad that Fantasia 2000 was released as a homage to the amount of effort and work that went into Fantasia, and to keep Walt’s dream “alive” in some way. I can see exactly what the Disney Studios wanted to achieve, and it did push creative boundaries. It also took courage to do something so “out there” and different, risking the reputation of the Studios. They survived the lukewarm reception, and difficult global events, and pressed on.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[2] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature (2000).

[3] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘Fantasia (1940), pp. 7-9.

[4] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature (2000).

[5] Credit: Author Unknown, ‘This is what REALLY happened at The Rite of Spring riot in 1913’, ClassicFM.com, 15th October 2018.

[6] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[7] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Lost “Fantasia”: The Disappearance of Sunflower’, CartoonResearch.com, 27th March 2020.

[8] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature (2000).

[9] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[10] Credit: Jim Fanning, ‘Fifteen Fascinating Facts About Fantasia’, D23.com, date unknown.

[11] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[12] Credit: Disney, The Fantasia Legacy: The Concert Feature (2000).

[13] Credit: Disney, Fantasia: The Making of a Masterpiece (1990).

[14] Credit: Jim Fanning, ‘Fifteen Fascinating Facts About Fantasia’, D23.com, date unknown.

[15] Credit: Disney, Musicana: The Fantasia Sequel That Never Was (2010).

[16] Credit: Jim Fanning, ‘Fifteen Fascinating Facts About Fantasia’, D23.com, date unknown.

[17] Credit: Jim Korkis, Disney Never Lands (2019), ‘Beastly Kingdom’, pp. 55-60.

[18] Credit: Michael, ‘Neverworlds – The Magic Kingdom’s Fantasia Gardens’, ProgressCityUSA.com, 19th June 2009.

by The Disney Purist

#1 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

  1. BACKGROUND
  2. PLOT
  3. CHARACTERS & CAST
  4. MUSIC
  5. PRODUCTION
  6. RECEPTION
  7. LEGACY
  8. FINAL THOUGHTS
  9. REFERENCES

BACKGROUND

This is the story of the one that started it all.

Although not the first-ever animated feature-length film – the oldest of these appear to have been made earlier in the 1900s, and some lost to history – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs does hold the title of being the first full-length traditionally cel animated film.

More importantly, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first feature-length animated movie to come out of the Disney Studios, starting their collection that came to be known as the Disney Animated Classics.

After years of making cartoon shorts, where the medium of animation was experimented with and humour was defined, in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was finally released into the world, fourteen years after Walt Disney and his brother, Roy, founded their film studio.

It wasn’t an easy journey by any means. The press was brutal in their opinions of Walt’s plans, what they liked to call “Disney’s Folly”, and no-one outside of the Disney Studios thought that they could either pull it off, or that the audience would be receptive to it.

Well, the press was wrong. Very wrong, in fact. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a huge success. Audiences were overjoyed with the movie that they were presented, plus it was artistically amazing, something they had never seen before. A full cartoon story that had heart, humour, and drama.

It put Walt Disney in line with the major film studio owners of the time. At last, animation was finally being recognised in film as something just as good as live-action.

I do like Snow White, although I think I found it too scary to watch as a child, so it’s a movie that I definitely had to grow to like. The only problem is I grew up in the 1990s, so I was thoroughly spoilt by the musical fairy tales of the “Disney Renaissance Era”, so Snow White will never be too high on my ranking of the Disney Animated Classics.

Although Snow White was released as a “family-friendly” piece of movie entertainment, not everyone remembers it that way, since it has some very dark and frightening moments, as many of Walt Disney’s earliest movies did.

PLOT

The plot of the movie is pretty well-known, but let’s go through it anyway.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs begins with a queen asking her Magic Mirror who the “fairest one of all” is, hoping that it will be her. The Magic Mirror bluntly states that there is another who is fairer than the Queen. Though he does not state her name, merely describing the girl as having “lips red as the rose, hair black as ebony, skin white as snow”, the Queen knows it is Snow White. Being the girl’s stepmother, with Snow having lost both of her parents in some unknown way, the Queen forces Snow to work as a maid at the castle, even though Snow White is the princess of this kingdom.

Snow tries not to let this get her down, as she knows that she can always wish for her life to get better, hoping for her true love to find her someday. A prince overhears Snow singing and decides to jump over the wall of the castle grounds to get closer to her. He surprises Snow by singing right next to her, at which point she runs inside. He proceeds to serenade her whilst she stands on a balcony, and they fall in love instantly. I mean, good for them I guess, but if any man ever acted like that today, then they’d just come across as a creepy stalker. Not the best first impression.

The Queen continues to be jealous of Snow White and asks her Huntsman to take Snow into the forest and kill her, bringing back her heart to the Queen. Whilst in the forest, unbeknownst to Snow, the Huntsman does plan to kill her, but he finds he cannot bring himself to do it. He tells Snow to run into the forest and never come back. Terrified, Snow does as she’s told, but the forest is much scarier in the dark, and she finds herself scared of the wind, the trees, and all the animals. Eventually, she comes to a clearing and faints from fear. As she begins to come round, the forest animals, who are actually really cute, little things, come over to her. Snow finds herself outside a small cottage. She goes inside.

Inside the cottage, she finds a very untidy house, with seven small chairs and seven small beds. Snow assumes that this must be the home of seven messy orphaned children, and decides to tidy up the house with some help from the animals. After all that work, Snow becomes tired and falls asleep on the beds, but not wanting to choose just one, she ends up sprawling out over multiple of them.  

The owners of the cottage, seven dwarfs who work in the nearby mine, come home to find their house clean and believe there is an intruder inside. As they go upstairs to investigate, they discover a monster in their beds! Except, it’s just Snow White. She is welcomed into their home by six of the seven dwarfs – Happy, Doc, Bashful, Sleepy, Sneezy, and Dopey; Grumpy isn’t at all impressed by Snow White though, which makes much more sense. Welcoming the person who broke into your house like a friend wouldn’t be the normal reaction of anyone today, regardless of whether they said they’d clean and cook for you. Well, maybe university students would like that, but I wouldn’t.

During the day, Snow stays at the cottage doing housework, whilst the dwarfs are out at work, and at night, they all sing and dance together. It all seems to be going well, until the Queen discovers from her Magic Mirror that Snow White is still alive, and living in a cottage with seven dwarfs. Furious, the Queen goes to her secret basement where she keeps all of her magic and potions. She decides to feed Snow White a poisoned apple. Though it won’t kill her, just putting her into a deep sleep until woken by “love’s first kiss”, the Queen believes that it will make Snow White look so convincingly dead that she will be buried alive. To ensure Snow White takes the apple from her, the Queen turns herself into an old hag as a disguise and heads to the cottage.

Whilst Snow is cooking and the dwarfs are away, the Hag, or the Witch as she is more generally known, goes to the cottage and tells Snow that she should use some of her apples to make the dwarfs apple pies instead of the gooseberry pies Snow was already baking. Snow isn’t sure, but the Witch insists, making her way inside the cottage. The forest animals see through the disguise, and try to warn Snow, but she ignores them. The animals go to the mine and attempt to get the dwarfs home. The dwarfs don’t move, but when Sleepy mentions that the Queen may have found Snow, they rush back. Meanwhile, the Witch tells Snow that the apple she has is a wishing apple, and that if she wants to meet her true love, she should wish for it and take a bite.

The dwarfs get back to the cottage, but it is too late; Snow has already taken a bite of the apple and passed out. The dwarfs see the Witch leaving the cottage and chase her into the mountains during a thunderstorm. The Witch climbs up to the top of a cliff and she tries to move a huge boulder, to have it tumble down on the dwarfs as they make their way up to her. But a lightning strike hits the ledge she is stood on and it crumbles, taking the Witch with it, as well as that boulder which crushes her to death. The Queen is defeated.

Though the dwarfs believe Snow White to be dead, since she is so beautiful, they cannot bring themselves to bury her, but instead encase her body in a glass coffin. The next spring, the Prince, from the beginning of the film, learns about this tragic death of the girl he loved and visits her coffin. With the dwarfs still keeping watch over Snow’s body, the Prince proceeds to say goodbye to Snow White, by giving her one kiss. Suddenly, Snow White awakens; it was love’s first kiss. She is surprised to see the Prince next to her, but is overjoyed at the same time – as are the dwarfs and the forest animals. Everyone celebrates as the Prince carries Snow White to his horse, and she kisses the dwarfs goodbye as her and the Prince ride off into the sunset together, to live “happily ever after”. Aww.

Despite some intense scenes and some awful close-ups of the creepy old hag, this is a relatively tame plot compared with the Brothers Grimm version of the tale. The Brothers Grimm version includes the death of Snow White’s mother during childbirth as well as multiple murder attempts of Snow by the Queen. One of these involved lacing Snow White up into a bodice so tight that Snow passes out. The dwarfs arrive in time to save her though. On the second attempt, Snow is poisoned with a comb and again passes out, but the dwarfs save her. With the third attempt of the poison apple, the Queen cleverly only poisons half the apple so that she can eat the unpoisoned half to calm Snow White’s suspicions. Another difference is that Snow was not awoken with a romantic kiss, but instead, as the Prince and his servants transport Snow White’s body back to her father’s castle, the poison apple simply dislodges from her throat. The two still get married though and on the wedding day, the Queen learns from her Magic Mirror that the Prince’s bride is now the fairest of them all. As she investigates, she sees Snow White is the bride. The Queen is then caught and made to wear red-hot slippers that force her to dance until she drops dead. Nice. That’s actually the main plot point of The Red Shoes – but that’s a different story[1].

CHARACTERS & CAST

These days, Snow White is not considered to be a good feminist role model. She’s a bit too sweet, a bit too naïve, and she only dreams of finding her true love. There’s nothing especially wrong with that, but unlike some of Disney’s more contemporary princesses or female lead characters, Snow White gets a lot of criticism these days.

Watching Snow White, or Cinderella, or Aurora all through my childhood just made me decide that being kind and caring to others is important, and that there’s nothing wrong with having dreams. Not exactly a negative, is it? So, I don’t really care about all that.

There is one thing I really don’t like about Snow White – and that’s her voice. I’m not a big fan of my own voice, so I guess I’m just a hypocrite, but I find Snow White’s voice to be too high-pitched and very grating. I was very surprised when I was younger to find that the “face characters” at the Disney Parks speak in exactly the same way – though why I was surprised, I don’t know, because of course, they’re try to be as authentic as possible.

But she’s not so bad. Snow White is very caring and helpful; she’s not spiteful or resentful even though she has basically been banished from her kingdom by her crazed stepmother, and she just wants to move on with her new life. She is too trusting, by letting a random old woman come into her house, but then again, she is kind and doesn’t have a suspicious or cynical bone in her body, so that’s something she would do.

When the character of Snow White was being designed, it was a struggle for the animators to make her look like a real person. The signature animation style of the Disney Studios at the time had not been to make anybody look particularly authentic, it was all quite caricatured, so when they first attempted to draw Snow’s face, the animators said she ended up looking more like Betty Boop than a real girl, giving her huge cartoon eyes After some additional training around drawing realistic human movements, they figured out how Snow White should look though[2]. When it came time to ink and paint the character, another difficulty arose. The animators knew she needed some colour on her cheeks, however, if they applied red paint to her cheeks, Snow White ended up looking like a clown. The women who worked in the Ink and Paint Department, which was all women at the time due to the need for “a delicate hand”, decided to apply real rouge to the drawing directly, and Snow looked great. Walt Disney was concerned that the women wouldn’t be able to do it in exactly the same way each time Snow was being painted, but they scoffed and said of course they could since they already had to do their own make-up every day. Sure enough, they managed. The ladies later received compacts from Walt as a present after the release of the film. They looked at themselves in the mirrors, and thought they all looked so tired and awful after all the stress of getting Snow White finished on time[3]!

Adriana Caselotti voiced the character of Snow White, and she was named a Disney Legend in 1994 for this role. Caselotti first heard about the part when her father, who was a singing teacher in Los Angeles, was asked if he knew of any women or girls who could sing operatic notes but also speak as a child. Caselotti desperately wanted to audition for the part, so her father put her forward for it. A hundred other actresses also auditioned for the role, but Adriana got the coveted role. Sadly, because of Walt Disney’s desire to make the voice of Snow White unique, Caselotti’s career did not sky-rocket after the movie came out. In fact, she had very few roles after this, providing some operatic singing lines for The Wizard of Oz (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and then for some Disney animated short films, but these were mostly uncredited. Outside of that, she reprised her role of Snow White for a few Disney projects.

For Snow White’s counterpart, of course we have the Queen. Or the Evil Queen, or Queen Grimhilde, or the Witch, or the Old Hag; she has lots of names. She is beautiful, but also very vain, determined to be “the fairest one of all”. The Queen is not the fairest in the land, and is jealous that her stepdaughter, Snow White, happens to have that title even at her young age and without even trying; it drives the Queen mad with envy. The Queen is actually quite stunning, despite her personality being so cold and murderous. When the Queen transforms into the Witch or the Hag, whichever term you prefer, she becomes as ugly as her inside. The close-up shot of the Witch transformed is particularly scary, and it happens again shortly after when she pops up at the window of the Dwarfs’ cottage. Children of all ages have been scared of her for years, including me. But the Evil Queen is a brilliant character. She is calmly villainous, a straight talker, and just plain wicked. The iciness of her voice and stern look is classic Disney villain, and that’s why she is consistently included amongst the Disney Villains franchise, even after all these years.

