Disney/Pixar In General

It's hard to say because the rest of the movie up until that point seemed like it was setting things up as a comeuppance story, even more so than the original story, where Ichabod lost the Love Triangle beforehand anyway.

I kinda buy into the idea that Ichabod survived at least due to the ending sequence.

Only slightly relevant due to it's package film nature, I kinda thought it was a shame Disney didn't make a full film out of Wind In The Willows. I always liked how the novel and other adaptations started off slowly bringing together the supporting cast first (with a lot of the early story revolved around Mole in fact), it was a unique structure.

Even then they could have done what the Martin Gates adaptation did and separated Mole and Toad's halves into two half hour stories.

Edited by Psi001 on Oct 12th 2018 at 2:32:07 PM

I believe Disney did the American distribution for the 90s live action version with the Pythons, which was renamed Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride when they got ahold of it.

(Perhaps the completest film version of the book is the Rankin Bass version of 1987, which includes pretty much everything in the book.)

I'm watching Frozen on Freeform right now and I swear it sounds different. Same voices, but less refined I suppose. It must just be my ears (or maybe it's HD?) but it's so weird. I've listened to "Let It Go" dozens of times and it sounds different now.

I know the original Chris Farley version of Shrek is a looked for Lost Media, but I've never heard anyone look for the Chloe Moretz version of Bolt. I don't think it's worth talking about on the Lost Media forums since it's probably locked up at Disney, however I'd like to hear some of her lines.

Random thought about Aladdin: the Genie / Merchant is never given a name in the film, of course, but if I were to give him one I’d go for the ultimate Historical In-Joke and call him Youhenna.

RE: Cobra Bubbles: He was also the one who convinced Pleakley's planet that mosquitoes were an endangered species.

Huh, this is interesting.

Gothel's original casting call states "Mother Gothel stole Rapunzel from her rightful parents eighteen years ago, and has kept her locked in a tower ever since so that the world won’t steal the power from her magical hair. As for the power of that hair, Mother Gothel keeps herself young and ageless. While it’s easy to see Mother Gothel as a Mommy Dearest villain (and she is), she’s more complex than that. She really does LOVE Rapunzel, or at least thinks she does. She sees herself as Rapunzel’s protector and believes, that she has to live forever because no one will ever be able to protect or love Rapunzel the way that she can. Thus, we have the most co-dependent mother-daughter relationship in history. And when the teenage girl begins to separate herself, Mother Gothel slowly descends into madness and will stop at nothing to get her little girl back in her tower."

source?

I am not sure if Gothel really loved Rapunzel. The only part of her body she touches in a truly loving manner is her hair. Otherwise she only does it to assert her dominance over Rapunzel.

This thread has information from when the movie had just started production, including Gothel's casting call. Wikipedia doesn't mention it specifically, but does mention that Gothel's actress felt sh did love Rapunzel and that had to be a key element of her character, otherwise everyone would ask why Rapunzel never left.

You can see that in the movie - Gothel having selfishly deluded herself into believing her obsession with the sundrop power and keeping her youth, and her affection for Repunzel, are one in the same. She thinks she's being forced to be the bad guy because she wants to protect what's hers, and doesn't care that the person she's "protecting" was never hers to protect in the first place, nor that she's treating that person like a thing.

I also always loved the irony that in putting Rapunzel in the tower, Gothel's entire life became revolved around keeping her there and keeping others away. As such, she got her eternal life but never actually gets to live it.

I just simply think Gothel NOT loving Rapunzel makes her a less complex and less compelling villain. If the love is real, if corrupt, toxic, and unhealthy, its a better example of toxic mother-daughter behavior (Something the team did research for the film) and makes her more interesting.

Yeah...the "Getting kind of chubby" line is actually from one of the production team who kept getting that line from her mother. Charming.

Isn't that also the movie where they collected as many females as possible to draw the ideal dashing hero for female sensibilities?

Due to animation being exempt from the Writers’ Guild of America, the writers of Aladdin will receive zero compensation for the remake.

Edited by Spinosegnosaurus77 on Oct 14th 2018 at 2:22:48 PM

For a moment I was "what????" but then I remembered that in most animated movies, there isn't really a script per se. It is more a group effort with the animators working of storyboards, which would usually make it impossible to pin down a specific writer.

