TAP-G (2024)

Writer, former podcaster, entertainment enthusiast. Movies and media have the power to shape our world and vice versa. Let’s take a deeper look at them.

My Thoughts on Once Upon aStudio…

It finally happened. A whole freaking century of existence. People like Pat Powers, P. L. Travers, Ben Shapiro, and Bob Chapek tried to destroy it. Commercial failures like The Black Cauldron, Strange World, Home on the Range, and Treasure Planet caused them to stumble. We’ve seen them try to sell us terrible things like the second incarnation of Journey into Imagination, a Maui body suit, Mickey Mouse gas masks, and movies with premium access fees on Disney+. They’ve stayed abreast amid multiple controversies, like cast member pay, copyright law, working with China for the Mulan remake, and the accusations of being an anti-semite. And yet through it all, they’ve committed to making art (which is always up for debate), and they remain in business thanks to their unerring ability to touch our hearts. Disney has been happy to flash that magical three-digit number everywhere to impress its clientele, but arguably its true moment to celebrate was a short that premiered on ABC on October 15th, then on Disney+ the following day. That short was Once Upon a Studio.

The short starts with Mickey and Minnie Mouse hopping out of a framed photo and plan a group photo to celebrate the anniversary. Soon, 543 characters from various shorts and movies hop to life and gather outside the Roy O. Disney Animation Building.

It’s a great short. There’s a lot it does right. I’d hesitate to say it does anything wrong, but I do have some notes. But let’s talk about the good stuff.

Robin Williams. In its number one selling point in their marketing hype, Disney shared with the public that a never-before-used archival recording of Robin Williams he did for Aladdin would be unearthed exclusively for this short. To the average Joe, this was incredible news. Robin passed in 2014, nine years ago, and our hearts have ached ever since. The Genie was one of his most career-defining roles, and no matter how hard others tried, no one could pull it off as well as he did. But there’s more to it than that. Jeffrey Katzenberg and Disney proper went out of their way to screw over the comedian during production, as the man had terms and conditions they didn’t feel like abiding by. The man recorded hours upon hours of gags and skits and jokes that didn’t get used in the final film, and when he died, it was revealed that Robin had one last “screw you” for the company: absolutely none of those recordings could be used without permission from his estate for 25 years after his death, in 2039. So clearly, they got the stamp of approval from Williams’ family and legal team, and we got to hear an original Robin joke from him.

But it gets better. Genie shares screen time with Olaf from Frozen. Olaf’s actor, Josh Gad, tweeted about the sensitivity of the situation, adding that he got into voice acting thanks to Robin. The man got to share screen time with his idol and said if he had any concern that this was not done above board, and with reverence, he would not have participated.

But it goes even deeper. Seconds before the Genie explodes onto the screen, the most surprising cameo (to me) was seeing Robin the lost boy. I’ve talked at length about this before, but as a recap: Robin Williams appeared alongside Walter Cronkite in a 1989 short film called Back to Neverland that played only at Disney-MGM Studios’ Magic of Disney Animation attraction through 2004. In that short, Robin tells Walter he loves Peter Pan, and thus, the legendary news anchor walks him through the process, making him a lost boy facing Captain Hook. The short was so influential that Williams’ vacation clothes – a loud, yellow Hawaiian shirt and a Goofy hat – were made an Easter egg in Aladdin‘s finale. And to see Robin, the lost boy, make a brief appearance, particularly alongside the Genie and one of Robin’s biggest fans was a hell of a treat.

The commitment to the original artistry. The loss of 2D animation has remained a difficult pain for many Disney fans. Aside from the smattering of animated projects like the three Goofy shorts from 2020, we haven’t seen a hand-drawn animated movie since 2011’s Winnie the Pooh. Once again, the animation team showed what they do best and made these characters look as good as they’ve ever been. From what I can see, Disney brought back various animators who were the original supervising animators of their respective characters like Will Finn (Iago and Cogsworth), Eric Goldberg (The Genie), James Baxter (Belle), Ruben Aquino (Ursula), Nik Ranieri (Hades, Kuzco, and Lumiere), Tony Bancroft (Pumbaa), and Alex Kuperschmidt (Stitch). Almost none of the characters looked off-model or even carelessly scrawled.

It’s worth drawing attention to how well the CGI characters like Antonio Madrigal, Sisu the dragon, Moana, Flash the Sloth, and Fix-it Felix interacted with their hand-drawn co-stars, but for me, one slightly imperceptible detail got me hella stoked. During the trailer released a month prior, I gawked at Colonel Hathi and Winnifred (‘Cause Jungle Book fans gotta stan) when I saw a flickering line down the front of Winnifred’s trunk. An animation error? Yes and no. To streamline the animation process, Disney developed the Xerox process, which allowed animators’ drawings to be copied straight to the animation cels. This meant they were charged with erasing as much of their construction lines as they could, but this left characters from 101 Dalmatians in 1961 to Oliver & Company in 1988 with a very scratchy texture and flickering lines. In the short proper, I saw this on Merlin, too. Really think about that level of dedication when it would have been SO MUCH EASIER to make all the 2D characters look like they were drawn the same. Particularly for an effect most people can’t identify or even see.

The voice cast. I’m always kind of mystified at how Disney regards their voice casts. On one hand, they do everything within their power to get back OG actors to reprise roles, whether it’s the latest Kingdom Hearts game, the newest ride at California Adventure, or latest spinoff in the franchise. And this short was no exception. It wasn’t just Robin Williams. I fully expected Bill Farmer (Goofy and Pluto), Josh Gad (Olaf), Jim Cummings (Winnie the Pooh), James Woods (Hades), Jodi Benson (Ariel), Scott Adsit (Baymax), Anika Noni-Rose (Tiana), Scott Weinger (Aladdin) and Auli’i Cravalho (Moana). I didn’t expect but am not at all surprised hearing the vast array of archival recordings I fully recognized from their original source material, such as Eric Blore (Mr. Toad), Jeremy Irons (Scar), Pat Carroll (Ursula), My Hero Sterling Holloway (Winnie the Pooh, Kaa, Cheshire Cat), Dwayne Johnson (Maui), David Spade (Kuzco), Bobby Driscoll (Peter Pan) Verna Felton (Flora), Billy Joel (Dodger) Barbara Luddy (Merriweather), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Jim Hawkins).

Still, many of their replacements were pretty good. Alan Tudyk’s King Candy made him perfect as the Mad Hatter. I’ve heard Bob Joles as Bagheera in The Jungle Book 2, and I think he did decent as Cogsworth. I miss Ed Gilbert, and while Jim Cummings wouldn’t have been my first choice as Baloo, I wasn’t able to tell right away. No one can replace Gilbert Gottfried, yet that was Piotr Mixhael as Iago. But the biggest surprises were the actors they DID bring aboard and the ones they chose to leave silent. For example, Nathan Lane has a ton of stage and screen credits, to the point where Timon from The Lion King is barely a blip on his resumé, but he calls Olaf “Frosty”. On the flip side, Ernie Sabella (Pumbaa) was not present, despite he’s front and center most every Lion King appearance, and his biggest screen credit is (Arguably) the naked guy on the subway in that one episode of Seinfeld. Corey Burton has voiced Captain Hook reliably since the eighties, and yet he’s silent here. Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Ginnifer Goodwin, and Jason Bateman are all busy actors, but they still took time out of their schedules to drop by for Anna, Elsa, Judy Hopps, and Nick Wilde. It was cool hearing Richard White again as Gaston. Little Ravi Cabot-Conyers reappeared as little Antonio Madrigal. I was shocked Tom Hulce returned as Quasinodo. Daisy Duck hardly had any screen time, much less with her official performer, Tress Macnielle. Regardless, what we did get was a treat for the ears.

The cameos I didn’t expect. Here’s what I’ve learned from what I call “Ain’t Disney Great” projects: with a catalog as vast and popular as Disney’s, whenever they want to put together a montage or group shot of a wide array of Disney animated characters, it’s expected they limit characters by most popular and little further. Mulan fans will rarely see more beyond Mulan and Mushu. 101 Dalmatians are almost wholly represented by Cruella DeVil, Pongo and Perdita. As a Jungle Book fan, I’m lucky I get King Louie, as most of the time, it’s just Baloo and Mowgli. If you love Emperor’s New Groove, Atlantis, The Rescuers, or Chicken Little, you’re just about guaranteed to be out of luck. But the stops were most certainly pulled out, drawing from literally all 62 animated features from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to November’s Wish. Not even including Mickey and pals, there were a surprising number of cameos from projects I didn’t even think they would acknowledge. I already mentioned Robin the lost boy. Johnny Fedora and Alice Bluebonnet? Cool. Art and Dot from 2021’s Us Again? Surprising. Susie the Little Blue Coupe? Startling. Lambert the Sheepish Lion? Nuts! And it didn’t stop there! The Reluctant Dragon! Pedro the Mail Plane! John Henry! Katrina van Tassel and Brom Bones! George from Paperman! Gopher from Winnie the Pooh! Nessie! John, Duke, Susie, and Joe from Fantasia 2000‘s Rhapsody in Blue sequence! Small One! Paul from Inner Workings! Wayne and Lanny from Prep and Landing! Slue Foot Sue! So many of these characters are hard to identify, even if you’re a hard-core Disnerd like me. And yet, here they are!

One set of characters I want to bring up is the cast of Tarzan. Tarzan, Terk, Tantor, Jane, Kala, Kerchack, and Clayton all appear in the final cast photo. Tarzan is still under copyright by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. Thus, Disney refuses to do anything with them to avoid paying royalties. It would have been a pretty glaring oversight to not include them, sure, but it was super nice to see them once again.

That moment with Walt. The moment that certainly got everyone directly in the feels was right after Rapunzel conked Kaa on the head with her skillet. Mickey catches sight of a large photo of Walt Disney, and he looks on with heartfelt appreciation. What I liked about this moment most was how simple and quiet it was.

It would have been so damn easy to drop in an AI Walt spouting one of his oft-capitalized catchphrases, shaking hand with Mickey, but luckily, it was reeled in to just a momentary calm moment amid the insanity of the chaos. It was pretty reverent and respectful that way. Kudos.

Now that we took care of all the cool stuff, I want to share my notes. Nothing bad, of course. Just bear with me, if you please.

The cameos that didn’t happen.

Before I start this entry, let me start by addressing two things. One, as I addressed in my Kingdom Hearts list, I understand I have an issue with never being satisfied with my Disney crossovers. Whether it’s House of Mouse, Disney Heroes: Battle Mode, or Once Upon a Time, after the thrill of seeing a huge Disney crossover, it wears off pretty quickly as I start to pick apart who was there and who wasn’t. I totally get that’s a flaw on my part and mine alone; this is just me warning you, dear reader. Second, I’m not going to be so pedantic as to say something like “Well, for Meet The Robinsons, they had Carl the Robot, Lewis, Wilbur, Bowler Hat Guy, and Lucille Krunklehorn…but where’s Francine? Uncle Art? Goob? Lefty the Octopus? ZERO OUT OF TEN!!” Of course not. That’d be pathetic. So as a rule, I allowed entries from projects that simply weren’t represented.

Roger Rabbit

This was arguably the number one character I’ve heard people ask about. And given we saw animated characters from live-action/animated hybrid movies, to see the titular character from the gold standard of crossovers himself was surprising. That is, until you dig a little deeper.

You might have noticed no characters from literally any subsidiary of the company were involved. Despite the anniversary was for the company as a whole, they stuck to purely to Walt Disney Animation Studios. That means no Muppets, no Lucasfilm, no Marvel, and no Pixar. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was animated at Elstree Studios in LA, and later London, neither of which are WDAS. To top it off, the movie was a coproduction between Disney and Amblin Entertainment, and even then, under Touchstone Pictures. Even today, neither studio can seem to agree on who owns the rights. But it seems it’s already enough that old Roger wasn’t drawn anywhere near WDAS, thus excluding him entirely.

Giselle

2007’s Enchanted was also not animated by WDAS, but unlike Roger, it was released directly under the Walt Disney Pictures banner. Also, you might have noticed Giselle was never promoted to official Disney princess. This is because if you recall in the movie, Amy Adam’s doesn’t just play Giselle, she is Giselle: her animated self had to look like her. Because of this, if Disney wanted to make merchandise or further projects with her, they’d need to secure legal rights to Amy Adam’s face, which would be expensive and likely not worth it.

Julius the Cat

I knew they were going to do whatever they could to celebrate the antiquity of the studio, but I worried they weren’t going to go all the way back. As you might’ve guessed, the anniversary goes all the way back to 1923. Mickey didn’t star in Steamboat Willie until five years later. Oswald appeared in the short, but he only goes back to 1927. The oldest still-working Disney character is Pegleg Pete, who first popped in a 1925 Alice comedy. How could they fill in that 2-year gap? Well, the Alice Comedies may have starred a live-action girl, but she had a sidekick in most of them: a spunky cat named Julius who actually goes as far back as the old Laugh-O-Grams shorts back in Kansas City in 1922. It would have been great to solidly mark the full centennial, but even I couldn’t expect his showing up rationally. He’s the sidekick, not the star. He looks more like Felix the Cat. He’s too nondescript. Literally a whole gag segment would be devoted to just identifying who he is, since even the most seasoned Disney stans wouldn’t have been able to tell at first blush.

Milton

Characters like John Henry, Lambert, Susie the Little Blue Coupe, Paul, Dot and Art, Nessie and George were all one-shot characters. But Milton appeared in three cartoons alongside Mickey’s pal Pluto. A relatively uninteresting character, Milton was a cat who provided some conflict as a sort of mischievous adult alley cat. Unlike Figaro, a kitten, the fights between them wouldn’t be ridiculously one-sided. Like I said, he only lasted three shorts (Plutopia, Cold Turkey, and Puss Café), but his impact has been pretty minimal. Still, it’s three times more than Lambert or Susie.

Ortensia

This one is arguably my biggest nitpick. With Mickey and Minnie, Donald and Daisy, all the princes and princesses, it just seemed like a jerk move to add Oswald, but not his girlfriend.

Professor Owl

This one is the one I acknowledge with the most sincerity. Sure, Professor Owl only cropped up in just two shorts: Adventures in Music: Melody and the Oscar-winning Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom, both in 1953. But he gained greater fame about 35 years later as one of the hosts in the wraparound segments on the Disney Sing-Along Songs videos. He got famous enough to even appear in the intro of House of Mouse in 2001, and not even in a subtle way, either.

The Br’ers.

If I had a nickel for every time I mentioned anything Song of the South related on this blog… Yeah, I’m doing it again. I’m completely aware Disney is trying HARD to wipe their hands clean of these guys, but it’s no use: you can shut down the rides, delete the songs, and fail to include them on the company’s biggest crossover ever. But at the end of the day, the movie exists, and it was a milestone in the early decades of the company’s history. To keep ignoring them and cramming them into the crawlspace under the stairs is not a viable long-term solution.

The jokes I would’ve written.

I love writing fan fiction. I love writing a story and planning out how each character would react in a given situation based on what I understand about them. Because I love my Disney crossovers, the very idea of penning a special like this would have involved me disappearing for a whole weekend and coming back with 40 tomes of notes, jokes, suggestions, scribbles, pitches, on how to make a funny, dramatic, compelling saga involving characters from all 62+ films. But I get it: I’m certain the writers were similarly passionate, and probably a lot of stuff got cut simply for time or wanted greater focus on visuals rather than dialogue. And yet, I can’t help but expound upon the types of jokes I saw or come up with new ones. At the risk of being super insulting to the writers…

1. There was that great scene where Rapunzel conks Kaa on the head when he hypnotizes Clarabelle. I’m not sure who suggested her, but because she’s a cow, why not see the aftermath? Rapunzel chuckles, swinging the skillet with gusto, only to find Calarabelle is gone. Where is she? Well, Alameda Slim from Home on the Range – who can hypnotize cows and only cows with a hypnotic yodel – is prancing down the hall, singing “Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-oo”, with Calarabelle giddily dancing behind. Rapunzel huffs, chuckles, grips her pan tight, and follows.

2. We saw Luisa from Encanto hoisting the Home on the Range cows, Cyril Proudbottom, Rutt and Tuke, and Small One on her shoulders in one shot. I can picture Tigger encouraging Eeyore to keep up, with the donkey sluggishly mumbling that he’s coming. Suddenly, he’s flung high up and onto Luisa’s shoulders. Luisa chuckles, telling Tigger that one day, there’ll be a donkey she won’t have to carry. Just then, Little Burrito – the flying donkey from The Three Caballeros – glides by, and they both laugh.

3. After swiping Scrooge McDuck/Ebenezer Scrooge’s moneybags, Robin Hood and Little John stroll down the hall when LJ asks, “Hey Rob, ever get Deja vu?” After they pass by, Baloo asks his mancub buddy, “Hey Lil” Britches, ever get Deja vu?”

4. After Wreck-it Ralph stumbles out the building, he narrowly avoids getting hit by several crumbling bricks. He looks up and sees Willie (Mickey and the Beanstalk), Gustav (The Brave Little Tailor), and Paul Bunyan are bored and waiting impatiently, with drumming fingers causing structural damage. Ralph, of course, shouts, “Hey! You’re gonna wreck it!”

5. We saw Mr. Toad giddily taking Aladdin’s magic carpet for a whirl. Suppose he crashes carpet, and looks up to find…Vanellope von Schweetz’ car, the Lickety Split. Toad is enraptured with longing. Cut to Vanellope and Oliver & Company‘s Dodger enjoying some hot dogs from the cafeteria, skipping back to the car, only to find J. Thaddeus Toad has…eaten most of it.

6. As Robin the lost boy flies along, he breezes by Captain Hook, upsetting his hat. He and Mr. Smee are strolling down the hallway when Smee anxiously reminds his boss that Mickey wants EVERYONE there. Hook casually assures his underling that he has officially gotten over his fear of “that infernal crocodile.” Louis from Princess and the Frog almost bumps into them, pleasantly greeting, “Hey, y’all!” This, of course, causes the pirate to wail in abject terror.

7. Belle and the Beast share a tender moment in the hall when Rutt and Tuke, the moose from Brother Bear, wander by. Rutt asks if she’s the mermaid. Tuke answers, “Beauty, eh.” Rutt responds, “Beauty. So she’s the sleepy one, right?”

8. Taran from The Black Cauldron boasts to prince Phillip and Hercules about his heroic deeds with his sword while Eilonwy looks on, rolling her eyes. A wild swing of his sword gets it caught in the door. Taran can’t budge it free, but Wart from Sword in the Stone jostles it free easily and politely hands it back. As Taran sheepishly chuckles, the other three laugh good-naturedly.

9. The sprite from Fantasia 2000 and Isabela Madrigal are working together to grow some greenery and beautify the surrounding area for the photo. As Minnie drops by and compliments their work, she warns them to go easy on the vines. As Isabela asks why, Tarzan swings by, doing his trademark yell, and scatters the flowers everywhere. Upset at first, the girls laugh heartily instead.

Make no mistake: I know these things are work. Writers and animators et al should be paid what they’re worth. I’m just some punk online armchair animating for something that was already pretty damn awesome to begin with. So I’m not just some whiny troll, just a fan with an ADHD-riddled brain that won’t quit his hyperfocused fandom of choice.

What were the stakes, exactly?

Conflict makes for the best entertainment, as a conflict begs the question “How can this be solved,” whether it’s a problem or a genuine battle. The whole purpose of this short was not really to tell a story, but to showcase 543 animated characters. I’ve always been of the mindset that a story need only be as good as a vehicle to let characters be characters, and I still stand by that. But the only real conflict comes in late when Goofy accidentally breaks the camera, and everyone starts to leave as though there’s no options left anymore. With all the characters with various skills and powers in virtually every capacity, it seems kind of silly that characters, even ones as pessimistic as Grumpy and Eeyore, would just give up right away.

Since they were doing this after hours, maybe they could have tried to keep things down to avoid being seen. Maybe the villains could’ve hijacked the plan to make it a villains photo shoot, thinking they were going to be left out of it, only for Mickey to remind them that this is for everyone. I dunno, that was just two ideas that I came up with off the top of my head. A broken camera wasn’t a terrible plot point, but I thought they could have made it a touch more engaging with a little something extra. That’s all.

For Burny.

The last thing I want to touch upon is this short was dedicated to Burny Mattinson. Martinson was the elderly gentlemen who bemused about if the walls at the studio could talk before he and the intern leave for the day. More importantly, Burny worked at the studio for 7 straight decades, from 1953, all the way until his death earlier this year, in February of 2023. It’s a powerful reminder of the legacy that this short represented.

Conclusion

This was a great short and I was very happy to see so much representation of so many Disney characters, even if it wasn’t as much as I imagined it could be. But once again, I get it. That’s my hang-up and mine alone. This short was a great way of commemorating a century of Disney, and judging from the general public’s reaction to Disney in 2023, was by far the best yet.

Congrats, Walt. You done good.

100 More Disney Voice ActorFacts!

Because 100 just wasn’t enough. Let’s see what else you might not know about voice acting and working for Disney!

1. Guido Luigi Emanuele Caselotti was an Italian immigrant and a singing instructor in Los Angeles when he got call from the Walt Disney studios in 1935. He was asked if he knew of any girls who could sing like a child. Just then, a girl’s voice on the line volunteered. His 18-year-old daughter, Adrianna, was listening in on the upstairs phone, and thus, she was cast as Disney’s first princess and the fairest one of all, Snow White.

2. After a session of voicing Winnie the Pooh, Sterling Holloway was called on by Walt himself to see what he could do about a troublesome snake character in their upcoming Jungle Book adaptation. Holloway, the ninth in line to give it a whirl, came up with the idea to make a gag about his back pain, since…well, pythons are mostly spines. This clinched him the role of Kaa.

3. If I had a nickel for every time Paul Reubens (AKA Pee-Wee Herman) voiced an AI unit piloting an alien spaceship in a Disney property, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right? (RX-24 in the original Star Tours attraction and Trimaxion in 1986’s Flight of the Navigator)

4. Alan Young had co-written his own version of A Christmas Carol for Disneyland records, called An Adaptation of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, Performed by The Walt Disney Players, released in 1974. Young also played Ebenezer Scrooge as well as Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and Ghost of Christmas Past. Several years later, Young was called in by Disney to play Scrooge in an animated adaptation of that adaptation, and was surprised it was his own script. Young reprised the role of the greedy miser, and in 1987, with the premiere of DuckTales, Scrooge McDuck was his own character to voice right up through No, a Mickey Mouse cartoon that was released in 2016, the same year he passed away.

5. Sherri Stoner has had a fairly active career as an actress before becoming a writer on Steven Spielberg’s Animaniacs. She was even the voice of Slappy the Squirrel. But before then, she was the live-action model for Ariel.

6. Dallas McKennon was a very versatile character performer, often playing nutty characters, with his most famous performance as Cincinnatus in the Daniel Boone series in 1964. For animation, he was the original performer for Gumby and Pokey. But even if you aren’t familiar with his Disney roles like the fishing bear in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) or the fox in Mary Poppins (1964), I guarantee you you’ve heard him before. You know that high-pitched, insane cackle the hyena in Lady and the Tramp (1955) lets out when Lady almost gets chomped on by an alligator? That laugh was used in a multitude of productions, such as the Crash Bandicoot video games (Ripper Roo), Tourist Trap (Closet mannequin), and Elf (Jack in the Box). But barring even all that, who do you think tells you to watch yer personal belongings on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad because it’s “the WILDEST RIDE in the WILDERNESS!”?