Lucille La Verne was chosen to voice the Queen originally, but she then said she could also voice the Witch, so La Verne voiced both parts, which makes sense, given the two characters are one and the same. The animators knew La Verne as a great stage actress, having made her Broadway debut in 1888, but they had also seen her as The Vengeance in A Tale of Two Cities (1935) in which she performed a great, witchy cackle, perfect for the Witch here, with her theatrical voice being a match for the Evil Queen. Every evil queen needs their sidekick though, and the all-knowing Magic Mirror happens to be hers. The Magic Mirror is very brave for actually telling the Queen the truth; I think I would’ve lied if that had been me! The Mirror was voiced by Moroni Olsen, who went on to voice the Senior Angel in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) and play Herbert Dunstan, the father-in-law, in Father of the Bride (1950) and its sequel Father’s Little Dividend (1951).

Next, we have Snow White’s prince. The prince with no name. What a shame, given the Queen has several of them. He is simply known as The Prince, though some fan sites have said his name is Prince Florian. I like just calling him The Prince, it makes him a man of mystery. I am not a massive fan of the Prince as a character though. He’s a bit stalker-like if you think about it cynically, walking into the palace gardens without being invited, desperately searching for Snow’s coffin for months on end, kissing a dead girl on the lips… Then again, if he hadn’t done that, Snow White wouldn’t have lived and that wouldn’t be right for a fairy-tale ending. I guess riding off into the sunset with an attractive guy you don’t really know is better than getting murdered by your stepmother, right? The Prince was going to have more involvement in the story of the film according to early storyboards, by being captured by the Queen and having to escape from her prison. This idea was abandoned for some reason or another. This could’ve helped his character development so much more, because all we see of him is a brief clip of him singing at the start and then saving Snow White with a kiss at the end; it’s not much of a character arc. No name, no character arc. The poor prince. Who would’ve expected the “lead” male character to be so under-done? Harry Stockwell provided the voice of the Prince. After this voice role, he went on to perform as Curly, the lead role in Oklahoma!, on Broadway from 1943 to 1948. Harry Stockwell is the father of actors Dean and Guy Stockwell.

The Dwarfs were not as difficult to animate as the other characters, as they were based on caricatures instead of real-life humans. The complications came in ensuring that each of the seven had their own personalities and quirks, with these matching their names. The names of the dwarfs were not even settled until a year before the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with Dopey just being known as “Seventh” for a while. There were many other possible names for the dwarfs being tossed around including Dirty, Lazy, Wistful, Snoopy, Goopy, Dippy, and Chesty[4]. If you can remember all seven names that were decided upon, then it’s quite obvious to the viewer which dwarf is which.

Doc is the leader of the group, with his biggest quirk being the fact he consistently misspeaks and trips over his words. He is voiced by Roy Atwell, who was known for playing characters that stammer or mis-deliver their lines. Sneezy obviously sneezes a lot, so his voice actor was Billy Gilbert, who was known for his comic sneezing routines. Happy is the optimistic one, voiced by Otis Harlan, and Bashful is the shy one, voiced by Scotty Mattraw. Pinto Colvig, who was the original performer of Goofy and Pluto, voiced Sleepy and Grumpy. Dopey is the final and perhaps most memorable dwarf, despite the fact he never speaks. He’s the sweet but dim one, and the only dwarf without a beard. Eddie Collins provided the small amount of vocals that Dopey does have.

Although all the dwarfs do look similar, their heights and body shapes are slightly different based on their main characteristic, with Doc, for example, being slightly bigger to give him the gravitas of being the group’s leader. Dopey is slightly shorter than the others, and never walks in time with the rest of the dwarfs, which suggests that he is different to them. It was animator Frank Thomas’s idea to give Dopey a recurring hitch step to help him keep up with the others. Though Walt Disney loved this action, it irritated the other animators who thought they had finished their work on the character but then had to add in Thomas’s hitch step to any drawings of Dopey[5]!

MUSIC

Some of the songs from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs have become iconic over the decades since the movie’s release. How many of us haven’t whistled whilst we’ve worked, or heard “Heigh-Ho” playing somewhere? It’s been impossible to avoid these songs.

Walt Disney was a strong believer in letting the music move forward the story of his projects, with music being incorporated into many of the Silly Symphonies, so he knew how important this would be for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The magical score for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was composed by Frank Churchill, Paul Smith, and Leigh Harline. Smith had composed the scores for some of Disney’s nature documentaries The True-Life Adventures, as well as working on the scores for other Disney movies, such as Saludos Amigos (1942), The Three Caballeros (1944) and Cinderella (1950). Harline went on to compose the score and some of the songs for Pinocchio (1940) alongside Ned Washington, winning the Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for “When You Wish Upon a Star”. Harline left the Disney Studios in 1941.

The music for the songs was also composed by Frank Churchill, who had written the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” for The Three Little Pigs (1933) Silly Symphony short, and went on to write music for other Disney animated films, including Dumbo (1941), for which he won two Oscars, for the score and the song “Baby Mine”, and Bambi (1942). The lyrics were provided by Larry Morey, who collaborated with Churchill again for the Disney films The Reluctant Dragon (1941) and Bambi (1942).

25 songs were originally written for the film, with only eight being used. One song “Music in Your Soup” was cut from the film when its accompanying sequence was removed from the final edit. Another, “You’re Never Too Old to Be Young”, was simply replaced with “The Silly Song”. “The Silly Song” is that strange yodelling song that plays as Snow White and the dwarfs dance together one evening. I don’t mind it so much, although it does go on a bit and I would suspect it would get irritating very quickly if you listened to it on a loop! But it’s much better than the deleted song. Another song the dwarfs have is that very well-known song “Heigh-Ho”. It’s clearly very catchy because everyone at least knows the chorus if nothing else! It’s ok, but I don’t love it. Like the yodelling song, it’s quite samey.

My favourite of the dwarfs’ songs actually doesn’t really have a name, other than “Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum” or “The Dwarfs’ Washing Song”, which plays as they are washing up for dinner. It’s a very satisfying scene to watch, especially if you’re a germophobe, like me. It is literally just telling you how to wash your hands, but for some reason, I really like it.

For Snow White’s songs, obviously, she has a few. One of these is “With a Smile and a Song”, which Snow sings to the forest animals after she’s gotten over her scare in the forest. It’s very upbeat and positive, but if you’re not a fan of Snow White’s high-pitched voice, it’s not an easy song to love. She also sings “Whistle While You Work”, which is a satisfying scene to watch too, if you like to see rooms cleaned to perfection. It’s a bouncy sort of tune that is hard to ignore, even if you want to.

Snow White also gets a (sort of) duet with the Prince early on in the film, “I’m Wishing/One Song”. I like to imitate Snow White with the opening lines of “I’m Wishing” sometimes, because I actually quite like the song. It’s a romantic song and it keeps Snow’s spirits up whilst she’s being used as a slave. The Prince then comes in, before singing “One Song” to Snow after she runs away. It sounds like a classic romantic song from a musical of that era. Since I quite like that era of musicals, this is also a good song for me.

The final song to mention is “Someday My Prince Will Come”, with Snow White describing her earlier encounter with the Prince to the dwarfs, as she dreams of him coming back for her and taking her to her castle to live happily ever after. It’s a sweet dream to have, and one that could only happen in fairy tales, but it’s an iconic song from the film, so let’s not be too cynical about it. The song is reprised at the end of the film, with a chorus coming in to sing triumphantly about how all of Snow’s dreams have finally come true. The song has been covered by many artists since its release, including Barbra Streisand for the Platinum Edition of the DVD in 2001, singer Anastacia for the Disneymania CD (2002), as well as Disney Channel stars Ashley Tisdale and The Cheetah Girls for Disneymania 4 and 6, and Sonny with a Chance’s Tiffany Thornton performed it for the Diamond Edition DVD in 2009.

Interestingly, Disney was sued for this song. Owner of the copyright to the song “Old Eli”, Thornton Allen, claimed the same chorus was used in the Snow White song. Allen said he’d sent a copy of “Old Eli” to Disney in 1932. Allen didn’t have a copy of the letter to say the Studios had received it, but Disney did, though it had been sent to the New York office, not the Hollywood one. It contained a list of musical compositions Allen had sent and “Old Eli” was not listed. Frank Churchill, composer of “Someday My Prince Will Come” said he had never seen it, and there was no evidence to suggest he had. Deems Taylor, a famous composer at the time who would go on to be involved in Disney’s Fantasia (1940), was asked to testify as an expert witness. He noted some similarity in the notes, but stated that it was a common harmonic progression. He also said the rhythmic structure and chorus were very different. The judge for the case ruled against Allen, saying that although he could hear some similarity, there was no chance of mistaking one song for the other[6].

PRODUCTION

By the 1930s, Walt Disney had already made a series of animated/live-action shorts in the 1920s as part of his original Laugh-O-Gram Studio. These were called the Alice Comedies, that combined live-action acting with animated backgrounds. He was also known for being the creator of Mickey Mouse, with Steamboat Willie (1928) being one of the first fully synchronised sound cartoons. The Disney Studios then produced a series of musical shorts, the Silly Symphonies, some of which were ground-breaking for their use of Technicolor, with others spanning hit records, such as “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”.

But this wasn’t enough. Walt Disney had considered making a feature-length animated film in 1932. In May 1933, he thought he had the best idea of making a film of Alice in Wonderland, where Alice would be a live-action actress and Wonderland would have been animated. However, when Paramount released their own film version of Alice in Wonderland in December 1933, Walt decided against it. Briefly, he looked at doing something similar, a live-action/animated hybrid film, with the story of Rip van Winkle, but that idea was cancelled when the actor Walt had in mind to play the main role, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash.

By October 1934 though, after having already won four Academy Awards for his short cartoons by this point, Walt had decided to use the fairy tale of Snow White as the basis for a full-length animated film. Though Grimm’s fairy tale is said to be the inspiration for the story, in actual fact, Walt was more inspired by the 1916 silent movie Snow White, starring Marguerite Clark in the title role, that he had seen as a child[7]. One day, key artists at the Disney Studios were asked at the end of their working day to go away, have dinner, and then come back to the studios for a meeting. At this meeting, Walt proceeded to act out his entire plan and storyline for his version of an animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The animators were drawn in by Walt’s acting and enthusiasm, and loved the idea. 

But when the press got wind of the fact Walt Disney was trying to make a full-length animated feature film, they all thought he was crazy, with the film being given the nickname “Disney’s Folly”. The film industry felt that no-one would be able to sit through a cartoon for 90 minutes. Cartoons were too brightly coloured, too packed with sight gags and unrealistic movements to satisfy a regular film audience. Walt didn’t let the nay-sayers put him off though; he knew better. He knew they could make their Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a full story with humour, but also emotion and realism. He was aware that full-length feature films were more likely to make money than an animated short, and wanted to expand the animation medium beyond “silly cartoons” and push its use as a storytelling artform.

Walt Disney wanted to ensure that his animators were ready for this new challenge, so he invested money in art classes, so that the animators could study their art form further in the evenings and at weekends. They needed to properly analyse human movements for this story. Their previous cartoons had never needed to do this as they were not meant to be realistic to life. The Silly Symphonies were still being created during production on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs so they could use those short cartoons as a way of experimenting with special effects and human animation.

Since Snow White is a typical European fairy tale, Walt Disney wanted the film to look visually like a European storybook, so the best way to do that was to look to some European artists and their concept artwork. Two of these were Albert Hurter and Gustaf Tenggren. Hurter’s work was quite gothic and decorative in nature. His concept work of the forest scene, with the scary trees, as well as his poses for the crying dwarfs as they mourn Snow White’s death inspired the final scenes. Tenggren made inspirational sketches of the backgrounds, like the cottage, forest, and the castle. He was an illustrator and watercolourists, so he had a firm basis in what illustrations for European children’s book looked like. Tenggren went on to be a key artist for the settings of Pinocchio (1940)[8].

Live-action models were also used to act out some of the planned movements for the characters, so that the animators could use those as a guide. Marge Champion was the live-action model for Snow White, with actor Don Brodie dressing up in a cape and walking up tall scaffolding to give the reference material for the Witch’s demise.

By late 1936, the first drawings were sent to the Ink and Paint Department. Colour tests were run to decide on the best colours for the film, with Snow White’s dress colours not being finalised until just a few months before the release of the film. The multiplane camera that was being developed to provide tracking shots and a sense of depth was not even ready at the start of production, so some scenes had to be rushed through the process, meaning this innovative idea was not even used in the way it was meant to be. The multiplane camera would really be used to its full effect in Disney’s next film, Pinocchio (1940). The technique had originally been tested on the Silly Symphony The Old Mill (1937).

