Remembering Disney’s Millennium Age (2001-2015)
Article by Animation Nation, June 2023
If Disney fans can agree on anything, it’s nothing. But if a reasonable plurality can agree on anything, it’s that Jim Henson’s presence usured in the so-called Disney Animation Renaissance Age (alternately the “Jim Years” or “Henson Age” or occasionally Felt Age in a Muppets reference; some have called it a New Golden or even Platinum Age). The Renaissance Age is largely agreed to have run from 1986’s
Where the Wild Things Are to 2000’s
Invincible, or arguably through 2001’s
Aida. The next period, which ran from 2001 to 2015, has been officially called the Disney Millennium Age, and marks the period that began when Jim Henson retired in 2001 and was replaced as Chairman by his daughter Lisa and as Chief Creative Officer by Joe Ranft and ran to when Joe Ranft, in turn, stepped down as CCO citing heart issues at the end of 2015, to be in turn replaced by long-running Disney animator Terrell Little, ushering in the as yet unnamed Current Age. The Millennium Age has also been called a New Silver Age, particularly by those who consider the Renaissance Age to be a New Golden Age, while others have called it the Age of Exploration, both as a cheeky nod to it coming after the Renaissance and due to the fact that it was an age of experimentation in animation styles and themes[1].
Where the Renaissance Age is characterized by a return to popularity, innovation, and solvency for Disney Animation following the post-Walt Disney Bronze or (less charitably) Dark Age, the Millennium Age can be seen as a period of continued experimentation and boundary pushing that had mixed success as animators asked themselves “What Would Jim Do”, and decided that the answer was “push the boundaries of creativity and accept creative risk”. It was also famed as an era that saw the decline and near-extinction of traditionally animated films as CG animation got increasingly cheaper, easier, and more capable, and one that would witness the rise of growing competition from both other major studios like Universal, Filmation, Warner Brothers, and Hanna-Barbera, and from low-quality mass-market “CG Mills”.
Another defining trait of the Millennium Age was the rightward shift in US culture and politics, at least for the 2000s, marked by Conservative pushback against the “Political Correctness” and “Girl Power” movements of the 1990s. This shift worked against the more progressive turn for Disney Animation under the Hensons and also ran into increased resistance from board member George W. Bush, who urged Disney to lean in to a new “customer fan basis” of Conservative and Evangelical viewers. To this end, he would ultimately executive produce 2009’s
Mission, which followed a Jesuit Priest in The Philippines in 1500 and slightly underperformed, yet became a cult classic.
Ironically given its association with Joe Ranft, the earliest films of the Millennium Age were all greenlit by Jim Henson, which has led many to suggest that the Millennium Age really begins after
Hiawatha in 1995 when the growing competition from rival studios ended Disney’s dominance or in 2004 when Ranft’s first Greenlight screened. And if you go to any message boards you will find plenty of folks willing to fight and die on their chosen hill. But since the general consensus is 1986-2000 for the Renaissance Age and 2001-2015 for the Millennium Age, we at
Animation Nation are not going to fight it.
As such, this brief survey of the Millennium Age films is actually broken in two parts: the “Launched by Jim Henson” section and the “Launched by Joe Ranft” section. And by “Launched” we mean “entered active production” and not just entered into initial concept and storyboarding. And even this distinction is flawed, as many of these films began years before they entered active production, such as
Unbound, which was first pitched by Glen Keane in the mid-1990s and which ultimately traces back to the Walt-run Golden Age. So take even this distinction with a grain of salt.
Launched by Jim Henson (2001-2004):
Jim Henson was the one who, as CCO, officially signed off on production for all the animated films that debuted between 2001 and early 2004 after his retirement, since Animation Takes Time. So while he was kicked back in New Mexico when these films screened, he’s still indelibly linked to them.
Scare Force One (2001): One of the many ideas that first came out of the “Great 3D Brainstorming Session” of the early ‘90s,
Scare Force One follows the buddy-adventure of a monster and the five-year-old child that he was assigned to scare[2]. The monster Johnson, a.k.a. “The Ripper”, a big and beastly but actually timid member of the titular “Scare Force” (3D “regular” and
Bug Life star Patrick Warburton), has one job: extract screams of terror from his assigned child for use as a power source, or lose his job on the Scare Force in the Big Downsizing that all monsters live in perpetual fear of. Maintaining his status as “Scare Force One”, the top scarer, is critical to retaining his job. The problem, though, is that his newest assigned child, Mary (Kimberly Brooks), has been tormented so long by her three older brothers that she’s not scared of
anything. The fact that she lives in the crime ridden neighborhood of Westminster, or “West Monster” as it is called, only adds to her fearlessness. But with Monstropolis in the midst of an ongoing energy crisis, the pressure is on to deliver the screams. Perpetually browbeaten by his abusive boss Mr. Sullivan (Samuel L. Jackson) and villainous rival Boggsworth (Steve Buscemi), who have evil plans of their own to end the crisis
at all costs, Johnson in the end must team up with Mary not just to save her family from an evil plan by Councilman Jones (also Jackson) that would leave her family homeless, but to save Monstropolis itself from the parallel plans of Sullivan and Boggsworth.
Sweating Bullets (2001): The Skeleton Crew rides again in this stop-mo spectacular “Western Ghost Story”[3] and “Goth salute to Old Hollywood”. When the timid young cowboy Greenhorn Grady (the great Don Knotts) foolishly herds his cattle into the haunted literal ghost town Gallows Gulch, he soon awakens the ghost of the nefarious old cattle rustler Slim Tim Grimm (Thurl Ravenscroft), who proceeds to cause havoc for the good-ish citizens of Headstone Hill. And Grady, who can mysteriously now understand his animals (a whole herd of C&W music and Western movie special guest voices, real and impersonated)[4], must overcome his nervous nature and partner with his cattle and kooky inventor Boilermaker Bess (Kathy Bates) to defeat Slim and save the day. Full of fun C&W music written by Garth Brooks and Willie Nelson that evoke the classic C&W stars of old,
Sweating Bullets is in its own strange way like a subtle salute to the Old Disney of Walt’s day, quoting
Pecos Bill and
The Apple Dumpling Gang, among other classic Disney Westerns. And while far from the Crew’s or Disney’s greatest performer, it’s none-the-less a fun story that has found a new life in the Disney Channel’s Halloween Canon.
Ella (2001): It’s the Amblimation and Fantasia animated film that nearly gave Roy Disney a heart attack! When the titular Ella, an elephant, becomes all the rage singing in a swinging Jazz Age city of anthropomorphic animals, the resulting events maybe more than push the limits of its T Rating (rumors of an R cut continue to circle the net). Done entirely in hand-drawn, hand inked-and-painted animation,
Ella is a story of fame and its ups and downs, exploring beauty standards and prejudice. Reportedly greenlit and supported by Jim over the objections of Roy Disney, the Fantasia label and T-rating helped defray some of the heartache. A surprise sleeper hit catching the tail end of the neo-swing fad, even justifiable comparisons to the much more family-friendly
Ruler of the Roost, released later that year by Bluth and Hanna Barbera, failed to quash interest from teen and young adult audiences, who loved its transgressive nature. The piece also served as a sort of quasi-biopic for Ella Fitzgerald, with the obvious similarities to the famous chanteuse enough that Disney reportedly paid the Fitzgerald family an “undisclosed amount”. Belatedly added to the WED-sig line a decade after the fact,
Ella remains a cult favorite and has come to be known (often sardonically) as the “film that launched a million Furries”.[5]
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Sort of this… (Image source Disney Wiki)
Aida (2001): When Sir Elton John asked his friend Jim Henson to do an animated musical based on Antonio Ghislanzoni and Giuseppe Verdi’s
Aida, Henson was more than happy to support, particularly as the eponymous Nubian Princess Aida (Aliyah) and Egyptian Prince Rhadames (the great Sabah Fakhri, who reportedly did it for the money) were dovetailing well into Disney’s ongoing expansion of the profitable Princess line[6]. But the story of forbidden love, and its themes of race and war, resonated with Henson, and this complexity, along with the tragic ending, led the project to become the first big budget, major release WED Signature film. While the board fought back hard and new Chairwoman Lisa Henson had to stop the board from forcing a happy ending upon it (“Would you ask me to give
Romeo and Juliet a happy ending?”), the critics went nuts and Oscar et al showered it with love. Alas, the tragic ending and a T rating probably did hurt sales in the short run, though in the long run it has led it to be a beloved classic and “modern day masterpiece” that gets shown to millions of middle school students the world over.
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(Image source Disney Fanon Wiki)
At the End of the World (2002): The last of the Great 3D Brainstorm titles, and originally developed under the working title “Trash Planet”,
At the End of the World is a dystopian yet ultimately hopeful Sci-Fi epic from the 3D team and is officially the last film where Joe Ranft served as the Executive Producer before moving on to his new role as Disney’s Chief Creative Officer, trying to fill Jim Henson’s Godzilla-sized shoes. Directed and based on an idea by Andrew Stanton, who essentially asked the question “What if mankind had to leave Earth and somebody forgot to turn off the last robot?”,
AtEotW follows QB-2, a loveable robotic Robinson Caruso whose job is to effectively “clean up” a deserted, post-apocalyptic Earth wrecked by pollution and climate change. The precious and pitiable little trash compactor soon has his world thrown into chaos by two events: the discovery of the first living plant on Earth in an incalculable amount of time, and the arrival of a spaceship full of blob-like aliens and their adorable vegetation evaluation bot EVE, who becomes a sort of love interest for QB. QB and EVE are famous for their endearing designs and also for being the first main characters in a Disney production voiced by “nobody”, their expressive voices actually the work of legendary sound designer Ben Burtt, whose efforts along with those of the animators gave the two bots an amazing level of humanity.