7. Maurice Chevalier was a personal friend of Walt Disney. When he died in 1966, Chevalier came out of retirement to sing the theme song for The AristoCats (1970) to honor his friend.

8. Disney tries as hard as they can to retain the same actors for repeat performances for consistency, unlike Warner Brothers, who regularly recast their Looney Tunes characters in most every new project. Characters like the princesses are the most reliable, and in Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), we saw the return of Jodi Benson (Ariel), Linda Larkin (Jasmine), Irene Bedard (Pocahontas), Ming-Na Wen (Mulan), Anika Noni-Rose (Tiana), Mandy Moore (Rapunzel), Kelly MacDonald (Merida), Kristen Bell (Anna), Idina Menzel (Elsa), and Auli’i Cravalho (Moana). Only Adrianna Caselotti (Snow White), Ilene Woods (Cinderella), and Mary Costa (Aurora) failed to return since they had since passed away.

9. In Frozen II (2019), Josh Gad improvised the bit about looking for Samantha. A few weeks after its release, Gad posted a tweet announcing he finally found her… She was apparently a skipper on Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise.

10. Walt Disney knew Phil Harris socially, and when Harris was asked to play Baloo in The Jungle Book (1967), Harris grew frustrated because the bear was written similarly to the Kipling version of Baloo: Gruff, no-nonsense, and serious. Harris left. About a week later, he was begged to return at Walt’s behest, but this time, Harris asked to read it like himself. This became the lackadaisical, freewheeling, carefree ursine we know and love today. A characterization so appealing he essentially reprised the role in to a T in the following two releases: Thomas O’Malley in The AristoCats (1970) and Little John in Robin Hood (1973).

11. You might be familiar with character actor Jim Varney, whose best known performance is Ernest P. Worrell in the Ernest franchise (Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest Scared Stupid, Ernest Saves Christmas, etc.) Not only was the Christmas movie filmed at Disney-MGM Studios, but he took on the Disney theme parks again in a 1989 made-for-television promotional special where Ernest takes the first test run plunge on Splash Mountain at Disneyland. In 1995, he joined the voice acting ranks as Woody’s pal Slinky Dog in Toy Story (1995) and Toy Story 2 (1999). In 2001’s Atlantis: the Lost Empire, Varney played Cookie, the crew’s cook, but he passed in 2000 before he could finish the role. His friend Blake Clark dubbed one line in Atlantis (“I ain’t so good at speechifyin'”), and actor Steve Barr has taken over the role for the plastic hound dog in subsequent Toy Story productions.

12. Mary Wickes was a very busy comedienne in numerous sitcoms and plays thanks to her impeccable comedic timing, lanky build, and acerbic tone. She utilized these assets as the live action model for Cruella DeVil in 101 Dalmatians (1961), though the fashionista was voiced by Betty Lou Gerson, who did the opening narration for Cinderella in 1950. Mary returned to Disney for Sister Act (1992) and its sequel as Sister Mary Lazarus. But her final film role was that of Laverne the gargoyle in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Sadly, Wickes passed away before her work was completed, and Jane Withers filled in for her.

13. Several famous faces were at Disneyland on opening day, August 17th, 1955. Aside from Ronald Reagan, Art Linkletter, Frank Sinatra, Fess Parker, and Buddy Ebsen, we saw Jerry Colonna (the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland) was riding a train, Bobby Driscoll (Peter Pan) was riding a ship in Fantasyland, and Alan Young (Scrooge McDuck) just got off Peter Pan’s Flight. And no, Young wasn’t a time traveler (That we know of…) … he was renowned at the time for starring in Mr. Ed.

14. Jim Cummings was working at a video store in Anaheim Hills when he handed off his demo tape to a friend. While Don Bluth Studios passed on it, a few weeks later, a phone call from the Disney Channel offered him his first acting roles as Q. T the Orangutan and Lionel the Lion in 1984’s Dumbo’s Circus TV show. Thus began a lifelong career of voicing a flurry of beloved Disney characters such as Darkwing Duck, Zummi Gummi, Pete, Winnie the Pooh, Ed the hyena, Scar (singing), Rasoul the palace guard, Hondo Ohnaka, chief Powhatan (Singing), Ray the firefly, Don Karnage, Fat Cat, Professor Nimnul, NegaDuck, Bonkers D. Bobcat, Lucky Piquel, Nessuss the Centaur, Kaa, Tigger, any many, many more.

15. Only on two occasions has Donald’s nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie had separate voice actors. In 1997, the short-lived series Quack Pack had teenaged Huey, Dewey, and Louie voiced by Jeannie Elias, Pamela Adlon, and E. G. Daily, respectively. In the 2017 reboot of DuckTales, they were voiced by Danny Pudi (Huey), Ben Schwartz (Dewey), and Ben Moynihan (Louie). In most other projects, all three were voiced by either the OG Donald Duck, Clarence Nash, or Minnie Mouse’s Russi Taylor.

16. In Mickey and the Beanstalk (1947), Willie the Giant almost smashes Mickey in his pocket when he gets waylaid by a sputtering, massively building, but ultimately anticlimactic sneeze. That was not just a gag: Billy Gilbert voiced Sneezy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and before that, he was a vaudeville performer whose shtick was comical sneezes.

17. Adam West will forever go down in history as Batman, the “Bright Knight” (as he called himself) of the 1960’s television series. Aside from his role as Mayor Adam West on Family Guy, most all of his roles in his later years reflected his heroic persona one way or another. In 2005’s Chicken Little, he played the movie version of the title character as gritty space hero, and in 2007’s Meet The Robinsons, he was Uncle Artie: the pizza delivery driver whom Lewis mistakes for a superhero. His most transparent parody role was in the Kim Possible episode “The Fearless Ferret”, where he played the grumpy Timothy North, a former superhero looking to train his protégé, Ron Stoppable, into being the next generation of his superhero mantle.

18. Speaking of which, Will Friedle (The voice of Ron Stoppable) was the main character in Batman Beyond. In that show, Terry McGinnis (Friedle) is being trained as the next Batman while Bruce Wayne (Not West, but Kevin Conroy). It’s not hard to see that while Kim Possible‘s plot was not parodying the Batman Beyond premise, but the parallels are clearly there. Friedle later took on another animated superhero – for Marvel – as Peter Quill/Star-Lord in the 2015 Guardians of the Galaxy animated series on Disney XD.

19. Speaking of Batman, let’s take a look and see where some of the Dark Knight’s performers have wound up at Disney. We already talked about West, so next is Michael Keaton, whom we’ve heard in Cars (2006) as Chick Hicks, and Toy Story 3 (2010) as Ken. Val Kilmer parodied his Goose character from Top Gun (1986) in Planes (2013) as Bravo. George Clooney’s only Disney role is in Brad Bird’s live-action film Tomorrowland (2016). Christian Bale has been Thomas in 1995’s Pocahontas and Howl in Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) in the English dub. Even Will Arnett (LEGO Batman) voiced Sweet Pete in 2022’s Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers movie. For both Ben Affleck and Kevin Conroy… I’m sorry, guys. I couldn’t find anything. But hey, it’s not who they are, but what they do that defines them.

20. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), during the song “A Guy Like You,” the gargoyles give Quasimodo a powdered wig. This is most likely an homage to Tom Hulce’s other famous work, 1984’s Amadeus, where he played the impetuous and childish Mozart.

21. Br’er Fox in Song of the South (1946) was clocked at snapping eight words a second from James Baskett. Since animation is typically done at 24 frames a second, that meant animator Ollie Johnston had to articulate his mouth on an average of three frames per word!

22. In 2010, Disney released Epic Mickey, a game for the Nintendo Wii starring Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Despite all character dialogue reduced to mumbles, Oswald was given his first official voice to veteran voice actor Frank Welker. Frank’s other notable Disney roles are in Aladdin (1992) as Abu the monkey and the Cave of Wonders. Frank’s resume extends all the way back to the early sixties, with his most prominent credit being Fred Jones in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? in 1969…and is still Fred to this day. Since 2002, he’s also the voice of Hanna-Barbera’s beloved, gluttonous great dane, too!

23. Ever wonder why Hudson (Up‘s Ed Asner) in Gargoyles was the only one of the Manhattan clan to have a Scottish accent, despite them all being Scottish? According to showrunner Greg Weisman, network executives worried the main characters having non-American accents would be alienating to American kids. In fact, you can see the mindset hard at work in the nineties, with shows like 101 Dalmatians: The Series and Jungle Cubs where the characters suffer a severe de-anglicization. Someone should call Ludo studios and let them know, or that Bluey show will never catch on.

24. Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) was Wayne Allwine’s first time to shine as Mickey Mouse. However, Allwine also voiced the homeless man asking Scrooge for a penny at the opening scene, and both the grave digging weasels in the cemetery.

25. Danny Elfman has written countless scores and songs over his career. He even wrote the songs in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and was the singing voice of Jack Skellington, too.

26. If Little Brother, Mulan’s dog, seems vaguely familiar, what with those black eyes, rounded, jagged teeth, oval-shaped head, and even raspy bark, you’re not going crazy. Chris Sanders was the head of story on Mulan (1998), and his style was influential on several designs. He would later go on to create Lilo & Stitch (2002), even voicing the irascible blue alien. So yeah… that includes the barking, too.

27. We credit Walt as the first voice of Mickey Mouse, which lasted for about twenty years. But strictly speaking, he was also the first voice of Minnie, too. Steamboat Willie (1928) had him shouting, “Yoohoo!” and “Hey!” As well as the garbled chattering and laughter of the parrot.

28. With Marina Sirtis, Jonathon Frakes, Michael Dorn, and Brent Spiner as regulars on Gargoyles, a lot of fans noticed a fair amount of casting on the series favoring actors from Star Trek: The Next Generation, though this was initially unintentional. There were attempts to request Patrick Stewart, but his fees were too high. There was momentary talk to just have Sirtis and Frakes coax him into joining, but the idea was nixed for being unfair.

29. John Rhys-Davies is a beloved personality as Indiana Jones’ close friend and ally Sallah and the gruff Gimli in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. At Disney, he’s played fathers to both Aladdin (Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1997), and Mowgli (The Jungle Book 2 (2003).

30. John Ratzenberger was Pixar’s lucky charm for several years, voicing numerous side and tertiary characters like Hamm the piggy bank, Mack the truck, the Abominable Snnowman, P. T. Flea, and many more. At the end of Cars (2006), a mid-credits scene shows Mack at a drive-in watching Toy Car Story, A Bug’s Life, and Monster Trucks, Inc. In all three scenes, Ratzenberger’s characters appear (All in car form, of course), leading him to notice the use and reuse of the actor, asking “What kind of a cut-rate production is this?” It’s also worth noting for this cute homage to him, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, John Goodman, Billy Crystal, and Dave Foley all reprised their roles in single lines each for this quick joke.

31. Daisy Duck’s first appearance is recognized as Donna Duck in 1937’s Don Donald. In keeping with the internal logic consistent, she was voiced by Clarence Nash, just given a slightly higher pitched quacking voice. She became the Daisy we all know and love in 1940’s Mr. Duck Steps Out, but she still talked like her boyfriend. After three cartoons where she only had a cameo, her third true appearance was in Donald’s Crime (1945), where she was finally given a human-sounding voice.

32. Andrew Stanton, who directed Finding Nemo (2003) also voiced Crush the sea turtle and the seagulls. So yes, every “Mine!” is that of the movie’s director.

33. Maurice LaMarche seems to have a penchant for portraying villainous rodents. Since 1999, he’s sporadically voiced the revived character of Mortimer Mouse (A throwback to 1936’s Mickey’s Rival) and Mr. Big in Zootopia (2016). But LaMarche’s best-known character is Brain from the cartoon duo of Pinky & the Brain. LaMarche is also celebrated in the industry for his uncanny ability to do impressions of Orson Welles and Vincent Price. So if Disney ever decides to reboot The Great Mouse Detective (1986), they wouldn’t have to look too far for the perfect Ratigan.

34. His partner-in-crime, Pinky, is voiced by Rob Paulsen, another widely-acclaimed voice actor. Also the voice of Yakko Warner, Carl Wheezer in Jimmy Neutron, Raphael in 1987’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Donatello in the 2012 revival, he’s had numerous stops over at Disney. In The Adventures of the Gummi Bears, he was the artistic Gusto Gummi. In Darkwing Duck, the nefarious Steelbeak. In Goof Troop and A Goofy Movie (1995), Max’s pal P.J. In Lilo & Stitch: the Series, the sandwich-loving Experiment 625, AKA Reuben. In Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (2004), Troubador Turtle. In the DuckTales reboot, while he did not reprise his role of Steelbeak, he did play Gibbous, the agreeable moonlander who ends up working for Flintheart Glomgold.

35. Currently in the independent animation scene, Spindlehorse Studios is garnering a lot of attention thanks to Vivienne Medrano, creator of two adult animated projects, Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. They have enough clout to get performers for the latter show, such as Richard Horvitz (The Angry Beavers, Invader Zim, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy), Mara Wilson (Mrs. Doubtfire, Matilda), Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead), and even Ke$ha. In season two, episode one, “The Circus,” we meet the fathers of Blitzo and Stolas: Cash Buckzo and Paimon. Both are terrible fathers, but Paimon is suspiciously draped in a cloak, wearing black, with pointed shoulders, living in a palace. Both were played Jonathan Freeman…Jafar in Aladdin (1992)

36. Ming-Na Wen and Jodi Benson have one thing in common… Aside from being the voices of Disney princesses Mulan and Ariel. Both are the only original actors who had cameos in their respective live action remakes. Wen appears as “esteemed guest” near the film’s end, and Benson is the merchant who gives Ariel a fork. However, only James Earl Jones has the claim of actually reprising his role as Mufasa in The Lion King (2019).

37. Mae Questal was one of the early voices for Betty Boop back throughout the thirties. She reprised the role in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit when Eddie Valiant finds her as a cigarette girl at the Ink and Paint Club. You may even have seen her: her final role was as Aunt Bethany in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989).

38. Geoffrey Rush must’ve had a great 2003. In summer of that year, he kicked off his appearance in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise as Hector Barbossa, and voiced Nigel, the friendly pelican in Pixar’s Finding Nemo.

39. But then Idris Elba said, “Hold my Dole Whip.” Because his 2016 was even better. Starting Zootopia, he played Chief Bogo. Following that came the Jungle Book remake, where he flexed his intimidation game as Shere Khan. Later that summer, he appears in Finding Dory as Fluke, a sea lion who helps Marlin and Nemo find Dory… but not before telling Gerald to get off the rock.

40. Verna Felton had a long and illustrious career at Disney studios, voicing such memorable characters as Aunt Sarah, Flora, the Queen of Hearts, and the Fairy Godmother. Strangely, her Disney career was bookended by elephants specifically. She started in 1941’s Dumbo as Matriarch, the lead elephant who looks down on our hero. Her last roles were Eloise in the 1960 short Goliath II and Winnifred, Colonel Hathi’s wife in The Jungle Book (1967).

41. Before he became the elegant Captain Hook, Hans Conried made his debut with Disney in live action as the magic mirror in One Hour in Wonderland (1950). Another salaciously cruel cartoon villain of his is the fairly obscure 1977 featurette Halloween is Grinch Night, as – who else? – the Grinch!

42. Disney will officially tell you the only time Pluto ever spoke was in The Moose Hunt (1931), where he says, “Kiss me!” While he does say that, not only is the context super messed up, but those aren’t even his only words in the cartoon. He also says, “Mammy!”, a reference to Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer (1927) and a very racist one at that. The other thing he says is just sputtering “the moo- the moo- the moo -…the moose!” But what’s wrong with ‘Kiss me’? Mickey throws a stick for Pluto to fetch, and Mickey then confuses Pluto’s silhouette for a moose…so he shoots him! Pluto plays dead while Mickey sobs uncontrollably, until he begs Pluto to say something, so the dog sits up and says, “Kiss me!” So yeah…Disney, I’d keep this one tucked away next to Song of the South.

43. The DuckTales reboot was lousy with nods, cameos, and homages to the Disney Afternoon lineup. Both Jim Cummings and Bill Farmer returned to play their popular roles as Darkwing Duck and Goofy. One odd cameo came with the character Manny, the Headless Man-horse. An odd supernatural creature in the pilot, Manny was seen time and again up to the finale, where it was revealed he was a horseman of the apocalypse, and finally given a voice, supplied by Keith David. When his true power is unleashed, his giant bat wings pop out, and he bellows, “I live again!” as the Gargoyles overture plays. That’s right… Manny was their way of putting Goliath into the series, just in time for the show to end.

44. In the Phineas and Ferb episode, “Night of the Living Pharmacists,” the writers spoofed the zombie horror genre by having Doofenshmirtz clones wander around Danville, making more clones just by touching the citizens and turning them. George A. Romero, director of the 1968 film, cameos as a reporter named Don Adaded (Get it? “Dawn a’ de dead?”) who looks just like Romero. To top it off, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost also appeared as animated versions of their characters, Shaun and Ed, from the 2004 film Shaun of the Dead.

45. Why is Kaa (played by Scarlett Johansson) a female snake in The Jungle Book (2016)? Director Jon Favreau claimed it was because the 1967 movie was mostly cast with dudes. Darleen Carr (Shanti) only sings, Mowgli’s wolf mother, Raksha, never utters a sound, leaving only the aforementioned Verna Felton as Winnifred as a distinct female character. Talk about failing the Bechdel test!

46. Owen Wilson was the original voice of Pacha in The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), and even recorded several lines for it. However, this was in the original version of Kingdom of the Sun, where Kuzco (then named Manko) pulled a Prince and the Pauper and switched places with Wilson’s Pacha.

47. Rod Serling died in 1975, nearly twenty years before Walt Disney World’s The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror opened at Disney-MGM Studios. Mark Silverman is the attraction’s impeccable impressionist. To give you an idea how good he is, when Rod appears in the pre-show, it’s a green screened clip from the episode “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Rod originally turns says “Map of the United States,” but at the ride, the clip cuts away and he says “Maintenence service elevator”. Silverman’s work is so good you literally watched Rod speak and you wouldn’t have known the difference.

48. One of Tony Anselmo’s first credits as Donald Duck was in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The last time Mel Blanc played Daffy Duck, as well as a few other of his Looney Tunes characters, was in the same movie. Both men stood side by side while they recorded the dueling pianos scene.

49. Bruce Reitherman was the son of Wolfgang Reitherman, one of Walt’s legendary Nine Old Men, a skilled animator and a director of such films as The Jungle Book (1967), where Bruce starred as Mowgli, the mancub. While Bruce hasn’t done much acting since then, he would later go on to become a nature documentarian and wildlife photographer.

50. Mickey Mouse was completely off-limits to Francisco Angones and Matt Youngberg when working on DuckTales 2017, but they frequently pushed the envelope when it came to certain restrictions. In season two, Della and the kids find Donald stranded on a desert island – and in a memorable nod to Tom Hanks’ Castaway – with his only friend being a melon with a face carved on it. Because Chris Diamantopolous was already the voices of characters such as Drake Mallard and Storkules, it wasn’t hard to call him to use his Mickey Mouse voice for the melon, since he played Mickey in the Paul Rudish cartoons from 2013 to 2023. So it was as close to having Mickey on the show without actually having Mickey there.

51. Dolores Madrigal has an idiosyncratic tic of giving a soft squeak that punctuates a lot of her lines in Encanto (2021). Several theories online has cropped up that it’s a Colombian trait to communicate, that it has ties to when they were first colonized, or that it’s a way of saying “Oops, I shouldn’t have heard that”. But while those might have a grain of truth here or there, her voice actor Adassa has stated on her Tiktok that it was simply a distinctive trait to make her unique among the film’s large cast, so she spent roughly 15 minutes just making various squeaks.

52. Did you know Jackie Chan was in Mulan (1998)? Well… likely not the version you’ve seen. While Jurassic Park (1993) and Law and Order: SVU‘s B. D. Wong is the english voice of Shang, Chan was Shang in the Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, and Mainland Chinese dub. In addition, Chan also sang the fan-favorite song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” in all for languages, complete with music videos starring… well, himself!

53. Paul Frees, who is the Haunted Masion’s Ghost Host, the ghostly voice on Pirates of the Caribbean who warns, “Dead men tell no tales!”, and the original voice of Professor Ludwig Von Drake… was wounded in battle on Normandy on D-Day.

54. Bowling for Soup is the pop rock band that is known for their hit song “1985” in 2004, but they also performed the theme to Phineas and Ferb, and the band even appear as themselves in animated form in the episode “Phineas and Ferb’s Quantum Boogaloo”, where they sang the second chorus of the theme. On top of that, band frontman Jaret Reddick had also appeared in a handful of episodes as Danny, the lead singer of the in-universe band, Love Händel.

55. At the end of Aladdin (1992), the Genie wears a loud, yellow Hawaiian shirt and a Goofy hat. If you think this was just because Aladdin was a Disney movie, there’s actually more to it than that. In 1989, Disney-MGM Studios opened at Walt Disney World, and with it, the attraction The Magic of Disney Animation. The walk-through attraction allowed guests to explore a real animation studio after a pre-show starring the legendary journalist Walter Cronkite about the process. Co-hosting the show was a random guest he picked out, who was wearing a loud, yellow Hawaiian shirt and a Goofy hat: Robin Williams.

56. Lilo & Stitch (2002) director Chris Sanders recalled how Daveigh Chase had a very deadpan, off-beat sense of humor about her, which was helpful for the quirky Lilo Pelekai. But Daveigh might have infiltrated your nightmares, too. The same year, Daveigh starred in the American remake of The Ring as Samara Morgan. Heck, she bridged Japan and American twice in 2002 by starring as Chihiro in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. No wonder Stitch had his own series where he lived in Japan!

57. In 2014, an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse called “Mickey’s Pirate Adventure” aired; a special musical episode where the sensational six rescue Goofy’s grandpappy, Captain Goof-Beard. The celebrity they got to voice him in the kid’s show was then-88-year-old Disney legend Dick van Dyke. And yes… he sang, too.

58. Kevin McDonald is a Canadian comedian who gained notoriety in the sketch comedy s Kids in the Hall. In 2002, McDonald premiered in the cast of Lilo & Stitch as Agent Pleakley. The following year, on the series based on the Disney cartoon, in the episode “Fibber,” McDonald reunited with his peers Dave Foley (priest), Bruce McCulloch (Pixley), Mark McKinney (Bertley), and Scott Thompson (Pleakley’s mom), mostly cast as – who else? – Pleakley’s family.

59. Mr. ~~Weasley~~ Wesley in Home on the Range (2004) is a caricature of his voice actor, Steve Buscemi.

60. Pat Buttram has appeared in numerous projects over the years, but boomers might remember him best as Mr. Haney in Green Acres. The show’s co-star, Eva Gabor, would voice duch*ess in The AristoCats (1970) and Miss Bianca in The Rescuers (1977) and its 1990 sequel. Buttram appeared in both films as Napoleon the farm dog, and Luke, respectively. Buttram also appeared as Robin Hood‘s Sheriff of Nottingham, The Fox and the Hound’s Chief, a bullet in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and in his final film role, the attendant at Lester’s Possum Park in A Goofy Movie (1995), which premiered over a year after his passing.