So the question here is how much of the original script was left in the movie….

Apparently, great swaths of Aladdin were used in the live action version.

How didn't this come up during Beauty and the Beast???

Also, yes, during Tangled, they asked a large amount of their female department to help design a 'Dashing Rogue' and they also asked their department 'Hey, what are some well meaning but rather offensive or rude things your mother would say?' and built Gothel from there.

That wasn't my question. If we put aside the extra rule for animated movies, how much of the original script was left in the movie anyway? There always has to be a certain percentage, and we know that there used to be a mother, the Robin Williams add-lipped his lines, that the songs were written by Menken and...whoever replaced Ashman...so if you consider all this plus the fact that it is based on a pre-existing story and a lot of the situations and jokes were developed by the story-boarders, how much of the original script was left in the end?

... I highly doubt no one writes a full script for animated films these days. Of course there are exceptions, but really I keep seeing headlines about how a writer completed a script BEFORE production began. If they don't, we get flops like The Emperor's New Groove, which had to have its previous incarnation scrapped because the directors kept calling for rewrites way into the animation phase! If they don't, tons and tons of final work is scrapped and money is wasted! You find these problems in live-action films too, most of which inevitably become flops! And insinuating that animation is any less of a proud medium of cinema implies that you agree that animation is a lesser form than live-action and shouldn't be as respected or paid! The writer of Aladdin should have been compensated if they reused a lot of his script for this remake!

Edited by kyun on Oct 14th 2018 at 4:23:51 AM

So, I've realized something looking at Disney's theatrical output starting next year. Within three months of each other, you've got the Dumbo, Aladdin, and Lion King remakes, Captain Marvel, Avengers 4, Spider Man: Far From Home, Frozen 2, and Toy Story 4, in addition to the launch of Disney Play, their streaming service. Saying that Disney's gonna make some serious bank next year is an understatement.

On the note, with the launching of Disney Play, I've been curious on how that effects future plannings like physical Blu-Ray/DVD production or digital purchases on sites like I Tunes, Google Play, the like and future theatrical releases. And on that note, is the Lion King remake still a theatrical release, or is it going to be exclusive to Disney Play? The info I found was vague.

Don’t forget Episode IX.

I don't think there IS a full script. Not until later and even then those scenes can be thrown out. I've been asking about it in my script class this semester and the best I can find is that the director, writer, composer, and lyricist (which could be 6 or more people) have to sit and and rough sketch out the film from plot beats, characters, setting, and song.

They work together for parts but also develop, write, and use their own individual segments in storyboard format to present ideas, review them, and then insert them into the next level of development. There really isn't a 'Script' until most of the movie is already done.

This is why a lot of songs, "Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim" or "Proud of Your Boy" made it into early drafts but were dropped a lot later; They needed the songs and scenes to figure out who Aladdin was as a character, but were dropped when the quantity of characters and number of subplots were too many to handle. "Human Again" is another good example of a sequence developed to eposit about how the object characters felt, but ultimately cut since they ended up feeling like they didn't need to explain that.

If you've ever seen the Sweatbox (REALLY rare to get a copy of), there's a scene about mid way where they show the first storyboard draft (escentially, first script reading) and they discuss how rough it is and they sit around a table and narrow down what needs to stay and what needs to be cut. A later round-table drafting has animators arguing (once the movie has shifted into Emperor's New Groove) to keep Pacha's wife and kids while an exec is arguing that they're extranious filler and should be dropped. This is why you get the 'Disney Mom' problem of Ariel and Jasmine where mothers are inexpliably missing; They aren't technically needed if the same point can be made without needing to animate them. They also develop these sequences, sometimes even into full line art and animation, to better understand the character and later delete them. Lilo and Stitch has a few sequences like this that I wish had stayed.

Actors come in around mid-animation stage but they're still drafting the script at that point. Its one of the reasions the Voice Actor strike happened last year; A lot of voice actors don't even know what they're reading for and are left totally in the dark. Maybe not at Disney specifically, but its a consistent problem.

x3 I'm 100% sure (though I have no proof) that the Lion King 'live action' remake is going to be in Theatres; it's the Lion King, their peak Renaissance Film. That'd be insane to not put as much effort as possible into a film, and to not put it into theatres.