AtEotW is also famous (or perhaps infamous) for its massive and controversial twist, which we will not spoil here[7]. But it is also forever associated in the minds of fans with Jorgen Klubien’s
Sparky, for which it serves as a kind of dark foil, the dystopian (but hopeful) future warning to
Sparky’s bittersweet future promise.
Damsel (2002): We all know the story: the fearsome monster kidnaps the Damsel Fair and the Gallant Knight or Prince must come to her rescue. But
Damsel, the first animated film written and produced by Jude Barsi, who codirected with Kathy Zielinski and also voiced Princess Rebekah, the eponymous damsel, flips the script. In a nod to
Dragonheart, Rebekah and the “monsters”, the latter actually a single shapeshifting creature named Phobus voiced by Steve Buscemi, are in cahoots and working together to con the unwary do-gooders in a series of fantastic Honeypot schemes[8]. But when Rebekah’s actions threaten to take down an actually well-meaning man (as opposed to the horrendous macho jerks that she usually encounters), Rebekah and Phobus must reevaluate their schemes and, just possibly, find love…or more accurately arrange it for someone else who’s actually into that “romantic crap”. A brutal deconstruction of traditional fantasy tropes, in particular the more inherently sexist ones, and sporting a rocking NuPunk soundtrack (Bikini Kill’s deeply ironic cover of “Holding Out for a Hero” is a personal favorite),
Damsel is fantasy deconstruction at its best, and also one of the surprise big hits of the Disney Millennium Age with massive crossover appeal. It gave us the first Disney Princess with tattoos (which she hides under long gloves when “on the con”) and a true punk attitude (though Princess Argyle comes close). It’s also one of the first CG animated films to center on a human character, and a demonstration of how much the art had advanced, particularly in Rebekah’s (for the time) flowing and bouncing hair.
Almighty (2002): One of Disney’s “One Word Adjective Titles” common in this era (or “Onewordadjectivetitles” as the wise asses on the internet, us included, like to say), a trend set off by
Invincible (unless you count
Elementary! from 1985),
Almighty is a collaboration with none other than Sir Freddie Mercury. Beginning life as a project called “Ahura’s Mazda”, Mercury wrote the original screenplay with Neil Gaiman, leading many to wonder if it’s a part of Gaiman’s “Gods in the Modern World” series of stories. Based on Mercury’s childhood religion of Zoroastrianism,
Almighty follows the Good God Ahura Mazda (Mercury) as he lives in the modern world, no longer a central religious figure (he “handed all that over to the western copycat”). Instead, “Arthur” is simply a man trying to make a living as a Creative Officer for Illuminaria, a company in Las Vegas that deals in lights and lighting. And yes, he drives a Mazda. But when his ancient rival, the evil Angra Mainyu (Tony Jay), appears in Vegas as corrupt politician “Andy Mann”, and with a secret plan to throw all the world into darkness by ironically blocking out the light of the stars with light pollution (the Luxor casino features prominently in the scheme), Mazda must step up to once again quash his rival and save the Light. With an epic original rock opera soundtrack by Mercury and Menken,
Almighty is a fun exploration of dreams lost and remembered, the fleeting nature of “glory days”, and being willing to rekindle your Inner Light.
E.I.E.I.O. (2003): So, what is a farm animal to do when the new farmer is trampling your “rights?” Don’t get mad,
get organized! The last (traditionally) animated film greenlit by Jim Henson before his retirement,
E.I.E.I.O. asks what happens when Old MacDonald’s Farm unionizes. Inspired by the classic children’s song, the film follows the many animals on the farm when Old MacDonald (Ed Asner) passes on and his prodigal son Young MacDonald (Lou Romano) takes over. With the animals becoming increasingly upset at the new management – a star-studded lineup including Rosie O’Donnell as Bessie the head milk cow, Patrick Warburton as Shooter the bull, Ellen DeGeneres as Gabby the Goose, Matt Besser, Matt Walsh, and Amy Poehler as the three pigs (Sticks, Bricks, and Kevlar), and many others – the wily goat William (Steve Buscemi) organizes the Everybeast Industry Employees’ International Organization, the titular E.I.E.I.O., to fight for their rights. Taking cues from Orwell’s
Animal Farm and the Doreen Cronin 2000 children’s book
Click, Clack, Moo, which both receive “inspired by” credits, the film is a hilarious and self-aware exploration of rights and responsibilities with plenty of goofy slapstick to keep the nippers glued while tackling some serious issues.
Raptor Red (2003): Disney Does Dinosaurs yet again, this time with
Raptor Red, the story of a juvenile female Utahraptor based on the
Robert Bakker novel of the same name[9] and released in collaboration with Amblimation. Done in a documentary style with limited narration by Matt Damon and Minnie Driver, who also play the two paleontologists in the live action “dig site” framing device, this CG animated feature has no talking dinosaurs. Instead, the two paleontologists narrate the story as they dig up the remains and make their “best guesses” and the body language and noises of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs tell the larger story. Directed by Ralph Zondag and Eric Leighton, it is a realistic take on the assumed life of Utahraptor, which the paleontologists ironically refer to as “Spielberg’s Raptor”, as well as following a pterosaur and others.
Raptor Red didn’t break the box office, but didn’t flop, and remains a mainstay of museums and school video days.
Unbound (2003): A long-running passion project of Animation Vice President Glen Keane and reportedly of Walt himself,
Unbound is a sassy and postmodern take on the Grimm fairytale of
Rapunzel with music by Jonathan Larson. Originally titled “Unbraided”, it is said that Joe Ranft suggested the eventual Onewordadjectivetitle since “bound” can refer to putting one’s hair up, imprisonment, and obligations, which befits the story of a trapped, gaslit young woman coming to free herself with the help of a bumbling boyfriend and “Prince to the rescue”. Rapunzel (Christen Chenoweth) and Prince Forschung (Johnny Depp) must thus team up to arrange her escape from the sorceress Mother Hedwig (Idina Menzel), only to discover that there is a much bigger story going on than what it appears. With fun, rocking music and some wild, literally hair-raising adventures,
Unbound flips the ancient story on its head in ways both fun and satisfying.[10]
Not quite…
Flying the Coop (2004): Produced by Aardman Animations and Penguin Animation and distributed in North America by Disney (but by Pathé in the rest of the world),
Flying the Coop is a brilliantly executed remake of
The Great Escape, but featuring a coop full of Chickens. In this case, the chickens enlist the help of a rooster who claims an ability to fly to help them learn to fly away before they all become chicken pies. Greenlit by Jim as part of a follow-on deal after the success of
Tortoise V. Hare,
Flying the Coop stars many of the same voices and has much of the usual Aardman whimsey and dry humor. Despite some thematic similarities to
E.I.E.I.O., the film’s unique Aardman-ness allows the film to stand out from the popular traditionally animated Disney film.
Essentially this with some butterflies
Bart & Lisa’s Not-So-Excellent Adventure (2004): The first film in the three-picture deal between Bongo Studios and Disney,
Bart & Lisa’s Not-So-Excellent Adventure[11] is a time-travelling romp with two of Springfield’s favorites. To win a bet (long story), the Simpson siblings steal a dodgy time machine…and end up slalomed throughout history. They try to get home whilst meeting (and annoying) some of history’s greatest figures as they go on a madcap voyage through time and space. Full of the typical sardonic and ironic Bongo humor, borderline surrealism, and ample parody of
Bill & Ted,
Dr. Who,
Back to the Future, and other time travel stories, the film manages to elevate the quality of the animation to film level while still keeping the classic “Groening look”. The last film greenlit by Henson to actually air (the three-picture deal was signed in early 2001), production delays pushed the planned 2003 release into early 2004.
Launched by Joe R. (2004-2016):
When Jim Henson left in 2001, Joe Ranft had big shoes to fill, but most fans agree he did well despite the monumental challenges. Here are the films launched under his reign as CCO:
Lovely Inferno (2004): an adaptation of the classic story of
Orpheus and Eurydice, combined with a rejected proposal for an animated comedy based on
Dante’s Inferno, of all things,
Lovely Inferno is the second film in the unofficial Greek Trilogy after 1996’s
Medusa.[12] A fun and engaging story with a “light” Heavy Metal soundtrack that totally rocks (as Ironic as that sounds; we all love “Two Coins (Pay the Ferryman)”, “It’s a Livin’”, and “Springtime in the Underworld”),
Lovely Inferno makes the Underworld look quite inviting, actually, particularly after bubbly Eurydice, voiced by Tara Freeman, makes her “improvements”. Visually unique (Ranft reportedly urged the animators to look to heavy metal album covers from the ‘70s and ‘80s and then “flood them with flowers and rainbows and unicorns” when Eurydice arrives), the tragic romance becomes a bittersweet tale and launched a thousand internet battles on whether Universal’s hammy Nic Cage or Disney’s grizzled, snarky old rocker Ozzy Osbourne
[13] made the Better Hades. All in all, one hell of a fun film!