61. Composer Howard Ashman was unsatisfied with how Paige O’Hara was singing the song “Something There” from Beauty and the Beast (1991). Because he was sick and was coaching her over a teleconference call, he asked the staff to tell O’Hara, “Tell her she’s Streisand!”. As a result, O’Hara placed a strong inflection on the second syllable on the word “alarming,” akin to Barbara Streisand.

62. The talking skull on Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride that warned guests of the dangers ahead was originally voiced by Xavier “X” Atencio. He was an imagineer who worked on the attraction and even penned the songs “Yo ho, yo ho, A Pirates Life for Me” as well as “Grim Grinning Ghosts” over at the Haunted Mansion.

63. Samuel E. Wright was the voice of Sebastian in The Little Mermaid (1989) as well as in the TV series, sequels, and video game projects. While it’s his highest-profile screen credit, he also was the original Mufasa in the Broadway production of The Lion King and even voiced the multi-ton, villainous iguanadon Kron in Dinosaur (2000)

64. The Jim Henson sitcom Dinosaurs was a beloved staple of ABC’s TGIF primetime television block. Many beloved puppeteers of the Jim Henson company such as Elmo’s Kevin Clash and Kermit’s Steve Whitmire were part of the regular ensemble, but character actors like Jason Alexander (Seinfeld) and Tim Curry played various one-shot characters. One surprising regular was Christopher Meloni: AKA Law and Order: SVU‘s detective Elliot Stabler, who played Spike, Robbie’s ankylosaurus friend and a rebellious, anti-establishment punk. Geez, and you thought Ice-T had quite the trajectory.

65. Sean Marshall starred in the 1978 animated featurette The Small One, arguably the most openly religious Christmas special Disney ever produced. Credited as simply “Boy”, the short (Directed by future Disney defector Don Bluth) features the boy bringing his elderly donkey, Small One, into town to sell, and (Spoilers) sells him to a man and his pregnant wife on their way to Bethlehem. Marshall gave up acting not long after, and he had already performed his highest-profile role already by starring in 1977’s Pete’s Dragon as the titular Pete.

66. In determining if Tom Hanks was the best fit for the toy cowboy doll in Toy Story (1995) animators synced up some test animation with dialogue from Turner and Hooch (1989)

67. Ron Perlman is credited as the voices of the Stabbington Brothers in Tangled (1950), who – while never named in the film – are unofficially named Sideburns and Patchy. However…have you noticed throughout the entire film, Patchy never speaks?

68. In The Incredibles (2004), when Mr. Incredible struggles to remember Buddy’s name, he blurts out “Brody”. This is a nod to Jason Lee’s character in Mallrats (1995), who voiced Syndrome.

69. In Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins (2000), the movie was intended as a full-length pilot to the TV show of the same name, which included having Patrick Warburton (Kronk from The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)) as Buzz Lightyear. However, after all the lines were recorded and the animation was completed, word came down from on high to swap Warburton with OG Buzz, Tim Allen. Unfortunately for Allen, this meant having to try to sync up his tone and affect to match the character onscreen, which clashed with Warburton’s more deadpan delivery. Nice work, pal.

70. Bill Thompson played a slew of memorable Disney characters over the years including the White Rabbit and the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland (1951), Mr. Smee in Peter Pan (1953), Jock in Lady and the Tramp (1955), King Hubert in Sleeping Beauty (1959), and Uncle Waldo in The AristoCats (1970). In shorts, he voiced park ranger J. Audubon Woodlore and Professor Owl (In those Pre-Disney Sing Along days) However, his most popular character outside of Disney is MGM’s Droopy.

71. Pixar director Brad Bird, who gave us The Incredibles (2004) and Ratatouille (2007), has had such a deep love and appreciation for Disney animation that in his directorial debut, 1999’s The Iron Giant (released by Warner Brothers), you can find two elderly railroad engineers, who are modeled after their voice performers, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Both were two of Walt’s remaining Nine Old Men and were renowned for their impeccable friendship. After transferring to Pixar, he did the same thing in The Incredibles. They are elderly gentlemen complimenting the heroes for doing it “Old school.”

72. The legendary stage actor Nigel Hawthorne has been in two Disney animated features, 14 years apart. In 1985, he performed as Fflewdurr Fflam, the flustered minstrel, in The Black Cauldron. And in Tarzan (1999), he joined the cast as professor Archimedes Q. Porter, Jane’s father.

73. Of the three actresses who voiced the three good fairies in Sleeping Beauty (1959), two of them had long-standing careers with Disney. We already talked about Flora, voiced by Verna Felton. Merriweather was voiced by Barbara Luddy, who voiced Lady (Lady and the Tramp (1955), Kanga in the original Winnie the Pooh shorts, and both Widow Rabbit and Little Sister in Robin Hood (1973). Barbara Jo Ellen’s only credits with Disney are the Scullery Maid in The Sword and the Stone (1963) and Goliath’s mother in Goliath II (1960).

74. In Pixar’s Cars (2006), Lightning McQueen is sponsored by Rust-Eze Bumper Ointment, with Dusty and Rusty as owners of the brand. They frequently quip “Don’t drive like my brother! Don’t drive like MY brother!”. They were played by real-life brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi, who cohosted a car repair show as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, on the NPR radio show Car Talk from 1977 to 2012. They even got to choose what cars they wanted to be in the movie. Though both characters reappeared in 2017’s Cars 3 , Tom passed away in 2014, thus, all of Rusty’s lines were unused archive recordings.

75. The reason Jonathan Groff’s character Kristoff makes a voice for Sven in Frozen (2013) is because the writers wanted the two to play off each other, but worried a talking animal in the movie was a touch too fanciful in the semi-grounded universe they established in Arendelle. And as we all know, talking animals have no place in Disney movies.

76. In Monsters, Inc. (2001), Sulley greets his colleague, Ted, a giant green monster who returns with a chicken cluck. According to director Pete Docter, the plan was to use the iconic Godzilla screech, but Toho refused to loan out the rights, so they purposely went in the opposite direction with a much less intimidating sound. In the credit’s outtakes, Ted is played by Toy Story‘s Rex, played the “inconceivably” hilarious Wallace Shawn.

77. Mickey’s Delayed Date (1947) marked the last time Minnie Mouse spoke in a cartoon, unless you wish to count her singing as part of an ensemble with Donald and Goofy in Pluto’s Christmas Tree (1952). Even with Wayne Allwine was freshly cast as Mickey, Clarence Nash was on his final performance as Donald, and Goofy was briefly voiced by Hal Smith, Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) still left Minnie silent, as she hadn’t had a proper voice actor in years. It wasn’t until 1987 with the TV special DTV Doggone Valentine Russi Taylor took her first crack at Minnie, and incidentally, was also the first time Bill Farmer took on the role of Goofy. Also incidentally, her new dialogue was dubbed over a clip of Mickey’s Delayed Date.

78. Lenny Weinrib was in 1971’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks as both King Leonidas and his Secretary Bird. A far more recognizable character of his is – love him or hate him – Scooby-Doo’s gutsy nephew, Scrappy-Dappy-Doo.

79. Peggy Lee was the co-composer of Lady and the Tramp‘s (1955) music, as well as the voices of Darling, Peggy, and Si and Am (So yes, if you find the cats distasteful, you can totally put all the blame on her, I suppose.) However, one of Lee’s first hits is 1952’s “Why Don’t You Do Right?”, which you may recognize as Jessica Rabbit’s number in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

80. J. Pat O’Malley was Disney’s go-to Brit, often doing multiple roles on one project. This kept him returning to the studio as Walt was a bit of an anglophile. Among his best-known roles are Cyril Proudbottom (The Wind in the Willows (1949)), the Tweedles, the Walrus, and the Carpenter (Alice in Wonderland (1951)), the Colonel and Jasper (101 Dalmatians (1961)), the pearly drummer (Mary Poppins (1964), Colonel Hathi and Buzzie the vulture (The Jungle Book (1967)), and Otto (Robin Hood (1973)).

4 Disney MusicControversies

Disney has given the public some of the greatest music in all of cinema, with some like “Chim Chim Cher-ee”, “When You Wish Upon a Star”, and “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” even getting acknowledged by the American Film Institute, and several more getting Academy Award wins and nominations. It doesn’t matter how much you despise “It’s a Small World” or “Let it Go”; the fact is there’s a handful of these tunes you love and you know it. Mountains of texts have been dedicated to analyzing how the genius of just Menken and Ashman and the Sherman Brothers made so many indelible songs that garnered such widespread praise and joy.

But of course, not every song is a winner. And as Disney closes in on their centennial celebration, they have to realize not every decision made was a good one or that some of them created issues downstream that were out of their control. I love exploring all facets of Disney, not to shame them, but to look at complicated topics to see how they came about and what their impact had: on Disney, on society, and beyond. Because this goes beyond just being songs for our kids.

1. “Arabian Nights”

Aladdin is a beloved classic of the early Renaissance of the nineties, showcasing spectacular animation, great characters, and, of course, its spellbinding soundtrack. It was the last work between the astoundingly phemomenal team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. The two worked closely on The Little Mermaid, but during Beauty and the Beast, Ashman contracted AIDS and his health declined rapidly. He sadly passed before Beauty and the Beast was released, but by then, he had already submitted a pitch for a movie based off the “1,001 Arabian Nights”‘ story of Aladdin, and hoped to use the Genie as a fun sort of Cab Calloway figure. He had already submitted several songs, three of which made it into the final film: “Arabian Nights,” “Friend Like Me,” and “Prince Ali.”

“Arabian Nights”, to refresh your memory, is the movie’s opening number, where a diminutive vendor plods through the desert on his camel, singing of the exotic aura of the Persian desert and its culture. Right away, it sets the tone and atmosphere, getting audiences intrigued with what mysteries lie in the dunes of Agrabah. Ashman even wrote several verses of it to bookend the multiple chapters of the movie, one of which was used to close out the saga’s trilogy at the end of Aladdin and the King of Thieves.

However, no matter how funny, entertaining, or engaging Aladdin was, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was unmoved. Founded in 1980, the organization works to mitigate racism against Americans who are from or descended from Arabian countries. This includes turning to pop culture depictions if they are seen as untoward to said marginalized group. Since Aladdin was well-advertised (Much to Robin Williams’ chagrin, might I add), they had their eye on it, and had some choice words with Disney. Among their primary complaints were the anglicization of Aladdin, Jasmine, and the Sultan, while the villain and other tertiary characters were not only more ethnic-looking, but also nastier, too. To top it off, they were especially upset at the song “Arabian Nights”, since a lyric sang “Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face/it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” As far as they were concerned, exaggerating the exotica with transgressive barbarism was only playing into white perceptions and only perpetuated a caricature of the peninsula as bloodthirsty and primitive. And it wasn’t funny.

Of course, Disney was hesitant about making any changes – It was one of Howard Ashman’s last contributions and he’d been dead for almost three years, and he was extremely well-regarded by his colleagues – but changing the lyrics just seemed like the best possible move, even though the earliest cassette and CD soundtrack releases already included said lyrics. As a result, it did end up getting redubbed to “Where it’s flat and immense and the heat is intense/it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” And all subsequent releases in theaters, home video, streaming, and soundtracks reflect the updated change.

It really comes down as a lesson in nuance when it comes to racist depictions. I’ve seen Mickey in Arabia from 1932, and it is overwhelmingly, uncomfortably, shockingly racist. By contrast, Aladdin is far less offensive, but it still falls prey to prejudiced behavior by playing up oversimplified caricatures. When those perceptions dehumanize and other marginalized groups, it can implicitly encourage hateful attitudes or worse, stochastic terrorism. A lot from some lyrics in a Disney cartoon? Sure. But the less Disney can do to play up negative stereotypes, the harder it becomes to normalize racism in our kids. I know it’s been an uphill battle for me and millennials like me to unlearn twenty-plus years of hateful prejudice under the guise of comedy. And I look forward to see how else we can grow and adapt and change.

2. The Sweatbox

Before I begin, let me elaborate about the title of this movie. The term “sweatbox” dates back to the studio on Hyperion Avenue, where most of the classic shorts and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were made, before Walt used the box office revenue to build a brand new studio lot. The Sweatbox was a small room under a staircase that was dark and poorly ventilated, but Walt used it to screen test animation. Because this stuffy, southern California closet was often full of guys, with zero fans or air conditioning, often in the summer, AND it was where the animators would go to have the head honcho appraise their work…it wasn’t that you were sweating bullets in there so much as you would have been sweating freaking cannonballs.

Anyway, most Disney fans are unfamiliar with Kingdom of the Sun: mostly because Disney never made and released it. It was Roger Allers’ next big project once he was fresh off the success of co-directing The Lion King. The story was basically The Prince and the Pauper with an Incan twist: Emperor Manko decides to trade places with the identical-looking llama herder Pacha. While Pacha falls in love with Manko’s fiancée, advisor Yzma turns Manko into a llama as part of her grander plan to destroy the sun, blaming it for her advanced age. (Yes, I’m sure you know EXACTLY where this is going, but please sit down and don’t get ahead of me, please!) Allers and his team went full steam ahead and put together numerous storyboards, concept art, test animation reels, and more, even getting the likes of Eartha Kitt as Yzma, David Spade as Manko, and Owen Wilson as Pacha to record the voices.

Another lesson Allers took was the lightning-in-a-bottle collaboration between singer/songwriter Sir Elton John and Disney on the soundtrack for The Lion King. In 1997, he hired 13-time Grammy Award singer Sting to pen and sing the film’s songs. But Sting was a package deal: his wife, Trudie Styler, is a film producer, director, and documentarian. She wanted to follow along and make a documentary on the process of making a Disney animated feature. Allers agreed, and work began.

Sting got to work right away writing music – six songs total – such as “Walk the Llama Llama,” a bouncy nonsense song about the fun attributes of the animal, “One Day She’ll Love Me,” a romantic ballad sung in duet as Pacha and Manko’s fiancée struggle to understand how they feel, and “Why Can’t a Human be More like a Rock?” A thoughtful dissection by a rock man named Huaca over humans’ fallibility. Once the songs, the storyboards, the concept art, and the test reels were done, they were sent to Peter Schneider and Thomas Schumacher, the head executives of Disney animation…and they had far too many complaints to salvage the project in any meaningful way. Allers took this arguably the hardest, resulting in him leaving the project, and being replaced by Mark Dindal, whose only directing credit so far was Warner Brothers’ Cats Don’t Dance. The film was in shambles, little was able to be saved, Sting was already on his next projects, a new director was in charge, and worse, the December 2000 release date was set in stone. Why? The McDonald’s Happy Meal promotional deal was in jeopardy and the restaurant corporation would impose heavy fines should the studio miss their deadline.

Sting was annoyed his effort on the music he wrote was completely scrapped. Annoyed a movie that was going to be a big, grand epic was reduced to a buddy comedy. Annoyed his plans post-movie were getting completely upended because the studio didn’t want to lose him. To boot, Sting was asked to write just two songs for the movie, now called The Emperor’s New Groove. “Perfect World” and “My Funny Friend and Me” were his final projects, the latter of which got an Oscar nomination. The CD soundtrack that was made available for public consumption included some of Sting’s earlier contributions, including “Walk the Llama Llama”, sung by the then-unknown group Rascal Flatts, and Yzma’s bombastic villain song, “Snuff Out the Light”.

But remember Trudie and her documentary? She finished it and captured it all. From the raw emotions to the fly-on-the-wall moments, the anxiety to the uncomfortable conversations, the candid interviews to playful energy, it was enough to compose a visceral feature she titled The Sweatbox. But because the film and footage was under Disney’s consent, when it was released to the Toronto Film Festival in 2002, it was edited by Disney. After all, unlike all the other “Behind-the-scenes” features Disney’s made over the years, it was arguably the most honest and not PR-friendly. Not detrimental or slanderous, mind you, it just shows that making an animated movie is not as whimsically effortless as they make it out to be. After a run in an LA theater for a “For Your Consideration” campaign and one more film festival in Orlando, the movie vanished off the face of the Earth until it was pirated and released online in 2012. The only other time it saw the light of day was a short clip that was part of The Emperor’s New Groove bonus features on the 2001 DVD.

To this day, Disney still owns the documentary and keeps it tucked deep in their proverbial vault, probably next to Song of the South. It’s doubtful it’ll ever be released with Disney’s blessing. And I doubt Sting would ever return to work for Mickey again now knowing how easily his time and efforts can be dismissed with just the say so of the right person.

3. “Proud of Your Boy”

I’ve talked before about how “Proud of Your Boy”, in my Top Ten Deleted Songs article, is in my top three favorite Disney songs of all time, and I stand by that. It’s a great song and it’s a damn shame it was removed from the film.

During the original drafts of Aladdin, much like in the original story, Aladdin was living with his mother, and was more of a scrappy teenager. Because he and his mom were poor, she had to do whatever she could to support her and her son. But Aladdin, being a teenager, was confident he could always find ways to improve their situation faster and better than whatever his mother set out to do. Though I’m unaware of any specific scenes, it’s heavily implied through various storyboards that his mother would do an errand, Aladdin would assure her he could do it and improve their income, she trusted him to do it for her, and it would blow up in his face, leaving him ashamed and her disappointed. This, in turn, would lead to Aladdin meeting Jafar in disguise, who would lead him to the Genie, and thus Aladdin would use the Genie’s unlimited wishes to improve their societal standing. Though the lesson was still that Aladdin had to be true to himself, it was more about how he had gotten too big for his britches with his sudden good luck and how he had yet to mature because of it.

“Proud of Your Boy” was written to have Aladdin having the genie of the ring (not the same character as the genie of lamp), and knowing its power will grant his mother everything she could ever want. But he is well aware of his failures and how often he’s failed her, despite his best efforts. For Aladdin, he’s screwed up so many times that he feels he has to make it up to her. What makes this song work so well is Aladdin understands his shortcomings, at least in a broad sense, and that he wants to do better and make her proud of him, hence the title. In the storyboard reel, it even ends with him slipping the ring on his sleeping mother’s finger and kissing her cheek while Abu sobs in the corner. I’d like to think we all go through a phase in our lives where all we want is our parents or loved ones to tell us they’re proud of us, because we do fail a lot growing up, whether by accident or by choice, and it can be crippling when we feel we let them down. They rely on us to demonstrate the good values they’ve taught us, and we can only hope to be the best people we can be. Sometimes we do fail and it feels like we’ve failed the world as a whole, and that anxiety and guilt manifests into a misery that feels impossible to overcome. So, I get it. I get feeling that way and how badly I want to do right by those who rely on me, yet feeling wholly inadequate to do so. That’s why it’s such a crying shame it was cut.

As you can tell, Aladdin’s mother didn’t make it to the final cut. To hear the directors tell it, as Princess Jasmine’s role expanded, the need to have Aladdin’s mother lessened. She ultimately became a cumbersome character in the overall narrative, and as Aladdin aged up, she was dropped altogether. It was by no means an easy decision, considering the staff loved the song and, for a while, considered even having Aladdin sing it to her in heaven. On top of that, it was yet another one of the late Howard Ashman’s songs. However, it was made as part of its Broadway soundtrack and has gained popularity since, helped by Clay Aiken for the movie’s 2004 DVD release.

Now, you’re probably wondering how any of this is controversial. It isn’t. At all. But, uh…ever heard of the Proud Boys?

I wish I were joking, but no. Gavin McInnes, the founder of the group, went to his daughter’s school music recital, where he heard it for the first time. While he hates the song for being “fake, humble, and self-serving”, he admitted he couldn’t get enough of it. But as far as he was concerned, the song was not about a child apologizing for messing up and promising to be a better person, but about apologizing for being a boy. Which, I gotta say, is bafflingly moronic. Aside from the fact that despite lyrically, you couldn’t really replace “boy” with “girl”, the song works with any gender. It has eff-all to do with whether or not Aladdin is a boy. But it does paint a larger picture when it comes to conservatism and their relationship with media: how prone they are to misinterpreting it, willfully or no.

In recent years, it’s become frighteningly common when a movie or TV show comes out and some conservative pundit screams in vitriolic outrage over it. Not just the usual “It’s woke, therefore it’s trash” drivel, but this bizarre pattern as if they are trying to wholly miss the point of something just to spark anger in others. I’ve heard suggestions that poor media literacy is considered part of the conservative mindset, and it does seem to be true. Transgender hatemonger Matt “Kiss my Ass” Walsh thinks Ariel should look skeletal and pale instead of like Halle Bailey. Failed screenwriter Ben Shapiro thinks Lil Nas X actually worships Satan, that “WAP”‘s playful depiction of female sexuality is medically unsound, and that not having zombies in the famous episode 3 of The Last of Us made it bad. Actor Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute from The Office) thought another episode of The Last of Us was an intentional move by Hollywood to vilify Christianity. So I guess it tracks that the founder of a far-right militia group that supports misogyny, fascism, white supremacy, and participated in the January 6th insurrection might also be vulnerable to misunderstanding a song to such an alarming degree. I guess there is a correlation after all.

4. “The Orange Bird Song”

For those who’ve been to Walt Disney World racks upon racks of merchandise featuring this adorable little cherub:

This little guy is the Orange Bird, and he’s much older than you might think from his 2012 debut. The fact is, he was created back in the late sixties when Walt Disney World was being built. See, in search of capital to help build the park, the Florida Citrus Commission – the organization responsible for promoting Florida’s orange economy – volunteered to sponsor both the Sunshine Tree Terrace juice bar and the Tropical Serenade attraction (WDW’s version of the Enchanted Tiki Room.), but with one caveat: they wanted their own mascot with which to cross-promote. Bob Moore and Don McLaughlin co-created the Orange Bird character while Bob and Dick Sherman created the theme song “The Orange Bird Song”.

The Orange Bird was a spirited little guy who loved promoting a healthy lifestyle (often by drinking lots and lots of sugar-laden orange juice, but hey, there are worse vices) and was unable to speak: instead his thoughts would form into a visible thought bubble for others to see. The only other person who spoke for him was Anita Bryant: a former Miss Oklahoma pageant winner, model, and singer who was chosen to sing the bird’s theme song. She, the bird, and the song starred in numerous national commercials and print ads starting in 1977, promoting orange juice, and Orange Bird even got his own walk-around character in Adventureland. If things were any rosier, our little friend would have become a blood orange.

Of course, it couldn’t last. A few years later, Bryant, whose biggest claim to fame so far was singing the Orange Bird jingle, got famous for another reason. She became one of the first politically motivated advocates for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that was growing in America at the time. She had been heavily influenced by her Christian upbringing in that hom*osexuality was akin to pedophilia, which – you guessed it – meant her platform was inflamed with “save the children” rhetoric She was one of the first to do so, long before our current political climate, and while the backlash wasn’t as strong as it is now, she did get a pie shoved in her face for it, once.

Even in the early eighties, neither the Florida Citrus Commission nor Disney were interested in being associated with Bryant. Because of her known ties to oranges and orange juice, gay bars stopped serving it in their drinks. If you wanted a screwdriver, for example, tough luck. You could get yourself an Anita Bryant co*cktail, though: vodka mixed with apple juice. By 1987, the contract was ending. Between the PR nightmare and the increasingly high cost for the sponsorship, the Commission was ready to part. Similarly, Disney had all but phased out the character by this point to avoid controversy.

So why did our little buddy fly home? Well, in 2004, Tokyo Disneyland (owned and operated not by Disney proper, but the Oriental Land Company does have access to just about anything they want) brought the character out for April 14th: Orange Day. The holiday is celebrated by couples giving each other oranges or orange-colored gifts…and let’s be honest, the Japanese populace loves cuteness. After all, characters like Chip and Dale, Stitch and his girlfriend Angel, and Duffy are all idolized over there, so our little avian guy exploded onto the scene. Eight years later, Disney in America tried again by making new merchandise with the Orange Bird, sans his song, and he’s become a beloved icon ever since.

