Consider my mouse ears officially retired. Following a series of despicable and unforgivable events that started with The Return of Jafar and has led to Cinderella II: Dreams Come True, I want to remove myself from all things Disney. I want nothing to do with the company that once promised me dreams that would come true, and now can do no better than recycle classic storylines in sequels that have no place on the big screen - or on DVD, for that matter.
I was once a Disney devotee, shameful as that may seem today. In fourth grade, I became a card-carrying member of the Mickey Mouse Club; I loyally tuned in every afternoon to see the likes of Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake sing, dance, and act out poorly written skits. I was equally devoted to Kids, Inc., a program that also aired weekday afternoons on the Disney channel featuring a group of pre-teens in a band that played bubblegum music. Cut me some slack, I was only 11.
In later years, Disney impressed me (and audiences nationwide) with animated features such as Beauty and the Beast in 1991, Aladdin in 1992 and The Lion King in 1994. Young enough to still enjoy good cartoons and old enough to appreciate their artistic value, I regarded these films as hallmarks of creative talent. With astounding animation, renowned and gifted voice talents, and original plots, Disney soon evolved to be the yardstick against which other animated film producers measured themselves.
And for a while, it seemed as though no one would ever come close. After all, this was the company that started the Mickey Mouse phenomenon back in the 1950s. By the time films like The Little Mermaid were making a big splash at box offices around the country, Disney had already established itself as the standard for innovation in animation. Companies like Pixar were just getting their feet wet.
But the company inadvertently paved the way for its rivals when it started to get lazy - namely, when The Return of Jafar was released in 1994 directly to video. It seemed to be a small blunder on Disney's part, but it set the company's production and marketing tone for the next eight years. Aladdin was not a film that required a sequel. Sometimes, as in the case of The Godfather and the Back to the Future series, a movie needs a sequel. Sometimes even the sequel needs a sequel. This, however, was not the case with Disney's 1992 blockbuster animated feature, especially given the absence of Robin Williams' voice as the Genie. The film's conclusion left no question unanswered - Disney had stuck with its tried and true "happily ever after" formula, and it worked. And there's never a good reason to mess with happily ever after.
Disney failed to recognize these warning signs, though. The result was a flick that was an utter flop. The animation didn't compare to that of the film's predecessor, the storyline was substandard at best. The list of flaws is endless. The failure of The Return of Jafar marked the beginning of the end for the animation giant, and Disney didn't even realize it.
Realizing that making sequels was an acceptable line of work, Disney shifted its focus from full-length animated features (good ones, anyway) to marketing madness, inundating the American public with more Disney than it was prepared to stomach. From commercials advertising trips to Disney World to Disney stores opening in just about every American shopping mall, there was no escaping the stranglehold of the company that had once devoted itself solely to making good cartoons. It soon became clear that Disney's marketing strategy was "all or nothing" - the company wouldn't rest until it had the American public saying "Take me to Disney World" in its sleep.
But while Disney was deciding it was all about the money, other animators were realizing the cinematic void that was being created. Pixar was the first to jump at the chance to make a feature length animated movie that would blow Disney out of the water. And in 1995 Toy Story did just that. Suddenly Disney was behind the times - the company that once set the bar in animation was now at the bottom of the totem pole, having focused on producing poorly written pre-teen dramas for the Disney Channel and its various advertising campaigns instead of making movies. The company answered the onslaught of new animated features with Mulan in 1998 and Tarzan one year later. Disney intended for these films to show audiences nationwide that it hadn't lost its touch, and instead proved just the opposite. Disney no longer knew how to take risks with its movies - not with its plots and not with its animation, either.
Which brings me to today. Two of the most frequently aired Disney television commercials are for the company's latest animated features, both being released directly to video and DVD. Cinderella II: Dreams Come True and The Hunchback of Notre Dame II are sequels to two very different kinds of movies. Cinderella is a long-time classic - every girl dresses up as the maid-turned-princess at least once in her lifetime for Halloween. And on some level, we all wait for our prince to arrive, glass slipper in hand. Like Aladdin, Cinderella belongs in the "happily ever after" class of movies, and as such, should not have a sequel. Happily ever after is the end of the line - and as I said, you can't mess with happily ever after. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was another movie that did not need a sequel, but for different reasons - namely that Hunchback was not that amazing a movie the first time around. How do you make a sequel to something that was less than impressive in the first place? You don't.
But Disney seems to have come to the conclusion that the basic rules of movie making (and common sense) don't apply to them. Which seems to mean that we must be prepared to endure the company's shoddy attempts at maintaining its reputation as one of the premier animators in the business. What Disney doesn't know is that it lost that status nearly ten years ago. And at this rate, it doesn't look like it's ever going back.