The Further Life of Toys (2004): Just days into his new job as the Disney CCO, Joe Ranft did the unthinkable: he greenlit a Disney Animated Sequel. While no official ban on sequels existed, the “unspoken rule” was “no sequels”. Even the idea of a “Snow White 2” was considered heresy. If you wanted more with the characters, make a TV Series (and even these were controversial!). But Ranft and the rest of the old “3D Crew” as they were still called even long after the Division had been disbanded and reabsorbed into Animation, saw potential in their characters…not to mention they got constant requests for more from them from the fans! Thus, he greenlit a sequel to 1997’s hit
The Secret Life of Toys, and rather than face pushback from the board, he got their full support after showing them the storyboards and the financial projections. Thus, the
new unstated rule became “no cheap, gratuitous, low budget cash-grab sequels.” If you had a good story to tell,
by all means tell it! Set a few years after
The Secret Life,
The Further Life of Toys introduces us to a world where Jack is now 18 and off to college and the toys, Cowboy Cody in particular, are facing an uncertain future. Things get further complicated when Cody is inadvertently sold to a toy collector, who recognizes Cody as a rare and valuable vintage toy, and also introduces us to some of Cody’s new Cowboy friends from the old 1950s show. This sets off an existential discussion about growing up, growing old, and whether it is better to be heartfeltly loved or materially valued. Bring your blankie and your tissue box for this one, folks, ‘cause things get scary
and sad! But they also stay heartwarming and humorous. Hilarity, for example, ensues as Buzz Lightspeed gets his language circuits reset to Spanish.
A bit of both of these
Walkabout (2005): Australian Aboriginal culture is the latest to get the Disney Animated treatment in this story about a war between two factions of spirits known as
Quinkans[14], one side consisting of short and mean goblin-like “Imjin” and the other of tall and mischievous “Timara”, and an aboriginal man on “walkabout” named Mandawuy (David Gulpilil) who tries to broker peace between them. Done with hand-drawn animation heavily influenced by Aboriginal traditional art,
Walkabout also featured a soundtrack heavily influenced by Aboriginal music composed by Archie Roach and Tracy Chapman, giving it a unique art style and soundscape. Various Australian guest voices from Steve and Terry Irwin and Paul Hogan as a trio of goofy Crocodiles to Kate Blanchett as a disagreeable kangaroo matriarch to Hugo Weaving playing against type as an eccentric Platypus round out the fun (reportedly a planned appearance by Mel Gibson as a cocky alpha dingo was scrapped after an antisemitic tirade by Gibson). Dipping heavily into Dreamtime cosmology and worldview and mixed with surreal humor, it has been accused of being “absurdist” by some, an accusation producer Harry Belafonte[15] pushes back upon: “It’s no more absurd than a talking mouse or a frog dating a pig.” Given some of this experimental nature, it underperformed at the box office in most places save for Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and, for reasons nobody can quite explain, South Korea, and yet
Walkabout has its own strong dedicated fan base and is getting reevaluated today.
(Image source Artsy Craftsy Mom)
Loggerheads (2005): When he received no pushback on
The Further Life of Toys, Joe launched this quasi-sequel of
Finding Nemo following the popular Green Sea Turtles. “None of us was fully happy with the animation on Nemo,” director Andrew Stanton said. “It was too cartoony. But by the 2000s we had the technology to do the realistic underwater visuals that we’d really wanted to do back in ‘95, so we made
Loggerheads!” Another of Disney’s Onewordadjectivetitles, the name
Loggerheads refers to both the rival bale (yes, that is what a group of turtles is called, who knew?) of Loggerhead Turtles, and the term “at loggerheads” for when two individuals or groups are at an impasse. It is thus a story of the two rival bales (Green Sea Turtles vs. Loggerheads) getting in a dispute over a nesting beach that, due to human development and sea level rise, has shrunken considerably. The ongoing slapstick battles between the rival bales leads to both comedy and emotional drama. And in the end, of course, they must team up together to save the beach for them all by enlisting the help of some local kids to gather public opposition to the expensive private resort taking over the nesting beaches. While Fin, Marla, Nemo, and the others do make some brief appearances, this is really the turtles’ tale. And while you may really find yourself missing the playful banter between Fin and Marla,
Loggerheads is none the less a fun little film.
“Duuude, we get our own movie?? Righteous!!” (Image source Heart)
Epic (2005): Yet another of Disney’s Onewordadjectivetitles,
Epic is a retelling of the
Epic of Gilgamesh[16], and probably one of the most whimsical takes on the Oldest Story in the World with original music by Julie Andrews and Mark Mancina. Starring the incomparable Richard White as “Gil”, Jeremy Irons as his wild man companion Enkidu, and of course Lea Salonga as the ravishing Ishtar, the story unfolds in a literally Operatic yet mostly straight take on the epic poem following Gil’s doomed quest for immortality. With its idiosyncratic animation style, which evoked ancient Mesopotamian art, and its risky Actual Opera soundtrack and PG rating, which likely cost it some younger viewers, it none the less became one of the more profitable WED Signature productions.
Maleficent (2005): Once he got away with sequels, Joe Ranft greenlit a CG animated
prequel in this tale of the
Sleeping Beauty villainess, produced and directed and voiced by Jude Barsi with the Skeleton Crew. This tale, which follows young Maleficent as she grows up under the stifling laws of the Fairy Folk and becomes angry, selfish, ambitious, and casually cruel, lets us see the world from Maleficent’s perspective, and witness the events that shaped her along the way. Setting up the events of the original film, it showcases how Maleficent’s tragic and doomed friendship with a human, Amileah, the future Queen Leah and mother of Princess Aurora (Mandy Moore), ultimately drives Maleficent’s actions against Aurora in the original film. Barsi shines as the eponymous character, demonstrating her vocal range by voicing her from infancy to adulthood, practically embodying Eleanor Audley by the end. The film even has a subtle feminist and queer vibe (especially as seen in the initially close relationship between Maleficent and Amileah) as Maleficent’s non-effeminate actions and ambition make her the source of much of the very scorn and fear that propels her on her path to villainy, making one wonder that if they’d just let her be herself, she might have turned out differently. And while
Maleficent makes no attempt to justify her cruel and evil actions or retroactively make her into an antihero, it does give us some context to a beloved but originally rather one-note Disney Villain, making the rewatch of
Sleeping Beauty into an intertextual Shakespearean tragedy[17].
The Haunted Mansion (2006): Disney and the Skeleton Crew mine the well of Disney’s own IP in this animated take on their classic theme park attraction, where the members of the Steam Romance Society of Explorers and Adventurers (S.E.A.) from DisneySea visit a haunted Louisiana Mansion and get more than they bargained for from the mansion’s 999 ghosts[18]. And all of their quirky retro-futuristic technology proves no match for these local spirits, in particular a seemingly innocent little girl ghost named “Pepper” (Tara Freeman), along with all of the familiar ones from the theme park attraction, like a Tragic Ghost Bride named Melanie Gracey (Scarlett Johansson), the Hatbox Ghost (Mark Hamill), and Madam Leota (Cate Blanchett). Some have called it “a Steam Romance
Ghostbusters”. A zany musical inspired by the songs and comedy of Vaudeville,
The Haunted Mansion brings a star-studded ensemble to what is, essentially, a modernized retelling of
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. Executive producer and art director Guillermo del Toro and Directors Kathy Zielinski and Carole Holliday imbue the ensemble piece with a fun sense of whimsey and clockwork artistry while also addressing some real concerns with Victorian values, particularly in how they still resonate today. A good performer with a modest budget, it’s perhaps best known today for 1) continuing off the S.E.A. series of animated films after 2000’s
Journey to the Center of the Earth, and 2) being in a brief legal battle with Columbia, who noted some superficial similarities in the plot to
Scooby Doo (it never made it past the discovery phase).
Love and War (2006): WED-sig gets risqué in this modernized retelling of the classic Greek play
Lysistrata. When the leaders of the two fictional nations of Lysia and Strata, Magistrate Warburn and Herald Spartan (Patrick Warburton and Keith David), seem absolutely dead set on launching what’s sure to be a long and brutal war over the insignificant little island of Guano, the women of Lysia and Strata, principally two army wives from each side named Leslie and Cala (Kathy Bates and Lisa Kudrow), come up with a simple method of defusing the call to arms: there will be no “lovin’” for the men of the lands as long as there is war on the horizon. Rated T and full of inuendo and entendre,
Love and War pushed the bounds for Disney Animation in new ways, and turned the old Hippie slogan of “Make Love, Not War” into an ultimatum.
Shadow Mask (2006): Directed by Dave McKean and Lana Wachowski (just prior to her transition and credited as Larry), this surreal hybrid-CG animated film is based on McKean’s artwork and written by frequent collaborator Neil Gaiman.