By the summer of 1937, the Disney Studios had run out of money, and didn’t have enough to finish the film. They had already spent around $1 million, and estimated they needed about $500,000 more. A banker was invited to the Studios to see a test screening of what Disney had so far on the film. The banker barely reacted at all to the screening, with this making Walt and his brother, Roy, nervous that the bank would not allow any further investment, however, the banker said he was sure the film would make them a lot of money, and gave them the amount needed to complete the film.

This didn’t mean that all sequences could stay in the film though, with many sequences edited. These include Snow White’s run through the forest, the Queen at her cauldron, and the dwarfs march home being shortened. A fight between Grumpy and Doc was cut, with a whole scene of the dwarfs eating soup, that animator Ward Kimball had spent ages working on, also being removed from the final edit. To make up for Kimball’s disappointment, it is said that Walt assigned Kimball to animate the character of Jiminy Cricket for their upcoming film, Pinocchio (1940)[9].

Although it was a lot of work, with many of the employees at the Studios working overtime without pay to complete the project, they were enthusiastic to work on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, believing this would be a moment in film-making history. 

RECEPTION

After all that work, Walt Disney was determined to give Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a proper Hollywood-style premiere, to showcase the animated masterpiece in the same way as the live-action films of the day.

The premiere was set for 21st December 1937 at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, with the whole film only being completed around the 1st December. Many celebrities attempted the event, including Shirley Temple, Judy Garland, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, and Marlene Dietrich. Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Donald Duck were also in attendance, along with Adriana Caselotti and Harry Stockwell, the voice actors of Snow White and the Prince, who sang some of the numbers from the film before the showing. Those two actually were not even given tickets to the premiere and snuck up to the balcony to see themselves in the movie! The dwarfs were also there, along with a set-up of the dwarfs’ cottage, and an exhibit showing some of the artwork from the film[10].

Walt Disney and the rest of the Studios’ employees were nervous about the reaction to the film, but they didn’t need to be concerned. The audience at the premiere was completely taken in by the pure drama and emotion of the film, with some even crying at the end. It was immediately clear that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was not “Disney’s Folly” at all, but “Disney’s Triumph”. It had a captivating story, expressive characters, charming music, and was artistically innovative and impressive.

It was popular at the time of its release, immediately becoming one of the most important movies ever made, and being seen as a milestone in movie-making history. Walt Disney was later awarded with an honorary Oscar at the 1939 Academy Awards ceremony. It was presented to him by Shirley Temple, and consisted of one large statuette, with seven mini ones alongside it, to represent the seven dwarfs. It was not only a popular movie in its “home country”, but became a worldwide hit, being dubbed into more than 20 languages, having its own soundtrack released, and having its own line of merchandise. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs supposedly inspired MGM to make The Wizard of Oz as Walt Disney’s film had shown how adaptations of children’s stories could be widely successful. It changed the movie industry forever and was an inspiration to so many movie makers. It was a dream come true for Walt Disney.

The final box-office result for the original run of Snow White was $8.5 million, making it the highest-grossing Hollywood film at the time. In 1939, Gone with the Wind would knock Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs off that top spot[11]! But it didn’t stop there, because Snow White has been re-released numerous times in theatres, with the first of these re-releases being in 1944, and continuing throughout the next four decades. The instant success of it set a trend for Disney to continue with theatrical re-releases. In 1993, the movie was digitally restored and re-released again. It was also released on home video in the 1990s, with DVD and Blu-Ray releases following suit in the 2000s and 2010s[12].

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs even inspired children’s playhouses. Judge Alfred K. Nippert built a “Snow White House” playhouse for his nieces in 1938 on the estate he inherited from his father-in-law, James N. Gamble of Procter and Gamble, in Volusia County, Florida. It was completed in March 1938 and Walt Disney reportedly visited the house. He loved the attention to detail and gifted Nippert eight life-sized dolls of Snow White and each of the dwarfs[13]. Walt Disney also built his children their own Snow White-inspired playhouse, with a replica dwarfs’ cottage being constructed by studio carpenters in the backyard of their home as a Christmas present to his daughters, Diane and Sharon[14].

LEGACY

Because Snow White was the very first Disney princess, and since the film was the very first Disney Animated Classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was always going to be quite prominent at the Disney Parks, especially since the movie was released in 1937, almost twenty years prior to Disneyland’s opening date in 1955, meaning there was plenty of time to think of ways of including this movie in upcoming attractions. However, it is worth noting that in recent years, and with their numerous company acquisitions, Disney now have access to many more modern, strong female characters, so it seems that Snow White and her Prince are slowly becoming less and less frequent as these newer characters come in to the fold. 

But there are still plenty of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs references at the parks currently. Clips and music from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are included within many of the Disney Parks’ nighttime and fireworks shows, such as Momentous at Hong Kong Disneyland, Happily Ever After at Walt Disney World, the Harmony in Color parade at Tokyo Disneyland, and of course, Fantasmic! at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, where the Evil Queen features as the leader of the Disney Villains revolution. The characters are also likely to appear in parades, with the Evil Queen frequently appearing in Halloween-themed ones. A Snow White makeover package is also available at the Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boutiques that exist at the Disney Parks around the world.

Four of the six Disney Parks have, or had, a dark ride going through the events of the movie, with all four of them being opening day attractions. It took guests through the story of the film in minecart shaped ride vehicles. At Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, this ride was called Snow White’s Adventures from 1971 to 1994. Instead of having the guests watch the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs play out in front of them, the guests were meant to feel like they were Snow White, so Snow herself made no appearance in the ride. This was also the case at Disneyland. However, when it was deemed to be too scary to have riders feel like the Evil Queen was after them, and that their ride vehicle was going to be crushed by a falling rock, Snow White was then added to the ride, and the attraction name was changed to Snow White’s Scary Adventures. I always found this attraction scary as a child, but I do scare easily. Anyone who has been on the Snow White themed dark rides at the Disney Parks will know just how horrible the Evil Queen’s transformation scene is, where she spins round quickly to face the cars as they pass her – the stuff of nightmares. The ride then continued to run at Walt Disney World until 2012, when it was closed to make way for Princess Fairytale Hall, a permanent meet-and-greet location in Fantasyland.

However, the ride does still run at Disneyland, as it has since July 1955, under the name Snow White’s Enchanted Wish. This was not the original name, however, which was actually Snow White and her Adventures, before being refurbished in 1983 to make it less scary, and renamed to Snow White’s Scary Adventures[15]. The attraction was most recently refurbished and updated in 2021, with new effects and a new “Happily Ever After” finale scene added to it. There is an interesting point to mention about the outside of the show building – if you look up at the window long enough, you may see the Evil Queen watching you… Also at Disneyland, you’ll find a miniature scene showing the Seven Dwarfs’ cottage on the Storybook Land Canal Boats attraction, as well as on the Casey Jr. Circus Train which oversees the boat ride. At Disney California Adventure Park, you can even eat at the Carthay Circle Restaurant, a fine dining experience residing inside a reproduction of the actual Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, where the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs took place all those years ago in 1937.  

At Tokyo Disneyland, you’ll find their version of the Snow White attraction, Snow White’s Adventures, which opened with the park in April 1983. Also, at the Fantasy Springs Hotel, the area is themed to iconic Disney movies, such as Sleeping Beauty (1959), Tangled (2010), and obviously, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. 

Disneyland Paris also has a Snow White ride, opening with the park in April 1992 and is similar to Tokyo’s version of the ride. It is named Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains, the French title for the film. I have been on this version too, and I remember it being much scarier than Disney World’s one; I’m still haunted by visions of skeletons being thrust from the side of the room right at the ride vehicles. There is also La Chaumière des Sept Nains shop in Fantasyland, themed to the Seven Dwarfs’ cottage. Much like Disneyland’s ride, there is also a miniature scene of the cottage on Le Pays des Contes de Fées, Disneyland Paris’ version of the Storybook Land Canal Boats.

 At Magic Kingdom and Shanghai Disneyland, both parks have a family-friendly rollercoaster attraction, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. The coasters aren’t too wild and crazy; the ride vehicles swing from side-to-side, but the track is not too fast or twisty. There is also a nice section of the ride where you go through the dwarfs whilst they are working in the mines and can hear them singing “Heigh Ho”. Magic Kingdom’s ride then ends past the Dwarfs’ cottage, with Snow White inside and the Witch knocking at the door with her apples. Shanghai’s ride ends with the cottage in the distance and a well closer to the vehicles, where two raccoons are playing around. This is a fun ride, at least I know Magic Kingdom’s is; I haven’t been to Shanghai. Even my mum, who dislikes most rollercoasters, loves this attraction. Near Shanghai’s Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, you can visit the Mountainside Treasures shop. Also at Shanghai Disneyland is the Once Upon a Time Adventure attraction. It is a walkthrough attraction within Shanghai’s Enchanted Storybook Castle, telling the story of the film via screen projections, special effects, and designed sets.

Sadly, Hong Kong Disneyland does not currently have a Snow White dark ride, or a Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. However, as part of the walkthrough experience Fairy Tale Forest you’ll see areas themed to some of Disney’s best fairy-tale movies, with one of these being Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

In terms of meet-and-greet locations, Snow White seems to be quite frequently seen at all six Disney Parks. At Walt Disney World, she has a permanent meet-and-greet location at the Germany Pavilion in Epcot. The dwarfs occasionally have a meet-and-greet location at Special Events such as Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party and Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, but not always. They are very popular when they do appear. The Evil Queen is likely to be spotted at Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. At the Wilderness Lodge Resort, if you dine at Story Book Dining at Artist Point, a Snow White-themed character dinner, you will see Snow White, Grumpy, Dopey, and the Evil Queen.  

At the other five parks, though there are not permanent meet-and-greet locations, you will likely find Snow White, and sometimes the Prince, visiting guests around the castles and Fantasyland areas. Disneyland’s Fantasy Faire location and Disneyland Paris’ Princess Pavilion spot are good areas to see Snow White also. She is likely to be a part of any Princess character dining experience, such as Cinderella’s Royal Table at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, or Auberge de Cendrillon at Disneyland Paris. The Evil Queen, sometimes appearing as the Old Hag, is likely to be available for meet-and-greets at the Disney Halloween events, but she is sometimes seen randomly in the Fantasyland areas, especially at Disneyland, where they seem to have much more frequent, rare, and casual character interactions. Unfair…Anaheim is just so much further away than Orlando…

Finally, Snow White Grotto, a wishing well with statuettes of Snow White and the seven dwarfs standing on top and along the waterfall, is an attraction at Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland, located to the side of their respective castles.

Moving on to the screen, Snow White the fairy tale has been adapted numerous times by many different film studios. Some of these include the live-action movies 20th Century Fox’s Mirror Mirror (2012) and Universal’s Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), with both putting a darker, more modern spin on the classic tale. ABC series Once Upon a Time (2011-18) also chose to twist the story of Snow White with its retelling of the fairy tale, with Ginnifer Goodwin cast as Snow White, and Lana Parrilla as the fabulously cruel Evil Queen. These characters, including Josh Dallas as Prince Charming, and Jennifer Morrison as Emma, Snow and Charming’s daughter, drive the first six seasons of storylines.

However, Disney themselves will be releasing their own live-action version, Snow White, in 2025; it was meant to be released in 2024, but was delayed due to the SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023. Many Disney fans are not too happy about this upcoming movie, as lead actress Rachel Zegler has caused some upset with a few of her comments around the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. By stating that her Snow White will be much more modern and not dreaming about love or needing rescuing by a prince, Zegler inadvertently offended some of Disney’s most loyal fans, leading many to claim that they will boycott the film. These comments also led to a rumour that the role of Snow White was to be recast; it was not true. I didn’t agree or like what Zegler said about the original Snow White, however, I think the furore that surrounded this incident was over-the-top and uncalled for. Another controversy surrounding the film is over Disney’s handling of the seven dwarfs. They originally reassured people that these would actually now be “magical creatures” to avoid reinforcing negative stereotypes, however, an image from the movie has since been released and does not appear to show these characters being sensitively addressed[16]. We’ll have to wait and see.

On a lighter note, it is possible that the world could have seen a short animated sequel to Snow White a few years after its release. A folder of story sketches was found in Disney’s Animation Research Library, which seemed to suggest that a sequel named Snow White Returns had been in the works, and would have used two sequences that were originally meant to be included in the full film, however were cut. The story would have seen the dwarfs getting ready for their annual visit from Snow White, with them wanting to make a bed for her as a present. On returning home from their bed building, they would have found Snow in their cottage making soup. After slurping their soup down, despite Snow trying to get them to eat like gentlemen, the dwarfs would’ve gone to present the bed to Snow. Except they try to lift the bed and it won’t move, since one of the carved bedposts was not sawn off the tree. As Snow waits ages for the dwarfs to return, she falls asleep. The dwarfs find Snow asleep and decide to wait until the morning to give her the present. They instead jump into the bed and fall asleep themselves[17].

FINAL THOUGHTS

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will always be remembered for being a ground-breaking piece of movie history. It paved the way for other movies of this kind to come out of the Disney Studios to be loved by millions for years to come. It truly is a very special movie.

In all honesty, it doesn’t really matter what anyone’s opinion of Snow White is, because it was the movie that sprung Walt Disney and his animators into the spotlight.

