Despite the pronouncements that hand-drawn animation is dead, Disney’s latest film, The Princess and the Frog has been a huge success. So was there nothing wrong with the format in the first place?
At the dawn of a new decade it’s only natural for people to look ahead to the future of cinema, but after the monumental success of Avatar, a film that has been heralded as groundbreaking for some time, the next decade is going to be even harder to predict. How interesting then that Disney’s latest success lies not within the comfortable but expanding world of computer animation, but with the classic story and style that made Disney a global powerhouse for almost 70 years ago.
Toy Story 3 is unsurprisingly one of the most anticipated films of the year predicted to be as good as or possibly even better than the original. But before that, we can look forward to the theatrical release of The Princess and the Frog, a new film that represents everything that built Walt Disney’s legacy. Ironically this old-skool format was kickstarted by John Lasseter, chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios and the man credited with killing 2D, hand-drawn animation in the first place.
The Princess and the Frog is a Broadway style, American fairy tale set in the French Quarter of New Orleans and is noted for being the first Disney film to feature an African-American princess voiced by Broadway star and Dreamgirls actress Anika Noni Rose.
Despite that landmark, it is very much a case of same story, different film. The formula, or cliché, depending on your opinion, clearly came into play here: Take a well known fairytale, add a sassy and independent female lead from a single parent family with one signature friend and mix in a few oddball but fun animals with a knack for singing. Unsurprisingly she learns something about herself and the world during the journey and lives happily ever after with her prince.
And yet this is the same format that many were criticizing when Toy Story was released in 1995, anyone who thought that hand-drawn animation was dead were quickly silenced as the film immediately shot to the top of the US Box Office with takings of over $25 million. Whilst admittedly it does not mirror the takings of an average Pixar film, it showed that for whatever reason, Disney films with all their clichés and overused formulas, are still popular and remains a draw for the lucrative family demographic.
Lasseter’s involvement is intriguing as it was his unbroken run of hugely successful and critic-proof films with Pixar that convinced everyone that Disney was dead. Even Disney believed it. Only five years ago, two of the most important figures at Disney for the past 30 years, John Musker and Rom Clements, were shown the door only to be re-hired by Lasseter, himself. An animation pioneer and a fan of Disney itself, he charged the pair with a task of making a classic Disney animation and the result, is The Princess and the Frog.
Despite the meteoric rise of computer-generated films, Disney classics have never lost their charm. DVD releases are consistently best sellers although it should be noted that sales have dwindled due to illegal downloading.
Perhaps the two can co-exist. After all, along with TS3, Disney’s other major release is Rapunzel which has employed cutting edge animation and filming the entire thing on something called Hair-O-Vision.
Whether or not Disney will continue to make their classic stories is anybody’s guess, but they only have four fairytales left to make into a feature: Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and The Three Bears, The Princess and the Pea and Plato Republic. A dark take on any of the above is sure to be a hit.