Shadow Mask was Chairwoman Lisa Henson’s first Executive Production credit since coming to Disney, and a visually unique world executed largely through digital puppetry and pantomime. When a teen girl named Koy (Rooney Mara) discovers a cursed mask in her recently-passed grandfather’s attic, she ends up pulled into a parallel world of abstract, inhuman beings with nonlinear ways of thinking (fans call it “Goth
Alice in Wonderland”). A surreal and deeply philosophical story based heavily on Postmodern Philosophy, the T-rated film struggled to find more than a cult audience despite excellent reviews. It was post-facto added to the WED Signature line after winning numerous writing and technical awards, including an Oscar nomination and Annie win for Art Direction.
Marsh Madness (2006): One of the first CG-animated films greenlit by Ranft,
Marsh Madness is a “salute to Jim Henson” that actually uses the “Muppets look” with its creatures, in this case a large group of Swamp Creatures that deal with the encroachment of a suburb. A Green Narrative, the South Florida swamp creatures, all voiced by Muppets Alumni, take the developer and the local politician in his pocket to court to save their swamp from being drained and developed into yet another strip mall. Goofy, borderline-Meta, and practically self-aware in that Muppets kind of way (though none of the creatures are officially Muppets),
Marsh Madness features a fun and freewheeling “Gulf & Western” style musical soundtrack done in collaboration between Jimmy Buffet and John Denver. It also marks Florida Crime novelist Carl Hiaasen’s first foray into screenwriting and storyboarding (with Jorgen Klubien) and is (very) loosely based on his first foray into children’s literature, 2002’s
Swamped.
Wallace and Gromit: Night of the Living Veg (2007): Aardman’s popular man-and-his-dog duo reach the Big Screen at last in this screwball spin on the films of George A. Romero (who cameos!). When one of Wallace’s experiments goes “pear shaped”, zombie zucchinis[19], stalking celery, undead arugula, revenant radishes, creepy carrots, lich-like lettuces, and other variations of The Walking Veg haunt the town, threatening to devour the town’s veg supply. And it’s up to W&G to clean up their mess and save the day. “Let’s just hope that nothing happens to the cheese, eh, Gromit?”
Turok: Son of Stone (2007): Adapted from the popular videogame[20],
Turok: Son of Stone is a collaboration with Whoopass Studios, directed by Gendy Tartakovsky and done in his signature “epic minimalist” style. When the Native American warrior Tal'Set (Adam Beach) ends up falling through a portal into the Lost Lands, he must fight to gain the mantle of Turok and avenge the murder of his tribe. All this time, he’s being hunted by a violent, racist ex-Confederate colonel (Michael Rooker) who fell in to the Lost Lands with him, and being opposed by the tyrannical leader of a race of sapient dinosaurs (Ian McKellen). Glorious in its stylized action, made epic by Tartakovsky’s brilliant eye and elegantly minimalist style,
Turok was made for under $15 million and made a good $75 million in return, more than justifying future Whoopass collaborations.
Roger ‘n’ Me (2007): The second Bongo collaboration, this time recruiting producer/animator/voice actor/singer Seth MacFarlane of
The [New] Flintstones fame,
Roger ‘n’ Me, is the story about an alcoholic, perverted, borderline sociopathic alien nicknamed Roger (Seth MacFarlane) who busts out of Area 51 and befriends a little Latina girl named Elena (Ivana Baquero), her older sister Camilla (America Ferrara) and their recently widowed mother Maria (Salma Hayek). Roger reveals to the two sisters that he’s “the Decider”, an important member of his species, and that he needs to head back to Roswell, New Mexico, in order to contact his race and tell them that it’s time for First Contact. The thing is...this is all a lie. As we learn in Act I (as Roger explains at Area 51 to the talking goldfish Hermann), Roger is actually a petty criminal who, on the run from the head of an intergalactic crime syndicate (whom he had ratted out to the Galactic Federation to save his own skin), got a job as a crash test dummy at a spaceship company. Following his latest “job”, a test crash near Roswell, he was found by the US government and taken to Area 51. At his ship, which is still in Roswell, Roger is planning to contact the Galactic Federation and remind them of the deal they cut, and the girls are pretty much leverage. Furthermore, his ship’s engines have faulty power coils that could “sink half a continent” if they explode, or similar hell to pay if the Federation tries to flake on their side of the deal. They are pursued by Agent Orange (Patrick Stewart) and his Assistant Agent Green (MacFarlane), two Men in Black who are secretly also in touch with Roger’s boss, corrupt Federation Agent Xxarrllaxx (Sigourney Weaver). And while Roger and Elena are adorably dysfunctional, let’s face it, Sir Patrick stole every scene that he was in, playing a much sillier and goofier character than one normally expects from the decorated actor.
Like a blend of these (and nothing to do with Michael Moore!)
Scaredy Cat (2007): Disney evokes Hitchcock in this wild and slightly-scary-in-the-right-ways CG-animated collaboration with the Skeleton Crew and director John R. Dilworth. It follows a cat named Oscar (Brent Spiner), who gets framed for a petty crime and must clear his name and unearth the massive conspiracy at the heart of the effort. With scenes that quote just about every Hitchcock film in one way or another, the scenes, as some had feared, didn’t quite connect to young audiences as much as they did to their parents, though the goofy slapstick, creepy atmosphere, and constant overreactions by Oscar (supplemental voice work by Frank Welker) did land with the nippers. Showing off the latest in hair and fur technology and winning technical awards, the film underperformed, but gained a cult audience.
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(Image source Disney Wiki)
Flights of Fancy (2008): Directors Brenda Chapman and Kevin Lima, in their first CG film, bring us this story of a young Pixie Girl who is stifled by the traditions of Fairyland society. Dahlia (Jude Barsi) has a complex relationship with her mother Nasturtium (Julie Andrews) and the Fairy Queen Titania (Helen Mirin), which is further complicated by her close (and discouraged) friendship with the goblin Agaric (Kevin Clash). When Dahlia and Agaric choose to flee the Fairylands, chaos ensues as the modern material world is suddenly beset by the “return” of the Fair Folk. Featuring the hit songs “Break the Mold”, “Get Over Yourself”, and of course the Oscar-winning “The Way it Is”,
Flights of Fancy is an inspiring story of finding your own way in a regimented society, a story of familial love and uncommon friendship, and in general a fun and gorgeous CG-animated adventure.[21]
Not this, though Tink does cameo at one point
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2008): WED Signature does Shakespeare. Enough said, really, though it bears mentioning that the voice cast – Ian McKellen as Theseus, Julie Andrews as Hippolyta, Brian Blessed as Oberon, Helen Mirin as Titania (again!), Kiera Knightly as Hermia, Leonardo DiCaprio as Lysander, Orlando Bloom as Demetrius, Helena Bonham Carter as Helena (naturally!), Nigel Planer as Bottom, and Robin Williams as Robin Goodfellow, among others – is absolutely divine. Inevitably compared to Lucasfilm’s
The Tempest (1994), and often considered by fans to be a companion piece, it’s a brilliant adaption, lovingly traditionally animated, and one of the most approachable versions of The Bard’s classic tale, making it a High School video day standard.
(Image source Amazon)
Herakles (2008): A spirited adaptation of the classic
Labors of Hercules starring Matt Berry as Herc,
Herakles marks the third film in the so-called Greek Trilogy. And it is just pure fun mixed with occasional crushing heartbreak as the dumb jerk struggles to overcome his hubris and learn to love something other than himself. “A Stable Guy” is our favorite song here, and its associated montage our favorite scene, particularly given its centrality as a turning point in Herc’s life.
Somewhat like this
Mission (2009): Ex-President’s son, then-Vice President’s brother, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, and Disney board member George W. Bush, made his debut as an executive producer for this story of a young Jesuit in The Philippines in the late 1500s, an idea that he claims to have come up with himself. Father Ignacio (John Leguizamo), who was born in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru (and is of partial Incan descent), finds himself torn between his duty to God as he understands it from the Gospels and his duty to the King of Spain, which are often at conflict. Things get complicated further when he befriends Uto (Dante Basco), a Muslim “Moro” from Mindanao, a people whom the King wants “pacified” and forcibly converted. Begun as an attempt to appeal to Christian audiences without tossing aside Disney values,
Mission is visually stunning with bright colors that contrast some of the “shades of grey” plot, and takes full advantage of the then-state-of-the-art in CG animation. The songs by Selena and A.B. Quintanilla explore traditional Peruvian and Philippine music through a Broadway and Blues lens. Produced by Glen Keane in a rare step back into active production and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements in their first CG feature, it received high accolades from general audiences and Christian audiences alike, and only received minor pushback from some hardline Christians in the US, Europe, and The Philippines who objected to its portrayal of Jesuit Missionary work through an anticolonial lens (though fully based on real accounts of Spanish colonization of The Philippines). It also garnered some controversy resulting in an out of court settlement with Goldcrest Films due to its numerous thematic and plot similarities to
The Mission (1986).
Pirates of the Caribbean; A S.E.A. Adventure (2009): The S.E.A. returns in this next installment of “what if a classic Disney ride was real”, this time written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio of
Kingdom of the Sun and
Red Sails fame. When a young Victorian heiress gets pulled into an adventure involving the ghosts of the pirates hanged by her great-great-grandfather, who are back for revenge, the S.E.A. must save the day and keep her safe from the pirate ghosts. Or are they ghost pirates? The Enchanted Tiki Room makes its own appearance, as does the Barker Bird.
