Line #1 YMMV/Fantasia


1	* AdaptationDisplacement: The "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment is far more popular and widely known than the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer%27s_Apprentice 1797 German poem]] the segment was based on.
2	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
3	** One [=YouTube=] comment brought this up regarding Zeus/Jupiter's behavior in the Pastoral symphony. He seemed to be going ''specifically'' for Dionysus/Bacchus with his lightning bolts, never seeming to actually ''hurt'' anyone else. The commenter said that maybe Zeus was just being a JerkassGod like he's normally been portrayed, disrupting a festival for no reason other than it amused him... or maybe he was simply trying to test his son in his own... unusual way by [[EnforcedMethodActing interrupting a celebration when he'd least expect it]]. It also helps that, since Dionysus/Bacchus is just as immortal as his father, it's not like the lightning bolts will actually hurt him (the unicorn donkey is another story). He's not putting his son in any actual danger.
4	** Zeus/Jupiter's storm rolled in when everyone was laughing at Dionysus/Bacchus drunkenly kissing his donkey. The ridicule could have enraged Zeus/Jupiter and he came in to remind his followers that gods are to be respected and feared, not mocked.
5	** When Yen Sid smirks at Mickey after the latter's broom shenanigans, was it because he [[ActuallyPrettyFunny found the whole thing amusing]]? Or was he just planning to hilariously punish Mickey?
6	* AnimationAgeGhetto: ''Fantasia'' began as a conscious attempt to avert this. With a focus on classical music, as well as some family-unfriendly imagery (for instance, it's the only Disney movie to show ''topless women''[[note]]though the toplessness wasn't meant to be sexual; it was meant to be natural. Some of the fairies in "Nutcracker" also appear naked.[[/note]]), this film is Disney's first attempt to make a film that was serious and "artistic". Sadly, the film's initial box-office failure meant that no more like it were ever made and it may have actually codified the ghetto.
7	* AudienceAlienatingPremise: Although the film is now considered a Disney classic, some have argued this was one of the reasons for its initial box office failure at the time, as a mature concert arthouse film featuring a variety of shorts that had no dialogue and widely varied in their tone and narrative had little appeal to general audiences, who found the experimental nature of the film and use of classical music to be too "avant-garde" and "formal" for their liking, while many critics and classical music nerds saw the mere idea of ''Fantasia'' as insulting and disrespectful to classical music. Despite having plans for more films at the time, the film's failure meant Disney would not try the ''Fantasia'' concept again until ''WesternAnimation/Fantasia2000'' nearly ''[[SequelGap 60 years]]'' later... which [[HistoryRepeats also flopped at the box office for similar reasons]] (despite the original film having been VindicatedByHistory by then), causing Disney to abandon the ''Fantasia'' concept altogether.
8	* SugarWiki/AwesomeArt: The film contains some of the most beautiful art and stunning animation in any Disney film and is rightfully considered to be one of the high points of Disney's Golden Age, if not the Walt Disney Animation Studios as a whole.
9	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment:
10	** The roadshow version of the original has a moment during the introduction of ''The Rite of Spring'' where the orchestra's percussionist accidentally knocks over his chimes. It has no narrative purpose, and according to the DVDCommentary, it was [[ThrowItIn left in]] because it was funny.
11	** Also, prior to the soundtrack bit, one of the double bass players initiates a short swing session in the orchestra by picking a few notes on his instrument. Note that the bass riff setting off the short jam session is ripped, note by note, from the opening of the fourth movement of the Pastoral Symphony. The bass player actually ''converts a Beethoven piece into a jazz tune''.
12	* BrokenBase: The film has developed a bit of a divisive reception amongst the Disney fandom over the years. Depending on who you ask, it is either regarded as being one of the greatest animated films of all time and Creator/WaltDisney's greatest work due to how ambitious and groundbreaking it is, on top of its beautiful animation, or a boring and disjointed film that, while beautifully animated, lacks substance due to its lack of a cohesive narrative unlike Disney's other films.
13	* CommonKnowledge: The famous sorcerer's hat is often assumed to be WesternAnimation/{{Mickey\|Mouse}}'s hat due to how much it is associated with him. The actual "Sorcerer's Apprentice" short makes it clear that the hat belongs to Mickey's mentor, Yen Sid; Mickey borrows it to make his chores easier. Disney has not done much to combat this, thanks to Mickey's sorcerer outfit becoming the most iconic image from the work, while Yen Sid only appears sparsely.