Personal opinions aren’t what’s important here. The fact is Snow White launched a legacy and a revival in cinema. Its history speaks for itself, and it will be treasured forever.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Dan Peeke, ‘Snow White And The Seven Dwarves: 10 Differences Between The Book And The Film’, ScreenRant.com, 16th March 2020.

[2] Credit: Disney, Still the Fairest of Them All: The Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (2001).

[3] Credit: Disney, “Hyperion Studios Tour”, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Disney+ (2009).

[4] Credit: Disney, “Disney’s First Feature: The Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Disney+ (2016).

[5] Credit: Disney, Still the Fairest of Them All: The Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (2001).

[6] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Some Day My Lawsuit Will Come’, CartoonResearch.com, 30th September 2022.

[7] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015). ‘Introduction’, pp. xi-xiii.

[8] Credit: Disney, “Disney’s First Feature: The Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Disney+ (2016).

[9] Credit: Disney, Still the Fairest of Them All: The Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (2001).

[10] Credit: Jim Korkis, The Vault of Walt: Volume 1 (2012),’Snow White Christmas Premiere’, pp. 83-92.

[11] Credit: Disney, Still the Fairest of Them All: The Making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (2001).

[12] Credit: Disney, Disney Through the Decades (2009).

[13] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: Snow White, Off the Beaten Path’, YourFirstVisit.net, date unknown.

[14] Credit: Jim Korkis, The Vault of Walt Vol. 7: Christmas Edition (2018), ‘The Snow White Christmas Cottage’, pp. 21-22.

[15] Credit: Werner Weiss, ‘Snow White’s Scary Adventures: Florida Edition’, Yesterland.com, 12th April 2024.

[16] Credit: Nikolas Lanum, ‘‘No longer 1937’: Resurfaced video of ‘Snow White’ actress Rachel Zegler continues controversy’, NYPost.com, 25th July 2023.

[17] Credit: Disney, “Snow White Returns”, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Diamond Edition DVD (2009).

by The Disney Purist

#54 Big Hero 6 (2014)

  1. BACKGROUND
  2. PLOT
  3. CHARACTERS & CAST
  4. PRODUCTION
  5. MUSIC
  6. RECEPTION
  7. LEGACY
  8. FINAL THOUGHTS
  9. REFERENCES

BACKGROUND

Although the 2010s at Disney Animation started with a typical princess musical (Tangled (2010), the movies that followed would be a mixture of new ideas and different styles, from the video-game based Wreck-It Ralph (2012) to the comic book style of Big Hero 6.

Previously, Disney had tried to move away from their fairy-tale musicals but with little success. The 2000s spanned almost an entire decade of non-musical films, with many being classed as “adventure movies”, however, the majority of these movies flopped at the box-office with Treasure Planet (2002) even being such a financial disaster that it caused the Disney executives to ban the making of any further 2D animated movies – for a time, anyway.

Luckily, in the 2010s, non-musical Disney animated movies did resonate with audiences. That could be because audiences of today are more open to seeing a different genre of movie from Disney, or it could just be that viewing preferences have simply changed amongst younger age groups. Either way, I’m glad that Disney did, and continue, to move away from just the one format of film, and have the freedom to take us to new worlds. 

 I don’t read comic books and I don’t like superhero films. I’ve never seen any movie related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the only films I like that are at all related to superheroes are Sky High (2005) and The Incredibles 2 (2018). So, you’d think I wouldn’t like Big Hero 6 – but actually, I really do.

I think my problem with superhero movies is that all of it seems so far away from reality that I can’t get interested in it. This is where Big Hero 6 is different. The villain isn’t some supervillain with a plan to take over the world or destroy it, and the superheroes are just normal people using science and technology as their superpowers, using things that really exist, instead of relying on super-strength, or invisibility, or other powers that they’ve somehow gained through some bizarre event or incident. Big Hero 6 just feels real.

Big Hero 6 was a big step for Disney, as it was the first animated film by Disney to use a Marvel property, after Disney purchased Marvel in 2009. Disney had numerous live-action films based on Marvel characters in the works at this time, a full slate spanning about a decade, but making an animated film based on a comic book or a superhero character was unlike most superhero films that had existed before.

It was a risk, but one that paid off.

PLOT

Big Hero 6 is set in the city of San Fransokyo, a hybrid of the cities of San Francisco and Tokyo. Hiro Hamada is a fourteen-year-old boy who is incredibly intelligent. He graduated high school at the age of thirteen and is wasting his potential by hustling people at “bot fights”, using a small but sophisticated robot to defeat his opponents. His brother, Tadashi, is a student at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology and tries to encourage Hiro to do something more fulfilling with his life. He takes Hiro to his research lab to show him what he could be doing. Tadashi has built a healthcare companion, basically a robotic nurse, called Baymax, who looks like a giant walking marshmallow. Hiro warms to the idea of researching and studying, before deciding wholeheartedly that he must go to this school.

To do this, Hiro creates an invention to take to the Institute’s Showcase, showcasing his idea of microbots that can do anything that the mind wants them to do, via a neurotransmitter. Robert Callaghan, the professor at the Institute, loves the microbots and invites Hiro to join the school. Hiro accepts, despite Alistair Krei, CEO of Krei Tech, wanting to buy the microbots. However, just as Hiro and Tadashi are about to celebrate with their friends and Aunt Cass, who raises them since their parents died when they were young, a fire breaks out in the building and Tadashi runs in to save Professor Callaghan. Tadashi doesn’t survive, causing Hiro to go into a deep depression. Callaghan is presumed dead too.

One day, Hiro hurts himself while in his room, and Baymax activates, alerted by Hiro saying “ow”. Hiro doesn’t want anything to do with Baymax, but finds one of his microbots from his presentation, which is moving, seemingly attracted to the other microbots Hiro created for the Showcase. Hiro assumes its broken as the other microbots were destroyed in the fire, but Baymax follows where the microbot wants to go, to try to help Hiro feel better. Hiro and Baymax end up outside an abandoned warehouse. Breaking in, they find a whole production line of Hiro’s microbots, and have to escape an attack from a black-cloaked man wearing a Kabuki mask. Scared, Hiro reports the incident to the police, but is ignored.

Hiro decides to fight his attacker, upgrading Baymax with martial arts moves and 3D printed armour, and goes back to the warehouse, but it’s empty. They track the man to the nearby docks, using the microbot again as a tracker. Tadashi’s friends from the Institute, who are trying to encourage Hiro to attend school despite his grief, show up just in time to help Hiro and Baymax escape the guy for a second time.

Hiro decides to get the four friends involved to attack the guy together. Each friend creates their own superpower, based on their scientific research. Baymax can now fly, and him and Hiro fly up to a wind turbine to scan the city to find their attacker. They track him to an island, and all of them go so they can attempt to take the mask, to stop their attacker’s control over his microbots. They discover that the island was used for a teleportation experiment by Alistair Krei. The experiment went wrong, leaving a woman missing and the government shutting down the island. Suddenly, the group are attacked. Hiro knocks off the mask revealing that their attacker is – Robert Callaghan! He had used Hiro’s microbots to shield himself from the fire at the Institute that night, meaning Tadashi died for nothing. Enraged, Hiro removes Baymax’s healthcare chip, leaving only Hiro’s attacking one, and orders Baymax to kill Callaghan. The others stop this, returning Baymax’s chip, but Hiro is furious and leaves the island with Baymax.

Hiro tries to get Baymax to kill Callaghan but he reminds Hiro that Tadashi wanted Baymax to help people, showing Hiro videos of Tadashi testing Baymax. Hiro apologies to his friends, who forgive him, and tell him that they found out that the woman who went missing in Krei’s experiment was Abigail Callaghan, Callaghan’s daughter, so he must be trying to enact a revenge plot on Krei.

Sure enough, they find Callaghan at the opening of Krei’s new campus. He has rebuilt the portals from Krei’s original experiment, and uses them to destroy the building, before planning to throw Krei in too. The group help to save Krei and stop Callaghan by getting the majority of the microbots sucked into the portals through clever distractions. Eventually, Callaghan doesn’t have enough microbots to continue attacking the group.

Baymax then detects life from inside the portal. Hiro, assuming it to be Abigail, goes in with Baymax to retrieve her. On the way out though, Baymax is damaged by floating debris. The only way to get Hiro and Abigail out is to use his rocket fist, which Hiro designed, to push them out, but Baymax cannot go with them. Hiro accepts this is the only way and tearfully says goodbye to Baymax. Hiro and Abigail are return safely, and Callaghan is arrested. Hiro then decides to go back to the university with his friends, and finds Tadashi’s original healthcare chip for Baymax in the rocket fist that Hiro kept. He rebuilds Baymax, inserts the chip, and gets his friend back. The six of them continue to protect the city as a team, calling themselves “Big Hero 6”.  

CHARACTERS & CAST

The movie Big Hero 6 starts out with Hiro Tamada “bot fighting” in the slightly dodgy streets and back allies of San Fransokyo. Hiro is quite cocky at this stage and the team at Disney knew they needed the right balance of cockiness and vulnerability to match Hiro’s age. If the balance edged too much towards cocky, I presume the audience would not have found Hiro likeable and wouldn’t have been bothered by his story, but luckily, they got it just right[1]! Hiro doesn’t think anything of hustling much older, and bigger, men than him, who no doubt have connections in this underground arena. That’s how he gets himself into trouble and has to be rescued by his older brother, Tadashi.

Tadashi clearly doesn’t approve of Hiro’s choices in life; he wants him to live up to his potential and continue to improve the world with his genius ideas and inventions, because Hiro is very intelligent. Tadashi shows Hiro what he could be doing with his time instead, and by showing Hiro Baymax and all the work he’s put into that goes a long way to convincing Hiro to use his talents for good. Their parents died about ten years before, so they are very close and protective of each other. They are being raised by their Aunt Cass, living above the Lucky Cat Café, that Cass owns and runs, with her cat Mochi. Cass is concerned she isn’t raising the boys well, especially when they end up being arrested for being involved in illegal bot fighting, but she is very supportive towards them and so proud of what they’ve accomplished in life. Mochi was actually not a part of the original script for Big Hero 6, however, story artist Kendelle Hoyer wanted Hiro’s family to have a pet. She continued to draw the cat in her storyboards and eventually it was decided that the cat could stay[2]! 

Tadashi Hamada is voiced by Daniel Henney, who is currently cast in the Amazon Prime fantasy series The Wheel of Time (2021-present) as al’Lan Mandragoran. Aunt Cass is voiced by comedic actress Maya Rudolph, known for her roles in movies such as Grown Ups (2010) and its 2013 sequel as Deanne; Bridesmaids (2011) as Lillian; and Disenchanted (2022) as Malvina. She rose to fame as a cast member on the sketch show Saturday Night Live from 2000 to 2007. Rudolph currently stars in the AppleTV+ comedy series Loot (2022-present) as Molly Wells.

When Tadashi unexpectedly dies in the fire at the Institute, Hiro sinks into a deep depression which Cass tries hard to get him out of, by encouraging him to register at school. Not that Hiro really listens, until he meets Baymax. Baymax is the best character in the whole movie, in my opinion. He is the funniest, mostly because he has no filter, and doesn’t understand how people act. Like the “fist bump” scene. Hiro tries to teach him how to “fist bump”, so he can mimic what him and Tadashi used to do; it was their “thing”. However, Baymax doesn’t quite get it right, and after the “fist bump”, wriggles his fingers a bit and goes ‘ba la la la’, so not quite the same thing! The Disney team knew this would be a funny moment in the movie, so built in more opportunities for the audience to see it. Another hilarious moment is seeing low-power Baymax, who could also be called “drunk Baymax” if this weren’t a Disney film. I’m sad there aren’t more moments of this in the movie. Baymax is a great companion for Hiro, at a time when he needs someone most. Obviously, Baymax is a “personal healthcare companion”, so wouldn’t want Hiro to be in anyway unwell, but he goes above and beyond what would be expected to help Hiro grieve and come to terms with his brother’s death – like fighting bad guys, for example! I think everyone that watched Big Hero 6 came away from it wanting their own Baymax in their lives – I know I did, and still do.

To create Baymax, the face was inspired by a traditional Japanese bell called a Suzu seen at a temple in Tokyo whilst the Disney team were on a research trip there. On the surface of the bells, there are two circles with a line in the middle, exactly like Baymax’s face. The idea for Baymax to be a “huggable” robot, instead of the traditional robot that can be found in the comic series, came from a different research trip to technological institutes, specifically Carnegie Mellon, where the team saw work on “soft robotics” including a vinyl arm. They knew that was the perfect look for Baymax[3]. Baymax’s movements were influenced by real and movie robots, and even koala bears, as well as babies and penguins. Penguins have similar body dimensions to Baymax, as in long torso and short legs, so they were a good choice to look at how Baymax would walk[4].

Scott Adsit voices the lovable Baymax. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Pete Hornberger in the comedy series 30 Rock (2006-13). Hiro is voiced by Ryan Potter, who made his acting debut as Mike in Supah Ninja (2011-13) for Nickelodeon. For Disney XD, Potter was cast as Riker in Lab Rats: Elite Force (2016). After that, he appeared as Gar Logan / Beast Boy in Titans (2018-23), then voiced the character of Kenji Kon in Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (2020-22).