Cloud 9.4-B (2009): Director Pete Docter flies high with this visually stunning and emotionally intelligent story of the lonely pilot and radioman of an old Soviet Army early warning airship disguised as a cloud, who have no idea that the USSR has fallen and that the Cold War has ended…and who largely despise one another. Now old men (as told in the gutting silent opening montage of the two abandoning their lives and family to serve the Soviet Union), Alexi and Yuri (Tim Curry and Ed Asner) suddenly find themselves caretakers for a group of three young Canadian kids (teenaged Allie, tween Tony, and five-year-old Calli) who were carried away by an uncontrolled hot air balloon). As they debate what to do with the kids, Calli accidentally sends the perpetual-motion aircraft into a crash spiral, which they manage to right, but which leaves them all stranded in a primeval valley full of strange Pleistocene creatures. One long look at loneliness and lack of purpose and how we deal with a changing world,
Cloud 9.4-B is an emotional rollercoaster to say the least[22].
View attachment 828508
(Image source Disney Wiki)
Contact (2009): Another CG film done in the Henson Style, kooky Muppet-like aliens from the planet Koosbane arrive on Planet Home, where they encounter human-like (well, Muppet-human-like) locals. But they’re not here to take over or to study or abduct or make peace, they’re here to sell the people of Home all kinds of
exciting new goods (the working title was “For a Limited Time Only!”) in this allegory for economic imperialism. Satirizing the tropes of first contact and alien invasion and abduction fiction, and directly parodying numerous Sci-Fi films and Matinee Monster flicks (Tim Burton reportedly consulted),
Contact is a goofy but engaging film that none the less looks at the real consequences of economic exploitation. Jim Henson himself provides several voices along with numerous Original Muppets alumni like Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, and Fran Brill in addition to the current Muppet Performers (Kevin Clash, Steve Whitmire, Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, et al).
Boots (2009): the classic Italian fairy tale of
Puss in Boots gets a new spin…as a Mafia movie! Things start in a Boots-narrated flashback when gentle mobster’s son Giovanni (Leonardo DiCaprio) saves a talking cat named Boots (Joe Pesci), and they stay best friends through adolescence. But despite his demanding father’s best attempts, the gentle Gio doesn’t inherit the business or even the car, and seems doomed to irrelevance within the “Family”. But out of gratitude, Boots steps in to help con his master into a place in the Family as Consiglieri to Don Barko (Robert De Niro) and win the heart of the Don’s daughter Isabella (Hayden Panettiere)[23]. And in a nod to Cyrano, Gio must rely on the much more capable Boots to guide him through the life of a wise guy and lover boy. Set in a sprawling “dirty thirties” cityscape and loaded with parodies and call-outs to all your classic Mafia movies, not to mention a waling jazz soundtrack by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy,
Boots is an amusing take on the classic story – and yes, it amuses us. It’s funny. It makes us laugh. And they freakin’ go there with that scene (“Am I like a pet to you? Do I look
cute?”). So go see it already. Capice, paisano? Sorry, had to go there.
Lightnin’ and Bolt (2010): Yet another quasi-sequel, this time of the popular 2000 film
Sparky,
Lightnin’ and Bolt takes us to a near future where electric cars are starting to replace gas ones. But rather than portray a Green Utopia, it follows the titular electric sports car Bolt (Jason Bateman) and his rivalry-turned-friendship with an old gasoline pickup truck named Lightnin’ (Ron White), who is a PG-rated moonshiner distilling his own unlicensed “high test fuel”. Persistent rumors suggest that the original title was “Nut and Bolt”, but that this was abandoned due to the unintended entendre. This film explores the nature of technological progress and the unintended consequences that it can cause, with numerous gas-powered vehicles and petroleum-drilling machines and the like facing an uncertain future. Bolt and Lightnin’ start off hostile, but soon realize that they must team up to prevent a sort of vehicular race riot driven by a rabble-rousing demagogue of an old Cadillac named Derrick (Chris Cooper), who is determined to bring back “the old ways” no matter what the cost. Diving into some deep subjects such as environment, employment, racial and ethnic tension, and learning from our differences,
Lightnin’ and Bolt was, given the ongoing aftershocks of the transition to the Green Economy we’re seeing now in the world, ahead of its time.
Shadowmaker (2010): The Skeleton Crew does their thing in this Gaiman-written, Selick-directed stop-mo story of a child with “freakish hands” who learns to become a shadow puppeteer…and who soon finds that he can bring his shadows to life. But with great power comes…you know the rest. And soon he unleashes shadows that even he can’t control. An underperformer (the whole Gothy SCP look was slowly regaining a following, but not yet fully back in fashion), the film needless to say became an absolute cult classic.
Colonies (2010): This CG animated film follows two rival colonies of penguins in Antarctica, set during the race for the South Pole[24]. The POV characters of the two colonies, flock of guest names including Robin Williams, Queen Latifah, Selena, Lewis Black, Hank Azaria, and more, watch as two teams of seemingly bumbling giant featherless creatures (humans), the exploration team under “Fuzzy Face” (likely intended to be Amundsen, voiced by Kristofer Hivju) and the team under “Mr. Toothy” (likely Scott, voiced by Gary Oldman), race one another to go “nowhere” from the perspective of the penguins. Framed like a wildlife documentary in reverse, and full of ironic humor, the bemused penguins watch as these totally-out-of-their-depth humans make incomprehensible decision after incomprehensible decision that “any nestling would know better” than to do. A reflection on the nature of human exploration in the service of colonial ambition, and on the oft-perplexing insanity of human ambition in general, funny hijinks abound amid an ongoing power struggle between the titular penguin colonies (Emperor and Macaroni) that mirrors the geopolitics between the Norwegian and English factions and ultimately frames a story about the two faces of human nature. Or, as Lewis Black’s Emperor Blacktail famously puts it when Fuzzy Face reaches the pole and plants the Norwegian flag, “Wait, that’s
it?! They tromped weeks through the ice and wind, losing their members along the way, to
poke a stick in the ground in the middle of nowhere?!? They didn’t even lay any
eggs! Unbelievable. What
idiots! Now, let’s hurry. We
have to beat the Macaroni-heads to the Big Rocks or all is
lost!”
Snow (2010): Disney once again collaborates with Studio Ghibli in this gorgeous traditionally animated film based in Japanese mythology.
Snow (
Heart of the Snow Woman in Japan) is the story of a teenage boy named Hinata (Yuichi Nakamura in the English dub), who falls in love with Shizuko (Cherami Leigh), a yuki-onna spirit (snow woman)[25]. But Kurokami, her god-father (Ken Wantanabe), forbids the union while Hinata’s father Kazuya (George Takei) warns his son to stay away from the “demon girl”. And when Hinata breaks a simple promise to his beloved Shizuko, things spiral to a bittersweet conclusion layered with nuance and meaning. Commonly described as “
Heart and Soul crossed with
Poet and the Dragon”,
Snow none the less manages to stand out on its own for its breathtaking visuals and deep emotional intelligence while also asking complex questions about belonging, tradition, and “us versus them”.
Wallace and Gromit Down Under (2011): The clueless inventor and his put-upon, far-smarter canine companion travel to Australia on a bit of holiday, where they are caught up in a nasty bit of business with a bloke named Bogan (Carl Barron). The scene where Wallace gets his camera strap caught on the tail of a kangaroo, leading him bounding across the outback, is right up there with the Model Train Chase in
The Wrong Trousers for great Aardman action scenes. Alas, this was the last major appearance by W&G and the last feature film by Wallace voice actor Peter Sallis, who was into his nineties by that point and passed on not much later. Still, a fun Last Voyage for the great comedy duo. “I say, Aussie cheese is quite better than we were led to believe, Gromit. Watch out for the Croc Cheese, though, as I hear that it ‘has a bite’, heh-heh. Good one, eh, Gromit?”
Truckers (2011): Part One of the Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett[26], and done in partnership with Penguin Animation in one of Penguin’s first CG Animated films,
Truckers follows a culture of tiny “Nomes” who secretly live inside the Arnold Brothers Department Store in London, divided into various competing tribes. But when the End of the World (the impending closure of Arnold Brothers) is Nigh, Nomes Masklin and Grimma (Hugh Laurie and Kate Winslet) must unite the clans to transport their people to a new Promised Land…by stealing a lorrie! A fun adventure story that delves into philosophy on the nature of who we are and how we see the world,
Truckers was successful enough to spawn two sequels in 2013 and 2015.
(Image source Goodreads)
The Ice Dragon (2011): In this Bongo Studios-produced adaptation of author George R. R. Martin's 1979 novella, young girl Adara (Kerry Ingram), born during a long winter and “different” from the other children, befriends a giant, seemingly untamable ice dragon. When vicious fire dragons from the north threaten Adara’s village, only she and the ice dragon who loves her can save everyone[27]. The last of the three-film deal between Disney and Bongo,
The Ice Dragon is noteworthy for its unique Anime-inspired hand drawn animation style, which is both different than the “Disney Style” but also more detailed and naturalistic than the typical Bongo Style. Even so, producer/director Bryan Konietzko and writers Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley imbue the film with a touch of Bongo’s trademark sardonic humor, making the film extremely relatable. The film also gained a very specific and dedicated audience: the Autism Community, who saw in Adara’s story a tale of a girl on the Spectrum being at first shunned, but then celebrated by the people, and who learns to not just function, but thrive in the village.