14	* DancingBear: In its initial release, ''Fantasia'' was sold on the novelty of having visuals specifically created to match pre-existing music. While this novelty may be lost for most people, especially for those raised on music videos, many others argue the overall quality of film itself, along with other aspects, has kept it from aging.
15	* EnsembleDarkhorse:
16	** Sunflower from "Pastoral Symphony" has her fair share of fans. Depicting her as happy, unsubmissive, and realistically drawn is heartwarmingly popular.
17	** The Father Pegasus from the same segment is a very literal example of this trope, for his imposing yet gentle nature.
18	* EthnicScrappy: The infamous centaur Sunflower, a very uncomfortable black caricature, who has oversized lips, a body designed off a donkey, and acts as a servant to the other female centaurs (who are all white and beautiful, with the bodies of beautiful horses). She is removed from prints of the movie made after the 1960s, and Disney does their best to pretend she doesn't exist. Ironically enough, she has a strange popularity in fan art, where she is drawn less stereotypically and depicted as unsubmissive.
19	* EveryoneIsSatanInHell: When the film first came out, there were some critics who were convinced that the makers had fascist sympathies because of [[InsaneTrollLogic portraying humanity as insignificant compared with nature]].
20	* EvilIsCool: The "Night on Bald Mountain" section introduces Chernabog, who would go on to become one of the most popular antagonistic figures in Disney media. His fearsome appearance and the way he conducts countless ghosts and demons in a hellish ritual to celebrate the UsefulNotes/{{Walpurgisnacht}} solidified his status as one of the coolest and most [[NightmareFuel nightmare-inducing]] entities to ever be featured in the company's works.
21	* HilariousInHindsight:
22	** In the introduction to the "Nutcracker" segment of the original roadshow, Deems states that nobody performed the ballet back then. Skip to 70 years later, and said ballet is arguably the most well-known and performed ballet in the world. In fact, the "Nutcracker" is probably the only piece in the movie apart from "Tocatta and Fugue" and ''maybe'' "Dance of the Hours" that is more well-known for itself rather than for being part of this film. [[https://d23.com/5-fascinating-facts-about-fantasias-nutcracker-suite/ According to this D23 article,]] the ballet had not been performed in the United States before ''Fantasia'' was released: it didn't have its American premiere until 1944, which suggests that ''Fantasia'' [[ColbertBump introduced ''Nutcracker'']] to American audiences.
23	** The Pastoral segment as a whole and its depiction of Zeus when ''WesternAnimation/{{Hercules}}'' was released, especially when compared to how both are portrayed, with this film's Zeus being the common JerkassGod he was in the myth while the latter film's Zeus is the [[EverybodyLovesZeus exact opposite]]. Even more hilarious when Disney would go back to portraying Zeus as accurate to the myth in ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017''.
24	* HypeBacklash: Many people who prefer more narrative-driven works find the film to be boring due to its lack of a true story, and fail to see it as the masterpiece everyone else hypes it up to be.
25	* JustHereForGodzilla: The probably most well-known segment of the movie is arguably the SorcerersApprenticePlot featuring WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse. The look of Mickey is just as iconic, so some modern viewers will check out the movie only to see the origin of Mickey as Sorcerer's Apprentice.
26	* MainstreamObscurity: It's one of Creator/WaltDisney's most acclaimed films, but people likely know it more for a few iconic segments like Sorcerer Mickey due to Mickey's general prevalence in marketing.
27	* MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales: Sunflower serves as a strange example of this. She's a female centaur who is drawn like a black caricature (wide lips and a body like a donkey) and acts as a servant to the white-featured centaurs. She has been removed from the movie since the '60s, but she has her share of fans. There is rather a lot of fan art depicting her as a little more realistically drawn and unsubmissive.
28	* OlderThanTheyThink:
29	** Contrary to what many assume, the storyline for "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is not original to Disney. The composer Paul Dukas wrote the piece as "program music" specifically to tell the story of a hapless amateur magician whose broom goes out of control--which he got from a poem by Creator/JohannWolfgangVonGoethe (who in turn was retelling an older German folk tale which itself had analogues going back to Lucian). Disney's innovation was simply giving the title role to WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse.