Then there’s rest of the “Big Hero 6” team, Hiro and Tadashi’s four friends from the Institute. First, there is Go Go. She is a bit reserved and quite sarcastic; she doesn’t say much. Go Go is researching maglev wheels, wheels which are magnetically suspended, so not attached to anything, and these become her superpower, allowing her to speed-skate with them on her feet, and be able to throw them at opponents. Go Go is voiced by Jamie Chung, who has appeared in movies, such as Grown Ups (2010) and The Hangover Part II (2011), and in the television series such as Once Upon a Time (2011-18) in the role of Mulan, after being a cast member on reality show The Real World: San Diego in 2004.

Honey Lemon is the other girl in the group. She is bubbly and enthusiastic, almost too much so. Her speciality lies in chemistry, and her superpower is about creating balls of potent chemicals, which can change form, plus be shot out at speed. Genesis Rodriguez provides the voice for Honey Lemon. Rodriguez began her career with roles in telenovelas such as Prisionera (2004) and Dame Chocolate (2007) before moving in to roles in the later series’ of Entourage (2004-2011) and, most recently, she played Sloane Hargreeves in Season 3 of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy (2019-present).

For the guys, there are Fred and Wasabi. Fred is the school mascot, so not a science student, though he is interested in science so hangs out in the lab frequently. He is also a comic book enthusiast, and spends a lot of time thinking about superpowers even before the group is formed. For his superpower, as the school mascot is a dragon and he doesn’t have any science talent, he has a super suit that can breathe intensely hot fire. Fred is childish and kind of gross – we hear about how many times he wears one pair of underwear, for example – but he is friendly, and not bothered by what people think of him. It also turns out that Fred has very rich parents and lives in a mansion. In an End Credits scene, we see that Fred’s dad is actually a superhero himself – and looks and sounds like Stan Lee. Nice comic-related Easter egg there! Comedian and actor T.J. Miller voices Fred. He had voiced the character Tuffnut Thorston in How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and its 2014 sequel, as well as some of the earlier spin-offs, and voiced the character of Gene in The Emoji Movie (2017). Miller also portrayed Weasel in Deadpool (2016) and its 2018 sequel. On television, Miller received a Critics’ Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2015 for his role as Erlich Bachman in Silicon Valley (2014-17). In recent years, Miller has been replaced in many of his recurring acting roles due to police matters.

Wasabi, on the other hand, is the complete opposite to Fred. He is incredibly organised, overly cautious, and reluctant to be involved in the group to begin with. Fred gave him the nickname “Wasabi” after he got some wasabi on his shirt one day – something that Wasabi finds annoying as it only happened one time. His superpower is based on his research around lasers, making plasma blades that are razor sharp and can cut through nearly everything. Wasabi is voiced by Damon Wayans Jr., known for starring in Happy Endings (2011-2013) as Brad Williams and for having the recurring role of Coach in New Girl (2011-2018). He also recently starred as Adam in the film Players (2024) for Netflix.

Then, there is the villain, “Yokai”, then found to be Professor Robert Callaghan, in one of those surprise villain moments that Disney and Pixar started doing in the mid-2000s. At the start of the movie, he doesn’t seem like a bad guy. He’s a bit stand-offish, and doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t seem evil, though it is clear he is one to hold a grudge; when he spots Alistair Krei at the showcase, he makes it quite obvious that he doesn’t like Krei at all, and warns Hiro away from him. It turns out Krei was the reason his daughter disappeared in a failed experiment, which seems like a fair enough reason to hold a grudge, really! Then, we see “Yokai”, who is not at all concerned that he could’ve killed all these kids who are actually his students. He is blinded to everything except his revenge plot and doesn’t care who might get hurt if they get in his way. Even when he is revealed by Hiro to be Callaghan, he isn’t apologetic at all and continues on with his plan. By the end of the movie, when he is thwarted by “Big Hero 6”, and his daughter is found to be alive, Callaghan just looks sad, as he is put into the police car. Maybe he shouldn’t have become so consumed by hate. Like most villains, Callaghan never saw himself as the villain of the piece; he felt that he was enacting some sort of justice. He is grieving in much the same way as Hiro is, and even Hiro almost resorts to violence when he sees how unfair it is that Tadashi died for no reason, and Callaghan doesn’t even care. It just shows what grief can do to a person. Hiro comes to terms with his, thanks to Baymax, who won’t allow Hiro to go down the dark path of hatred and revenge, unlike Callaghan[5].

Callaghan is voiced by James Cromwell. In recent years, Cromwell has had a recurring role in the drama series Succession (2018-23), receiving three Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor. He also had a recurring role in Season 3 and 4 of Boardwalk Empire (2010-14). In the second series of the American horror anthology series, American Horror Story: Asylum, Cromwell was cast as Dr. Arthur Arden; he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries for his performance. In film, Cromwell has appeared in a range of films, including Babe (1995) as Farmer Arthur Hoggett, for which he was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category at the Academy Awards; I, Robot (2004) as Dr. Alfred Lanning; The Queen (2006) as Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh; The Artist (2011) as Clifton, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) as Benjamin Lockwood.

Well-known Disney voice artist Alan Tudyk voiced Callaghan’s nemesis Alistair Krei. Tudyk had previously voiced King Candy in Wreck-It Ralph (2012) at this time, and has since gone on to have a voice part in every Disney animated feature since, including Duke of Weselton in Frozen (2013), Hei Hei in Moana (2016), and Valentino in Wish (2023), amongst many more Disney and non-Disney projects, Iike the series Resident Alien (2021-present).

PRODUCTION

The story of Big Hero 6 goes right back to the group of writers who created the original comic. The group all met while working at Marvel in the 1990s. They had been working on the X-Men series’, however, when Marvel went bankrupt, they moved over to DC Comics and worked on Superman. After a while, they decided they wanted to work on their own franchises instead, and set up their own company called Man of Action Entertainment, a writer collective. They had a big hit with Ben 10, which aired on Cartoon Network in 2006, and continued in some form, whether in television or gaming, until 2021. Man of Action were surprised to find out that Disney were making a movie based on Big Hero 6 but they were delighted with the final result[6].

When Don Hall had finished working on Winnie the Pooh (2011) as co-director, he decided to pitch an idea for an animated movie based on a Marvel property. He had always wanted to make a Disney movie based on a Marvel comic, and now that Disney had bought Marvel, he knew he had the opportunity. Hall stumbled upon Big Hero 6, which he hadn’t heard of before, but liked the style of. The characters from this obscure Marvel comic book called Big Hero 6 first appeared in a 1998 three-issue miniseries called Sunfire and Big Hero 6. They would then appear again in a 2008 five-issue miniseries called Big Hero 6. Both of these comic series use the same characters, but the second one would mostly be the basis for the Disney movie. However, Disney did not generally use much information from the original comic, apart from the character names[7]. They were told by Marvel to make it their own, so they used the original characters, but changed the story quite significantly. One of the first changes was for Baymax to be built by Hiro’s brother, Tadashi, who was created for the movie, instead of by Hiro’s father, so they could have a storyline about brothers. Hall held a “brothers’ summit” to learn about his team’s experiences with their brothers.

Much like with many Disney animated movies, the film was screened every twelve weeks to collect feedback and reaction, meaning that scripts had to be rewritten and new scenes would have to be drawn, and others thrown out. For example, some of the deleted scenes include a prologue which would’ve recounted Hiro’s journey as a prodigy child, skipping grades at school and graduating early, before making robots and new technology with his brother. Baymax was also originally going to be presented at the showcase by Tadashi, with Fred being used as the patient, however, Disney felt Tadashi introducing Hiro to Baymax in his lab would make it more of a special moment for the brothers, strengthening their relationship. The first introduction of “Yokai” was going to be more menacing too[8].

In terms of the location, the team wanted to use the US geography of San Francisco and combine it with the cultural feel and vibe of the city of Tokyo, especially as this would represent Big Hero 6’s comic anime style. This made the city of San Fransokyo, which was created as a futuristic thriving metropolis full of people. The team spent around three years developing a rendering tool called Hyperion, to provide realistic lighting effects to the scenes, and give huge levels of detail and artistry in each shot. They also developed software called Denizen to create their characters, as they had 14 main characters to bring to life, the largest cast of main characters in a Disney film at the time, as well as over 700 unique supporting roles, more than any other Disney film that had come before. The Visual Effects team was expanded to tackle the numerous anime-influenced action sequences, going from thirteen on Tangled (2010) to forty for Big Hero 6.

As well as recreating the cities closely, by using Hyperion to generate the 83,000 distinct buildings, and include additional touches such as 215,000 street lights, specific details, like milk bottle boxes being stacked on the sides of buildings in Tokyo, alongside all the characters, to make San Fransokyo to feel like a heavily-populated area, the Effects team spent an entire day sat on top of 555 California Street in San Francisco, the second highest building in the city, to study the light’s effect on the city and the landscape, as it progressed from sunrise to sunset[9].

MUSIC

For the music, Henry Jackman composed Big Hero 6’s score. Jackman had composed music for both action films and Disney films prior to Big Hero 6, including Kick-Ass (2010) and its 2013 sequel; Captain Phillips (2013); Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and its 2017 sequel, and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and its 2019 sequel. For Disney, he had composed the score for Wreck-It Ralph (2012), for which he won the Annie Award for Music in an Animated Feature Production in 2013, prior to Big Hero 6, and went on to compose for Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) and Strange World (2022).

As the movie only contains the one song, Jackman’s score really had to sing here. The piece “First Flight” is particularly good, and accompanies the scene of Baymax and Hiro flying over San Fransokyo for the first time, after Hiro’s upgrade to Baymax, mimicking Hiro’s initial fear of flying for the first time before settling in and enjoying the ride. Disney knew they always wanted this scene to exist, even from the very start of production[10]. The piece “I Am Satisfied with My Care” is my favourite though, which plays as Baymax and Hiro say goodbye before Hiro leaves the portal with Abigail and says the heart-breaking line “I’m satisfied with my care”. Disney scores just have a way of making endings even more emotional with the music they use.

The only song in the movie and soundtrack is called “Immortals”, performed by American rock band Fall Out Boy. It’s quite out there for Disney, using a rock song, though it’s more electronic and pop than hardcore rock. It’s a great song, and gets stuck in my head often, but very different to most Disney songs, which is probably what they were looking for as Big Hero 6 is different to most Disney films. It suits the action feel of the movie well. It plays during the scene of the group testing out their strategies and superpower skills before they face “Yokai”.

RECEPTION

Big Hero 6 was released in November 2014, but debuted as the opening film at the Tokyo International Film Festival on 23rd October 2014. In theatres, Big Hero 6 was released alongside a new Disney short, Feast (2014), about a dog and his owner’s shared love of food and how that changes with the owner’s new relationship.

Despite Big Hero 6 being quite a shift away from what audiences expect from Disney Animation, the movie did very well both at the box-office and with critics. It grossed over $650 million worldwide, making it the fourth Disney release of 2014 to do so, with the others being solely live-action films: Guardians of the Galaxy, Maleficent, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Three out of the four of these films were “superhero movies”.

Big Hero 6 also became the highest-grossing animated film of 2014, which is quite an achievement considering DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon 2 was also released that year, as were The Lego Movie and The Book of Life. Within Disney records, in 2015 Big Hero 6 became the third highest-grossing Disney animated film release in the US and Canada, after Frozen (2013) and The Lion King (1994) for a time.

Critics were impressed with the action-packed storyline, but were also pleasantly surprised to find that Big Hero 6 dealt with difficult topics, like grief and emotional healing, so it didn’t just appeal to superhero fans, but was universally relevant. It was also funny and Baymax as a character was a huge hit with audiences.

Big Hero 6 won Best Animated Feature at the 87th Academy Awards, which was good for the Disney Studios to see as, apart from Frozen (2013) winning the category the year before, Disney Animation had not won ever since the category began in 2001, with Pixar having a great track record there instead. Big Hero 6 also won five awards at the Visual Effects Society Awards; won Favorite Animated Movie at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards; and won an Annie Award for Animated Effects in an Animation Production. It sadly was not able to win Best Animated Feature at the Golden Globes or the BAFTAs, though, with those wins going to How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Lego Movie, respectively.

LEGACY

But this reaction to Big Hero 6 showed just how much of a success the movie had been, and continued Disney’s run of animated hit films. In terms of what came next, there have been talks about a theatrical sequel to Big Hero 6 since its release, however, nothing has been confirmed so far.

Still, Big Hero 6 did get a spin-off television series called Big Hero 6: The Series, which took place right after the events of the film, and ran from 2017 until 2021. Many of the voice actors reprised their voice performances for the series. This then spanned a comic book series. The film also inspired a Japanese manga adaptation. Then there was the series Baymax! released on Disney+ in 2022, which consists of six ten-minute shorts detailing Baymax’s encounters with other citizens of San Fransokyo and his attempts to help them. I just watched them this week; they were funny, cute, and sweet – I loved them. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to get a second series.