The Afterlife of Toys (2011): Not satisfied that enough people had been emotionally traumatized by
The Further Life of Toys, Docter and the team set the existential dial to 11 with 2011’s
The Afterlife of Toys. Essentially, Docter asked “what if
The Velveteen Rabbit wasn’t just depressing, but sort of funny and heartwarming too?” and
Afterlife was born, so to say. When the toys, in a scene that, as Nostalgia Larry said, “caused Lexapro prescriptions to skyrocket,” are all lost in a tragic housefire, they awaken in “where the toys go when they cease to exist”. Called “Toylysium” by the local vintage toys there, this turns out to be a strange place that’s both heaven and limbo, one part “Toy Paradise”, one part artificial and empty world where the fake children who Love Them Forever are empty vessels of simulated affection. Docter, who explores some HUGE existential and theological questions in a way that one might normally associate with Don Bluth (who reportedly loved the film), gives us a film that’s one part
The Matrix, one part
Dante’s Inferno, and several parts The Island of Misfit Toys.
The Afterlife of Toys is an emotional rollercoaster to say the least.
This (more or less) is as how the film
starts! (Image source Screen Rant)
Figment of the Imagination; A S.E.A. Adventure (2012): Yet another S.E.A. story, this time featuring Professor Dreamfinder and Figment,
FotI:ASEAA debuted just in time for EPCOT 30th anniversary. One of the more esoteric of the S.E.A. adventures, this film (I’m not going to touch that acronym again!) sees a world under threat by a severe lack of imagination, which threatens to drive the planet into a dull, grey world devoid of emotion, color, whimsey, fear, love, or really anything that makes life interesting. So S.E.A. must break through into the mystical World of Imagination and enlist Professor Dreamfinder, the Wizard Gelzz, and, of course, the dragon Figment to bring back Imagination. Described by Ebert (in one of his last reviews) as “like a strange cross between The Beatles’
Yellow Submarine,
The Neverending Story, and a two-hour theme park advertisement”, this is one odd duck of a film even by S.E.A. standards, and yet still a fun, rollicking family friendly adventure, with the poplar Figment driving the highest box office of any S.E.A. film.
Fuzzy Wuzzy (2012): Another collaboration with Whoopass (well, “Kickin’”) Studios and directed by Craig McCracken,
Fuzzy Wuzzy is the adorable, bathos-filled story of a horrible, destructive Wendigo spirit (Frank Welker) that gets accidentally released back into the modern world by, and is then inadvertently befriended by, a little Cree Indian girl in northern Manitoba named Summer (possibly a nod to famed voice actor Cree Summer, who voices Summer’s mother Dawn Flower). Often compared to
An Alien in the Family or
Starboxx and Cindy, but also reminiscent of the numerous “little girl/kitten/baby befriends a monster/bulldog/ghost” shorts from Anime and Classic Warner Animation, the film follows as this destructive and vindictive otherworldly spirit, which Summer simply calls “Fuzzy Wuzzy”, gets effectively brought into the light, but must then take a stand against his fellow Wendigos, and prevent a war with humanity. Animated in the “Kickin’ Style” of minimalist animation, this film cost less than $20 million but with its slapstick mix of comedy and action, and the adorable nature of Summer (Cathy Cavadini), managed to emerge as a sleeper hit that would spin off an animated series on Disney Toon Town.
Isn’t he adorable? (Image by
Kryptiid on Deviant Art)
Monstrous (2012): Monsters are real, and, frankly, perfectly friendly for the most part. However, they’ve largely been pushed to the fringes by the more attractive, vaguely human-ish denizens of The Big City, and live like second class citizens. Done in the Henson Style (all of the monsters and humanoids look very much like Muppets, though none officially are),
Monstrous is a tale of discrimination, redlining, Apartheid, and equal opportunity where folks just need to be given a chance, no matter how scary they seem. With celebrity voices from Tupac Shakur to Freddy Mercury to Tom Hanks,
Monstrous confronts our biases in a humorous but serious and ultimately heartwarming and cathartic way.
Brain Trust (2012): EPCOT’s newly revamped
Living Body Pavilion ride “Head Trip” (which had just moved to the Mind Pavilion) becomes a movie in this story of young 14-year-old girl Betty (played by Chloë Grace Moretz), or more accurately the story of the living embodiments of her thoughts and emotions. The film is unique in that it is a hybrid CG animation/Live Action film, switching between Betty’s external live action world and the animated “Inside” world where Captain Cortical Cognition, or “Cortie” (Amy Poehler) leads an all-star cast including Anthony Head as the nerdy Professor Hippocampus, Will Smith as the athletic Sergeant Motor, Bob Hoskins as the hardworking maintenance worker Henry Hypothalamus, Maggie Smith as the strict Governess Orbitofrontal, and Margaret Cho as the overworked Lieutenant Limbic, who has to wrangle the emotions Happy Heather (Tara Freeman), Sad Sadie (Rachel Dratch), Angry Angie (Wanda Sykes), Scared Sarah (Jenny Slate), Bored Bessie (Sarah Silverman), and the explosive Amygdala Amy (Lewis Black on helium!!). Carefully balancing the science with whimsey and emotional resonance,
Brain Trust makes neuroscience fun, but also meaningful and emotionally and intellectually intelligent. Our head editor’s sister, who was inspired to go into neuroscience by the original Head Trip ride, gave it 11 out of 4 stars and watches it with her kids incessantly. Bring your tissues, folks.
Moving Right Along… (2013): Mickey Mouse returns to feature film, and with Kermit the Frog in tow, who makes his Disney Animated Canon debut after more than 30 years being associated with Disney![28] Just in time for Mickey’s 85th Birthday,
Moving Right Along… is a Bob Hope and Bing Crosby style musical “Road To…” film with Micky playing the Crosby-like sincere and optimistic straight man and Kermit playing the more sardonic Hope role. When Kermit and Mickey get in a kerfuffle at the airport and miss their cross-country flight, much to the annoyance of Minnie and Piggy, the two take a long drive across America to reunite with their ladies, meeting other crazy characters (the rest of the Disney and Muppets gang and a few cameos, including Steve Martin and John Candy) along the way. Essentially, it’s
Planes. Trains, and Automobiles with Mickey and Kermit. With fun Crosby/Hope style song duets and a few fun “guest songs” (Gonzo and Goofy’s duet “Run a’Fowl” is our fav.),
MRA didn’t exactly break the bank when it debuted, but as a loving salute to Walt and Jim and good bit of G-rated comedy, it’s a fun couple of hours for the family and a mainstay on Disney Direct.
The Gravedigger’s Boy (2013): Selick, Gaiman, and McKean team up again in this supernatural tale of the son of a gravedigger in the 19th century who must partner with a neighbor girl and his deceased mother’s ghost to thwart a plot by an otherworldly spirit to eat the souls of the innocent. Full of dark and shadowy deeds and supernatural horror and a touch of Steam Romance, the stop-mo gothic adventure found a willing audience.
Diggers (2013): The second Penguin CG film and second in the Bromeliad Trilogy by Sir Terry,
Diggers takes over from where
Truckers left off. When the Nomes on the Range see their new homes threatened by the construction soon to begin on their home site, Masklin and Grimma must deal with both saving their people once again and their complex feelings for one another. A fun follow-up to 2011’s
Truckers,
Diggers is a bit more than more of just what came before.
The Lego Movie (2013): With the success of Truckers, Penguin Animation partnered with their theme park partners in Lego to develop a CG-based movie about the popular construction toys, and once again partnered with Disney for North American distribution. Following a team of “Lego People”, including some popular superheroes and other famous IP as they battle for the survival of the Lego Universe, the film proved a popular international hit.
Super (2013): Director Sanjay Patel brings us this story of Hridhan Balakrishnan (Neel Sethi), a bullied Indian American boy who dreams of being a superhero, like his idols Captain Superior (Richard White) and the rest of The Superiors, a team of superheroes who defend the metropolis of Clarion City. But when an accident during Chemistry Class empowers Hridan and his fellow middle school outcasts with superpowers of their own, they find themselves humiliatingly dismissed by The Superiors. Working to prove their worth, they soon undercover a dark secret of corruption and collaboration involving The Superiors and their seeming arch enemies, the Guild of Unrest, Intrigue, Larceny, and Evil (G.U.I.L.E.), and must team up against
both factions and the political and economic Powers That Be in order to rescue Clarion City from the self-serving cycle of violence and crime and corruption that keeps its population divided and downtrodden, and thus in need of “heroes” to “protect” them.
