Can Mickey Find His Mojo?
Disney is trying to kick its animation division back to life by (finally) embracing the computer. TIME gets an exclusive peek at its first four films
By RICHARD CORLISS/BURBANK
In the old fairy tale, a fretful fowl named Chicken Little gets bonked by an acorn, mistakes this minor incident for an astral calamity and frightens the neighbors by exclaiming, "The sky is falling!" In the world of traditional animation, when computer-generated (CG) 3-D cartoons came in, the sky did fall. The first piece was Pixar, with such movies as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. Another chunk was DreamWorks (the Shreks). And, yes, an outfit called Blue Sky fell too, with Ice Age and Robots. Hand-drawn, or 2-D, animation was instantly kaput. Chicken Little was right.
In a decade, CG animation has achieved a commercial and artistic revolution. It has also achieved something else: it annihilated the Disney cartoon feature. Now, with a fresh team at the company--CEO Robert Iger, film-studio boss Richard Cook and animation chief David Stainton--Disney has begun the arduous process of remaking itself. "It's like a battleship changing course," Cook says. "It takes a while, but we're moving in the right direction."
They are indeed, to judge from the exclusive peek they offered TIME of their first four CG theatrical features. Disney surely has a winner in its debut effort, Mark Dindal's Chicken Little, which opens Nov. 4. It's one of the funniest, most charming and most exhilarating movies in years. And it's a genuine Disney cartoon, with a storytelling sense and graphic precision worthy of the old animation masters.
The transition from pencils to pixels hasn't been easy for the studio. Hand-drawn feature animation was an art form it created and then nurtured for six decades, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 through the '94 smash The Lion King. Who could imagine that the empire would crumble? And why, when Disney had a distribution pact with Pixar, should the parent studio pursue CG animation? The box office answered both questions briskly: of the 10 top-grossing animated films since 1995, when Toy Story became the first computerized cartoon feature, all but one (Disney's Tarzan, at No. 10) are CG.
Like a dazed boxer who has been KO'd, the old-line Disney artists were slow to rise from their canvases. They kept making serioso dramas with soaring Broadwayesque scores, when the CG films were mopping up with brash, no-song comedies that appealed to young males as well as the family audience. New ideas were stifled. "It's kind of an irony," says Oscar-winning animator Eric Armstrong (The ChubbChubbs!), "because Walt was well known for being an innovative guy. A lot of people thought it was funny that Disney didn't want to try the same experimentation."
Gradually, Disney's box-office magic evaporated; Treasure Planet, in 2002, cost about $140 million yet cadged only $38 million at the domestic tickets. Worse, relations with Pixar soured--though the premier CG studio may sign up with Disney again. Last week Disney CFO Thomas Staggs said the film division expected a loss of more than $250 million for the year's fourth fiscal quarter.
The 3-D-vs.-2-D debate at the studio went beyond the commercial or even artistic implications of CG. Hand-drawn animation was the Disney religion. Stainton, while overseeing a reduction of the animation staff from 2,200 to 725, worked hard to win over the old boys. He argued that CG actually frees artists "to produce movies of extraordinarily different styles. There are limitations in hand drawn. In CG you can do things that are much more complicated." But some still thought the very notion of a change sacrilegious. To abandon the grand old style for 3-D would be like tearing down Chartres to put up a condo.
As the animator of many cartoon heroes, from Ariel in The Little Mermaid and Beauty's Beast to Aladdin, Pocahontas and Tarzan, Disney veteran Glen Keane was expected to lead the rearguard battle. "Everybody," he says, "wanted me to really fight for hand drawn." When Keane looked for ways to work in the new world, he says, "many of the traditional artists thought that I had betrayed them. And many of the CG artists didn't trust me." In 2003 the two camps met for a retreat. "We realized there were a lot of things being done [at CG studios] that just aren't us. So let's do us."