At the Disney Parks, just after the release of Big Hero 6 in 2014, Baymax and Hiro were meeting guests at The Magic of Disney Animation at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World Resort. At Disneyland, the two were seen in Tomorrowland, where a sneak peek of Big Hero 6 was also been shown at the Magic Eye Theater.

These meet-and-greets later closed, but Baymax could still be seen at Walt Disney World at Epcot Character Spot from 2015, however this area closed around 2019 as part of Epcot’s big refurbishment plans for its 40th anniversary, so currently at Walt Disney World, there is nowhere that you can meet Baymax or any of the Big Hero 6 group.

Luckily, Disneyland have much more respect as they have a whole area dedicated to Big Hero 6, when they refurbished the Pacific Wharf area of Disney California Adventure and transformed it into San Fransokyo Square. It opened at the end of August 2023. Here, you can meet both Hiro and Baymax, and even go to Aunt Cass Café or the Lucky Fortune Cookery for some food. There are also shops such as San Fransokyo Maker’s Market, however, there are no rides or attractions here. Also at Disneyland, in 2023 a fireworks show debuted called Wondrous Journeys, which included a real Baymax flying over the castle, but when it returned in 2024, Baymax had been removed from the show. Yokai was seen as part of the Disney Villain franchise at the Oogie Boogie Bash Halloween Party in 2023. He was also seen during Disneyland After Dark: Villains Nite in 2021.

At Tokyo Disneyland, they do have an attraction, The Happy Ride with Baymax, which is a whip-around ride, much like Alien Swirling Saucers at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida, and Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree at Disneyland. During the summer season 2024 at Tokyo, there will be a roughly 30-minute performance where Baymax will be riding in a parade float spraying mist and water to cool down guests. Tokyo Disneyland seem to have a lot of these types of events during their summer season, and Baymax seems to have been involved in a similar show in 2023. It doesn’t look like Baymax has a dedicated meet-and-greet location here though.

Shanghai Disneyland doesn’t seem to either, but in recent years, there has been a stage show called Baymax Super Exercise Expo where Hiro and Baymax lead a mini exercise or dance class for guests. It is unclear if this is still going, but I’m thinking not. At Hong Kong Disneyland, Baymax and Hiro have met guests previously, but it would seem not recently.

Strangely enough, though Disneyland Paris does not have a dedicated meet-and-greet for Baymax, him and Hiro were seen at Disney+ Day in 2022, and in 2018 for the FanDaze event all six members of Big Hero 6 were seen, and so was the villain Yokai. For Halloween 2018, there was also a show called Big Hero 6: Yokai’s Revenge!

Merchandise for Big Hero 6 is quite popular, with items such as Funko POP figurines, mugs, pins and clothing being available previously. As 2024 is the 10th anniversary of the movie, I’m sure more items will be released towards the end of the year.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Big Hero 6 is a movie with a lot of compassion, many strong characters, and an interesting and exciting plot. It was a new direction for Disney, and continued their long line of successes in the 2010s. When Big Hero 6 was released, it’s quite clear there was a lot of hype around it, especially given the fact that it was based on a Marvel property, after Disney’s heavily-publicised purchase of Marvel, and that it was Disney Animation’s first superhero movie. However, I feel like after a few years, it was overshadowed by other Disney hits, and hasn’t been given as much credit as it deserves.

It is a movie that talks about friendship and being able to do anything you want, being free to use your imagination to create anything. Like Disney wanted, it tells the audience that technology and science provide hope for the future. But mostly, the theme around loss and grief is what gives Big Hero 6 its heart.

As we see Hiro deal with his grief at losing his brother, we learn the most important message, which can be difficult to remember in the moment: that nobody is ever truly gone; your loved ones will always be with you as long as you remember them. Something I’m sure many people need reminding of from time to time.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Author Unknown, ‘Deconstructing “Big Hero 6”’, Oscars.org (online), 2014, date unknown.

[2] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘Big Hero 6’, pp. 160-162.

[3] Credit: Disney, The Origin Story of Big Hero 6: Hiro’s Journey (2014).

[4] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘Big Hero 6’, pp. 160-162.

[5] Credit: Disney, The Origin Story of Big Hero 6: Hiro’s Journey (2014).

[6] Credit: Dorothy Pomerantz, ‘Meet The Guys Behind The Original ‘Big Hero 6’’, Forbes (online), 7th November 2014.

[7] Credit: Joshua Rivera, ‘’Big Hero 6’ strays far from its source material – – and that’s great’, Entertainment Weekly (online), 10th November 2014.

[8] Credit: Disney, The Origin Story of Big Hero 6: Hiro’s Journey (2014).

[9] Credit: Author Unknown, ‘Deconstructing “Big Hero 6”’, Oscars.org, date unknown.

[10] Credit: Disney, The Origin Story of Big Hero 6: Hiro’s Journey (2014).

by The Disney Purist

#2 Pinocchio (1940)

  1. BACKGROUND
  2. PLOT
  3. CHARACTERS & CAST
  4. MUSIC
  5. PRODUCTION
  6. RECEPTION
  7. LEGACY
  8. FINAL THOUGHTS
  9. REFERENCES

BACKGROUND

Becoming just the second Disney animated classic to ever hit the movie screens, Pinocchio had a lot to live up to after the huge success that the Disney Studios had with their first ever full-length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

Snow White was great, with its traditional fairy-tale format and plenty of additions of that magical storytelling, strong characters, and bright music that we all associate with Disney Animation today. It’s hard to imagine that acclaim being replicated so easily.

In actual fact, it really was that easy.

Pinocchio wasn’t just as good as Snow White had been; it was even better.          

Pinocchio was released in 1940 to very positive reviews from critics, saying that Pinocchio surpassed Snow White in almost every way – the music was apparently not as great, but that is debated nowadays.

But the animation is where Pinocchio really shines, as the Disney animators knew they had made mistakes in Snow White, and found that they needed ways of improving those shortcomings for future movies. So, with the profits from Snow White firmly in Walt Disney’s pocket, he set about using those funds to make Pinocchio the most artistic and innovation film that those at the Disney Studios could make. It certainly shows off the quality of animation and proves that animation is just as impressive as any live-action movie, more so in some cases.

Now, that’s what the critics all say – back in the 1940s and even in retrospective reviews from the current decade. But that’s not me, because I have to admit something.

I have a big fear of dolls, anything with a human face that isn’t alive really. Therefore, unsurprisingly, I have an incredibly negative bias towards Pinocchio, and I really do not enjoy watching it. I have multiple theories of how I came to have this “strange” fear: maybe it was that episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch with the “Molly Dolly”; perhaps it was my sister moving my toys when I left the room and hiding under the bed so I’d think they moved by themselves; maybe it was seeing the adverts for the Goosebumps on old Disney VHS tapes; or perhaps it was from watching Toy Story.

I have no idea. It could’ve been from watching Pinocchio when I was younger for all I know, though I don’t remember seeing it, but I’ve been informed I did watch it back then.

Anyway, my point is I have major personal issues with Pinocchio. I appreciate that Pinocchio was a momentous moment in both the history of the Disney Studios and generally in the history of animation, but I really don’t like this film, and never will, no matter how many times I force myself to see it.

PLOT

For anyone that does not know the story, and I don’t blame you if you don’t or can’t remember it because you had to wipe any memory of it from your mind so as not to be scarred for life, Pinocchio revolves around a wooden puppet, carved by the wood carver Geppetto. Geppetto wishes on a star for this puppet to be a “real boy”, as he never had a child of his own, though he does have two pets, a cute cat named Figaro and a sassy goldfish called Cleo. As Geppetto sleeps, his wish partially comes true. Pinocchio is alive, but not a boy yet; he’s still a wooden puppet. As the Blue Fairy states, Pinocchio must prove himself to be “brave, truthful, and unselfish” for that to happen. Geppetto wakes up to find Pinocchio alive and is overjoyed. Jiminy Cricket, who basically broke into Geppetto’s home to warm himself by the fire, reveals himself to the Blue Fairy. She says that Jiminy should help Pinocchio on his way to becoming a real boy, to be his conscience and show him right from wrong. Jiminy readily agrees and he is given a smart, snappy suit to wear to match this new important position.

The next morning, Geppetto sends Pinocchio off to school, with a book, an apple, and of course, Jiminy Cricket. But on the way to school, “Honest” John the fox and Gideon the cat delay Pinocchio and tell him all about the wonders of becoming an actor. Jiminy tries to warn Pinocchio away from these two creeps, but it does not work, and Pinocchio is instead sold to puppeteer Stromboli to become a cabaret slave in his travelling show. To be fair to Pinocchio, Geppetto had not given him the whole “stranger danger” warning so no wonder he was led astray; that’s just bad parenting on Geppetto’s part. “Bad Dad” award.

Although everything seems great at Pinocchio’s debut show, as he is the star attraction and the crowd love him, it soon becomes clear to Pinocchio that Stromboli is not a good guy. Stromboli has made tons of money from Pinocchio’s show today and plans to take him on tour, so when Pinocchio asks to go home, Stromboli angrily locks him in a birdcage, saying he can never go home. Jiminy arrives and tries to free Pinocchio from his prison, but to no avail. Luckily, the Blue Fairy appears. Pinocchio, embarrassed by the predicament he’s got himself in, begins to lie to the Blue Fairy about what happened, causing his nose to grow and grow. The Blue Fairy tells Pinocchio she can free him and return his nose to normal size if he promises to return to his original mission: of being brave, truthful, and unselfish. Pinocchio agrees to this and is free to go home.

But once again, “Honest” John and Gideon intercept Pinocchio, as they have been ordered by the Coachman to round up young boys to go to a shady, mysterious place called Pleasure Island – in exchange for money, of course, not out of the “goodness” of their hearts. After some convincing and ignoring the advice of Jiminy yet again, Pinocchio agrees to go. He befriends a boy called Lampwick and the two experience the wonders of Pleasure Island together, where they can drink alcohol, smoke cigars, play pool, get into fights, and do all sorts of bad things. Jiminy eventually finds Pinocchio again, and tries to convince Pinocchio to leave this place, but he refuses as he’s having so much fun there. Jiminy is about to leave the island when he learns that the boys on this island end up cursed, becoming donkeys and are then used by the Coachman as slave labour. Jiminy rushes back to save Pinocchio. At the same time, Pinocchio sees his friend Lampwick turn into a donkey right in front of him. Pinocchio is horrified – and it gets worse, because Pinocchio soon sprouts donkey ears and a tail! Pinocchio manages to escape the island before the curse can fully transform him.

Jiminy and Pinocchio finally return home, but find the house empty. Outside, they receive a note from the Blue Fairy, saying that Geppetto, Figaro and Cleo all went looking for him on a raft but they were swallowed by a huge whale called Monstro, where he currently remains. Pinocchio and Jiminy jump into the sea and swim until they find the whale. Monstro swallows Pinocchio and Jiminy, where they are reunited with Geppetto. Pinocchio comes up with a plan to make Monstro sneeze, by starting a fire inside the belly of the whale, so that they can escape. As they are sneezed out of the whale – eww – Monstro chases after their raft and smashes it to pieces, leaving them flailing in the water. Pinocchio saves his father by pulling him into a cove. Monstro then crashes into the rock face, and Geppetto washes up on the beach, alive, with Figaro and Cleo. Jiminy then washes up on the shore too. Sadly, Pinocchio is found face-down in the water; he has drowned and died.

Back home, Geppetto, Jiminy, Figaro, and Cleo all mourn the loss of Pinocchio. However, as through this act, Pinocchio proved himself to be brave, truthful, and unselfish, the Blue Fairy turns Pinocchio into a real boy – minus the donkey ears and tail – at last. The group celebrates. Jiminy thanks the Wishing Star, which is also the Blue Fairy, and is rewarded with a badge for all of his good work, which certifies him as an official conscience.

After all that, you can hardly say Pinocchio is a feel-good children’s film, can you? It’s much more of a morality play than anything else. If you’re looking for family-friendly entertainment to escape from how terrible the world can be, this is not the Disney film to choose! I suppose, providing it doesn’t traumatise the children first, some of the messages about being a good, honest person might be absorbed, at least for a little bit, though.

Disney did their very best to tame their movie compared with the original source material, the book The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. The name Pinocchio comes from the two Italian words “pino” and “occhio”, which mean “pine” and “eye”, an appropriate name for a wooden puppet. The Adventures of Pinocchio was originally published as a serial as part an Italian children’s magazine. Disney used some of the same plot points, for example, the boys turning into donkeys on Pleasure Island, though it is named the Land of Toys in the original story; Monstro swallowing Geppetto; the Fox and the Cat tricking Pinocchio, but other than, it is so much more terrifying! Pinocchio is incredibly badly-behaved too: kicking Geppetto as soon as his feet are carved; running away from home, where the police arrest Geppetto as they assume Pinocchio has been mistreated by him; having his feet burnt off by the fireplace; squishing the Talking Cricket with a hammer; being hung from a tree by the Fox and the Cat[1]. It just gets worse and worse! Although, Disney’s Pinocchio is already quite terrifying to watch, imagine if they hadn’t strayed from the original source. How awful would that have been….