This as a movie, basically (Image Source iamag.co)
Pets (2013): Disney tries out its latest advances in hair/fur CG Tech in this story of a dysfunctional suburban family that gets kidnapped by aliens, and then sold in a big scary market, only to be “adopted” by a family of giant cat-dog like aliens. Hilarity ensues as the alien family, who each reflect their human equivalent (and are even voiced by the same actors, only with some modulation, which is explained away as part of the technology that is used to communicate with their “pets”), argue on how to properly care for their pets. The alien father wants to breed them for future sales (setting up an awkward scene where the human father is about to be “paired” with a gorgeous woman), the alien mother wants to use them for show-animals for personal glory (complete with a humiliating “wash and groom” scene), the alien middle son keeps tapping the glass or otherwise tormenting them, and the alien youngest daughter just wants to play with them…a little too rough at times. Voiced by Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Jude Barsi, Charlie Tahan, and Kaitlyn Dias, as the pets and their owners come to terms with one another, they in turn come to terms with their own families, and the heartwarming ending is fully earned. In part slapstick “flip the script” narrative, in part send-up on “puppy mills”, “show animal” culture, the illicit “pet trade”, and other more nefarious aspects of the economics of modern animal ownership,
Pets is a high-concept cartoon that manages to get the laughs while tackling some big subjects. Kathleen Hana’s platinum-selling, albeit PG-rated, cover of
Porno for Pyro’s “Pets” (“teenagers are
messed up in the head”) is worth the watch all by itself.
(Image source TV Tropes)
The Mystery of Big Thunder Mountain: A S.E.A. Adventure (2014): Another S.E.A. film, this Old West adventure with the S.E.A. crew explores the tragic events surrounding Big Thunder Mountain, it’s train, and the Wild West world that surrounds it. A bit of an underperformer as both the novelty of the S.E.A. stories and interest in the Steam Romance and Retrofuturism aesthetics waned,
TMoBTM:ASEAA would be the last S.E.A. adventure, at least for a while.
Blade (2014): Another Whoopass/Kickin’ and Tartakovsky collaboration released under the Fantasia label, this time featuring the lesser-known Marvel character,
Blade follows the titular “day walker” vampire slayer (Keith David) as he battles the minions of the night. Beginning as a LOLA-based student film, Whoopass gladly hired its creator and ran with it. T-rated and bloody, the “Kickin’ Style” lent itself well to this exciting action adventure.
Does Not Compute… (2014): In a future high-tech world, robots and AI are commonplace and no more exciting than a toaster. But the robots and AI systems themselves have a complicated life and society of their own. With a ton of top-tier voice talent from John Goodman to Tina Fey to Nigel Planner to Mel Brooks, a quirky Electronica soundtrack by Mike Mothersbaugh, and some fantastic and dynamic CG animation,
Does Not Compute… is really a sort of
Upstairs, Downstairs type exploration of class and service. The songs are quite catchy as well. CCO Joe Ranft called it “a stealth-sequel to
The Brave Little Toaster”, and one can see why.
Not this…
Mana (2014): A Polynesian fantasy adventure written by Taika Waititi before his big breakout,
Mana follows siblings Maia and Manu in a long-distant “time of heroes” as they set out from their volcano-threatened small island on a quest to find a new home for their people. Along the way, they are aided, or possibly harassed, by the moody and bombastic God-Hero Māui (Lawrence Makoare), who enlists them in his quest for immortality[29] in exchange for teaching them “the secrets of the stars” or navigation. Part cultural creation myth, part musical adventure,
Mana explores Polynesian culture in a respectful but magical way devoid of the “Tiki Tourist” stereotypes.
Ratatouille (2015): Aardman brings us this whimsical story of a gourmet rat named René (René Auberjonois) who lives in Paris and who secretly becomes a chef by remote-controlling young chef’s assistant Antoine (Eric Idle) by hiding under his hat and pulling his hair. Originally pitched to Penguin Animation by animator Jan Pinkava[30] in the early 2000s, the story struggled in Development Hell for years before Nick Park met Pinkava at a production meeting on
Wallace and Gromit Down Under and hired him away from Penguin. Intrigued by the comedic potential and its themes of following your dreams, no matter what society thinks, Park greenlit the picture in Stop-Mo Aardman style, and an animation classic was born.
Wings (2015): The third and final tale in the Bromeliad Trilogy,
Wings sees the Nomes learning that their universe and their heritage is much,
much bigger than they thought. In fact, it’s Galactic! It’s NOMES…IN…SPAAAACCCEEE! Nothing much more to say, really. A fitting finale to the Trilogy. Alas, Sir Terry would not live to see it except in early low-res form, having passed on from complications to his neurodegenerative disease earlier that year. The movie was dedicated to his memory. This alone spurred a huge turnout for this film, and led to a renewal of interest in the prior two films and the older Discworld productions.
Model Town (2015): Directed by Jeff Rowe in his animated movie debut,
Model Town follows a trio of high schoolers in the 1970s, Jennifer, Christopher, and Amy (Catherine Taber, James Arnold Taylor, Ashley Johnson) when they stumble across a half-completed model town in the basement of their school[31]. As they mess around with it, they realize that it has the power to change their hometown through changes they make to it (accidentally knocking off the bell tower from the mini church causes the same to happen to the actual church in town, for example). Things escalate quickly when the school bully Jeremy (Jensen Ackles) learns of their “toy”, and tries to smash it. Reminiscent of
Goosebumps crossed with an episode of
The Twilight Zone,
Model Town explores the concept of power and how we use it in a way accessible to all ages.
Here we Go Again… (2015): Mickey and Kermit return, this time with Minnie and Piggie in tow, in this follow-up “Road to…” musical comedy. When the four go on a European road trip together, hilarity (as is its want) ensues, along with catchy songs and madcap Disney and Muppet appearances. While it failed to reach the heights of its predecessor, and thus never spawned a third film (unless you count the 2017 Gonzo and Goofy feature), it still entertains.
Stalked (2015): A Postmodern CG take on
Jack and the Beanstalk made in partnership with Amblimation,
Stalked retells the classic tale from the perspective of the giants. Framed like a comedic horror film crossed with a
Tom & Jerry style chase cartoon, Lawrence the Giant (Patrick Warburton) and his wife Anabel (Eddie McClurg) must deal with the harassment of the “little pest” Jack (Yeardley Smith) as he steals all of their stuff, including the golden goose (Frank Welker) and the magic harp (a snarky Sarah Silverman). No songs and no princesses,
Stalked is really a story about the assumptions that we make, with lots of goofball slapstick action. And the twist ending is as heartwarming as anything in the Disney Animated Canon. Also notable for being the last animated film released while Ranft was CCO.
Not this (Image source Disney News Today)
Notes on the Current Age:
Terrell Little officially took up the reigns as Disney CCO in January of 2016, inheriting several Ranft projects just as Ranft had inherited several Henson projects. Chosen for his unique point of view, breadth of experience in animation and live action and movies and television, and his ability to connect with his audiences though social media, Little, despite being nearly as old as Ranft, has provided a youthful energy and an ability to engage with diverse audiences. Getting to experience his own films and those of his coworkers through the eyes of his own kids further put him deeply in touch with his audience. Since taking the reins he has leaned heavily into Direct View technology and the new Disney Direct service and frequently interacts directly with fans via social media.
If Henson was the risk-taking innovator and Ranft the “steady workhorse”, then Little is so far ramping up to be the guy who can “read the tea leaves” and adjust the Disney formula to a changing, diversifying audience. One of his first actions, promoting Brenda Chapman to the head of Disney Animation to replace the retiring Glen Keane, sent an immediate signal that this was a New Era where Different Voices would be heard.
On the Animated Canon side, Little and Chapman presided over the release of these Ranft-launched films:
- Oh Bother: a Winnie the Pooh Tale (2016): more fun with the 100-acre wood gang
- Dog Days (2016): The life of anthropomorphic dogs, done in the Henson Style
- Los Muertos (2016): The Skeleton Crew explores Dia de los Muertos
- Who Broke the Cat?! (2016): CG Fur Tech on full display in this nod to Old Disney
- Gonzo, Goofy, & Ga-Ga (2017): A Disney Icon, a Muppet, and an Alien walk into a mall…
- Ghost Rider (2017): Kickin’ collaboration following Marvel’s literal Hell’s Angel biker
- Avast! (2017): Aardman makes a pirate tale, eh matey?
- The Addams Family (2017): Skeleton Crew goes CG with this relaunch of a classic IP
- Fishing for Marla (2017): Marla from Finding Nemo gets her own movie; full snark ahead!
- Greenhorns (2018): Five naïve young cowboys and cowgirls must save the herd
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2018): Aardman brings the Douglas Adams classic to life in this rare non-original work
- Wild Blue Yonder (2018): A cocky Fighter Jet learns humility from an old cargo plane
- Rock the Casbah (2018): Morocco Rocks in this musical coming-of-age story
- Shawn in the City (2019): Aardman’s Shawn the Sheep gets his own movie
- Jake (2019): A young boy has one wild imagination in this hybrid live action feature
Little, in turn, has so far greenlit the following animated films:
- Beastley (2019): The creatures of the Beastley Kingdomme come to life!
- Imaginary (2019): A Kickin’ original by Craig McCracken about a girl and her supposedly imaginary friend
- Seoul Food (2019): A young Black boy faces culture shock, and supernatural complications, when his Air Force family moves to South Korea
- Blue (2020): WED-sig gets The Blues in this musical exploration of African American History
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (2020): Aardman continues with Adams
- Ruptured Duck: A Duck Family Misadventure (2020): Donald and family have a new adventure
- Rio (2020): A Jazzy musical mystery adventure set in Rio de Janeiro during the Flying Boat era[32]
- The Warrior Queen (2020): A West African princess takes over the kingdom
- Tomorrowland: A S.E.A. Adventure (2021): The S.E.A. visits The Future after a long hiatus
- Cargo Cargo! (2021): Taika Waititi’s animated directorial debut in this humorous yet sympathetic exploration of Melanesian Cargo Cults
- Three Monkeys (2021): See, hear, and speak no evil, but do see this Stooges-inspired China-based film!