And Bryant? Yeah, she kinda lost her fame as a singer and model, but she faced a bit of karmic justice. Her controversial nature alienated a lot of sponsors and backers, resulting in her losing pretty much her entire career. In 1980, she divorced her husband (A quick sidenote: she cited he was abusive, which, given he outspokenly blames gay people for their divorce, I’m inclined to believe, so I’ll leave one token of sympathy for her on that front.), which caused her to be shunned by her fundamentalist Christian groups, where she bemoaned how unfair it was to be hated by the church by making her own choices (HMM…YA DON’T SAY.), and in 2021, her granddaughter announced she was marrying the woman of her dreams. Since then, she’s stayed pretty well out of the spotlight. And if she’s happier there, I guess everyone came out a winner there.

Pretty wild stories, huh? If you know any others, I’d like to hear what you have to offer!

100 Disney character voice facts you may notknow!

What do you know about the voices of some of Disney’s most beloved animated stars? Let’s see what you know!

1. In The Great Mouse Detective (1986), when Basil and Olivia almost get seen by Basil’s upstairs neighbor, one Sherlock Holmes, we hear him and Watson conversing. It took some time and legal dealing, but that is the voice of the OG Sherlock of cinema, Basil Rathbone. Basil already had another Disney animation screen credit as the narrator for The Wind in the Willows (1949).

2. We all love Kristen Bell as the playful yet pure-hearted princess Anna from Frozen (2013). However, she also has two whole words in Zootopia (2016) …as Priscilla. (“Yes…Flash?”)

3. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) (Distributed by United Artists) stars some of cinema’s greatest comedians, but Disney fans should keep an eye out for Stan Freberg (The beaver in Lady and the Tramp), Don Knotts (Mayor Turkey Lurkey in Chicken Little), Buddy Hackett (Scuttle from The Little Mermaid), Mickey Rooney (Tod from The Fox and the Hound), Andy Devine (Friar Tuck from Robin Hood), Nicodemus Stewart (Br’er Bear from Song of the South), Terry-Thomas (Sir Hiss from Robin Hood), and Sterling Holloway (Winnie the Pooh, among many others).

4. John Cleese was approached to play Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast (1991), but turned it down in favor of playing Cat R. Waul in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991).

5. Sir Patrick Stewart cites turning down the role of Jafar in Aladdin (1992) as one of his biggest career regrets, as he had obligations for Star Trek: The Next Generation at the time.

6. Ed Wynn was unable to recreate the performance he did on a soundstage for the animators. Instead of using any soundbooth recordings, we can hear his lines as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland (1951) has a slight reverb.

7. Jeremy Irons blew out his vocal chords singing “Be Prepared” in The Lion King (1994) Jim Cummings, already voicing Ed the hyena, took over. Irons’ last line is “YOU WON’T GET A SNIFF OUT OF ME!”, and Cummings’ first is “Be prepared for the coup of the century”.

8. Ben Wright had voiced Roger Radcliffe in 101 Dalmatians (1961) and Rama, Mowgli’s wolf father in The Jungle Book (1967). However, directors had no idea who he was when he was hired as Grimsby in The Little Mermaid (1989) and had to tell them.

9. Though Sterling Holloway didn’t make his big debut with Disney until Dumbo (1941), a note by Walt Disney shows even during the development of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) he had his name next to Sleepy, indicating he knew of him and wanted to hire him even back then. However, the role instead went to Pinto Colvig, who also voiced Grumpy.

10. Rosie O’Donnell was happy to voice Terk in Tarzan (1999), but only under one condition: she wanted her own song. As luck would have it, Phil Collins already wrote “Trashin’ the Camp” for her.

11. There are numerous traditions in staging Peter Pan. Like the crocodile played by offstage ticking or Tinker Bell played by a spotlight. Obviously, neither of these were translated over to the 1953 Disney adaptation. But one that WAS kept was casting Hans Conried as both Mr. Darling and Captain Hook.

12. Chris Sanders, co-writer and co-director of Lilo and Stitch (2002) used to use his Stitch voice to call coworkers and antagonize them before it was used in the film.

13. We know Stan “The Man” Lee had cameos in virtually every Marvel film right up through Avengers: Endgame (2019). But Stan not only had a voiceless cameo in Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018), but since Big Hero 6 (2014) was a Marvel property too, he makes an appearance – voice and all – as Fred’s dad in a post-credit scene. Stan even reprised the role in the subsequent TV series.

14. The primary reason Goofy starred in his own series of “How-To” cartoons is because his original voice actor, story man Pinto Colvig, left the Disney studio in 1937, and the studio never found a good enough replacement. He would return in the forties and continued to voice Goofy until his passing in 1967.

15. Kathryn Beaumont has her legacy secured as both Alice from Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Wendy Darling in Peter Pan (1953). But she wouldn’t let age stop her from reprising her role as Alice in 2002’s Kingdom Hearts.

16. Lucille LaVerne provided the voice for the Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), including after her transformation into the old hag. All she had to do was take out her false teeth.

17. Mel Blanc, the legendary man known for voicing most all of the Looney Tunes, has only three credits with Disney. One is a parrot and Uncle Orville on the Carousel of Progress (“No privacy at all around this place!”). The other is in Pinocchio (1940) as Gideon. Several lines were written for the character until it was decided to try and make Gideon popular like Dopey, hence his silence. All we hear of it now is a single hiccup. Interestingly, one of the last times Blanc ever voiced Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety, and Sylvester was in his third Disney credit, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), which was one of his last projects before his death in 1990.

18. In Enchanted (2007), a news reporter reporting on the incident in the pizza restaurant signs off as Mary Ilene Caselotti. This is an homage to Mary Costa (The voice of Aurora), Ilene Woods (The voice of Cinderella), and Adrianna Caselotti (The voice of Snow White).

19. Bob Peterson, a Pixar story man and the voice of several characters for the studio (Such as Mr. Ray in Finding Nemo (2003) and Roz in Monsters, Inc. (2001)), was inspired by his time as a camp counselor when a child ran up to him and said “I just met you and I love you!”. He later used this greeting for Dug the dog in Up (2009)

20. Are you a Seinfeld fan? Patton Oswalt (Remy in Ratatouille) is a video rental clerk in “The Couch”. Sarah Silverman (Vanellope in Wreck-it Ralph) appeared in “The Money” as Kramer’s girlfriend, Emily. James Hong (Chi Fu in Mulan) is the seating host in “The Chinese Restaurant”. Ernie Sabella (Pumbaa in The Lion King) is the naked guy in “The Subway”. Lee Arenberg (Pintel in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise) is in “The Parking Space”. Bette Midler (Georgette in Oliver & Company) played herself in “The Understudy”. Brad Garrett (Gusteau in Ratatouille, Hook hand in Tangled, among others) played Tony, Jerry’s mechanic in “The Bottle Deposit”. Patrick Warburton (Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove) plays Elaine’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Puddy. Jerry Stiller (Uncle Max in The Lion King 1 1/2) played Frank Costanza. Estelle Harris (Mrs. Potato Head in the Toy Story franchise) is Estelle Costanza. Wayne Knight (Tantor in Tarzan, Zurg in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command) was Newman. Michael Richards appeared as a caveman in Epcot’s Universe of Energy (1996-2017). Jason Alexander played Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and Abis Mal in the Aladdin television series. Julia Louis-Dreyfus appeared in A Bug’s Life (1998) and Onward (2020) as well as MCU’s Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. But you know who has never appeared in a Disney production? Jerry Seinfeld.

21. Song of the South (1946) gets a lot of flak for its racist depictions, and it’s not unwarranted. Regardless, James Baskett pulled his weight as not just Uncle Remus, but also the voice of Br’er Fox, and when Johnny Lee was away on a USO Tour, he voiced Br’er Rabbit in the “Laughin’ Place” segment, too. The man earned his honorary Oscar, but it’s no less cringey to know before this movie… he played a crow in Dumbo (1941)

22. In Aladdin (1992), where the vendor in the opening tries to sell you his wares, it was a complete improv session for Robin Williams (Originally, the movie ended to reveal the vendor was really the Genie in human guise). Given a box of props, he went nuts with the materials given, in true Robin fashion. Animator Eric Goldberg recalled when he pulled out a bra and sold it as ” a double yamulkah” and “a double slingshot”, and how it wasn’t allowed to be in the movie, despite their best efforts.

23. The Producers (2005) is a beloved Mel Brooks production, starring Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane. Both men headlined in The Lion King (1994) as adult Simba and Timon, respectively. Wouldn’t it be cool if Ernie Sabella (Pumbaa) was there, too? Actually, he was! As a bartender! Too bad his scene was cut in the theatrical version.

24. Ever since Figment was returned to Epcot’s Journey Into Your Imagination in 2002, he’s been voiced by Dave Goelz, best known as the puppeteer and voice of The Muppet’s Great Gonzo (In the 1983 iteration, Figment was voiced by comedian Billy Barty). However, he’s not the only Muppet performer to have done a character voice for Disney. Frank Oz (Yoda, Miss Piggy, Grover, Fozzie, Bert, and many more) played Funguss, Randall’s assistant in Monsters, Inc. (2001)

25. There’s only been a few times where the voice actors portray their animated counterparts apart from their animated appearances. One of the first is Kathryn Beaumont, who played Alice on television a few times, including 1950’s One Hour in Wonderland (Though if you want, you can count Sterling Holloway wearing a bow tie as the Cheshire Cat on The Fred Waring Show, too!). Scott Weinger famously wore Aladdin’s duds in the episode of Full House where the Tanner family goes to Walt Disney World. His opponent, Jonathan Freeman, the voice of Jafar, originated the role on Broadway when the show opened in 2014. And if that Moana live action remake goes through, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (Maui) and Auli’i Cravalho (Moana) will join the ranks.

26. In Zootopia (2016), a panicked pig shopkeeper alerts Judy that Duke Weaselton just stole a bunch of flower bulbs. Hopps was voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, and the pig is voiced by Josh Dallas; both of whom at the time were co-starring on ABC’s Once Upon a Time when the movie came out as Snow White/Mary Margaret and Prince Charming/David Nolan.

27. On ABC’s Home Improvement, an episode called “I was a Teenage Taylor” provided a particularly snarky meta gag for those in the know. On Halloween, Randy (Jonathon Taylor Thomas) gives a kid in a spaceman costume one piece of candy, and a kid dressed as a lion seven. JTT played young Simba in The Lion King (1994), and his dad, played by Tim Allen, was Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story (1995)

28. Three Disney princesses cameo in Enchanted (2007). Jodi Benson (Ariel) plays Sam, Robert’s secretary. Second is when Nathaniel catches a soap opera, the woman is played by Paige O’Hara, who played Belle in Beauty and the Beast (1991). Lastly, when Prince Edward stumbles onto an apartment where a pregnant woman with three kids grumbles, “You’re too late,” the actress is Judy Kuhn, the singing voice of Pocahontas.

29. When Baloo tickles King Louie’s armpits to get him to drop his crumbling temple in The Jungle Book (1967), that’s not Louis Prima laughing. It’s a reused track of Br’er Rabbit’s laughter from Song of the South (1946). Specifically, when Br’er Bear shoves the beehive onto Br’er Fox’s head.

30. Stephanie Beatriz was nine months pregnant while belting out her powerful number “Waiting on a Miracle” in Encanto (2021).

31. Idina Menzel already made a name for herself on Broadway in Rent and Wicked, thanks to her renowned voice. When she transitioned to film, she wanted to be sure she could flex her acting chops first and foremost. Thus, one of her first onscreen roles was Nancy Tremaine in Enchanted (2007), where, despite it being a musical, she didn’t sing. And as we all know, she never sang for Disney ever.

32. The famous Goofy holler was originally from 1941’s The Art of Skiing (Pronounced Shee-ing). Hannes Schroll was a professional yodeler who provided the alpine ambiance to the short, as well as yes, emphasizing Goofy’s tumbles and plummets.

33. The barmaid who owns the saloon in Home on the Range (2004) is voiced by former governor of Texas Ann Richards (1991-1996). She admitted it was mostly to impress the grandkids.

34. The face of Madame Leota on the Haunted Mansion is that of imagineer Leota Toombs. However, that isn’t her voice. It was too high pitched and feminine, leaving her voice to be dubbed over by a woman known for scaring others: Eleanor Audley. Who’s she? Oh, no one… just the voice of Lady Tremaine, Cinderella’s stepmother, and Sleeping Beauty‘s Maleficent.

35. Billy Bletcher was the original voice of Pete, Mickey’s nemesis, as well as the Big Bad Wolf in the Three Little Pigs (1933). Pinto Colvig would co-star as the Practical Pig and – as noted earlier – was the original voice of Goofy, who’d go up against Pete in Goof Troop. Another connection between the two? Both were cast in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz (1939) as Munchkin background voices.

36. Jim Cummings has provided the voice of at least one named character in virtually every show the Disney Afternoon. The Adventures of the Gummi Bears (Zummi Gummi), DuckTales (El Capitan), Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers (Monterey Jack, Fat Cat, and Professor Nimnul), Darkwing Duck (Drake Mallard/Darkwing Duck and NegaDuck), TaleSpin (Don Karnage and Louie), Goof Troop (Pete) Bonkers (Bonkers and Lucky Piquel), Aladdin: The Series (Rasoul), Gargoyles (Dingo), The Schnooku*ms and Meat Funny Cartoon Show (Narrator), Timon & Pumbaa (Ed the Hyena), Quack Pack (Captain Dreadnot), Mighty Ducks (Commander Xenon), and 101 Dalmatians: The Series (The Colonel). Only the final show, Hercules: The Animated Series, lists Jim Cummings (According to IMDB) in three episodes, but characters without names. But hey…at least he was Nessuss the centaur in the 1997 film!

37. If I had a nickel for every time there was a late-sixties Disney cartoon directed by Woolie Reitherman about a boy and his bear bestie hanging around a forest starring Bruce Reitherman, Sterling Holloway, Sebastian Cabot, and Clint Howard, singing Sherman brothers songs, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right? (Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966) and The Jungle Book (1967); Reitherman was Mowgli and Christopher Robin, Holloway was Pooh and Kaa, Cabot was the Narrator and Bagheera, and Clint Howard was Roo and Hathi Jr.)

38. Vin Deisel is the only voice actor to have provided the language dubbing of his own character in international releases. Apparently, whether it’s “Yo soy Groot,” “Je suis Groot,” or “I am Groot,” it’s pretty easy to do the translations.

39. It may not surprise you that the lead crow in Dumbo (1941) – whose name is Jim, by the way. Yes, really – is voiced by a white man. What you may not know is his actor was Cliff Edwards… the voice of Jiminy Cricket.

40. Daws Butler is the legendary voice guy from Hanna-Barbera, as the original voice actor for Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, Elroy Jetson, Hokey Wolf, Wally Gator, and several others. His only credit at Disney is in Mary Poppins (1964) as a turtle and a penguin.

41. Ever wonder why an alligator in The Princess and the Frog (2009) seems to eagerly want to eat Naveen “Basted, battered, and fried”? Probably because that’s celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, who specializes in Cajun cuisine. If you doubt me, listen closely as he shouts his signature catchphrase, “Bam!” as he chomps after the frog prince.

42. Alan Tudyk (Dodgeball, Firefly) has popped up in several Disney projects in the past decade. In Frozen (2013), he played the Duke of Weselton, where everyone keeps calling it “Weaseltown” as a running gag. In Zootopia (2016), his character’s name is Duke Weaselton…and Judy Hopps at one point calls him Duke Weselton.

43. Disney tried to get the Beatles – John, Paul, George, and Ringo – into the studio to play the vultures in The Jungle Book (1967), but Lennon fiercely rejected the invite and suggested Disney go hire Elvis instead. Instead, J. Pat O’Malley, already the voice of Colonel Hathi, voiced Buzzie, the bald vulture. Chad Stuart (Flaps, the blond vulture) was part of a British invasion duo, Chad & Jeremy. Lord Tim Hudson (Dizzy, the shaggy vulture) was a DJ and band manager, and later on voiced the English Cat in Scat Cat’s group in The AristoCats (1970). And Digby Wolfe (Ziggy, the redheaded vulture) was a British comedian who appeared on several shows, including The Monkees. Close…enough…?

44. In the Phineas and Ferb episode “The Curse of Candace”, Ferb’s father is watching a horror movie when he off-handedly asks “Where are all the rock n’ roll dance numbers?” Lawrence Fletcher here was voiced by Richard O’Brien…creator of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and actor for Riff Raff.

45. To promote the live action 2019 Kim Possible movie on Disney Channel and announce the newly casted main characters, a a short dropped on YouTube where the original show’s creators, Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, are holding auditions for Kim and Ron. Christy Carlson Romano and Will Friedle, the animated characters’ voice actors, try to audition for the roles, but fail miserably due to the fact they are far too old to play the teenaged heroes. Only after this hammy bit do the showrunners reveal the actors that have already been hired to play Kim and Ron.

46. Donny Osmond literally punched himself in the stomach in the line, “But you can BET before we’re through” in “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” in Mulan (1998).

47. In the House of Mouse episode “King Larry Swings in”, you might have been scratching your head over “King Louie’s twin brother”, since aside from his voice, Larry is fundamentally identical to the King of the Swingers. This is because in the nineties, Louis Prima’s widow, Gia Prima, sued Disney over unpaid royalties in use of the character, even when her late husband wasn’t the one behind the microphone (Like in TaleSpin when Jim Cummings did the role.) The lawsuit settled, but Disney became so paranoid about any use of King Louie that in The Jungle Book 2 (2003) he’s absent altogether, and with King Larry, it’s Cummings doing a pseudo-Phil Hartman impression.

48. Changing Mickey Mouse’s performer has been a pretty unceremonious tradition. Walt visited sound effects engineer Jimmy MacDonald and asked if he could talk like Mickey. When he did his impression, Walt told his staff to call Jimmy because he was too busy (And…you know, probably the smoking thing made it hard, too.) Wayne Allwine worked under MacDonald and filled in for him when he failed to show up for a session, after which Allwine was told “Kid, join the actor’s guild. They’re gonna use you.” Bret Iwan auditioned for the role while Allwine was dying from diabetes, leaving little opportunity for celebration.

49. Even before joining the Disney family, the Simpsons cast have had turns on Disney’s payroll. Yeardley Smith (Lisa) has the least time, appearing only two episodes of Disney Channel’s Phil of the Future. Harry Shearer was a dog announcer in Chicken Little (2005). Kelsey Grammer (Sideshow Bob) was Stinky Pete in Toy Story 2 (1999) Russi Taylor and Tress Macnielle have both been longtime performers for tertiary characters, but are renowned to Disney fans as Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck, respectively. Julie Kavner (Marge) played Timon’s mother in The Lion King 1 1/2 (2004). Nancy Cartwright (Bart) was Rufus the naked mole rat in Kim Possible and Todd in The Replacements. Dan Castellaneta (Homer) was the controversial replacement for the Genie in the Aladdin TV series. Hank Azaria seems to avoided Mickey’s reach…though he voiced Goofy in 2020’s Disney+ special, Plusaversary. And ever since Disney bought 21st Century Fox, why not count Bartok from Anastasia (1999), too?

50. Megan Mulally turned down the role of Dory in Finding Nemo (2003) when she was asked to do the role in the voice she used for her character Karen for Will & Grace.

51. In 2013, Disney began producing the Paul Rudish Mickey Mouse shorts. All the standard voice actors play their respective characters (Russi Taylor as Minnie and Alan Young as Scrooge have both since passed away.) The only one who got a brand new performer right from the get-go is Mickey, voiced by Canadian comedian Chris Diamantopoulos, instead of official voice Bret Iwan. The reasoning was supposedly they wanted someone who sounded more like Walt’s version of Mickey since they were harkening back to the original design aesthetic.

52. When The Incredibles (2004) was released on DVD, it came with a short called The Adventures of Mr. Incredible. The short was made to look like a 60’s cheaply-animated special where Mr. Incredible, Frozone, and a rabbit named Mr. Skipperdoo stopped the villainess Lady Light bug. A commentary track was provided where Craig T. Nelson (Mr. Incredible) and Samuel L. Jackson (Frozone) reprised their roles as they discussed this supposed bit of lost media. Among other topics they discuss: why Frozone talks like a beatnik, why there’s a rabbit, why Frozone looks like a white guy, and why the animation looks so weird.

53. During the eighties and nineties, Paul Winchell’s humanitarian efforts and failing health often got in the way of his recording sessions for Tigger, leaving Pooh actor Jim Cummings to take over every so often. During his last session with Winchell, Cummings asked what it all meant, to which he replied “It means I want you to take care of my little buddy”. Paul’s last time voicing Tigger is on Walt Disney World’s Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ride, which opened in 1999.

54. Jonathon Taylor Thomas needed help method acting for Simba during the wildebeest stampede in The Lion King (1994). He was advised to imagine his mom fell off her chair across the room. Of course, at the cue, young JTT shouted “MOM!”

55. Donnie Dunagan was a major in the US marine corps for both Korea and Vietnam. He kept close to the vest one very understandable secret from his fellow officers…that he voiced young Bambi.

56. Don’t go up to Tony Anselmo with your Donald Duck impression, no matter how good you think it is. Anselmo worked closely with OG Donald of fifty-plus years, Clarence “Ducky” Nash, and he handed the role to Anselmo literally on his deathbed. Today, Anselmo is fiercely protective of Donald’s integrity, so I’m guessing yes, he has already seen the YouTube video of the Full Metal Jacket clip you’re thinking of and he would rather you not bring it up, ever.

57. The team behind Toy Story 3 (2010) humored the idea of getting back the kid who played Andy, John Morris, in the first film to play him again. When they called, they got his voice mail…and were delighted he sounded exactly like how they wanted him to sound for the movie. Not to be outdone, Erik von Detten, who played Sid in the original film, also returns. Notice his signature skull t-shirt on the garbage man jamming out to some awesome tunes.

58. Jonathan “Candy” Candido was a radio performer who got his start in films as the grumpy apple tree in The Wizard of Oz (1939). His shtick was his deep, guttural, four-octave voice that got Walt’s attention. You may recognize him best as the Indian chief in Peter Pan (1953). But he was also a pig-faced goon in Sleeping Beauty (1959), the crocodile captain in Robin Hood (1973), and Fidget the bat in The Great Mouse Detective (1986), said to be his personal favorite.

59. Tex Ritter was a singing cowboy from the 1930s through the 1960s, with one of his songs being “Blood on the Saddle.” He was tasked by Disney to reprise that very song in an off-key performance that would be used for Big Al in Walt Disney World’s Country Bear Jamboree. If his last name looks familiar, his son is Three’s Company actor, the late John Ritter. Tex’s grandson and John’s son is Jason Ritter: Dipper Pine from Disney Channel’s Gravity Falls.

60. Donal Gibson played John Smith in Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998). You might be more familiar with his older brother Mel, who was John Smith in the original 1995 film.

61. Angus McLaine, the director of Lightyear (2022), explained the reason Tim Allen was not cast as the space ranger that time around was because Lightyear was intended to be the movie Andy would have seen before he got the toy. Movies often hire their A-list actors, another for their Saturday morning cartoon versions, and yet another for merchandise. Though IRL, we got the toy first (Tim Allen in the Toy Story films), the cartoon second (Patrick Warburton in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command), and the movie last (Chris Evans in Lightyear).