A few respected animators, like Andreas Deja (who drew the title characters in Hercules and Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and Eric Goldberg (mastermind of the Genie in Aladdin), resisted making the switch to CG. And Keane, when he sat down at a computer, was soon aware of its downside. "It tempts you with the easy choices. It says, 'You designed half that face. Push this button, we'll duplicate it, and the job's done. You've got symmetry--perfect!' But the key to beauty is strangeness, asymmetry."
To woo him, Stainton told Keane he could direct a favorite project, Rapunzel Unbraided--if it was CG. Keane discovered that the computer "forced me to be a better artist. It challenged me to be better at what I do." CG also allowed him to give his leading lady something hand drawn couldn't persuasively do: freckles.
Rapunzel is scheduled for a 2008 release. It is to follow next year's fantasy trip Meet the Robinsons, in which a boy is taken in by a wonderfully eccentric family, and, in 2007, the hip, puckish American Dog, about a canine celebrity who thinks he's still on his TV show when he's really stranded in the desert. Those three films have a high standard to meet in the sassy, bouncy Chicken Little. The title character (voiced by Zach Braff) has huge glasses and a studious mien. And, oh, is this chick adorable, whether trying to win a chaotic baseball game or shaking a tail feather in his soon-to-be-copied chicken dance. It's up to him and his outcast pals to persuade the local skeptics that, darn it, the sky really is falling. At a pace as sprightly and assured as the great old Warner Bros. cartoons, the movie flirts with alien abductions, crop circles, Streisand jokes and familial reconciliation. The animation is gorgeous, but it's the feeling that you'll take home--warm, smart and happy.
Thus does the Disney ship set its new course. There's no telling if Chicken Little will be a hit that convinces Wall Street and mall rats alike that the old studio has a brand-new bag. It has a lot of catching up to do. Sony's animation division will release its first CG feature, Open Season, in 2006. Blue Sky and DreamWorks aren't going anywhere. And Pixar would be a fierce competitor. But if Disney thrives in CG, a little chicken shall lead it. And from now on, they hope, the sky's the limit. --With reporting by Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles
Disney is trying to kick its animation division back to life by (finally) embracing the computer. TIME gets an exclusive peek at its first four films
By RICHARD CORLISS/BURBANK
In the old fairy tale, a fretful fowl named Chicken Little gets bonked by an acorn, mistakes this minor incident for an astral calamity and frightens the neighbors by exclaiming, "The sky is falling!" In the world of traditional animation, when computer-generated (CG) 3-D cartoons came in, the sky did fall. The first piece was Pixar, with such movies as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. Another chunk was DreamWorks (the Shreks). And, yes, an outfit called Blue Sky fell too, with Ice Age and Robots. Hand-drawn, or 2-D, animation was instantly kaput. Chicken Little was right.
In a decade, CG animation has achieved a commercial and artistic revolution. It has also achieved something else: it annihilated the Disney cartoon feature. Now, with a fresh team at the company--CEO Robert Iger, film-studio boss Richard Cook and animation chief David Stainton--Disney has begun the arduous process of remaking itself. "It's like a battleship changing course," Cook says. "It takes a while, but we're moving in the right direction."
They are indeed, to judge from the exclusive peek they offered TIME of their first four CG theatrical features. Disney surely has a winner in its debut effort, Mark Dindal's Chicken Little, which opens Nov. 4. It's one of the funniest, most charming and most exhilarating movies in years. And it's a genuine Disney cartoon, with a storytelling sense and graphic precision worthy of the old animation masters.
The transition from pencils to pixels hasn't been easy for the studio. Hand-drawn feature animation was an art form it created and then nurtured for six decades, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 through the '94 smash The Lion King. Who could imagine that the empire would crumble? And why, when Disney had a distribution pact with Pixar, should the parent studio pursue CG animation? The box office answered both questions briskly: of the 10 top-grossing animated films since 1995, when Toy Story became the first computerized cartoon feature, all but one (Disney's Tarzan, at No. 10) are CG.
