*For the record: I consider Pixar and Disney very different entities, with very different work ethics.
It seems like for the last X number of years, traditional animation has slowly been dying in feature films. There have been great exceptions like Persepolis, Triplets of Bellevue (both French films, hmmm...), and various work from Japan (I'm looking at you Ghibli), but for the most part CG has taken over. Personally, I'm tired of it and only Pixar ever seems to consistently get it right (and Dreamworks on occasion). Every (non-Pixar) Disney attempt at it, like Meet the Robinsons, just leaves me wondering "why?"
With that said, I am REALLY hoping that this turns out the way I hope it's going to.
Princess and the Frog is my hope of redemption for a Disney gone wrong since my childhood. At Comic Con this year, I had the great privilege of seeing scenes and material from this film. We watched the scene where the "Prince" meets the bad guy, a musical number composed by Randy Newman.
Watching this sequence made me feel like I was 5 again.
It wasn't just the animation, which in high def looks stunning; some of the best hand drawn work in years! It was also the general "feel" of the film. Randy Newman has actually done a good job (from what I can tell) and composed an appropriate score for this. It was kind of a mix of the deal-with-the-devil qualities of Little Mermaid's "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and the spectacularly magical visual elements of "A Friend Like Me" from Aladdin. I couldn't have been happier with the way it was turning out, and although it will likely be sticking to the classic 90s formula of Disney... I'M FREAKIN' OK WITH THAT! Anything but the stupid Jonas Brothers/G-Force/CG Tinkerbell/Prince of Persia/Bad TV Movies crap that Disney has obsessed itself with for the past decade. If you're going to make films aimed at family audiences, pleeeaaaase return some of the qualities that actually enchanted me with Disney during my childhood. I can only hope, pray, and shake a decent sized fist at Disney to make sure that Princess and the Frog becomes what it should, a pure shot of childhood nostalgia and a resurgence of the medium for the industry.
A big thanks to John Lasseter, who has been pushing Disney to do this kind of stuff again for quite some time now.
Please go out and support this movie. Whether we like it or not, animation has a lot riding on this one.
P.S. I'm pissed at my friend, who gets to see an advanced screening of this film Wednesday. I hope she'll at least tell me how it is.
(A fun game: Take a shot for every time the word "hope" or hope related words are used in this article.)
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It's nice to know that John Lasseter isn't just a beach ball of hyperactive praise ("What I love about Miyazaki is.... he's just so great!"), but that he is an advocate for hand-drawn animation. Disney made the right decision merging with Pixar, although I keep hoping that the Disney ethos doesn't swallow Pixar up, like a giant venus fly trap eating the last surviving (and very cute, and probably blue) worker ant.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm worried about this film a little (New Orleans? Black magic? The ways this could go wrong are staggering), I'm still going to see it, because it feels like there hasn't been a hand-animated film since Emperor's New Groove (at least, not a note-worthy one).
Also, Disney: You've been making fairy tale movies for 70 YEARS. How did you miss "The Princess and the Frog?" Jesus.
I'm sure if we skimmed the barrel, we'd find plenty of fairy tales that they've missed. Like... ummm... Beowolf? (crap! just missed that one). It seems to me more like the premise of the fairly tale is just a spring board for a completely different story, but who knows.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, those are exactly the kinds of "questions" that people had for Miyazaki at comic-con: "you're so great...ummm....oh yeah, how are you so great?" Maybe not verbatim, but something along those lines.
I agree that this movie could definitely go very awry... but it's importance right now is so huge that I'm willing to suspend my fears until I see it. And regardless of story, it still looks amazing (but maybe that's just the animator in me talking).
"Beach ball of hyperactive praise," can I quote you on that?
You have my blessings for future quotations of any and all material uttered here. Though it might come back to bite me in the rear if I ever get that dream job at Pixar...
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