CHARACTERS & CAST

Collodi’s version of the puppet Pinocchio was actually very unlikeable and cocky, nothing at all like Disney’s character because Walt Disney knew they had to make Pinocchio like an innocent little boy, so that the audience would want him to succeed in his journey to becoming a real boy, and that they should be concerned about the distressing situations Pinocchio ends up in. I don’t think I would’ve cared about Collodi’s Pinocchio at all if I’d read the book, but I certainly care about Disney’s little Pinocchio who is so naïve and easily persuaded that you have to feel sorry for him when all these terrible things happen. It is also clear that Pinocchio genuinely cares about his father and doesn’t want to disappoint him. Pinocchio becomes a real hero at the end of the film, sacrificing his own life to save Geppetto’s, for which he is given the ultimate reward: to finally be a real boy.

Originally, the character was designed to be very geometrically-shaped, like a real wooden puppet, but Walt Disney didn’t like that, so he asked for the character to be redesigned. Pinocchio had to look like a sweet little boy, so that is what the animators did; he became more boy than puppet. Child actor Dick Jones provided the voice for Pinocchio, but he had already been cast in numerous minor screen roles before then. In 1939, he appeared in the movies Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Destry Rides Again. During voice recordings for Pinocchio, at one point the Disney team were struggling to figure out how to make it sound like Pinocchio was underwater searching for Geppetto, so they had the bright idea of having Jones lie down on a table and have he read his lines out as water was poured into his mouth! As he almost drowned from this, they soon worked out that putting a filter on the microphone would be a sufficient alternative to make the character sound like he was underwater[2]! After Pinocchio, Jones appeared in a few episodes of the series Annie Oakley (1954-57). In 1955, Jones starred as the title character in the Western television series Buffalo Bill, Jr. (1955-56). His final film role was in 1965 in the Western film Requiem for a Gunfighter. Jones passed away in 2014 at the age of 87.

Of all the characters in Pinocchio that have dialogue, Jiminy Cricket is my favourite. I also really like the suit he wears. I’d completely forgotten that he doesn’t start the movie wearing it; he actually shows up looking bedraggled and homeless, and the Blue Fairy gives him a new suit, the proper uniform to be a “conscience”, apparently. Jiminy isn’t overly helpful to Pinocchio throughout the film, though that is made worse by the fact that Pinocchio ignores him a lot…He tries his best but if someone just won’t listen to you, what more can you do! Jiminy also says what the viewers are likely all thinking, which makes me laugh. For instance, whilst in Geppetto’s workshop at the start of the film, he gets frustrated by the sound of the cuckoo clocks, which I agree are so annoying, and he has some great lines, like “Conscience is that still small voice that people won’t listen to.” That’s quite true!

The Talking Cricket as the character is known in the original book is a very minor character, who only shows up a couple of times in the story: once when he gets killed by Pinocchio after attempting to give him advice, and again when he comes back as a ghost. The team at Disney decided that having the cricket as a main character would give Pinocchio a sidekick, and bring some friendship and humour to the otherwise dark story. In the end, Jiminy’s wise-cracking ways dominate the screen, and as such Jiminy Cricket has become one of Disney’s most memorable characters. Being an official conscience will do that for you. Ward Kimball was assigned the task of designing Jiminy Cricket, which was quite difficult as crickets are not the cutest insects and Walt Disney wanted something cute. So, Kimball drew multiple designs of this walking-talking cricket, until eventually they got the design that we now know as Jiminy Cricket – who looks very little like an actual cricket.

Cliff Edwards, who was also known by the name “Ukulele Ike”, due to his performances playing the ukulele, voiced the character. Edwards first popularised the song “Singin’ in the Rain” after performing it in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 musical film, alongside The Brox Sisters. Edwards had a few movie roles, with one being in the comedy film His Girl Friday (1940). Edwards voiced one of the crows in Dumbo (1941) and reprised his role as Jiminy Cricket often for other Disney projects up until his death in 1971.

Geppetto is Pinocchio’s kindly father. He wants nothing more than to have a child of his own, and so Pinocchio coming into his life is a great gift. Geppetto doesn’t feature all that much in the film, just at the beginning and at the end, because this film is all about Pinocchio, but you can see how devoted he is to Pinocchio by the fact he goes out to sea to find him and ends up being swallowed by a whale… Although Pinocchio is an Italian story, Geppetto speaks with an Austrian accent. That is because Christian Rub was an Austrian-born actor. He made Geppetto soft-spoken and calm, even in the face of adversity, which is a nice contrast to all the evil villainous men in this film. Rub had appeared in numerous movies, with his film debut being in The Belle of New York (1919) and his final film role being in Something for the Birds (1952). Also in 1940, Rub was cast as Thoren in RKO’s Swiss Family Robinson, not to be confused with Disney’s 1960 live-action film. Apparently, Christian Rub was a Nazi sympathiser, which made working with him quite difficult, given the time of Pinocchio’s development.

Whilst on the subject of Geppetto, I also have to say that I absolutely love Figaro, Geppetto’s black and white cat. He’s so cute! Disney really got the temperament of the cat spot on because Figaro has two emotions: moody and needy. He’s the best character in this film, no question. Because Figaro was so popular, and supposedly Walt Disney’s favourite character in the film, Figaro became Minnie Mouse’s cat after this. Clarence Nash, famous for voicing the character of Donald Duck, “voices” Figaro here. Cleo, Geppetto’s goldfish, is also quite cute, but is no Figaro. I did see one of the deleted scenes though, which would have seen Figaro trying to eat Cleo whilst stuck in the stomach of Monstro; that wasn’t nice to watch. Bad Figaro.

Now let’s get to the despicable villains. I like Disney Villains, but I draw the line at these four. They are just awful and horrible to watch. “Honest” John, or John Worthington Foulfellow to give him his full name, which just sounds incredibly pretentious, and his mute sidekick Gideon are the two con artists who use Pinocchio to make themselves richer. They bother Pinocchio twice, and sell him to Stromboli and then to the Coachman, basically. You’d think Pinocchio would have learnt to stay away from them after the first incident, but nope! John is quite persuasive and charming, which is how he is able to convince Pinocchio to do bad things, but generally, the two of them are quite bumbling and relatively comedic. Apparently, “Honest” John was partly inspired by Walt Disney’s brother, Ray, who sold insurance. He wanted animator Ward Kimball as a client, but whenever Ray came to the Studios, Kimball always tried to hide from him, even hiding in an armoire at one point[3].

Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny for the Looney Tunes, was originally going to be the voice of Gideon, but Disney decided that Gideon should be mute, so the only “line” that Blanc managed to voice here was Gideon’s hiccup[4]. Walter Catlett voiced “Honest” John. Catlett had appeared on stage in musicals like the 1920 production of the Jerome Kern musical Sally, and Lady, Be Good by George and Ira Gershwin in 1924. Catlett also appeared in various movies, including Bringing Up Baby (1938) as Constable Slocum, and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) as Morrow, the Poet.

Finally, the last two villains are Stromboli and the Coachman. Both of them are greedy and abusive, with the Coachman happily sending boys to an island to be cursed so that he can get some cheap donkey labour, and Stromboli planning to use Pinocchio like some dancing slave. I really don’t like either of them and find them the scariest and most repulsive characters in the film. Charles Judels voiced both characters. 

MUSIC

Let’s move on to something brighter, like Pinocchio’s soundtrack. The songs were composed by Leigh Harline, who also co-scored the movie, with Ned Washington contributing the lyrics. After Pinocchio, Washington went on to write the lyrics to the songs in Disney’s Dumbo (1941), earning an Academy Award nomination for “Baby Mine”, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “High Noon” from the 1952 film High Noon. There are five original songs in Pinocchio, though more were written for the movie and ultimately not used. One of these is Jiminy Cricket’s song “I’m A Happy Go Lucky Fellow” which instead was used in the animated film Fun and Fancy Free (1947).

To be honest, I’m not a fan of any of the songs from Pinocchio, although if I had to pick a favourite it would either be “Give A Little Whistle” or “Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee”. I remember hearing a variation on “Give A Little Whistle” in the former Walt Disney World parade Celebrate a Dream Come True so that’s probably why I don’t mind that song. It is performed by Cliff Edwards and Dickie Jones as Jiminy teaches Pinocchio how to whistle so that he can call for help, and reminds him to “always let your conscience be your guide”. “Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee” is performed by Walter Catlett as “Honest” John as he tries and succeeds in convincing Pinocchio to be an “actor” in Stromboli’s puppet show. For a villainous tune, it’s quite catchy and bouncy. It is briefly reprised as John speaks to the Coachman in the inn.

There is also a short song called “Little Wooden Head” sung by Christian Rub as Geppetto, as he tries out his new wooden puppet Pinocchio and walks him around the room. I already find the scene creepy – because, puppets – and the repetitive mechanical sound to the music is a little bit irritating to me, so I don’t like this song. It’s also sad how little Figaro is being tormented by Geppetto as he moves Pinocchio towards him. Poor kitty. I also don’t like “I’ve Got No Strings” because there are even more puppets here! Pinocchio’s singing isn’t great either, but I can appreciate the different variations of the song that were written to match the nationality of the puppets that join Pinocchio on stage.

But the most remembered song is obviously “When You Wish Upon a Star”, which is performed by Jiminy Cricket at the very start of the film, during the opening credits and then the opening scene of Jiminy sat atop the Pinocchio storybook. There is also a reprise of it at the end of the film. It is a sweet song and it basically became the Walt Disney Company’s theme song from this moment on, as it sums up their message about wishes and dreams being able to come true. Sadly, I don’t love this song either, maybe because I’ve heard it too many times – or maybe because I just don’t like the film – but it is iconically Disney.

Leigh Harline had previously co-scored Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), alongside Paul J. Smith, with the two scoring Pinocchio together. Harline had also scored many of the Silly Symphonies cartoon shorts in the 1930s. Smith contributed to the scores of many of Disney animated feature films from this point on, including Saludos Amigos (1942), The Three Caballeros (1944), and Cinderella (1950), as well as some of the True-Life Adventures nature documentaries in the 1950s.

Within the score, I think “Clock Sequence” is quite clever, as it is a symphony of all the cuckoo clocks going off at once, but making them chime in harmony with each other. It is a bit annoying after a while though! “Coach to Pleasure Island” has quite a jazzy feel to it, which is in complete contrast to what we now know happens over there; it sounds fun and exciting, not like somewhere where these boys are ultimately going to meet their doom. It’s not my favourite score, but it adds tension, hope, and happiness when it needs to.

Pinocchio was the first Disney feature to win an Academy Award, actually winning two awards: one for Best Original Score and the other for Best Original Song with “When You Wish Upon a Star”. It wouldn’t be until Mary Poppins (1964) that these honours were received again, and then another thirty-odd years until The Little Mermaid (1989) would do so once more, from which point four other “Disney Renaissance” films also would[5].

PRODUCTION

After Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the Disney Studios had to make another picture just as good, if not better. Initially, it was decided that the animators would set to work on Bambi (1942), and that that would become their second full-length animated feature. However, Walt Disney was unsure how to go about making that movie, as he wanted the animation to look as realistic to nature as possible, so Bambi was set aside.

Luckily, during production on Snow White, animator Norman Ferguson had brought in Collodi’s book, The Adventures of Pinocchio, and gave it to Walt to read. The book had become very popular since its publishing in 1883 and had been translated into numerous languages. Because of the story’s episodic nature, since it had been published in a magazine first and not as a full story, there were ample choices for their movie. They could choose to avoid the darker, crueller elements of the story, and focus on the moral message of the story, of how to become a better person, and recognising right from wrong, which would be especially good for the children who would be watching the movie.

This structure to the plot, giving Pinocchio many adventures and interactions with different characters, meant that the animators had even more opportunity to develop their character animation, giving each character a distinct personality. This was also the opportunity where many of those who came to be known as the “Nine Old Men” really got to shine. Frank Thomas, for example, animated the sequence of Pinocchio as a marionette at the start of the film, after being carved by Geppetto; Ollie Johnston worked on the sequence of Pinocchio’s nose growing as he is trying to explain his predicament to the Blue Fairy. As mentioned, Ward Kimball designed Jiminy Cricket after having his work on Snow White cut from the final edit; and Eric Larson animated Figaro. John Lounsbery did some animation of “Honest” John, whose animation was being supervised by Norm Ferguson. From this point on, the “Nine Old Men” became a huge influence in the animated movies that came afterwards. But older animators, like Bill Tytla, Art Babbitt, and Fred Moore also contributed to Pinocchio’s characters, animating Stromboli, Geppetto, and Lampwick respectively.

Snow White had given the world an animated fairy tale that looked magical. The team wanted to have the same artistic approach that had been used in that film for Pinocchio, to make the film reminiscent of Old-World storybook illustrations, many of which had been created by German artists. Gustaf Tenggren was the concept artist responsible for Pinocchio’s setting of an Alpine village. Tenggren had made many drawings of Bavarian town Rothenberg ob der Tauber as inspiration, with Geppetto’s house in particular closely matching the Hotel Altfrankische Weinstrube there. Tenggren was also influenced by Germanic architecture for the interior locations, such as Geppetto’s workshop with its numerous cuckoo clocks and music boxes. Too many if you ask me. How many does one man need? Has Geppetto struggled to sell them? This is why, despite Pinocchio being an Italian story, the backgrounds seem to replicate Bavarian and German areas[6].

