Disney has been a film company that has directly affected my childhood and I assume will continue to affect my future. I figured it would be nice to kind of examine a little bit of Disney's history, or more specifically look at the movies that have heavily competed against Disney during my lifetime. This will be done in order to have a better understanding of what we can expect from future Disney movies as well as future animated movies in general.
Oh, and I figured since a lot of this post involves links and pictures, I can cut up this post into multiple articles to spare y'all from reading one giant post that takes an eternity to finish. So with that in mind, let's take a trip back in time to...
The 90s
I always find it interesting that people mistake The Swan Princess, Thumbelina, and Anastasia as Disney movies. Disney was too busy producing stuff like The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hercules to be producing more typical, formulaic princess movies. And yet, it's kind of understandable that people make that mistake because of the typical princess formula.
Take The Swan Princess for example. Here we have the typical beautiful princess and prince.
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| Here singing about how beautiful the other is. |
Oh, and Princess Odette grew up with only one parent before becoming an orphan.
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| This guy's happy he doesn't make it past the first ten minutes of the movie. |
Then we have the adult villain with magic powers.
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| Smoke signals?! What dastardly magic is this? |
Now where have we seen this all before?
Beautiful Prince and Princess
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| "We just met a minute ago. Wanna get married?" "Yes!" |
Princesses Who Lose a Parent
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| I grew up with just a father, and he got turned into a seaweed thing for awhile |
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| Girl, I grew up orphaned and controlled by my wicked stepmother. And that was BEFORE becoming a princess |
An Adult Villain with Magic Powers
And a Wedding at the End
You might be saying, well that's just the basic character and plot archetypes found in fairytale movies. What about the music? Glad you hypothetically asked that. For that, let's examine the songs that we hear from Anastasia.
There's the opening number to explain the situation of the story.
The song about a girl's struggle for self-discovery.
The song about dreams.
The villain's operatic music number.
The montage music to make the storyline go faster.
And we can't forget the cheesy song about romance.
Sounds a little bit familiar right?
Opening Song to Explain Plot
A Girl's Self-Discovery
The Song About Dreams
The Villain's Song
And the Cheesy Romantic Number
Success?
So what was the point of matching Disney's style, characters, story, and music? Well, since a big part of the reason that Disney became famous is because of its princess movies, it only makes sense to steal those ideas to gain popularity as well.
However, the simple fact is that because Disney's name wasn't stamped to the films of The Swan Princess, Thumbelina, and Anastasia, none of those movies saw as large of a profit as other competition like The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast (Does that count as a princess movie? Oh well, I'm counting it anyway). However, there are many people in my generation who know and appreciate Anastasia and The Swan Princess as if they were legitimate Disney classics (Thumbelina wasn't as big of a hit). And over time, people still remember the tunes and the basic story to these movies, which means that VHS (now DVD) sales are probably good and that a decent chunk of change has been given to the creators.
Since these movies are still remembered by people in my generation, even if they are often mistaken for Disney movies, there is something to say about the success of being able to reproduce Disney's princess formula.
Look for more analysis and thoughts on Disney's Competition to come in Part 2.
P.S.-I cannot take all the credit for the thought process that led to the development of this post nor can I say that I was all too creative with the jokes and critiques that I made along the way. Here are a couple of links that inspired this post.
Honest Trailer-Frozen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb5IH57SorQ
Nostalgia Critic-Swan Princess (Beware of language throughout this video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoWIGycdl5s
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