62. Shere Khan’s voice actor, George Sanders, was asked if he wanted a drawing of his character with Walt’s signature on it. The actor, a friend of Walt’s, bemused, “How utterly absurd. Why would I want his signature? He might want mine.”

63. Ellen Degeneres was inspired by a neighbor who used to listen to whale sounds to relax, while she thought they were incredibly annoying. This is what inspired her “whale speak” performance in Finding Nemo (2003)

64. Alicia Keyes, Jennifer Hudson, Tyra Banks, even Beyoncé herself all expressed interest in coveting the role of Tiana in The Princess and the Frog (2009), but directors John Musker and Ron Clements preferred hiring a lesser-name star so viewers didn’t go into the movie thinking about the actress over the character.

65. Ever wonder why Giselle from Enchanted (2007) is not an official Disney princess? Giselle’s design is based off her actress, Amy Adams, since her live action version is also her animated counterpart. Unfortunately, this meant having to secure lifelong rights to Adams’ likeness, which was a legal and expensive effort. Thus, Giselle never even got the invite.

66. Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella were originally hired to play hyenas in The Lion King (1994).

67. Robin Williams was hired minimum SAG pay to play the Genie in Aladdin (1992) since animated films weren’t hugely successful at the box office at the time, so he decided to do it mostly for his kids. His one caveat was to not have the Genie in any marketing materials, mostly so it wouldn’t conflict with friend Barry Levinson’s Toys, which was releasing around the same time, but he was also morally against the concept. However, his comedy was so good that then-studio head Katzenberg kept trying to find ways to work around the stipulations, like interfering with production on Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992) and twisting the interpretation of “Genie on no more than 25% of the poster” clause (by having the Genie take up 25% and everyone else be much smaller.) Williams even hated his Golden Globe win, seeing it as more advertising for a project that disrespected his wishes and overshadowed Toys. While he came back for Genie a few more times before his 2014 death (like in 1997’s Aladdin and the King of Thieves), his will states no unused recordings from Aladdin can be used without permission for 25 years after his passing.

68. In 2018’s Christopher Robin, Bridesmaid‘s Chris O’Dowd was hired to play Tigger, since everyone besides Pooh was recast for the film. However, test audiences disliked it so much that Jim Cummings came in to redub the dialogue instead.

69. Alan Tudyk has been in every animated Disney release since Wreck-it Ralph (2012). However, because more films have been taking place in different parts of the world, and Alan is white, he’s been cast mostly as birds. Like Hei Hei in Moana (2016), a toucan in Encanto (2021), and Iago in Aladdin (2019). Hey… a paycheck’s a paycheck

70. Tom Hanks will forever go down in cinema history as Woody from the Toy Story films, but the Nicest Guy in Hollywood is also one of the busiest and most expensive. For projects like video games, toys, promotional materials, and other projects where Woody has to speak, his brother Jim Hanks often gets the call from Pixar.

71. Charles Fleischer is a true method actor. He had to be on set and just out of camera view to speak his lines as Roger in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) while Bob Hoskins (Eddie Valiant), Christopher Lloyd (Judge Doom), Joanna Cassidy (Dolores) and others had to speak rubber dolls or an empty void. Unlike Kathleen Turner (Jessica Rabbit) and Lou Hirsch (Baby Herman), Fleischer dressed in a Roger Rabbit costume when he did so.

72. Peter Cullen has been a prominent voice actor for decades, and voiced Winnie the Pooh’s Eeyore, mostly during the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh series. However, Peter Cullen’s other most beloved character, in both the original animated series from the eighties through the current film franchise…is Optimus Prime.

73. Sterling Holloway’s first character for Disney is Mr. Stork in Dumbo (1941), which is also a caricature of his likeness.

74. Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor, the-then voices of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, were married in 1991 until Wayne’s passing in 2009.

75. In a 2018 episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver ripped Venezualan dictator Nicolás Maduro a new one over his corruptive practices. According to their culture, the dead become birds. Thus, Venezualan-born actor Wilmer Vanderrama appears in a parrot costume pretending to be the deceased spirit of Hugo Chavez to pass on advice about restarting the old social welfare programs. Valderrama snarkily calls Oliver “Zazu,” but not just because Oliver always refers to himself looking like a bird. At the time, he had already recorded his lines as Zazu for the yet-to-be-released 2019 The Lion King remake. However, Valderrama shouldn’t talk… he was Disney Junior’s Handy Manny and later, Mirabel’s father, Augustine, in Encanto (2021).

76. The baby who was eventually cast to say Big Baby’s one line (“Mama…?”) in Toy Story 3 was named Woody. Director Lee Unkrich was unaware of this until after the baby recorded his line.

77. Before Meeko the raccoon and Flit the hummingbird, there was a turkey named Redfeather. After a string of memorable comic sidekicks, Disney looked to further the tradition in Pocahontas (1995) by having the animals talk. In Redfeather’s case, they were looking to have the late, great John Candy in the role. When Redfeather was switched out, a more realistic tone of the movie was opted for, leaving Meeko, Flit, and Ratcliffe’s pug Percy silent. It would have been Candy’s second animated Disney character after Wilbur the albatross in The Rescuers Down Under (1990).

78. The legendary George C. Scott (Patton, Dr. Strangelove) was cast as two Disney villains in 1990. One was Percival C. McLeach in The Rescuers Down Under, and the other was Smoke from Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue. The latter is not a Disney movie per se, but it was released under their distribution label, and featured Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Baby Kermit, Baby Piggy, and Baby Gonzo alongside Alf, the Smurfs, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Slimer, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Michelangelo, and Garfield. The bizarre crossover is an anti-drug PSA for kids.

79. Louis Prima loved voicing King Louie in The Jungle Book (1967) so much he headlined his own record called Let’s “Hear” it for Robin Hood, where King Louie – now a denizen of Sherwood Forest and a chum of Robin himself – recaps the movie and sings the 1973 film’s songs. He even came close to being the subject of Bernard and Bianca’s rescue operation an the original draft of The Rescuers (1977) as a polar bear – also named Louis – who wanted to leave the zoo. Story problems and plagued this plot and Prima had a debilitating heart attack, which resulted in it being cut. All that remains of that version is a brief segment where Bernard tries to take a shortcut through the zoo before being chased out by a snarling lion.

Ferngully: The Last Rainforest(1992)

One thing that’s difficult to describe to the younger generations about the nineties in a “You just kinda had to be there” way is the animation boom. Unless you were an animator-run studio or your property was highly lucrative, animated feature films just weren’t generally allowed to happen throughout the seventies and eighties. Even Disney constantly toyed with the idea of shutting down the animation department due to the prohibitively high costs and increasingly diminishing returns. But after the releases of Don Bluth’s Secret of Nimh, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, and All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Disney’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid, suddenly studio executives couldn’t scramble fast enough to get cartoons back into theaters. No more cheap productions based on toyetic television cartoons: it was time for well-animated musicals to be part of the cinematic experience again.

Thanks to Disney’s decades-long branding power and resurgence with the Renaissance, it was no surprise that the average Joe thought every animated movie was a Disney movie. For the rest of the decade, most consumers couldn’t tell the difference between Beauty and the Beast, The Pebble and the Penguin, Quest for Camelot, Balto, Thumbelina, We’re Back! A Dinosaur Story, A Goofy Movie, Anastasia, and – yes – Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. So why is Ferngully here when it was not released by Disney, and was, in fact, openly attacked by them? Simple: it was produced by 20th Century Fox. Go figure.

How did this one do? Why don’t we head to the land down under and leave only footprints and take only memories!

The plot: In one of the last Australian rainforests, Ferngully, fairies reside in solitude with nature, believing humans to be extinct. One spirited fairy, Crysta (Samantha Mathis) is eager to learn more about them. A fruit bat named Batty Koda (Robin Williams) has escaped a biology lab and shares numerous horror stories about the abject terribleness of the human race. When Batty shares that a bunch of them are near Mount Warning, Crysta goes to check it out. As it turns out, they’re there to chop down the trees for lumber, and one in particular, Zak (Jonathon Ward), is marking the trees. Using her fairy magic, she accidentally shrinks Zak to fairy size and takes him back to Ferngully, where he learns far more about the forest than he ever could have imagined.

Unfortunately, one tree long ago was created by the fairies to imprison a disgustingly toxic spirit named Hexxus (Tim Curry), who feeds on pollution. Freed now that his tree is felled, he seeks to raze Ferngully to the ground. By manipulating Zak’s bosses, Hexxus steers the multi-ton, tree-chopping machine, the Leveler, toward the vulnerable rainforest.

How’s the writing?: Once you come to terms with the fact that this script was written for the express purpose of being an environmental film for children, you’ll be fine. It can feel a bit preachy and oversimplified in its narrative, even missing the nuance needed to understand the real causes and ramifications of deforestation. But the issue really only comes from the clunky way the plot unfolds, particularly around the musical numbers.

For example, the movie opens with a brief backstory with Crysta and her sage mentor, Magi, discussing how Hexxus came to be trapped until Crysta flakes out and flies off. Over the next few minutes, we are treated to gratuitous, yet lovely showcase of the rainforest to the song “Life is a Magic Thing” until Crysta flies above the canopy…THEN GOES RIGHT BACK TO MAGI, as if we needed a musical break just to avoid a slightly longer scene with Magi. Similarly, as soon as Zak starts to realize his situation, he runs into Lou the goanna, voiced by Tone Lōc, singing a seductive song about eating Zak. Once again, once the song ends, it’s as though nothing happened, and the song was kind of unnecessary.

Another odd clutter of scenes is Zak and Crysta headed to Ferngully when the Beetle Boys grab Zak, the leader, Stump, seems to have some sort of seizure upon realizing Zak is human before flying off with him. Zak escapes, only to have an odd scene where Batty needs a boost of confidence when the fairies don’t seem to care about him… an emotional moment that really doesn’t go anywhere or amount to anything. It’s as though the movie needed this kind of excess padding to inflate the movie’s runtime, but for reasons I don’t totally understand. They’re not funny enough to truly distract me, and they lack any relevance to the greater plot at large.

Yet strangely enough, it doesn’t truly bother me as much as it should. I’m not completely sure why, but if I had to guess, it might be because these scenes are in character. While I don’t understand why Stump’s face starts twitching, I do get his triumphant shout of capturing a human as they fly off. Batty’s monent of self-pity seems right, as well as Zak’s empathetic assurance. This way, I feel like my time wasn’t wasted even though it kind of was. It just feels like an environmental movie clumsily told. Not poorly; just clumsily.

Does it give the feels?: This is hard. See, I’m a millennial who was 5 by the time this came out, and while I didn’t watch it nearly as much as Aladdin, it still holds a significant nostalgic factor. I made this section as a means to describe what a first-time viewer might experience when they finally put it on. So my perspective is definitely biased. But let’s try to look at this hypothetically from a more objective standpoint. I think in that way, it’s a complete toss-up.

On the negative side, this movie is painfully mired in 1992, not least of which is through its songs. It’s bad enough Zak has a Walkman he calls a “stereo” and calls Crysta a “Bodacious babe”, but try to shake off the early nineties vibes when listening to Sheena Easton’s power ballad of “A Dream Worth Keeping” or the cover of “Land of 1000 Dances” by Guy that are so dated, you wouldn’t believe it came out in 1991 or 1993. Kids today would definitely either laugh at its transparently dated depictions or be unable to put their finger on why something feels off. Add on top of that the overt environmental messaging and its clunky storytelling, and it’s going to have some kids scratching their head.

On the plus side, it is a visually stunning movie with moments of genuine character arcs, with some genuinely funny jokes, some entertaining songs, some great talent behind the microphones, and even a halfway decent love story. It’s totally up to the viewer, because there are lots of great things about the movie and a lot of not-so-great things. In the end, I freely admit I’m not qualified to answer this question.

Who makes it worth it?: The Genie in Aladdin was the first animated character Robin Williams signed up to do. But because Ferngully beat Aladdin to theaters by seven months, Batty was his first role in animation the public ever saw. Because he signed up for Ferngully after Disney hired him, studio head Jeffrey Katzenberg was not happy he did so, but Williams reminded him he and his voice were not owned by Disney. This resulted in Katzenberg sabotaging Ferngully‘s progress by renting out spaces and studios the production team needed to finish the film, but nevertheless, they persisted. Batty, like Genie, was written explicitly for Williams, and thus, the character had an antenna in his head that allowed him to constantly switch channels and trains of thought on a dime, per the comedian’s style. Batty isn’t as versatile as Genie, and his gimmick is a touch confusing, to say the least. Like…why would you infuse a bat’s head with wires, resulting in him quoting I Love Lucy, John Wayne, and Julius Ceasar? Not that it’s any less entertaining. It is Robin Williams, after all. Even if he early-nineties raps.

Of course, you can’t gloss over Tim Curry at his absolute Tim Curry-est. He starts off as a literal ball of slime, hissing and chortling in cruel delight, building up to yet another seductive song with a lot of creative imagery, “Toxic Love”. Arguably his most salacious song since “Sweet Transvestite”, Curry holds nothing back and cavorts in his campiest camp that ever camped. He gets precious little beyond that, but man, does he make the most of it.

Best quality provided: Fans of Robin Williams and Tim Curry are undeniably happy this movie showcases these beloved legends’ talents. It is some fine work of theirs, so it’s definitely a great way to honor their legacies. But that’s only part of it.

This movie looks gorgeous with a capital G. Animated movies are notoriously slow and expensive productions, and despite how talented and passionate the artists are, corners – more often than not – do get cut. The character models slip or an animation error pops up or something. But damn, the animation team here was fire. The characters look solid and have the appropriate movements, so much so that it would be forgivable if you did mistake this for a true Disney movie. And since this movie was meant to showcase the beauty of nature, the layout team proved their mettle in spades. This rainforest does look stunningly enchanting, equal parts alien and wondrous. And to top it off, it makes great use of that setting, aesthetically and narratively.

What could have been improved: I already talked about the clumsy storytelling that make some moments feel more contrived than others. But it doesn’t end with the musical segments haphazardly placed along the movie’s timeline. For example, two dimwitted cassowaries named Rock and Ock pop up in the opening song, and later appear for a gag when Crysta returns to Magi. Despite clearly setting up their presence with names and personalities, they are never seen again. Lou the Goanna is similarly wholly inconsequential.

After Crysta fails to enlarge Zak back to human size, they agree they need to find Magi to fix him, but this is never brought up again, and even in the short term, they don’t seem to be in a rush.

Crysta, Magi, and her friend Pip are not the only fairies, as we see her father and several others during a few scenes, but they tend to collect just offscreen when the main characters aren’t paying attention.

I get that Zak is slowly getting enamored by the magic of the jungle, resulting in his character arc. However, the film has some bouts of “show, don’t tell” that work aesthetically, but fail in fully explaining what’s going on. For example, when Zak shows her fire and she burns her hand, her hand glows green and he…scoops it up like Pooh scoops up honey? And he wordlessly stares off into the distance, mystified, leaving me to ask what just happened. In a third act scene where Magi sacrifices herself, little orbs are cast to each fairy, turning everyone’s glow from green to blue, including Zak. What did this do? You got me. Sure, it looks pretty, though.

Again, I get this film had one directive, and that was to show off the beauty of nature. A lot of films that have an agenda struggle to invest time and care into characters and story, and despite these complaints, they created a pretty memorable movie. I can only bag on these guys so hard for indiscretions such as “This one part didn’t make sense” and “This song is out of place here”. I’m just a guy who’s seen so many movies and cares about what children are being given for their entertainment, and I feel kids deserve media that respects their intelligence.

Verdict: There’s little to dislike about this movie. Its flaws get pretty easily overlooked since the animation, voice acting, and characters are of such good quality. It’s by no means a great film, but it is pretty darn good, all things considered. In a way that it had no right to be. It’s a great piece of nineties nostalgia that kids may scratch their heads over, but makes up for it with all the great assets I listed before. I give it seven nineties power ballads out of ten. Here’s hoping it gets onto Disney+ at some point with digital restoration.

I’m not terribly optimistic about a ride at Animal Kingdom anytime soon, but hey, who knows?

The Tigger Movie(2000)

Tigger has always been my favorite Winnie the Pooh character. I related deeply to a silly, hyperactive friend whose number one goal was to have as much fun as possible, since that was basically me as a kid. Even today, what’s not to love about a guy whose whole deal is just letting loose, making his own entertainment, constantly inviting his friends in on the action?

Like the rest of Christopher Robin Milne’s toys, Tigger was another item in his nursery that wound up in Milne’s beloved books, and the original toy is with his friends at the New York Public Library to this day. However, his rise to stardom, though exceptional, often staggered slightly behind Pooh and the others.

After Pooh’s debut in 1926’s Winnie-the-Pooh, the follow-up book, The House at Pooh Corner, came two years later, and it’s in chapter two, “In Which Tigger Comes to the Forest and has Breakfast”, where the striped goofball bursts into everyone’s lives. Right away, we’re treated to his hallmark characteristic of overblown certainty in himself despite facts bearing otherwise, knowing Tiggers like everything except honey…and haycorns…and thistles…but extract of malt is what Tiggers like best, of course! Similarly, despite a Shepherd-faithful rendering of the quadropedal plush on Honey Tree‘s poster, Tigger wouldn’t bounce in until 1968’s Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, winning the studio an Academy Award for Best Short Subject. Tigger’s popularity was so notable that the third short, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too in 1974, was named after him and got the studio a Best Short Subject nomination.

As a kid, while we didn’t have 1977’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in our collection, we did have the first four featurettes on VHS (I’M OLD, SHUT UP.). While I frequently watched The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh series, there wasn’t much else available. Aside from 1996’s Pooh’s Grand Adventure, Pooh’s exploits at Disney were not terribly plentiful… yet. The oversaturation of the market for Pooh movies really exploded in the aughts, which mostly started with this title, followed by Piglet’s BIG Movie and Pooh’s Heffalump Movie. Pooh, simply put, is one of Disney’s most evergreen I.P.’s, allowing a seemingly bottomless amount of potential stories to tell, even when the camera isn’t fixed squarely on our favorite tubby little cubby.

So now it’s Tigger’s time to shine. Does he give us his tigger-ific-est? Take time and twist your tail in tight for this totally Tigger-ifical topic!

The plot: As Autumn starts giving way to winter in the Hundred Acre Wood, all of our friends are getting ready for the bitter cold season… except for Tigger (Jim Cummings). His bouncing has caused Rabbit’s (Ken Samson) last headache and he demands he find other Tiggers to go bounce with. Of course, we all know the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is that he’s the only one…right?

Starting to feel the pinch of loneliness, Tigger sets off to find his family, with the help of his little buddy Roo (Nikita Hopkins). But the journey may bear far more discoveries and surprises than he may be prepared for.

How’s the writing?: What I truly respect about this premise is a great, well-thought-out story is birthed from the lyrics of a song.

It’s not a complicated premise: Tigger has always sought friends to join him in his bouncing, but it’s an activity few can keep up with, particularly for long periods. That can be extremely isolating for anyone. Before social media, if you had a passion that was super niche, everyone thought you were simply weird, and it could make you feel a unique mix of both like an outsider and one-of-a-kind. However, Tigger wears his emotions on his proverbial sleeve, resulting in feeling those infamous highest of highs, as well as those lowest of lows.

Thus, the story follows a coherent path of logic, based on Tigger’s scatterbrained perspective. He wants to bounce, but no one will bounce with him. He wants other tiggers, but there are none to be found. He is informed of a “family tree”, so he sets out to find this literal tree. He writes a letter to reach out to them, but the lack of response breaks his heart. A sudden letter shocks him with such glee he assumes his entire family will come visit tomorrow. And so on. If it were about anyone else, none of this would make a lick of sense, but that’s what makes it work. It’s Tigger’s story, through and through.

On top of it all, it’s arguably one of the few Pooh films that handles a full-length runtime well. Pooh stories do best in shorter formats like shorts, featurettes, or TV shows, otherwise writers struggle to fill the story with a lot of unnecessary padding or some kind of antagonistic force that usually feels out of place in the Hundred Acre Wood. However, this movie does feature a classic staple of the franchise: a misunderstanding. It’s become a bit of a trope to cause the band of friends to go off on an adventure, like seeking out a Backson or a Skullosaurus due to their limited understanding of things. At least here, as I pointed out before, it makes sense. Tigger’s expectations are so astronomically high that they’d have to come plummeting down like an asteroid causing the K-T extinction. And it wasn’t like the friends didn’t try to get Tigger to understand…he just wouldn’t pay attention. Again…pure Tigger.

Smart premise, character integrity, and genuine stakes. Fantastic effort.

Does it give the feels?: Tigger is an easy character to screw up for emotional investment. He’s almost always shown to be overbearingly, even recklessly, happy-go-lucky and devil-may-care. This makes him fun and funny, but we can forget Tigger has just as much capacity to feel deep heartbreak and betrayal. Recall in 1974’s Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too! when he promised to never bounce again.

Milt Kahl was one of Walt’s Nine Old Men and he was Tigger’s principal animator in both Blustery Day and Tigger Too. As a testament to his draftsmanship, watch just how perfectly he captures the look of abject heartache. Tigger’s raison d’être has been stripped away from him. This is a character who isn’t all fun and games. He feels everything deeply; we just see his joy more than anything else. Similarly, look at this screencap of his face when he realizes his family of Tiggers is not who he thought:

It’s no less stinging when he feels betrayed by the people he considered his closest friends.

In addition to this scene, the emotional mooring line is easily Roo, who spends the entire movie doing everything he can to be there for Tigger. In a way, he’s our avatar, grounding his friend in some ways, providing optimistic perspective in others, and going well out of his way to make his friend feel loved, appreciated, and happy. It’s through these two our hearts swell with deep, deep feels, making this movie more heartfelt than one might have expected.

Who makes it worth it?: You might be expecting me to say Tigger here, but surprise! It’s Roo!

Nikita Hopkins has got to be far and away the best performer of our favorite joey. The emotional nuances he had to strike to keep the movie strong are difficult for any actor, say nothing of a child actor. But strictly speaking, he carried the weight on this movie on his back. Tigger may have been the star, but without the company and guidance of his bestest little buddy, Tigger would have been lost and adrift in more ways than one.

It’s Roo who stays at Tigger’s side when everyone else wants nothing to do with him. It’s Roo who makes Tigger’s uniqueness feel aspirational rather than ostracizing. It’s Roo who repeatedly rallies their friends to make Tigger feel good about himself. And it’s Roo who feels responsible for letting Tigger down. Roo easily could have been just another kid character devoid of depth and rationality, but with the great writing and Hopkins’ great performance, this became one of the key features of the movie, and one of the best in the Winnie the Pooh franchise.

If none of that convinces you, just know Hopkins was nominated an Annie Award for “Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Male Performer in an Animated Feature Production” for this movie.

Best quality provided: Another thing this movie loves to boast about is its triumphant return of Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman after nearly 30 years of being away* from Disney.

Bob and Dick wrote the music for a slew of productions at the studio, with some of their best known hits being “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, “It’s a Small World (After All)”, “I Wan’na be Like You”, “Chim Chim Cher-ee”, “Higitus Figutus”, “The Beautiful Briny”, as well as the songs for the original Pooh shorts: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. Shortly after Walt’s death, the calls basically stopped coming, and the boys (when they weren’t abjectly hating each other) wrote music for movies like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Snoopy, Come Home, Charlotte’s Web, and Beverly Hills Cop III, and a smattering of melodies for Epcot attractions.