However, despite taking some ideas from the making of Snow White, Walt Disney and the rest of the Studios’ staff knew that they had made mistakes, and knew how they wanted to improve the artform and cinematography. Using the profits from Snow White, Walt could now invest in new technology and more complex animation. One of their biggest technological advancements was their creation of the multiplane camera, designed by Disney Studio technician Bill Garity. At over twelve feet tall, the camera used multiple layers of back, middle, and foregrounds placed at different heights to add depth and space to the animated sequences. For example, one particular sequence known for its use of the multiplane camera is the sequence of Pinocchio going off to school, where the camera sweeps over the village, gradually getting closer and closer to the streets, before settling on Geppetto’s house. This was actually done using a horizontal plane instead of vertical, and replicates the action that a dolly track camera would do nowadays. This sole sequence cost $45,000 back then to make, which is almost $1.8 million today. Another good example of this type of shot is when the camera pushes through wisps of mist and moves closer and closer into the Red Lobster Inn, where John and Gideon are meeting the Coachman[7]. 

For character animation, maquettes, making 3D models of character designs, really became standard for the Disney Studios during the making of Pinocchio. They had been used a bit for Snow White, but the models were predominately first used on Pinocchio. These maquettes were useful for the animators to be able to accurately capture all angles of their characters. There were also other models made of things like Stromboli’s wagon and the coach to Pleasure Island, as well as Geppetto’s cuckoo clocks, with these models being useful to animate realistic movement of the objects[8]. Live-action reference material was also taken, of actors like Evelyn Venable as the Blue Fairy, who was also the voice of the character. Venable was also the original model for the “Torch Lady” logo that appears at the start of Columbia Pictures films. Disney’s live-action reference footage could be used as a guide for the animators, again, to capture realistic movement. A Pinocchio puppet was also built as an animation model, but was lost for fifty years. It was eventually discovered in one of the studio cabinets[9].

The Effects Department were able to push forward with more impressive techniques as well. The water effects are a particular focus during discussions around Pinocchio’s animation, as they were able to replicate the waves of the sea, splashes, bubbles, and foam, with all of these being used in the sequence with Monstro the whale. It was very complex work as it was all hand-drawn. The magic effects of the Blue Fairy were also hand-drawn.

All of these additional animation techniques pushed the artform forward, and now Pinocchio is famed for its innovations.

RECEPTION

Pinocchio premiered in New York City on 7th February 1940 at the Center Theatre. According to Hollywood legend, as part of promotional activities for the premiere, eleven men were hired and dressed up as Pinocchio. They were placed on top of the theatre marquee for the day and were told to interact with the crowd. At lunchtime, they were given refreshments, including beer. A few hours later, the men were all naked, burping, shouting obscenities at the crowd, and generally behaving very “un-Pinocchio-like”. They refused to put their costumes back on and come down, so the police were called. They brought the men down using pillow cases to cover up their modesty[10]. I have no idea how true this story actually is or not, the veracity of this story is debated, but I have seen screenshots of people dressed as Pinocchio on top of the theatre, so at least that part was true. Actor David Niven wrote this story in his memoir Bring on the Empty Horses (1975), where it has taken on a life of its own. It sounds like a very funny publicity stunt gone wrong, but news articles from the time don’t go quite as far as Niven, instead simply saying that the men had just got bored, and started smoking and playing dice on top of the theatre.

After that possible disaster of a premiere, Pinocchio was released in theatres in the US on 23rd February 1940, where it received outstanding reviews from critics, with many stating that Pinocchio was technically better than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as well as having a more powerful story. Although more contemporary critics have said that the story may be too heavy for a children’s film, they all agree that Pinocchio is one of the best animated movies of all time, with memorable songs and characters.

Randomly, after Pinocchio’s release, the nephew of Carlo Collodi, the author of the original book, Paolo Lorenzini apparently begged the Italian Ministry of Popular Culture to sue Walt Disney for libel for portraying Pinocchio in such a way that the character could be mistaken for American instead of his authentic Italian heritage[11].

Pinocchio cost $2.6 million to make, which, adjusted for inflation, would be over $50 million today. This means Pinocchio cost almost twice as much as Snow White did. Unfortunately, due to the start of World War II and a lack of access to European markets as well as those in Asia, Pinocchio did not do well financially on its original release, bringing in somewhere around $1.5 million. This would have been very disappointing at the time for Walt Disney. As Walt Disney put it in a 1956 archive interview, Pinocchio was released “at a time when the world was kind of collapsing”, which is unfortunate[12]. The Disney Studios then lost staff members when the US joined World War II in 1941, and were required to make propaganda films for the US government, so they had to slow down progress on their full-length feature films. Only three more feature-length films were released by the Disney Studios, between 1940 and 1942, and after that, the “package feature” films came to be.

Luckily, when Pinocchio was re-released in theatres for the first time after the war in 1945, and then many times after that including in 1954, 1962, 1971, and 1978, the movie was able to make the money it deserved to. It was also then released on VHS, followed by DVD and Blu-Ray re-releases on its milestone anniversary dates[13].

LEGACY

Considering Pinocchio was released over eighty years ago, the movie and its characters continue to have relevance at all the Disney Parks across the world. For example, the characters have featured in parades and as walkaround characters for years. Jiminy Cricket hosted the nighttime shows Wishes and the SpectroMagic parade at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World in the 1990s and 2000s. Jiminy also appears in the Festival of Fantasy parade here, as does Pinocchio who is riding on the float that looks like Monstro the whale covered in the fabric of Aladdin’s magic carpet. Pinocchio has also been seen around the Walt Disney World Resort with Geppetto recently, and Jiminy Cricket has been known to meet guests at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park occasionally. Gideon and Honest John have also been spotted at special events before, like at Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. Lampwick and Stromboli have been meet-and-greet characters at times here as well.

Let’s also not forget Pinocchio Village Haus quick-service restaurant in Fantasyland at Magic Kingdom. It was meant to look as accurate to the film as possible, and the Imagineers got the detail down so precisely that the view from above resembles the overhead opening scene of the village in Pinocchio. This would’ve been visible to guests riding on the Skyway from 1971 to 1999, when it closed. The dining location, serving Italian food such as pizzas and pastas, is themed to Pinocchio’s village both in its interior, where it looks like an outdoor village courtyard, and its exterior, which resembles multiple houses clustered together. There are many dining rooms themed to characters from the movie, and one even overlooks the it’s a small world attraction[14]. Similar dining locations can be found at Shanghai Disneyland, under the name Pinocchio Village Kitchen, and at Disneyland Paris as Au Chalet de la Marionette. There are slight differences in theming, but more obvious differences in food selection. At Shanghai Disneyland, alongside pizza and pasta, rice and noodle dishes are also available, whereas at Disneyland Paris, the food is vaguely German-themed, not Italian, strangely, serving hot dogs, pretzels sandwiches, and roast chicken.

Disneyland Paris doesn’t stop there with its Pinocchio theming, as they have La Bottega di Geppetto, a merchandise location made to look like Geppetto’s house and workshop, as well as the dark ride Les Voyages de Pinocchio, which opened with the park on 12th April 1992, which takes guests through a shortened version of the movie’s story. In terms of character experiences, Geppetto and Pinocchio have been seen most recently in the park, as well as in the Disney Stars on Parade, with Pinocchio also being a possible character at the Plaza Gardens Restaurant character dining experience. Jiminy Cricket has been seen at this park before, as well as Gideon and Honest John.

At Disneyland, a miniature Alpine village scene from Pinocchio can be found on the Storybook Land Canal Boats, and on the Casey Jr. Circus Train. Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket dolls were also added to the it’s a small world attraction here. The Blue Fairy and Pinocchio feature during the Magic Happens Parade, and the Blue Fairy even got to fly across the castle during the original run of the Wondrous Journeys nighttime show. For walkaround characters, Blue Fairy, Pinocchio, Geppetto and Jiminy Cricket were all seen together as part of Throwback Nite in 2023. Disneyland also has a dark ride based on Pinocchio, called Pinocchio’s Daring Journey, which opened in May 1983. It is extremely similar to the one at Disneyland Paris, and the one at Tokyo Disneyland. Tokyo Disneyland’s ride, which has the same name, first opened with the park on 15th April 1983. The ride was designed to first be installed at Disneyland, however, the project was put on hold and not revived until designs for Tokyo Disneyland were being decided. Disneyland then received their ride a month and a half later as part of their “New Fantasyland” refurbishment.

Tokyo Disneyland also includes some small themed areas, such as the Pleasure Island Candies shop, Stromboli’s Wagon store, and Cleo’s food stand, named after the goldfish, but don’t worry; it doesn’t serve fish…I don’t think… The Blue Fairy has a featured float within the Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade Dreamlights, and Pinocchio, Geppeto, Jiminy Cricket, and Honest John have also been seen here in recent years.

At Hong Kong Disneyland, and similarly in Shanghai Disneyland, it is unclear how frequently, if ever, characters from Pinocchio appear to meet and greet guests. There was in 2017 during a Halloween event a walkthrough attraction called Maze of Madness: The Nightmare Experiment Continues at Hong Kong Disneyland which featured a “face character” Pinocchio, which looks even creepier than his costumed look…

In general, Pinocchio’s characters and music from the film are likely to appear during current or future parades or shows at the Disney Parks, as well as on the Disney Cruise Line, since this was such a big movie for the company that continues to be popular.

On screen, Jiminy Cricket reappeared in the Disney animated “package feature” Fun and Fancy Free (1947) and he also hosted a series of educational short films for the Mickey Mouse Club television series from the 1950s through to the 1970s. He also hosted the Disney Sing-Along Songs VHS tapes, and played the part of the Ghost of Christmas Past in Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983). Jiminy is a popular choice of Disney character to host anything, since he is an official “conscience”.

There was also a live-action made-for-television movie which aired on ABC in 2000 called Geppetto, which told the story of Pinocchio from Geppetto’s perspective, with Drew Carey playing Geppetto, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as The Blue Fairy. More recently, Disney made a live-action remake of Pinocchio, which was released straight to Disney+ on Disney+ Day on 8th September 2022. It starred Tom Hanks as Geppetto, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Jiminy Cricket, and Keegan-Michael Key as Honest John, and was directed by Robert Zemeckis. It received mostly negative reviews. It should also not be confused with another Pinocchio adaptation released in 2022, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which is a stop-motion animated film, and a darker version of the story, though it received much better reviews than Disney’s live-action remake, even winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Outside of traditional Disney work, Pinocchio, Geppetto, Jiminy Cricket, and The Blue Fairy all appear as supporting characters in the ABC television series Once Upon a Time (2011-18), with their characters being used most in the first couple of seasons.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Pinocchio really showcased the artform of animation, and proved the high-quality of the artists at the Disney Studios. Although Pinocchio struggled on its release due to the outbreak of World War II, over the decades, it has been re-released numerous times both for home release and in theatres and has more than made up for that initial box-office floundering. Families have been watching the film together for over eighty years.

Although Pinocchio is not one of the Disney Animated Classics I treasure, or will ever like, I can appreciate just how well it was made and how much work went into it. Perhaps this movie would speak to me more if I was part of an older generation that had not been spoilt by the so-called “Disney Renaissance” era and their musical-theatre style, which I prefer. Everybody has a favourite Disney film, and we’re all different.

Pinocchio remains a favourite of many – just not with those with a fear of puppets, like me.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Tom Chapman, ‘Pinocchio is a lot darker than the story you think you know’, DigitalSpy.com, 10th December 2022.

[2] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Disney Animation Anecdotes’, MousePlanet.com, 14th December 2022.

[3] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Disney Animation Anecdotes’, MousePlanet.com, 14th December 2022.

[4] Credit: Disney, The Making of Pinocchio: No Strings Attached (2009).

[5] Credit: Disney, The Making of Pinocchio: No Strings Attached (2009).

[6] Credit: Jim Korkis, Other Secret Stories of Walt Disney World (2017), ‘Pinocchio Village Haus’, pp. 7-8.

[7] Credit: Lucas O. Seastrom, ‘A Machine for the Imagination: Walt Disney’s Pinocchio and the Multiplane Camera’, The Walt Disney Family Museum Blog, 18th September 2016.

[8] Credit: Disney, The Making of Pinocchio: No Strings Attached (2009).

[9] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘Pinocchio’, pp. 4-6.

[10] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘Animation Anecdotes #270’, CartoonResearch.com, 8th July 2016.

[11] Credit: Jim Korkis, Everything I Know I Learned from Disney Animated Feature Films (2015), ‘Pinocchio’, pp. 4-6.

[12] Credit: In Walt’s Words: Pinocchio, Disney+, date unknown.

[13] Credit: Author Unknown, ‘Pinocchio Premiered’, D23.com, date unknown.

[14] Credit: Jim Korkis, Other Secret Stories of Walt Disney World (2017), ‘Pinocchio Village Haus’, pp. 7-8.