30	** The black coloration used for Pegasus when a DarkerAndEdgier look is wanted amusingly originates here. The intro to ''Pastoral'' makes reference to "Pegasus and his family" with the traditionally white look going to his mate.
31	* OnceOriginalNowCommon: Similar to Walt's previous ''Silly Symphony'' shorts, a major part of ''Fantasia'''s novelty was that it combined 2D animation with a fully orchestrated soundtrack. While this was groundbreaking and ambitious back in 1940, given that {{animated music video}}s have since become very common in the years following ''Fantasia'', the film's novelty has become somewhat lost to modern audiences.
32	* PeripheryDemographic: Together with ''WesternAnimation/AliceInWonderland'', ''Fantasia'' became hugely popular with college-age hippies and stoners in the late '60s and early '70s thanks to its surrealist imagery. Disney responded by re-releasing both films in theaters with psychedelic marketing geared towards these demographics, which helped the company recoup their longstanding losses on them and made them more acceptable to younger Baby Boomers, who'd previously been dismissive of the studio. This in turn led these audiences to show ''Fantasia'' to their own kids when they grew up, helping it achieve "classic" status by the late '80s.
33	* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: ''VideoGame/CastleOfIllusion'' fans were not pleased with the [[UsefulNotes/SegaGenesis Genesis]] adaptation of this movie. The gameplay was bad, the beepy music fails to do the original film's epic orchestral soundtrack any justice, and it didn't even have Chernabog as a final boss, despite the final level being Bald Mountain!
34	* SignatureScene: Mickey's dream sequence in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment, in which he controls the stars in the nighttime sky, is not only one of the film's most famous scenes, but also one of the most well-known images to be associated with the character. It is always featured in TV commercials, DVD covers and promotional material, and also gets referenced often in other media.
35	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
36	** Deems Taylor notes that at the time, ''Theatre/TheNutcracker'' had fallen out of popularity. His line where he mentions "nobody performs it anymore" was actually removed from later edits, such as the 1990 remaster, for sounding incredibly ridiculous by the end of the 20th century, by which point the ballet and its music had become Christmas staples.
37	** The portrayals of dinosaurs during the Rite of Spring, which date the film squarely in its era of paleontological understanding. The T. Rex's stance and arms, the sauropods mostly spending time in water (this was a popular theory at the time due to their size), so on and so forth are all incredibly dated.
38	* ValuesDissonance:
39	** Sunflower, the servant centaurette in "The Pastoral Symphony", whose human half looks like a black "pickaninny" and who performs menial tasks for the white-featured centaurettes. Deleted from all releases since 1969, so most modern viewers haven't seen her. If you're curious, there's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdi3zX9DKm8 YouTube]]. Even worse, she's actually animated in the style of the "Black Face" minstrel shows that were halted by the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement, which took place at around the time the censoring was implemented.
40	** On a less offensive level, the dancing mushrooms, which are clearly made to resemble old-fashioned Asian caricatures with slit-eyes and those funny cymbal-shaped hats. Granted, that segment of classical music is called the "Chinese Dance." Now that the YellowPeril is a dead trope, the funny little dance can be appreciated as straight-out humor, but it was certainly intentional at the time.
41	* VindicatedByHistory: When it was first released, ''Fantasia'' was a box-office flop and the reaction from critics was polarizing at best (UsefulNotes/WorldWarII had also broken out the year prior, cutting off the European cinema market; this also downed ''WesternAnimation/{{Pinocchio}}'', which had been released earlier in 1940, and it downed Walt when the strike and the U.S. military took animators away from him for the rest of the decade). Nowadays, the film is considered one of the best of the Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon if not one of the best animated films period.
42	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: One of the late Creator/WaltDisney's greatest pieces of animation. Some of the special effects were so spectacular for the time that film historians were at a loss as to how they were created. Disney themselves had few clues, as the camera team dismantled every rig immediately after shooting and kept no official record of what they had done. Fortunately, one particular technician, named Herman Schultheis, kept a private record of every effect he worked on and this notebook was rediscovered in the 1990s, revealing the complex--and quite inspired--filming techniques the team employed. Fortunately, as of 2014, the "Lost Notebook" has finally been released to the public by author John Canemaker.
43	* TheWoobie: The ''Stegosaurus'' that gets killed by the ''T. rex'' in "The Rite of Spring".

Context YMMV / Fantasia