While the songs are not on the same level as “Heffalumps and Woozles” or “Up, Down, and Touch the Ground,” they do vibe that way, with a simple rhymes and a complete acceptance to not use real words. I’m not really blown away by “Pooh’s Lullabee” or “Someone Like Me”, but if you read my List of Top Ten Winnie the Pooh Songs, you’ll see a few got me very invested, not least of which is Kenny Loggins’ closing song, “Your Heart Will Lead You Home”. That one comes pretty close to sincere sentimentality I haven’t felt since “Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)” and I will defend that statement.

Add on top of that the reproductions of E.H Shepherd’s sketches recreating scenes from the movie are a special touch.

What could have been improved: While we’re on the subject, I will confess most Winnie the Pooh films these days admit to trying very, very hard to replicate the tone and aesthetic of the original Pooh featurettes, but that’s akin to making Star Wars just like how you remember watching it as a kid. There’s lots of ways you can try, but there’s little you can do. Capturing lightning in a bottle is called that because it’s miraculous, near impossible, and in most cases, futile to do again. You can get the Sherman Brothers back. You can devote hours to replicating the uniquely pen scrawlings of the background. You can recreate the “interacting with the book and narrator shtick” again. You replicate the scribbly Xerox animation style from the sixties. In 2011’s Winnie the Pooh, you can boast the return of the late Burny Mattinson, who worked on the original films. But at the end of the day, it’s a new product with a new story and mostly new artists working on it. Even the three shorts’ follow-up, 1983’s Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore was VERY different from its predecessors in a number of ways, but no one seems to mind…if they remember it existed at all.

While I’d hardly call the animation bad, there is a bit of a simplified look to it. It’s not as bad as Day for Eeyore or the 2011 film, but it does give the movie a flatness. Yes, Tigger Too blatantly reused bits of animation from Blustery Day, but at the end of the day, it’s still some of Milt Kahl’s best work.

Also, another sore point for me I’ve gone on about before…Cummings cast as Tigger. I know Paul Winchell faded in and out of retirement throughout the nineties, going as far back as Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue in 1990, with his final performance being the 1999 Magic Kingdom Ride at Walt Disney World. And I know Winchell personally handed the character to Jim after he took over for Zummi Gummi in The Gummi Bears. But this is one “not like I remember it” complaint that’s hard for me to swallow. There’s just something delightful about that deep, robust boom Winchell had that Cummings doesn’t quite hit. Of course, Cummings already had the very difficult task of giving Tigger his most emotional script yet. Would Winchell have mastered it just as well? Who can say? All I know is Cummings did a great job giving Tigger his most emotionally raw performance to date despite his voice sounds like he’s straining to do it.

Verdict: The Tigger Movie is one of the most straightforward and sincere Pooh films ever made. Much like A Goofy Movie, it was a simple movie about a silly side character that turned out better than it kind of had any business being. With a solid premise full of potential and genuine heart, it’s a winner. It’s got some issues, to be sure, but hardly anything substantial or truly detrimental to the overall story. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh remains my favorite, but this one I’d designate a close second, which is saying something considering I wouldn’t know where to place the others. I give this movie a full eight whoop-de-whooper loop-de-looper ally-ooper bounces out of ten.

Now remember to dress warmly, eat well, stay safe and sound, and keep smiling. T T F N: ta ta for now!

How Screwed is Walt Disney World?: How five twits can ruin thekingdom

Well…they tried. And you know they did, because not only was money on the line, but DeSantis budged. How hard they tried, I couldn’t say for sure. In the end, it’s still a major L for Disney, and DeSantis is feeling pretty damned vindicated.

I’ve beaten a dead horse about Don’t Say Gay and its fallout, but I hesitated to comprehend where the next steps lay. See, last time I spoke about DeSantis, he was neck-deep in his re-election campaign, and I was relatively sure the guy who made Disney his mortal nemesis, the guy who did a bit of human trafficking to “own the libs”, the guy who tried to gerrymander his state in such a blatanly racist way it got denied by the courts, the guy who willfully let thousands of his constituents die because haircut privileges were more important than grandma’s right to not die…was not going to get reacquainted with that cushy, cushy office chair in Tallahassee.

But…

Now, I could speculate as to why why why why dear gods why what the f*cking f*ck why until the last atom shrivels out of existence, but it’s moot. Not only did this mean DeSantis can continue reigning his fascistic terror with impunity for four more years, but it means he’s emboldened. His Martha’s Vineyard prank was pulled two months before election day…when it was still fresh in voter’s minds, and even THAT wasn’t a dealbreaker for these voters. I’m reminded of that scene in Dumbo where the clowns start planning on embellishing their firefighter act: “If they laugh that hard at 20 feet, they’ll laugh twice as hard at forty feet!”

So now he’s back drafting legislation, ready to destroy as many lives as he can: banning books from classrooms, eliminating academic courses on African-American history, firing government employees for being “too woke”, breaking up diversity departments, and appointing human skid marks like CHRISTOPHER GODDAMN RUFO to college boards because it’s not indoctrination when they do it, right?

And just as we feared, he’s turned his sights back to Disney. But “Aha!”, we cried, “the egg is on your face, Ronny boy! That pathetic weasel who started this whole thing? He was fired! You got no beef with Disney anymore! Now you gotta deal with Iger again, and he can Art of the Deal you under the table!” (Okay, I may be exaggerating, but it’s fun to imagine it like this.)

Chapek lacked more than just self-awareness and principles: he also lacked Iger’s natural charisma and negotiating skills. The man was able to coax several multimillion dollar deals into happening because he knew how to make it work. We’d hoped he would step into Ron’s office and do everything short of pulling out a swinging pocket watch on DeSantis to get him to back down. After all, revoking Reedy Creek Improvement District was going to have serious economic consequences down the road, not that DeSantis really cared.

In the end…not much changed. As you might’ve heard, Ron has agreed to not disband Reedy Creek, but to rename it the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, and appoint a handful of hand-picked individuals of his choosing to preside over Disney’s proposals from hereon out. And that $1 billion bond debt is being redirected to Disney. Oh, and an added provision has ensured that no former employee of WDW of the past three years may be appointed. In other words, Ronny D still is holding Iger by the huevos, only now Disney doesn’t have to wait in line with the other normies before most of their projects are most likely to be voted down.

What does it mean for the normal people?

The best thing I can say about this is the debt reallocation. The taxpayers of Orange and Osceola counties don’t deserve to be overtaxed because of one governor’s weird, almost fetishized vendetta against “woke” ideology. That and DeSantis said he’d boost the pay for a Reedy Creek emergency personnel, so he’d better follow up on that.

But what makes me anxious is this political panel he’ll appoint to oversee Disney’s upcoming projects at the resort. Representative and bill sponsor Fred Hawkins admitted to adding the “No Disney people allowed” provision for fear of conflict of interest, but I don’t buy at all. It’s excluding potential candidates who might know a thing or two how the place operates in favor of having a board of cronies who’d go all Jonestown for DeSantis if he asked. Meaning, as long as DeSantis continues pledging vengeance against Mickey Mouse, I’ll bet every dollar I don’t have that he’ll hire the biggest Mickey haters he can find so they can vote down every proposal, no matter how flimsy their rationales are. After all, if he can get innocuous children’s books like And Tango Makes Three and Hair Love banned with nary a reason, I wouldn’t dare put it past him to stack the court against Disney.

My first concern was the construction aspect. Reedy Creek’s intent was intended to let Disney go all carte blanche on their land without government interference so they could build mountains, haunted hotels, giant golf balls, castles, et cetera. It’s bad enough the spendthrift dry rot has crystallized for almost three decades, but the pandemic forced Disney to cut costs even further. Looks like they’ll still soldier forth with Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, but beyond that, I highly doubt the skyline will change anytime soon. Even something as mundane as repaving World Drive will be met with punitive resistance. The bureaucracy will delay them so badly that if we think Disney moves slowly now, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

But I must confess – with a chill running down my spine – is the distinct possibility of them voting down projects not just to spite Disney, but for their stupid, bastardized ideals. Like…say if Disney proposes a Nightmare Before Christmas ride, and its schematics are well within the parameters of what the board has outlined, and it gets rejected for “promoting satanism”? That’s an obvious example, but again, if they can ban Hair Love without reason, just imagine what’d happen if they propose a Wakanda land at Animal Kingdom. Or that Coco/Encanto proposal from D23. Or even a Strange World ride.

Can Disney fight it?

It’s possible Disney can try to fight it in court, as in this country, anyone can take anyone to court for anything. And Disney has all the money, resources, legal expertise, and influence to rain litigious hell upon anyone who dares cross their path. But unless serious money is on the line, I’m not optimistic. It’s one thing to bully an artist off Etsy with a copyright lawsuit, but another to go after a high-profile elected official. Especially one who may run for president in 2024.

First, the public perception. Big corporations rarely look like the good guy in legal cases. And since DeSantis won over so many Floridian voters, a lot of people will be talking, but not many will be listening.

Second, DeSantis is cunning and merciless. Trump and DeSantis may be cut from the same cloth, but Ron is smarter. He’s figured out how to weaponize school hearings and trans issues with little pushback, which is why he can employ overtly fascist techniques like book banning, and no one bats an eye. He would figure out a way to make Disney look more evil. Frankly, it wouldn’t even be that hard. I mean…this is Disney we’re talking about.

Third, the Florida legal system may not help, even if Disney wins fair and square. Last year, DeSantis fired state Attorney Andrew Warren for not siding with DeSantis on legislation concerning abortion and gender-affirming care. While a judge agreed DeSantis broke the law…he claimed he didn’t have the power to reinstate Warren. To this day, Warren is continuing the legal fight, but time will tell if he’ll get any sort of justice. It’s a sobering sight to see a judge agree that a person broke a law but won’t do anything about it. Whether or not the judge could or couldn’t actually help Warren is irrelevant, but it does set up the possible precedent that no matter how well Disney does legally, they may land in front of a judge who might be loyal to DeSantis or bullied by him.

If going to court isn’t an option, then what?

Well, Disney’s going to have to find a way to work with the public, other Republicans, maybe even a Democrat or two if they want a chance at getting Reedy Creek back under their domain. There’s nothing about this I don’t hate, but being under the vindictive thumb of DeSantis is arguably the worst outcome Disney could endure.

Unless there is a massive upswell in support of Disney that offsets the governor’s popularity, not much will change. Disney will have to assert itself in a way that’ll have the public look at them in a better light, and that’s easier said than done. In addition to trying to court public opinion, they’d also have to do what all huge companies love doing in America: throw money at the political candidates they like. Of course, I find this practice wholly abhorrent and corrupt, but again, if Disney stands a chance at wriggling out from under DeSantis, then their best shot is to wait for the next election cycle in 2026 and endorse a candidate who might be friendlier to their proposals, or even reinstate Reedy Creek.

Judging from statements by WDW president Jeff Vahle, it looks as though Disney’s plan is, for now at least, to roll over and play nice. What a fighter.

Updates

So just as I feared, according to this Variety article, DeSantis has already picked out his army of minions: A ministry CEO, a real estate lawyer, a healthcare lawyer, a commercial lawyer, and a well-connected school board member who co-founded the hate group Moms for Liberty. I guess you could make the VERY flimsy case about needing a real estate attorney and a business attorney, but it looks suspiciously more like when Trump appointed Betsy DeVos and Jared Kushner to key positions: qualifications don’t matter as long as you give him lots of money or you’re chums at his country club. And because of that, you might’ve noticed no one seems to have any experience regarding the tourism industry. Of course, if you mentioned this to Ron directly, he’d just tell you it’s not about money, but principle. (Also of note: no psychiatrists or professionals who specialize in childhood development. Evidently, in order to protect the kids from dangerous Disney woke ideology, all that’s needed are a few random lawyers, a Karen, and a rich Bible-thumper.) Problem is, if no thought is applied to studying trends in the state’s biggest cash cow, that will bear repercussions.

For example, if they straight-up made Disney’s Gay Days illegal (And I guarantee you they’re thinking about it.), that will result in lots of lost revenue and even more bad press. But they’ll still hail its banning as some sort of moral victory. This alone, even if it does unfold like I suggested, would only mildly annoy Disney…but not enough to do anything about it. There’d have to be enough tyrannical demands from the panel before Disney could fight back, or – in the most dramatic scenario possible – they shut down Walt Disney World and leave the state. And soon, we’d have to see if Universal Studios and the rest of the competition in the region will either join Disney in solidarity or stay silent a risk the panel’s wrath.

On top of that, in this recent Daily Beast article, DeSantis has displayed even greater ambitions beyond just telling Disney what not to do:

“When you lose your way, you gotta have people that are going to tell you the truth,” DeSantis said. “All these board members very much would like to see the type of entertainment that all families can appreciate.”

It’s not enough they want to tell Disney what they can and can’t do; they’re giddy at the thought of remaking Disney in their own image and their own image alone. What would this even look like? Obviously, they have no control over the studios or other parks, but what are they hoping they’ll get Disney to build for them? A Hunchback of Notre Dame ride hosted by the Archdeacon? A restaurant themed to So Dear to My Heart? A shooting gallery in Fantasyland where you can kill the Reluctant Dragon? Uncle Remus and Sunflower the centaurette meet and greets? Replace all the POC dolls on It’s A Small World? Forgive my facetious, hyperbolic, “slippery slope” speculations, but the reelected governor admitted he wants to unilaterally dictate what Walt Disney World does or does not build solely based on his and his peers’ own whims. And that’s not even getting into if they turn it into a quid pro quo situation! (“Yes, but if you want to build that Moana spinner, we must insist you also build the Donald Duck Noah’s Ark ride Mr. Peri e-mailed you about last week”)

The Reedy Creek model was far from perfect, but for over half a century, it was a mutually-acceptable deal that Disney could take care of itself and in turn, the state of Florida only had to get so involved. And suddenly a disagreement over a house bill caused the governor to have a cataclysmic meltdown to such a degree it feels genuinely perverse just how horned up he is over screwing over Disney.

So… What now?

Like I said earlier, playing on their terms is Disney’s current strategy. It’ll be some time before enough totalitarian demands will be made that’ll force them to start to fight back. It’s possible they’re hoping to wait out this surge of fascistic fervor until DeSantis is out of office, but the Overton window has shifted so far right that it makes Proven Perjurer Alex Jones look like Bernie Sanders. “Normalcy” is not coming back anytime soon, and Republicans, conservatives, and evangelical voters in particular are like frothing bulldogs, snarling in a blind rage, determined to chase all the drag queens, transgenders, non-Christians, gays, and minorities back into hiding. This isn’t acceptable.

I cited this quote before, but it deserves to be heard again:

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes, we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”

Elie Wiesel said this in his 1986 Nobel Prize acceptance speech for his haunting and illuminating novels based off his experiences as a holocaust survivor. His point was that when oppressors like the Nazis steamroll over marginalized communities, remaining neutral/moderate/bipartisan/”I’m not into politics” is no better than if you helped them. (Conservatives will rage that the LGBT+ community and the woke activists wield all the power, but remember who has money, influence, and the power of legislation by right of association.) Disney needs to take a stand, and there’s no better time than now if they want the millennials and Gen Zers to keep them solvent in the future.

It’s been suggested to me that Disney could just up and leave Florida, but it’d have to come to severe extremes for them to justify abandoning Walt’s last dream and completely upend the state’s economy, even if another state offered some tasty tax breaks.

I’m moving back to Florida, woke ideology and all. And despite Marjorie Taylor Greene’s suggestion that I shouldn’t vote for five years, I’ll be voting in every damn election with my woke values. Because a state that is so damn scared of books, conversations about sexuality, higher education, studies in ethnic diversity, and basic human decency needs a greater push for empathy and kindness. We can’t abandon the citizens of Florida to suffer despotism.

Even if Disney isn’t exactly our ally, either.

Strange World (2022)

All throughout the nineties, Disney movie releases were more than just premieres, they were full-blown events. Like, Pocahontas had a massive, record-breaking opening-night screening in New York City’s Central Park in 1995. You couldn’t shut out the multitude of promotional toys, candies, magazines, games, interviews, and whatever else the marketing machine hurled at us. When the Renaissance petered out, Disney films still had solid marketing behind them, but the overindulgence waned. Believe it or not, Frozen underplayed its hand and released a handful of merchandise a few trailers before its box office and critical reception loosened the purse strings.

But Strange World was a unique beast. When it premiered in November of last year, it got so little attention that few casual moviegoers even knew it existed. At least, not until headlines began cropping up about its projected $100 million loss.

Did it deserve its pathetic fate? Dive downard into the dark, dangerous and deranged designs for destiny! Oh, and uh…spoilers.

The plot: Jaeger Clade (Dennis Quaid) is the world’s greatest adventurer, and with his son, Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), they have explored some of the greatest dangers out there. On Jaeger’s excursion to breach beyond a mountain range, Searcher finds a plant with an electrical charge and decides to return home to cultivate it. Disappointed, Jaeger decides to head off on his own, and soon disappears, presumed dead.

Upon his return, Searcher has spent years harvesting the plant, which he calls “pando”, and it has revolutionized power in Avalonia. When the plant starts losing its charge faster than usual, the president of Avalonia, Callisto Mal (Lucy Liu) recruits Searcher on an expedition into the Earth to find out why. Searcher’s wife Meridian (Gabrielle Union) and son Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White) tag along, and as they explore the bizarre and surreal underworld, they find not just the long-lost Jaeger Clade and a lot bloodthirsty monsters, but also a lot of uncomfortable truths they must face.

How’s the writing?: Disney has done sci-fi adventure multiple times, and sadly it has yet to really pan out. That doesn’t mean I think Disney is incapable of making a good film in this genre, but I find it odd that when they do, they follow an oddly broad, yet predictably specific template.

Atlantis: the Lost Empire followed a motley crew of explorers with steampunky technology as they went on a daring expedition, only to find what they came to look for was not quite what they were expecting to find. And worse, the villain turns out to be a duplicitous turncoat who refuses to listen to reason.

Treasure Planet also followed a motley crew of explorers with steampunky technology as they went on a daring expedition, only to find what they came to look for was not quite what they were expecting to find. And worse, the villain turns out to be a duplicitous turncoat who refuses to listen to reason.

And yes, Strange World…follows a motley crew of explorers with steampunky technology as they go on a daring expedition, only to find what they came to look for was not quite what they were expecting to find. And worse, the villain turns out to be a duplicitous turncoat who refuses to listen to reason.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? Of course not. Good stories are notorious for its listeners to want to hear again. However, if it doesn’t have something unique to offer or distract us with cool, relatable characters, audience members like me will get annoyed and ask why we bothered. To top it off, as an interesting twist it is that their world is literally a living thing, it grazes on that cliché seen in Dances with Wolves, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Pocahontas, The Lorax, and Avatar: that nature is a living, breathing entity, and our actions can hurt, irreparably damage, or even kill it. It’s not a bad message at all. But it’s a metaphor rarely done well. I’ll give it that it was a surprising twist I didn’t see coming, but I couldn’t help but feel a touch underwhelmed. And I’m no climate change denier here, I value a movie that carries a valuable message advocating for environmental responsibility and stewardship. I can’t put my finger on why I felt this way, all I know is it didn’t quite impress me.

It wasn’t bad at all…it just wasn’t all that great.

Does it give the feels?: After Coco, Turning Red, and Encanto, this is yet another entry in the “generational trauma” series of films by Disney and Pixar. Again, this is a message I can totally get behind. It’s a real and recently realized phenomenon that I applaud is being explored…but Strange World kinda drops the ball there, too. Early on, it’s shown through a weird fantasy where Ethan sprouts Jaeger’s features and cackles, showcasing Searcher’s deep-seated anxiety that…his son might abandon him like his father did.

First of all, A Goofy Movie did this much better because A) it was much cartoonier, B) it had suspense and buildup, and C) it was a dream by an anxious teenager, not a 40-year-old man. If Searcher’s anxieties were about Ethan leaving him, the daydream should have played up his sense of loneliness and abandonment, not some maniacal caricature of his father.

The movie focuses on this idea that we may be our father’s sons…but we are not their clones. Searcher had no obligation to be an adventurer anymore than Ethan has to be a farmer. Because of this – if I may give the screenplay the benefit of the doubt – Jaeger and Searcher are both shown to be a little bit right and a little bit wrong. But that’s part of the problem: this story isn’t Ethan’s, it’s Searcher’s. If it were, it might have been as effective as the Pixar short La Luna. But no, our main character has the courage of Scooby-Doo‘s Shaggy, with misplaced apprehensions, and we’re supposed to be mad at his objectively cooler dad. This movie should have belonged to Ethan, or at least better focused on Searcher’s fears. Because of this…the emotions of the movie run pretty flat.

Who makes it worth it?: Both Atlantis and Treasure Planet have one thing in common: there’s a lot of quirky, recognizable characters that make the voyages engaging. But sadly, even this part doesn’t quite get where it needs to be.

I feel like they want me to love Jaeger, and he can be a fun character, but he wasn’t as charismatic as I hoped he’d be. Supposedly, he’s conquered so much he is not just wildly confident in his physical prowess, but he’s earned a sense of pride so immense it feels more like overt narcissism, especially given both his combative attitude with Searcher and how the movie is framed through Searcher’s eyes: as a self-centered braggart more concerned about his ego and legacy than his own son or wife (Oh yeah, did I mention he also left behind a grieving widow, too? Class act.)

Mal is not particularly engaging, even after the twist. Caspian is a member of Mal’s crew who thinks he’s funny but doesn’t quite get there. The one character that might’ve been a much more interesting lead was Meridian, who actually had an adventurous spirit as well as stellar piloting skills. Plus, a scene where she keeps throwing Mal off-balance shows her mischievous side, and it’s genuinely funny.

However, as much as I like to use this section to highlight my favorite characters, I sometimes feel the need to bring up one in particular that is the antithesis to it. Here, that character is Splat. Splat is the shape of the vintage Nickelodeon logo but blue. He doesn’t speak, but chitters and squeals, and flashes the occasional thumbs up. He doesn’t even have a face. I’d normally write him off as an unoriginal creation if he were from an Illumination or Sony cartoon…but this is Disney. The studio that gave us Jiminy Cricket. Baloo. Timon and Pumbaa. Genie. Mushu. Sebastian. Pascal. Timothy Q. Mouse. Olaf. And for all that creative history, the best they could come up with was this? Man, what a disappointment.

Best quality provided: One issue I have with movies these days is most major blockbusters try so freaking hard to create wholly new and interesting worlds. At the this point, I’m a bit fatigued from seeing each new iteration of whatever vast, colorful, bizarre, surreal realm is conjured up for the next major film. And while I still feel that same sense of blasé, I can at least appreciate that the world beneath Avalonia looks as unique and cool as it is.

I can at least say it buries the lead pretty well in that sense. Like I said, so many movies fight to be the most eye-catching, the most wondrous, the most strangely beautiful land to ever exist, so to see a multitude of creatures bearing vague impressions of animals as we know them is cool…then it clicks in place rather startlingly when you realize they’re basically the equivalents of white blood cells and other functions of the immune system. In that sense, I genuinely was taken by surprise and appreciative for the designs and aesthetics which, at first glance, looked like bizarre just for the sake of bizarre.

Now in hindsight, I can look back on the titular strange world with a newfound understanding and appreciation, glad that it wasn’t random just to be weird and random. Kudos.