Also, according to Wikipedia, they're going to make a Live Action The Sword In The Stone film for Disney Play, though. So there's something cool.

EDIT: Also, I realized, for Aladdin, there is no completed script, because Robin Williams lines were Ad-Libbed.

Edited by DingoWalley1 on Oct 14th 2018 at 9:12:44 AM

Disney is getting so huge and powerful, it's now upsetting. In the news you're seeing a lot more people trying to sabotage their projects because of one reason or another (they ARE making more movies per year than any other studio, and that's only one example, and their streaming service next year will only double that output), but if any of those ever get canceled it will be on THEIR terms, not anyone else's. Which means there WILL likely be a Guardians 3, but only after they take it off the shelf when they find a replacement director will they do it. Which means all the actors will now be forced into working with a new director after they lost the fight to get Gunn back. With Aladdin, the writer is speaking out about not being paid for them reusing a ton of his script, but we will NOT get paid, because it's Disney (and WGA). People online are listing all the reasons why they shouldn't make so many remakes, but they will NOT stop, because it's Disney. That Gigantic film? That was canceled not because of a controversy, but on their own terms when no one could find a way to make it work- it was done when NO ONE was talking about it. Better human rights will NEVER be granted under Disney because of the people, but only if Disney makes the decision on their own.

Edited by kyun on Oct 14th 2018 at 7:27:02 AM

While I agree with most of your complaints (especially not paying the original Aladdin writers), I disagree with your Gigantic complaint; if a Film isn't working, I don't think a Studio should be forced to keep working on it until they find a way to make it work. True, it can turn out gems like The Lion King, but it can also make terrible or mediocre work (Super Mario Bros and Emperor's New Grove immediately come to mind as terrible and mediocre, respectively). And enough bad films can ruin a studio (even a powerful one, like Disney).

Most people I've talked to actually enjoyed Emperor's New Groove. All things considered, its a pretty good out-of-typical form for Disney and even more so considering the train wreck it was behind the scenes.

Wait, wait...there are two questions here. One is if there being a rule to not consider animated movies for script credit is a good thing. Yeah, no, I don't think so, ie Burton completely deserves credit for Nightmare before Christmas (but then, with him this isn't really a concern because he would get revenue out of being the original author of the story anyway). But I am sure that there are other cases in which an animated movie is above all based on a script, and in this case the scrip writer deserves the credit.

On the flip side there is the question if even if such a rule exists, the writers of Aladdin would have gotten credit for the work they done, and I am not sure if they would have or should have. Not if the main work has been done by the animators and the script was just a very basic outline at best.

There probably is a full script for a good chunk of Disney's films, even animated films are typically originally pitched that way, but then in development that script falls away to storyboards and less rigid means of framework. The more narrative heavy films especially, like Frozen, probably had a script at some point.

Either way, in regards to royalties, the problem here is that whether your contribution "I wrote my concept into the script that became the framework for the film" or "I arranged my concept into the storyboard that became the framework for the film," you're supposed to get compensation for that in the case that said idea has life outside the specific work you created, even if your work ultimately belongs to the studio (this is why everyone wants to be the lucky stiff who writes an episode of a tv show that then becomes a spinoff, for example), because it was your idea/conception and that's what the studio is both paying you for and using, but thanks to a loophole Disney doesn't have to do squat.

If any animator contributed enough raw concept to the film such that they could be considered to have equal or more providence over the idea than the writer or directors, they would - ideally at least - get what is effectively a writer or director credit anyway, the name of the title might be different, but it would be the same kind of contribution. Which in a perfect world would come with royalties/compensation if their contributions were then used again by the studio, yes.

From a film standpoint, the writer (particularly the head writer, in situations like this) isn't just the person who writes prose if they need it. A writer's contribution to a film is the overall concept and the framework of that concept. A director's contribution is the adaptation and reinterpretation of that concept into the visual medium - if you're, say, head storyboarder or something, and it was your concept and you're the one who arranged the framework and/or controlled the people who did so, you are effectively the writer of the movie.

Likewise, for the bulk of the animators, despite being the ones who did the legwork doing that interpretation, that doesn't necessarily mean they can be considered either the ones who created the concept (like a writer) or the ones who, themselves, adapted it (like a director).

Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 14th 2018 at 11:53:29 AM