- Unbroken (2021): Inspired by the true story of Khutulun, this Mongol Princess and woman warrior makes her own rules!
- Rocked (2021): animals in the Southwest Desert rock out, until a new solar farm moves in[33]
- The Lazy Mughal (2022): The great emperor just can’t be bothered in this Indian Muslim comedy
- Vamanos, Caballeros! (2022): Donald Duck and the other Three Caballeros reunite in this continent-spanning Latin American adventure
- Bubbles (2022): An underwater musical adventure for small tots in the Henson style
- Life, The Universe, and Everything (2023): Aardman’s next chapter in the five-part Adams trilogy; presumably more to follow?
- A Fu’s Errand (2023): A Fu Dog longs for more than guard duty
- Tsardines (2023): The Tsar and Tsarina deal with their many unruly kids[34]
- Congaree (releases 2023): a slave boy in South Carolina finds a mystical escape from his toil
- Danger Man (releases 2024): Whoopass adapts the little-known Marvel comic
- Hot (planned 2024): unknown; appears desert-based? Rocked sequel?
- The Mighty Blanket (planned 2024): unknown; something in the Scare Force universe?
- Bad Hair Day (planned 2025); unknown, but sure to display advances in CG hair tech
- Lines in the Sand (planned 2025); unknown, but appears to involve the Nazca Lines
- Nevermore (planned 2025); unknown, but the Skeleton Crew is involved; E. A. Poe?
These films have taken full advantage of the growing capabilities of CG animation, allowing for insane new realism and diversity in hair styles for people and animals and fictional beasts alike. They have even thrown in the occasional traditionally animated feature just to “keep the art alive”, as Little put it. They have also seen a rapid expansion of cast diversity, with Little, Chapman, and Feature Animation VP Pete Docter all working to empower their animators to pursue “their own stories”, which is reflected in the most recent films, including the popular and award-dominating
Blue. It’s a diversity push that has proven controversial as older, whiter, more conservative audiences cry “forced diversity” (folks are already calling for boycotts of the upcoming
Congaree, which follows the life of a Slave Boy in South Carolina) while younger and more diverse audiences celebrate getting to see themselves represented.
“It ain’t ‘forced diversity,’” said Little at last year’s D23, “It’s an end to forced
non-diversity!”
And given the demographic realities as North American and European audiences grow more diverse and Asian and African market shares grow, time is probably on Little’s side here.
What will the Current Age shape out to be? What trends beyond the diversification will define this era? Will it be a new Bronze Age, a second Dark Age, or a second (third?) Golden Age? Only time will tell. But perhaps some future Editor for
Animation Nation will write a retrospective much like this one sometime in the future.
We’ll all just have to wait.
[1] With Henson having established a “culture of creativity” rather than one of penny-pinching, shortcut-seeking, and self-serving corporate intrigues, there is no “Second Dark Age” (or, more charitably, Post-Renaissance Age) in the 2000s requiring Pixar Employees to the Rescue. Instead, the Millennium Age will be fondly remembered as a good, and occasionally great, Era for Disney animated films. And an open invite to anyone who wants to do a Guest Post deeper dive on any of these titles. Also, big hat tip to
@King of Danes for the assist on Age Names.
[2] Clearly became
Monsters, Inc. in our timeline. This one hews closer to an early idea before Mike was added and “Boo” was old enough to talk. This version will lean in on the Energy Crisis aspect more than in our timeline.
[3] This project (d)evolved into
Home on the Range in our timeline.
[4] Willie Nelson’s old bull “Willie” will note how much he enjoys “grass” while Dolly Parton will push back on early designs that gave her cow “Dolly” an extra-large udder. “I’m more than a set a’ boobs, y’all know.”
[5] Evolved out of a mixture of floating ideas that ended up with the unproduced
Bitsy and the
Wild Life in our timeline. Here you can think of it as a wholly hand-drawn, set in the late 1940s, PG-13-rated
Zootopia if it followed the musician Gazelle rather than Officer Judy Hops.
[6] Suggested by
@Missingnoleader.
[7] Yes, this is this timeline’s
WALL-E. The “twist” is the original idea (abandoned or at least downplayed in our timeline) that the blob-like “Aliens” are actually humans, whose limbs and muscles have atrophied in the centuries of “care” by their AI Protectors, with the AI not villainous, but simply a well-meaning system programed to “help” humanity needing to “learn” that being overprotective of your loved ones can be detrimental to care
[8] Idea by
@Plateosaurus.
[9] Idea by
@Migrant_Coconut.
[10] Clearly became 2010’s
Tangled in our timeline after years in Development Hell (Keane first pitched it in 1996). Here, with less executive interference, Keane gets his relatively “straight” take on the story without any attempt by Eisner to impose a modern framing device. Will be a traditionally animated film, not CG (that was an Eisner push even though the technology wasn’t anywhere close to up to it at the time).
[11] From
@Nathanoraptor.
[12] As briefly mentioned (along with
Herakles to follow) in the
Medusa post by
@Plateosaurus,
@Sunflare2k5,
@Nathanoraptor,
@Caellach Tiger Eye,
@HonestAbe1809,
@Migrant_Coconut, and
@nick_crenshaw82.
[13] Reportedly hours of profanity-filled “bad takes” from his recordings exist, with Freeman occasionally cursing back in her squeakiest, cheeriest voice.
[14] Idea by
@Plateosaurus.
[15] Requiem in pace, Great Griot.
[16] Based loosely on a stillborn idea for a Live Action film by
@Denliner and
@TheMolluskLingers.
[17]
Planned and cancelled in our timeline, with Tim Burton briefly attached, eventually evolving into the 2014 Angelina Jolie live action film. Hat tip to
@Nerdman3000 for bringing this to my attention and for the extra text. The Queen Leah subplot is his idea, which tries to get around how oddly forced and out of nowhere Maleficent’s cursing of Aurora seem in the original canceled animated version of
Maleficent, as well as how “pointless” Amitola ends up being in it. His solution here is to make Amitola (now renamed Amileah, or as she nicknamed, Leah) a human that Maleficent befriends who later marries Stefan and births Aurora after her friendship with Maleficent falls apart.
[18] Idea by
@MNM041 merged into an idea by
@ExowareMasses for a Disney Kingdoms series. Heather O'Rourke will be the writer and Jude Barsi will voice several of the spirits of the mansion. Hat tip to
@Nerdman3000 for some casting ideas and other text, and hat tip to
@HonestAbe1809 for the del Toro connection. Design-wise, the mansion would invoke elements of every Haunted Mansion attraction, similar to what our timeline’s 2004 film did. Mark Hamill’s appearance will notably result in him returning to the original ride at Disneyland earlier than in our timeline.
[19] Inspired in part by an episode of
Wallykazam!
[20] Idea and casting by
@Nathanoraptor.
[21] “
Inspired” by
@tobg999 and
this interview with Brenda Chapman. 😉
[22] Inspired by some abandoned ideas and concepts for Pixar stories, one of which evolved in our timeline into
Up. It’s ultimately, like
Up, based in Docter’s childhood fantasy about escaping reality in a flying house.
[23] Idea and casting by
@Migrant_Coconut.
[24] Idea by
@Migrant_Coconut with additions by
@Nathanoraptor.
[25] Idea and casting by
@Nathanoraptor.
[26] Based indirectly on a suggestion by
@HonestAbe1809 for an animated Discworld Watch adventure. Another studio has the rights to The Watch, but the Bromeliad Trilogy seems really Disney
[27] Idea by
@Nathanoraptor.
[28] Idea by
@TheFaultsofAlts.
[29] The decidedly R-rated way in which he hoped to achieve immortality in the actual Polynesian legends will
not be stated, only that he needs to “overcome Hine-nui-te-pō, Goddess of the Night”. Note that in general, though a trickster and fast-talker (the latest in a long line of Disney Trickster Mentors in this timeline), Māui will be treated a lot more reverently than he was in our timeline’s
Moana.
[30] With a healthy European animation industry, Pinkava never travels to the US or joins Pixar/3D like he did in our timeline, instead working for Penguin/Nelvana’s European Branch after a tour at DiC. As such, this timeline’s equivalent of
Geri’s Game is done by Penguin Animation and releases in 1998 before an animated production of
Madeline.
[31] Idea by
@Clorox23.
[32] Stars humans, and nothing to do with any endangered parrots.
[33] An environmental story about habitat destruction…from renewable energy construction!!! Coming soon to this timeline, I can all but guarantee…
[34] Indirectly inspired by
@nick_crenshaw82, who suggested a Disney
Anastasia to counterbalance Bluth’s
Beauty and the Beast. I took things a slightly different direction since the 2007 discovery of the actual Anastasia’s body would put an end to any straight adaption.
Glad I could help with naming the Millenium Age!