What could have been improved: Now comes the elephant in the room: why did this movie bomb? The objective answer is lack of marketing. People can’t see a movie they don’t know exists. But why? Why on Earth would Disney release a major animated release and not fund its marketing budget and at least try to recoup its budget back?

If I were to be as rational as possible, I’d theorize this was a budget-saving measure when the higher-ups worried this movie wasn’t going well. While yes, curtailing the marketing budget will guarantee a box office flop, it’s also several million dollars not wasted on a movie that probably wasn’t going to make back anyway. After all, the marketing is one of the last things to budget for in movie production, so why not try to save face by cleaving its funding to its bare minimum? Of course, this begs the million dollar question: what might have made them think it wasn’t going to do well? There’s the theory where Disney simply hedged their bets on yet another sci-fi film, but the predominant speculation was the fact that Ethan is gay. Unambiguously, blatantly, unsubtly, can’t-ignore-it, can’t-edit-him-out gay.

The idea is almost a full year back, when Chapek fumbled his half-hearted excuse for not getting involved in HB 1557’s passing, he wanted to not say anything incriminating, particularly that he might not be such an LGBTQ+ ally as he claimed to be. After all, Pixar revealed they had frequently recieved a memo from an unnamed executive who denied them permission to have such characters in their movies. To top it off, Chapek’s pathetic press release claimed that Disney was already fighting the good fight…by normalizing with representation in their movies. So which was it, Bobby?

So Bob might’ve caved and thought it a good PR movie to allow Ethan to have a boyfriend in the movie, despite the fact it was most likely in post-production by then. But Bob knew he was still going to deal with an uphill battle, knowing some red states might ban it and China would laugh in their faces. So instead of the usual pomp and circ*mstance, the budget for advertising was curtailed to minimize the damage. It doomed the project to fail, but there’s little doubt there was hope to slip it under the radar and not cause an uproar on the Daily Wire and Fox News. But it’s a movie: movies are to be seen and remembered. No matter what, social medias are going to go off like fireworks from both sides of the police aisle. As a result, Disney could, in the future, tell audiences they could put more gay people in their movies…but see these low box office results? It’s because no one actually wants that! So…guess everyone’s gotta stay straight! It was the same tactic studios used when we had movies like Supergirl, Elektra, and Catwoman: when they bombed due to behind-the-scenes drama, they were quick to blame the public for not wanting female superhero movies instead of…you know, the real reasons.

I can only speculate this whole thing, but it stinks of calculated corporate interference, especially in its timing this soon after the “Don’t Say Gay” brouhaha.

Verdict: I don’t dislike this movie, I just think it’s subpar. If the characters were more interesting or likeable, I’d be fine with it. But it felt hampered by a conflict that didn’t feel organic or rational, and that’s key if you want audiences to get invested. I have no problem with its messages or anything, I just think it could have been better with a bit of a stronger push for more creative choices. Overall, I think it’s a decent enough watch if you’re curious, but it’ll be awhile before I hit “play” on Disney+. Six pando plants out of ten.

Adventure is under there!

The Top Ten Worst Controversies of Chapek’sTenure

Bob Chapek was appointed CEO in April of 2020. While his predecessor, Robert Iger, stuck around until December of 2021, Chapek was pretty much the head honcho and the premier decision-maker. Despite a vote in June earlier this year by the board of directors to keep him on for three more years, the company stunned the hell out of everyone when on November 20th, they announced that Chapek had been fired, and effective immediately, Iger was called back in to take over for the next two years. Chapek’s reign as Disney’s chief operating officer lasted 31 months, 8 of them solo. This rivals Ron Miller for shortest tenure as CEO when his ran from March of 1983 to September of 1984 for a total of 18 months…and he was Walt’s son-in-law! So what the fudge happened?

There’s no easy answer to this, sadly. But it helps to have some context. Michael Eisner was Disney’s CEO immediately following Miller, when the company was on the cusp of being greenmailed out of existence by Saul Steinberg. It was more or less still functioning as the company Walt ran, making cartoons, live action films, and theme parks. But Eisner modernized it into the 90’s, initiating the “Disney Decade”. In 1994, between CFO Frank Wells’ death and the failures of Disney’s America and Euro Disneyland, Eisner lost his appetite for big, expensive projects, and resorted to micromanaging and panicked cost-cutting measures, all of which caused public perception of the company to go into a tailspin. Much like Richard Nixon, Eisner thought it better to exit on his own terms, rather than waiting to be ousted by his peers, and resigned in September of 2005.

Formerly an executive for ABC, Iger worked his way up the corporate ladder after Disney bought the station in 1995. Just five years later, he was promoted to COO, effectively making him second only to Eisner. Once he was made CEO upon Eisner’s resignation, he showed shareholders and fans his resolve to the company’s integrity by repairing the strained relations with Pixar, negotiating the return of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and terminating the oft-maligned parade of direct-to-video sequels. Though his 15 years in charge were not without failures, he seemed to understand the necessary role artistry played in a media company. But more than anything, Iger learned under Eisner’s tutelage the importance of modernization, growth, and expansion. As a result, he brought Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox under the Disney umbrella with increasingly mixed reactions among the public.

By contrast, Chapek started at Disney’s home entertainment division in 1993, worked his way through consumer products, and was made executive of the parks and resorts by 2015. These three branches tend to function more on branding and marketing rather than artistic creativity. By the time he was in charge of the theme parks, the cry of “Stop making every ride based on an I.P.!” was already a well-trod tune. But it became clear Chapek’s credo of “If it’s based on one of our franchises, people will buy it!” was the fiscally safe bet, and as long as profits continued to rise, the board of directors would keep him on.

In February of 2020, Iger announced his retirement for the end of 2021, and Chapek was elected onto the board in April. And since then, a multitude of headlines brought greater and greater scrutiny onto the organization, which is most likely why Chapek got ejected from his role so suddenly.

Now, before I start, let me make something transparently clear: many of these issues may not have been Chapek’s fault, at least directly. Many of these issues were products of Iger’s era that didn’t get completed until after he left, or were the result of another executive like Parks and Resorts head, Josh D’Amaro. Credit at the Walt Disney Company tends to be typically murky between CEO’s assimilating praise and ire from consumers and their desire to suppress individuals to avoid paying them more (a phenomenon that sadly goes back even to Walt’s day). Still, Chapek was the boss of bosses, and he had the power to mitigate any issues that came up. It was his house to keep in order, and his failure to do so led him here.

I listed 16 controversies (Let that number really sink in…16! In two years!!!) I felt could be attributed to Chapek himself, or at least situations he could have prevented and thus, I polled them on two Facebook groups so I didn’t have to rely purely in my gut on which were the worst. And since this is a top ten list only, I should at least let you folks know what I had as the 6 honorable mentions that didn’t make it.

The Scarlett Johansson lawsuit. The MCU film Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johansson, was set to be released theatrically in early 2020, but the pandemic delayed its release. Chapek, focused on the future of digital entertainment, opted instead to release it on Disney+. Johansson’s contract promised her her salary plus a bonus in ticket sales, but being on the streaming service meant no ticket sales, which cost her tens of millions in lost revenue. When she announced her intent to sue, the studio released a public statement declaring she showed “callous disregard” for the effects of COVID and announced her $20 million salary in a transparent attempt to publicly shame her. Both parties eventually settled.

The Premier Access fee on Disney+. Desperate to recoup for lost ticket sales during the pandemic, the company began releasing its tentpole films onto the streaming service, and starting with 2020’s Mulan remake, charging viewers (already paying $8 a month for Disney entertainment) the Premier Access fee of $30. The fee would drop off after the movie spent 3 months of being on the service, but this fee left a bad taste since Mulan already had numerous political controversies surrounding it and failed critically. Cruella, Black Widow, Jungle Cruise, and Raya and the Last Dragon all indulged the Premier Access fee, but was retired pretty quickly.

D23 2022’s underwhelming rollout. D23 tends to be a great cornucopia of announcements for upcoming movies, shows, and attractions, but for this past year’s convention, the news was pretty light: unusual for one commemorating the company’s 100th year anniversary. But what got a lot of people curious was theme park chairman Josh D’Amaro and Co-executive for Disney Animation Jennifer Lee took valuable stage time speculating two hypothetical ideas as a sort of litmus test for audiences rather than concrete announcements.

Closing Blue Sky Studios. Blue Sky was an animation branch belonging to 21st Century Fox, responsible for Spies in Disguise, Ferdinand, Rio, Robots, Horton Hears a Who!, The Peanuts Movie, and most notably, the Ice Age franchise. In April of 2021, the studio was shuttered, given only a two-month heads up, and its staff of 450 were laid off. The rights of the previous movies went to Disney, and to really twist the knife, Disney contracted a Canadian studio to make a Disney+ exclusive spinoff from Ice Age, The Adventures of Buck Wild.

Refusing to release Pixar films theatrically. The COVID pandemic forced Disney to make some tough calls, even if they don’t make much sense. Raya was released simultaneously into theaters the same day as it was on Disney+, while Encanto had a month-long engagement in cinemas before leaping over. But Pixar’s Soul, Luca, and Turning Red were all dropped exclusively onto the streaming service. Just twenty years ago, Pixar was considered their only saving grace during their second dark age, and now being cast aside without being seen on the big screens. On top of that, none of them came with the Premier Access charge, leading to many speculating if Disney was intentionally devaluing them. Even Pixar’s heads and its artists were mostly in the dark over Disney’s intentions. A Pixar film eluded theater screens until Lightyear in June of 2022.

Ending Magical Express. In 2005, Disney contracted the bus company Mears to provide complimentary transportation to and from Orlando International Airport and Walt Disney World and its cruise lines. This spared visitors from driving in a strange city, renting a car, and paying for expensive taxis. Plus, it had the added benefit of ensuring guests couldn’t leave and spend money elsewhere…but guests seemed to enjoy the free, hassle-less amenity. But due the strained budget of the pandemic, the decision was made to axe the service, ending January 10th, 2022.

With all those out of the way, let’s get into the ten controversies as voted on by a jury of my peers!

10. Walt Disney World’s lackluster 50th anniversary celebration

Disney has been infatuated with anniversary celebrations since Disneyland’s 35th in 1990. It creates an urgency in travelers to relish this limited-time fête and especially indulge in time-stamped souvenirs. Plus it adds a sense of gravitas: its increasing age instills a feeling of resilience, reliability, and with it, nostalgia. When Disneyland, their oldest park, turned 50 in 2005, they splurged by redecorating all five castles at all their resorts around the world and added – or at least copy/pasted – and renovated several attractions, including opening the brand new Hong Kong Disneyland and cruise lines shifting to service the west coast for awhile. It was a big honkin’ deal for the Happiest Homecoming on Earth. So when WDW hit their golden anniversary on October 1st of 2021, what happened?

Two new fireworks shows, a new ride at Epcot themed to Ratatouille, the daytime kite show at Animal Kingdom that became Tiktok fodder (And not for good reasons), and 50 small golden statues of random Disney characters interspersed throughout the parks.

Now, let’s be fair: Disney had a LOT more planned. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Journey of Water, Epcot’s Future World overhaul, the PLAY pavilion, the Galactic Starcruiser hotel, and the Tron-themed roller coaster were all scheduled to be ready to go by then, but the pandemic shutdown really delayed most of these projects, though with the PLAY pavilion getting shelved completely. Still, like for Disneyland’s 50th, the event is set to last for 18 months, ending March of 2023, and they’re gunning to get these open by then, so they can seem as though they were here for the celebration. But others, like Epcot’s ambitious overhaul, is getting repeatedly culled in quality to the point where we may be getting 50% of what we were initially promised, and even then, not in time for the end of the celebration.

The moral of the story: Never bite off more than you can chew. We understand even a three-month shutdown of the parks caused work to stall, as even construction workers shouldn’t be exposed to viral pandemics. But even if they hadn’t, it’s unlikely they would have completed all their projects by October 1st. Disney’s had this recurring issue of announcing grandiose plans and its final result often being a pale imitation, even if the plans don’t include groundbreaking technology for some time now, and it’s getting sad. Because at the end of the day, it means budget is the be-all, end-all on theme park attractions. They never seem to consider coughing up a few hundred thousand more might give that new ride or show enough of a boost to pay off in dividends years down the road.

Kitetails was especially disappointing, as making durable, functioning kites is not a recent, hi-tech phenomenon. Even an extra month of test runs would have allowed them to find ways to build sturdier, less accident-prone kites.

9. The Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser hotel

Ever since the buyout of Lucasfilm in 2012, Iger and Kathleen Kennedy sought to take advantage of the highly, highly lucrative Star Wars franchise and run full tilt with it. Despite the infamous toxic fandom, fans have proven time and again that the franchise is hardcore ride or die for them.

Because of this, the initial plans announced for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge included a land so interactive, so intuitive, that your exploits would follow you between experiences. The specific example cited was depending on how successful you and your crew navigated Smuggler’s Run, would affect how cast and characters in the area would regard you. Despite its hefty promises, the crowds, particularly in Anaheim, were alarmingly thin. And more importantly, those interactive perks were noticeably absent. But this was in 2019 and before Chapek was promoted, so let’s skip ahead.

Disney had also announced a new deluxe hotel themed to A Galaxy Far, Far Away where unlike the hotels built in the past five decades, the place would be so immersive, you’d might not even see Mickey Mouse himself or hear his name for your entire stay. Surprisingly, they kept to this promise, and in 2021, the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser Hotel started accepting reservations. Unlike a stay at the Grand Floridian or All-Star Music Resorts, you buy a wholesale, pre-set 2-day package so you and your guests could LARP every minute of every day until it was time to go home. However, concerns began in August of 2021 when the resort’s prices were announced, and that just two adults alone would cost nearly five grand. A literally astronomical sum, even for Disney. That December, a trailer dropped and things went from bad to worse.

The low-quality footage showed a hotel that looked more like a knock-off of a Star Wars thing than the genuine article, many griped. Its amenities were not shown. The light saber training looked meager. The costumes and makeup looked cheap. It was such a trainwreck that about a week later, Disney pulled the trailer after witnessing a colossal amount of cancelations (Of course, no one at Disney released any statistics…but lots of curious Star Wars fans saw a lot of openings for reservations crop up. Coincidence? Unlikely.)

The moral of the story: You should get what you pay for. The idea of an experimental cosplay hotel experience is not without merit. Like, at all. And while no one expected it to be cheap in a park that charges you $250 to build your own fricking light saber, $5,000 was just north of bonkers. But even that didn’t deter fans, as clearly there were plenty who expected Disney to deliver on their renowned quality experience. How could they not at five grand?

From what I understand, since the hotel opened in March of 2022, it seems to be a mixed bag. The Google Reviews show enough 1-star reviews to bring its score down to a 4.1 out of 5, and it’s hard to get a true bead onto whether or not the overall guest experience follows. But first impressions matter, and setting the price restrictively high along with the confusingly underwhelming trailer caused real issues.

8. The hiring freeze and layoffs

In a move that came mere days before Chapek’s firing, Disney saw a dismal sign: their stock price hit a 52-week low and lost over a billion dollars from the streaming service, their quarterly report claimed. Chapek soon released a memo claiming the company was to initiate a hiring freeze in some departments and lay off others.

The memo outlined several suggestions to limit cost expenditure, such as limiting business travel and advance approval for in-person meetings. In addition, Chapek set up a “taskforce” between his CFO (Christine McCarthy, who once was reported as wanting to raise food prices at the parks and shrink the portions as well as guest’s waistlines. Seriously) and General Counsel to seek out and find costs that could be cut to make the company more streamlined. But far and away, the hiring freeze and layoffs was the most alarming news.

The moral of the story: Maybe don’t screw over the little guy when things get tough. Sadly, this is a pathetically common game in corporate capitalism: protect the executives and their bonuses at all costs, and when things get dicey, just fire all the peons who are barely making enough to live. Not only did Chapek initiate this foolhardy taskforce with literally the top financial position at the company (basically “Do your job, but with more ruthlessness!”), but since his start, he brought on board Kareem Daniels as the head of Disney Media and Entertainment Division. It was essentially his job to mediate all creative decisions from a fiscal perspective. And the man currently has a net worth of $5 million.

Let me rephrase it this way: the company who was started by a guy whose credo was basically “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we did this” was now being run by a handful of highly paid money guys whose jobs were to determine where money was being spent and where to cut costs, who think the minimum wage workers are where it’s at. No wonder Iger fired Kareem the day after Chapek was ousted.

Good thing Chapek never implemented some stupid blue check system. That would’ve been dumb.

7. The reservation system

One of the best things I loved about going to Walt Disney World was having the freedom of choice. If things got too crowded at Magic Kingdom, just park hop over the Animal Kingdom. Want to see Fantasmic! after your day at Epcot? Go for it. Want dinner at Be Our Guest after you spent all day on Tower of Terror and Rock n’ Roller Coaster? You do you. But when Walt Disney World reopened after its closure for the pandemic in July of 2020, they also rolled out a new reservation system. What this meant was now days, even weeks ahead of time, when you buy your park tickets, you also have to determine which park you want to go to on what day. Disney’s official explanation was that it was meant to reduce crowds and avoid filling parks to capacity.

See, Disney got bit by the reservation bug a long time ago, knowing what to predict and when to predict it, as chaos and unpredictabilities are unwelcome in the financial world. They knew numerous guests liked to plan their trips ahead of time, but this mentality left out the subset of guests that preferred to wing it, and before Chapek moved in, Disney was already demanding not just hotel or dining reservations, but also fastpass reservations, too. But now to plan a trip on a macro scale seemed excessive.

While it’s not a bad idea to exert some parameters to determine how your business is going to run, it took some control away from guests. It gave Disney a clearer idea of how much food and merchandise to order for upcoming times, which means no more running out of inventory. It seemed to be just that much more dystopian.

The moral of the story: You can only control your customers so much. Sure, it sucks when the park fills to capacity before you have a chance to get there, or your favorite entrée is out of stock, or there are no more Fastpasses to be dispersed, but the planning ahead aspect takes away some of the impulsivity and makes contingency planning that much more difficult.

Besides, this kind of “big brothering” is what causes some to retreat to their log cabins and live off the grid. And Disney using it to pre-determine how guests will spend their vacations to this degree is a mite too restrictive.

6. Rushing to reopen the parks during the pandemic

Bob started just as COVID was starting to become a big deal in the U.S. Before long, hundreds were dying from this virus that seemed to target the elderly and the poor. The then-president, one Donald Trump, made it no secret he not only thought was the virus was no big deal, but that it might even have been a plot by democrats to hinder his presidency. Before long, right-wing pundits and the republican voter base ran with the idea that the virus was a hoax, the vaccine was dangerous, and the economic shutdown was far worse than a high death toll. Disneyland and Walt Disney World both closed in March of 2020, but Florida reopened a measly three months later, while California wouldn’t reopen until April of 2021.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, believed in the seriousness of the virus, and kept numerous businesses closed to ensure a minimal death count, which made him wildly unpopular with Chapek and D’Amaro, since the company was losing money hand over fist now that the Happiest Place on Earth was empty. Meanwhile, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, made it no secret his contempt for the safety restrictions, and only after three months, WDW reopened its gates, despite gathering still-absurdly high case counts. Never mind all these cast members were straight-up furloughed, and Florida’s unemployment system was intentionally rigged to fail around this time.

The moral of the story: It’s bad business to let your customers die to service capitalism. The parks reopened eventually with several safety restrictions, but no amount of guidelines could thwart the spread of a highly-contagious virus when tens of thousands of guests converge in a 100 acre theme park. If Disney were a mom-and-pop establishment where even a week off threatens their livelihood, I might have had a touch more sympathy, but they routinely rake in billions annually.

Even now, as I write this. we’re still not completely out of the woods, and Disney could have worked harder at taking the knee just to keep people alive. After all, dead people make lousy repeat customers.

5. Canceling annual passes

When the parks shut down, the big question that lingered was what was to be done about guest’s annual passes. There was more or less a mutual understanding between Disney and guests that if you opted for an annual pass, you could visit any time you wanted (blackout dates notwithstanding), so if you had an annual pass when the pandemic hit, Disney certainly did right by offering refunds, but in July of 2020, Disney outright canceled the sale of all annual passes. Annual passholders couldn’t even renew their current passes under this lockdown. 14 months later, Disney reinstated selling passes, but two months later, in November, they stopped yet again for all but the lowest-tiered passes. And whole year later, as I write this, the most news announced was the price increase, but not when they’ll go back on sale again.

The moral of the story: Loyalty goes both ways. One thing I learned working at Walt Disney World is that their primary demographic is the once-in-a-lifetimers. While annual passholders have cash to spare with frequent trips to the parks and the pass costs in and of themselves, the people who come once or twice in their lives will drop so much more money for merchandise and food. The irony of a loyalty program like this shows Disney can only extend so much of their respect to its guests, and especially its repeat visitors who bought a pass assuring they’ll return again and again. I worry perks like special merchandise may soon not be enough to retain these guests who have essentially pledged eternal loyalty to the theme parks.

4. Saying adults don’t like animation

In October of 2022, Chapek said this in an interview with the Wall Street Journal:

“I always say that when our fans and our audiences put their kids to bed at night after watching Pinocchio or Dumbo or Little Mermaid, they’re probably not going to tune into another animated movie. They want something for them.”

Look, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Yes, adult fans and audiences will undoubtedly want to tune into other Disney products like a Marvel limited series or the latest Star Wars spinoff, maybe even a National Geographic special…but Disney FANS will HAPPILY put on any one of the 60+ animated films because being a Disney fan means you love Disney productions! If you retain the idea that cartoons are for kids, you show a callous disregard for the artistic integrity of animation and what it has to offer!

If Bob scoffed at the ludicrousness of Star Wars or Simpsons or even ESPN, fans would be offended, but Disney was started on the foundation of animated films, which begs the question: if you are so dismissive of adults who like Little Mermaid, do you respect them at all as consumers?

The moral of the story: Know your freaking audience. Are there adults who just want to watch something that isn’t a cartoon after the kids go to bed? Of course! But a core aspect of Disney’s business is how well adults are drawn to it, either because they’re nostalgic for the stuff they watched they were kids themselves or the themes and jokes are intended for mature audiences. Yeah, it’s great to expand beyond making cartoons, but man, with that mindset, why are you CEO of a company known for making cartoons?

3. Disney Genie

If you want to know the full story behind Disney’s ticket book system, the single rider lines, the Fastpass, the Maxpass, and the eventual Disney Genie program, Defunctland did a magnificent documentary video on how the bane of Disney’s existence – the long lines at the theme parks – became an uncontrollable monster in its own right: one that cannot be slain or befriended. Disney has tried multiple times to make a system to appease everyone, but as the crowds continue to grow, any hope of managing lines has dwindled dramatically.

At D23 in 2019, Chapek himself announced the arrival of Disney Genie, an app that dramatically complicated the theme park experience by – you guessed it – directing guests to pre-plan everything from dining and attraction times to character meet-and-greets. However, now guests that wanted to jump the lines at Space Mountain or Tower of Terror now had to pay $15 per person per day for Disney Genie+. Not only does this system remove a guest’s ability to jump a line through the “lightning lanes” at the same attraction more than once, but even that wasn’t the end of the price-gouging microtransactions. For the most in-demand attractions, you had to individually request them for a nominal fee per person per ride.