Like a dazed boxer who has been KO'd, the old-line Disney artists were slow to rise from their canvases. They kept making serioso dramas with soaring Broadwayesque scores, when the CG films were mopping up with brash, no-song comedies that appealed to young males as well as the family audience. New ideas were stifled. "It's kind of an irony," says Oscar-winning animator Eric Armstrong (The ChubbChubbs!), "because Walt was well known for being an innovative guy. A lot of people thought it was funny that Disney didn't want to try the same experimentation."
Gradually, Disney's box-office magic evaporated; Treasure Planet, in 2002, cost about $140 million yet cadged only $38 million at the domestic tickets. Worse, relations with Pixar soured--though the premier CG studio may sign up with Disney again. Last week Disney CFO Thomas Staggs said the film division expected a loss of more than $250 million for the year's fourth fiscal quarter.
The 3-D-vs.-2-D debate at the studio went beyond the commercial or even artistic implications of CG. Hand-drawn animation was the Disney religion. Stainton, while overseeing a reduction of the animation staff from 2,200 to 725, worked hard to win over the old boys. He argued that CG actually frees artists "to produce movies of extraordinarily different styles. There are limitations in hand drawn. In CG you can do things that are much more complicated." But some still thought the very notion of a change sacrilegious. To abandon the grand old style for 3-D would be like tearing down Chartres to put up a condo.
As the animator of many cartoon heroes, from Ariel in The Little Mermaid and Beauty's Beast to Aladdin, Pocahontas and Tarzan, Disney veteran Glen Keane was expected to lead the rearguard battle. "Everybody," he says, "wanted me to really fight for hand drawn." When Keane looked for ways to work in the new world, he says, "many of the traditional artists thought that I had betrayed them. And many of the CG artists didn't trust me." In 2003 the two camps met for a retreat. "We realized there were a lot of things being done [at CG studios] that just aren't us. So let's do us."
A few respected animators, like Andreas Deja (who drew the title characters in Hercules and Who Framed Roger Rabbit) and Eric Goldberg (mastermind of the Genie in Aladdin), resisted making the switch to CG. And Keane, when he sat down at a computer, was soon aware of its downside. "It tempts you with the easy choices. It says, 'You designed half that face. Push this button, we'll duplicate it, and the job's done. You've got symmetry--perfect!' But the key to beauty is strangeness, asymmetry."
To woo him, Stainton told Keane he could direct a favorite project, Rapunzel Unbraided--if it was CG. Keane discovered that the computer "forced me to be a better artist. It challenged me to be better at what I do." CG also allowed him to give his leading lady something hand drawn couldn't persuasively do: freckles.
Rapunzel is scheduled for a 2008 release. It is to follow next year's fantasy trip Meet the Robinsons, in which a boy is taken in by a wonderfully eccentric family, and, in 2007, the hip, puckish American Dog, about a canine celebrity who thinks he's still on his TV show when he's really stranded in the desert. Those three films have a high standard to meet in the sassy, bouncy Chicken Little. The title character (voiced by Zach Braff) has huge glasses and a studious mien. And, oh, is this chick adorable, whether trying to win a chaotic baseball game or shaking a tail feather in his soon-to-be-copied chicken dance. It's up to him and his outcast pals to persuade the local skeptics that, darn it, the sky really is falling. At a pace as sprightly and assured as the great old Warner Bros. cartoons, the movie flirts with alien abductions, crop circles, Streisand jokes and familial reconciliation. The animation is gorgeous, but it's the feeling that you'll take home--warm, smart and happy.
Thus does the Disney ship set its new course. There's no telling if Chicken Little will be a hit that convinces Wall Street and mall rats alike that the old studio has a brand-new bag. It has a lot of catching up to do. Sony's animation division will release its first CG feature, Open Season, in 2006. Blue Sky and DreamWorks aren't going anywhere. And Pixar would be a fierce competitor. But if Disney thrives in CG, a little chicken shall lead it. And from now on, they hope, the sky's the limit. --With reporting by Desa Philadelphia/Los Angeles