Perhaps I’m a touch spoiled by my pre-Chapek days as a WDW cast member, untethered by park admission or limited time on Florida, but I loved the freedom to wander around, grabbing a Fastpass when I only felt like it, not having to plan an itinerary. It used to be minor bits of advice like “When kids are in school, the parks will be quieter”, or “Go left at Pirates of the Caribbean, because most people go right” were enough to add that much more magic to your visit, and had the added benefit of making you feel clever. Kind of like knowing the lore of a certain Marvel character, while watching movie as a n00b is fun, understanding the detailed backstory just makes it rewarding. Instead, not only is it important for getting your money’s worth, it’s required, all the while forcing you to spend even more.

The moral of the story: There has GOT to be a better way of managing this system. In the aforementioned Defunctland video, host Kevin Perjurer outsourced a data experiment whether no Fastpasses, paper Fastpasses, or Disney Genie+ were the best ways to maximize guest experiences. Through this very elaborate algorithm, the results ultimately showed the paper Fastpasses were the best way to deal with the chaos, and I don’t find this surprising. Pricing out lower-incone guests should NEVER be the solution to deal with crowd control. Instead, if dense crowds are the problem, then build more rides! Increase rider capacity! Expand park capacity! Add that fifth park, since you got so much room to spare!

So many amenities and perks have straight-up vanished in these two short years and it’s such a stop-gap response to a much bigger problem. After all, focusing squarely in raising prices and cutting costs while blatantly ignoring the creative angle is essentially what doomed Eisner. And those who ignore history, et cetera, et cetera.

2. Layoffs while giving himself a raise

The round of layoffs and hiring freeze he warned of this past month wasn’t the only time he looked to getting rid of staff to solve the company’s financial woes. Much of the equity performers were terminated outright and cast members all over the parks were completely furloughed when the parks closed. To a point, it makes sense. Something drastic needed to be done to keep them solvent. From what I understand, when things started to get tough, Iger – still on the board at the time – decided to forego his salary and pushed to wait until the CARES Act went through. Chapek – who just cut his in half – wanted to start layoffs right away. Thank goodness Iger won out.

Still, reports in 2021 showed both men boosted their pay, with Chapek literally doubling his from $14 million to more than $32 million, and according to this article, Chapek and the board were chomping at the bit to start reclaiming their stock options and other financial goodies despite, you know, the company losing money like crazy.

The moral of the story: Do I really need to explain? A responder to my poll informed me that Chapek didn’t have the power to raise his own pay, and that this was a decision by the board, and if it’s true…fine, but the point isn’t negated. Chapek wasn’t exactly insisting on cutting executive pay or fighting for cast member’s jobs when things got tight. Again, this kind of American capitalism will defend its higher-ups till the bitter end or until too much money is lost, whichever comes first. Not sure what changed their minds between June’s vote to keep him on and November, but man, he must’ve made some enemies.

Chapek feeling the pinch and the third shift custodial cast member getting laid off are two wildly disparate scenarios so wildly incomparable it’s hard to put into words. And yet Iger at one point thought this greedy nimrod was a worthy successor to the Walt Disney Company.

1. The “Don’t Say Gay” debacle

And at last, we come to arguably the most obvious and most prolific of all the controversies, the one most transparently was the company acting in poor stead, and the one most clearly on Chapek and Chapek alone.

Now, I’ve talked about this over and over and over, and chances are you’re only here because you’ve read all my other articles about this kerfuffle. But let’s recap: the Parental Rights in Education bill was a bill in Florida that defined only grades 4 and up could recieve any classroom discussion on sexual orientation and gender identity deemed arbitrarily “appropriate”, and allowed parents to sue schools for any reason. Labeled the Don’t Say Gay bill, cast members in Florida and all over the U.S. begged Disney – the biggest employer and political contributer in the state – to do something. Instead, they stayed silent until a week after gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law, and Chapek’s response drew ire from DeSantis and his voter base, all calling Disney “woke” and “groomers”. Even then, Chapek just mumbled some half-hearted excuse about how the company was helping all LGBT+ people by representing them in movies, then stopped all political funding.

The cessation of donations pissed off DeSantis so much he put forth a concerted effort to revoke the 50+ year contract Disney had with the state to build pretty much whatever they wanted, which was a naked act of petty retaliation and will charge over $1 billion to Floridians with barely any pushback from Chapek. All the while, the beleaguered Chapek showed his true colors as a staunch conservative who employed thousands of LGBT+ staff, and tried so hard to appear politically neutral that neither the left nor the right bought what he was selling.

The moral of the story: Practice what you preach. One thing that upsets me most about American politics is that of the two parties, I can either put myself behind the one that’s clearly full of hateful, judgemental, spiteful rhetoric focused on taking us backward…or I can opt for the party that talks a good game, but does little to nothing to change things for the better. I can either hate Disney if they stuck to the conservative values of anti-LGBT+ anything but appreciate the honesty, or I can get the wishy-washy, fence-straddling “apolitical ” company that refuses to take a stance, and tries to have it both ways and look completely disingenuous in the process.

The disingenuous aspect was not the worst strategy over the past decades, as it allowed Disney to appease both sides of the aisle for awhile. But as the rights of the LGBT+ community became increasingly polarized, the refusal to commit caused the left to believe Disney would happily sacrifice them to the slaughter if given half the chance, and the right to believe the company was a bunch socialist groomers or whatever buzzword they adopt is.

This was by far the winner in both polls, and certainly the biggest PR disaster since AT LEAST since the Disney’s America ordeal. And yet, just three months later, The board of directors still voted to keep Chapek on three more years. How bad were things behind the scenes in the final five months?!

The future is…something.

I kind of admit to this conspiracy theory I have no evidence for…so indulge me. What if Chapek was just a patsy?

Like I said earlier, many of these issues started under Iger. And he handed the gig to Chapek just as the pandemic was getting serious. What if the company was worried its upcoming ideas were not going to be seen in a great light, so they quickly ushered in a fall guy who acted the cluelessly greedy jerkwad, got all the blame for everything, recieved nothing but a sullied reputation, and by bringing Iger back, would make them look great again? After all, their stock prices shot up the day Iger returned. Again, I have no proof of any of this aside from basic apophenia, but I can’t help but wonder…

Anyway, where do we go from here? I doubt much will change. I don’t see Fastpass or Magical Express returning. Prices won’t go down: they never have, never will. I heard maintenance suffered at the parks under Chapek, so maybe we can see that turn around. Iger openly announced his desire to focus back on creativity and the front-line cast members, so only time will tell. Beyond that, I don’t think anything significant is in the works, but I genuinely hope I’m wrong. I really do. Iger has two short years to pick a better replacement than his last choice, and let’s hope he learned his lesson.

The Black Cauldron(1985)

At Disney’s Animation branch, the period from 1968 through…ooh, let’s say 1988 is called many names. Some, like me, call it the Dark Age because it was definitively characterized by box office bombs and mediocre successes, with the occasional hit like 1973’s Robin Hood keeping things afloat. Others are more optimistic, calling it the Bronze Age (In line with calling 1937-1942 the Golden Age and 1950-1967 the Silver Age), implying the underlying quality of the animated features, but acknowledging the lesser luster than the previous eras had. But I think there’s something to be said about calling it the “What Would Walt Have Done” Era.

See, the thing you have to remember is Walt learned very early on the lesson in owning everything he produced. Losing Oswald to Universal was pretty much the most defining moment in said lesson. He almost lost Mickey to Pat Powers not long after. Charlie Chaplin, his idol, echoed the advice when Walt finally met him. Bob Thomas even theorized in his biography An American Original that part of Walt’s rationale in renaming the studio after himself might have been a power move to prevent diluting the brand name with multiple names.

On top of that, Walt was super unpredictable. The man is defined historically as often barging into his studio and announcing new crackpot ideas that made his staff question his sanity…and yet he’d more often than not be in the right. Even his closest associates, his brother, and his wife never even had an inkling what could set his imagination on fire. And more often than not, they were based on Walt’s mentality of “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?”, whether or not there was any practical sense from a fiscal perspective.

So when Walt died that cold, bitter December morn, a board of frankly unimaginative directors used to working under Walt’s iron grip of “Because I said so” praxis were now forced to make their own decisions, and hoped not to screw it up. They were now tasked to make these choices. So pressed for success AND completely unsure where they should go next left them asking “What would Walt have done?” Ad nauseam. This question nagged everyone there after The Jungle Book‘s astounding posthumous success all the way until The Little Mermaid in 1989 (I consider Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988 the true start of the Renaissance Era, but that’s just me.)

The films of this era are ones many are familiar with, to be sure. Many are cherished favorites from childhood. But to compare them to Cinderella, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, or Fantasia is like comparing a Jackson Pollock painting to a Rembrandt. The films of the “What Would Walt Have Done?” Era include The AristoCats, Robin Hood, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver & Company. And while each have their own stories to tell, I want to look at The Black Cauldron, often considered the worst failure at Disney’s animation branch due its bloated budget, its haphazard production, its horrific imagery, and of course, its dismal box office performance.

Sheath your sword and stay still for this cinematic sensation stuffed with sorcery, suspense, and salacious surprises!

The plot: In the far-off land of Prydain, Taran (Grant Bardsley) is an assistant pig keeper to Dallben (Freddie Jones), and he discovers said pig, Hen Wen, is actually a clairvoyant one. A demonic ruler named the Horned King (John Hurt) is seeking the titular Black Cauldron so he may raise an army of undead soldiers, and suspects Hen Wen’s oraculous powers could help him find it. Dallben sends Taran and Hen Wen off to hide until the threat passes.

It doesn’t take long for Taran to lose Hen Wen, as the pig does get captured by the Horned King’s gwythaints. A boy convinced he will one day be a great warrior, Taran tries to rescue Hen, but gets imprisoned for his troubles. During his escape, he makes friends with princess Eilonwy (Susan Sheridan) and bard Fflewddur Fflam (Nigel Hawthorne), and finds an enchanted sword, which makes short work of most every obstacle that comes their way. Knowing the Horned King will stop at nothing to obtain the cauldron, our fellowship, plus a puckish furball named Gurgi (John Byner), task themselves to make sure the ghoulish monarch will never get his skeletal hands on it.

How’s the writing?: If we’re basing the writing of the movie purely on the final product, it’s a mess. If we’re judging it as a product it aspired to be, as something that was well-intentioned and probably pretty comprehensive? It’s still a mess. Just in a different way.

Allow me to explain.

The Chronicles of Prydain is a 5-book series written by Lloyd Alexander. To hear some Disney historians tell it, it was selected in response to a poll taken where teenagers were found to be the absolute least likely to attend a Disney movie in theaters, even producer Don Hahn brought this up in the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty. As such, the basic idea was to make a Disney cartoon but for older audiences, so we’re already not off to a great start. Second was at any given time, from the start of its production in 1971 to its summer 1985 release, the film had anywhere from one to four directors, and IMDB credits no fewer than 20 writers. This was largely due to then-CEO Ron Miller’s raging uncertainty over how to approach the film, made even worse by everyone’s varied interpretations and opinions. Scenes were added and dropped regularly as staff came and went, and director Richard Rich even admitted they wanted to condense all of Alexander’s five books into one movie. Add in further complications like lead animator of the project Don Bluth’s rebellion against Miller and his subsequent resignation from the studio and you can see why it seemed like the studio couldn’t figure which way was up on the movie.

In 1984, Miller resigned himself and Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg moved in as studio executives. Confused and horrified at the train wreck the movie was shaping up to be, Katzenberg sought to trim about 12 minutes off the movie. This enraged the animation staff, because that meant hours upon hours of tedious work literally thrown out. The final result was a disorganized mess that could be attributed to any one of these previous issues, with lots of unanswered questions.

1. Rules of a magical world aside, how does it work exactly that a King’s inherent evil nature gets mixed in with molten iron and you get a cauldron that resurrects zombie viking warriors? This might have been better if they didn’t give us this backstory at all.

2. What’s Taran’s deal in becoming a great warrior? I get that kids dream of being invincible heroes all the time, but he seems sold on this idea not that he should be a warrior, but is one and Dallben won’t let him. We see no relationship with him to the war and heroics in general, be they his idolization of any figure or inspiration from reading great stories, just that he waves a stick at geese and a goat and he should be allowed to fight in a war.

3. What is his and Dallben’s relationship? I’d ask where his parents are, but it’s a Disney movie, so that’s already a loaded question.

4. Speaking of the war, who’s fighting and for what? All we’re given in terms of factions is the Horned King, where his goons act more like undisciplined thugs than true soldiers, and by wanting his undead army to go out to conquer. Like he were a rising rebellion, despite his royal title. It’s very confusing.

5. When Taran sneaks into the Horned King’s castle, we get a jump-scare of a guard dog finding him. The guard himself grumbles about the dog “barking at nothing”, missing the TWELVE-YEAR-OLD BOY STANDING FEET AWAY. What’s more, Taran then bumps a door that very clearly wasn’t behind him seconds ago.

6. Taran, you really think the Horned King gives a flying hoo-ha that you “promised” not to reveal Hen Wen’s secret? Not to mention, you seemed rather eager to blurt it out to the cute blonde that broke into your cell. Oh, and Hen Wen was clearly clairvoyant, meaning she could see events happening elsewhere in visions. This is very different from saying she could “tell the future”.

7. Why was the water used in Hen Wen’s vision scalding hot when that clearly wasn’t the case moments ago? Hen literally had her face in it seconds prior.

8. How did Eilonwy get into Taran’s cell without a single tool or a single smudge of dirt on her?

9. Eilonwy’s glowing bauble makes itself known pretty quickly, even showing signs of a personality. However, after it hides in the witch’s cottage, it is never seen or heard from again. An alternate deleted scene shows the bauble was actually one of the fair folk, which still doesn’t explain why it hangs out with Eilonwy, why the Horned King thought it would lead him to the cauldron, why it’s incognito, and why it disappears from the movie after the characters leave the fair foks’ cavern.

10. There might have been a deleted scene showing why a tomb is in the dungeon of the Horned King’s castle, and why such a powerful weapon is buried with him. Who was that guy? And why was Taran so cavalier about his grave robbing?

11. Fflewddur Fflam is an endearing character, but provides nothing to the group, not even experience and insight as the eldest. When Katzenberg did his extensive editing, most of his lines and scenes were reduced to almost nothing.

12. There may not have been a narrative purpose behind Fflewdurr’s harp’s polygraphic tendencies, but it does make me ask why he owns and puts up with a musical instrument that breaks a string with every fib he tells.

13. There are clearly LOTS of fair folk in the caverns, so why is Doli the only one responsible for repairs, keeping track of where the cauldron was last seen, escorting the heroes to Morva, and just hiding or disappearing when things get tight?

14. King Eidilig asks Fflewddur if all the “killing and burning” was still happening, referring to the unspecified war. However, in what we do see in the Prydain countryside, not only is it pretty sparsely populated, but it still looks fairly pristine and un-burned. And to think Mulan had the huevos to pull this off, but not this PG-rated film that tried so hard to be mature.

15. Fflewddur offers his harp, Gurgi offers an applecore, and Taran offers his sword to the witches in exchange for the cauldron. Why didn’t the princess – key word being PRINCESS – offer anything? Paltry as their offerings were, at least they tried!

16. When our heroes get their hands on the cauldron, the witches immediately mock them for thinking they could destroy it, when they had it in their possession for all of a few seconds. A storybook had a scene in which it showed Taran and the gang did everything in pounding it with rocks and sticks to try to break it before the witches butted in.

17. Why does the Horned King refer to Eilonwy as a scullery maid? Assuming he’s not being derisive, is there something she hadn’t told Taran or Fflewddur? In fact, why is not a single word uttered about her kingdom, or her parents, or their army coming to rescue her, or even a ransom? Wait, is THAT why you didn’t offer anything to the witches? You aren’t really a princess?!

18. The witches made it pretty clear that jumping into the cauldron to stop its sorcery was both a sacrifice and a one-way trip. So what exactly was Taran’s plan when he tried to see if Gurgi could be rescued? In fact, since the witches reversed Gurgi’s death after only the mildest of protestations, were they lying about it being impossible, or was their magic just that powerful?

19. It was abundantly clear the Horned King ceased to exist on a molecular level getting sucked into the cauldron. How on Earth did Creeper get ahold of his horns?

You see? Having a rotating roster of directors and writers, headed by a wishy-washy executive, all trying to cram 5 source materials into 90 minutes, and butchered by a guy who had no idea how animation worked, it’s actually kind of a miracle it saw the light of day. It has one other major problem, but I’ll address that later on. This thing wasn’t dead on arrival, it actually held a lot of promise, even after all its production issues.

Does it give the feels?: Possibly. Your mileage may vary. It can get emotional in the right places if you get invested in Taran, Eilonwy, Fflewddur, and even Gurgi. Even if you find them annoying, they’re still up against a demonic monster with far more power than they can handle, and that’s enough to make you worry for them. Taran himself may be kind of a braggadacious twerp, but thankfully, there’s a lot of scenes showing just how in over his head he is, particularly given his inflated self-confidence when he has the sword. And thank goodness Eilonwy calls him out on his sexist bullcrap after the castle escape.

Gurgi often gets cited as one of the most annoying characters in the Disney canon and it’s not unfounded: between his Gollum voice, his cowardice, and his obnoxious, greedy impulses, Gurgi has earned that title for many. At the film’s climax, it’s Gurgi who sacrifices himself to stop the cauldron-borne horde. It does feel sad, especially when the witches return him seemingly dead. I disagree, as I think Gurgi’s arc doesn’t really add up, and the death fakeout is pretty cheap, if you ask me. If it works for you, great, but it didn’t do much for me.

Who makes it worth it?: The Horned King is the most edgelord of the Disney villains, but it freaking works.

In terms of substance, he has almost nothing new to offer. His personality is the typical vengeful, cold, cruel anger and very little else. In his first scene, he monologues to himself about his desire for power and that’s pretty much it. He speaks in a perpetual growl, provided by John Hurt. Most importantly, none of this is pretentiousness. He clearly has the means to back up his threats. He looks legitimately terrifying. His soldiers may be thuggish brutes, but they’re still, loyal, nasty, and dangerous. Even when given a comedic sycophant like Creeper, who could have severely undercut the scenes’ tense moments, you can feel just how genuinely terrified he is.

It’s no surprise Disney thought they were onto something by making him the premiere big bad in Tokyo Disneyland’s Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour over the Queen, Maleficent, even Chernabog.

Best quality provided: Here’s where things get tricky. I don’t think this movie is that bad. It has glaring flaws, to be sure, but this movie is FAR from beyond saving. Because there are a lot of really cool elements to it that could have made this movie awesome. Honestly, if Disney announced tomorrow they were going to reboot the movie into their canon of questionable live action remakes, I would not object to it at all. It has good parts to it. So what’s wrong with learning from its mistakes, and trying again?

Actually, it doesn’t even need to be that much of a reinvention. In this article I wrote a few months back, I suggested Disney reboot the franchise with a sequel series, exploring how Taran, Eilonwy, Fflewddur, and Gurgi could struggle to maintain peace in Prydain in the wake of the Horned King’s demise. Perhaps the war hadn’t quite ended, but the various fiefdoms fought in a power vacuum. Not only could this explain the ambiguous war mentioned in the movie, but give us all the other answers. Like, what if Eilonwy really WAS a scullery maid? Perhaps why Fflewddur was captured by the Horned King’s men in the first place? But above all, explore Taran’s now-complicated view on heroism. As I mentioned, Taran was pretty insufferable at first, obsessed with being a warrior. Thankfully, when given the chance to reclaim his sword at the end, he turns it down, admitting that Gurgi was the hero, not him. It’s not hard to imagine word spreading far and wide about how he supposedly defeated the Horned King and heralded as a hero everywhere he would go. And despite how weary and disillusioned he became, how old habits die hard, and as he and his friends are appointed as peacekeepers in tentative peacetime, Taran might yearn for the much-less-complicated role as warrior hero, to the point where he pines to wield the sword again, a temptation that alarms his friends.

Maybe all the lords and ladies in the area are scrounging for any and all magic creatures trying get a leg up on each other, putting the Fair Folk, the witches, Dallben and Hen Wen, and even Eilonwy’s bauble in peril. Maybe add a subplot of Creeper trying to start his own following, but his short-sightedness causes him to insult and alienate his followers before he can get a chance to back up his threats. Lather, rinse, repeat. And of course, what if there’s a chance the Horned King might return?

See? There is great potential to improve upon this movie without having to do all that much. Just the information missing and some deeper character development and you might have something really worth getting into.

What could have been improved: Most everyone would agree the disjointed narrative, the plot inconsistencies, and annoying characters are the biggest issues. However, I’m not sure I agree. No, as far as I’m concerned, the biggest problem was how hard they tried to make this movie so DARK, and EDGY, and MATURE…and it wound up being so much more juvenile as a result.

Disney movies have always had the stigma of being “for kids”, even when Walt was alive. This was exacerbated during the Dark Age, when the people in charge of the company knew so little about creative decisions, they, too, made this mistake. Most of the animated and live action movies leading up to Black Cauldron were often safe, predictable comedies because those were sure to make money. But because they failed to really challenge audiences, anyone who wasn’t a kid or a nostalgic adult was turned off by the latest Disney releases, hence the aforementioned poll results. Ironically, within a decade, Disney found their stride again, making musical fairy tales once again, and won over all audiences. And they didn’t need to try that hard.

Ask any person off the street the hallmarks of a Disney film. You might hear things like princesses, cute talking animals, fairies, musical numbers, magic, simple morals, being for kids, that kind of thing. But in The Black Cauldron, you’ll find a princess, a talking animal, fairies, magic, and a moral about what it means to be a hero. But to earn its PG rating, they added all of this…

Say nothing of this bit of nightmare fuel thankfully trimmed out of the final cut…

Leon Thomas did a great video as part of his retrospective on the DCEU here that dives into the difference between “adult” themes versus “mature” themes (Watch the whole series if you can, it’s great. Long, but great.), and it feels applicable here. While Disney would never, ever get away with sexual themes or swearing in their animated output, I can’t help but feel that some executive had that extremely rudimentary checklist, and woefully misunderstood what teens wanted so badly he basically said, “Well, it’s one of our animated cartoons, so we got the obligatory princess and cute, furry sidekick…eh, just add some gore and boobs and that should be fine.”

Like I said, movies like Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Mulan never needed to try too hard to be both for kids AND be mature enough for adults. And yet, what’s most baffling is after the Renaissance of the nineties, they did this again! Both Atlantis: the Lost Empire and Treasure Planet tried to buck the “cutesy talking animal musical cartoon” trend and both tanked at the box office. Thank ambivalent deity almighty they figured it out, releasing sinilarly unconventional titles like Zootopia and Big Hero 6.

Verdict: The Black Cauldron is undoubtedly a mixed blessing. I like it enough for repeat viewings, hot mess that it is. It’s by no means an unsung masterpiece, but it ought not to be ignored, either. Whether that Disney+ sequel series I pitched gets greenlit, or the remake is approved, or even if Sora, Donald, and Goofy finally land in Prydain, it deserves some exposure. At least, more than just “their first PG-rated animated cartoon and it lost to The Care Bears Movie“. And if you think I’m exaggerating, note The Great Mouse Detective is often cited as their first animated film to use computers, when that distinction goes – yep – to The Black Cauldron.

Anyhoo, four enchanted swords out of ten. Worth at least one watch-through. Even if the issues are too egregious for you, I’m relatively certain you’ll find something worth discovering.

Great Beelin’.