The Disney fairytale has an unhappy ending
Move over Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel and Jasmine: princesses are stars of the past, write Dawn Chmielewski and Claudia Eller.
Once upon a time, there was a studio in Burbank, California, that spun classic fairytales into silver-screen gold.
But now the curtain is falling on ''princess movies'', which have been a part of Disney Animation's heritage since the debut in 1937 of its first feature film, Snow White. The studio's release of Tangled, a contemporary retelling of Rapunzel, will be the last fairytale produced by Disney's animation group for the foreseeable future.
''Films and genres do run a course,'' says the chief of Pixar Animation Studios, Ed Catmull, who with the director John Lasseter oversees Disney Animation. ''They may come back later because someone has a fresh take on it … but we don't have any other musicals or fairytales lined up.''
Tangled . . . Flynn, Rapunzel and Pascal.
Catmull and Lasseter have killed two other fairytale movies that were in development, The Snow Queen and Jack and the Beanstalk.
To appreciate what a sea change this is for the company, consider that a fairytale castle is a landmark at Disney theme parks around the world and is embedded in the Walt Disney Pictures logo. Fairytale characters from Disney's movies populate the parks, drive sales of merchandise and serve as the inspiration for Broadway musicals.
But Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, Jasmine and the other Disney royals were born in the 20th century. Now, different kinds of Disney characters are starring in the megaplexes and toy aisles, including Pixar's Toy Story buddies Buzz Lightyear and Woody, Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean and a platoon of superheroes from the acquisition of Marvel Entertainment.
Over the decades, Disney has benefited from the ticket sales and licensing revenue generated by such princess-driven properties as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. The studio's most recent offering, however, was a disappointment. Although critically acclaimed, last year's The Princess and the Frog was the worst performer of Disney's recent fairytales.
In the age of mega-franchises when movies need to appeal to a broad audience to justify a sizeable investment, Disney discovered too late that The Princess and the Frog appealed to too narrow an audience: little girls. This prompted the studio to change the name of its Rapunzel movie to the gender-neutral Tangled and shift the lens of its marketing to the film's swashbuckling male co-star, Flynn Rider.
The movie was reconceived as a musical with fast-paced action and witty banter. The only surviving elements, Catmull says, were ''the hair, the tower and Rapunzel''.
Disney hopes Tangled will draw boys, teenagers and adults to the cinema, succeeding where its frog-prince saga failed. But it is taking no such chances in the future. Its current animation roster includes Winnie the Pooh, a return to the Hundred Acre Wood, and Reboot Ralph - itself a restart of an older project titled Joe Jump - about an outdated video-game character who has been left behind by the march of technology.
Catmull says he and Lasseter have been encouraging filmmakers to break with safe and predictable formulas and push creative boundaries.
''If you say to somebody, 'You should be doing fairytales,' it's like saying, 'Don't be risky,''' Catmull says. ''We're saying, 'Tell us what's driving you.'''
So why has the clock struck midnight for Disney's fairytales?
Among girls, princesses and the romanticised ideal they represent - revolving around finding the man of your dreams - have a limited shelf life. With the advent of ''tween'' TV, the tiara-wearing ideal of femininity has been supplanted by new adolescent role models.
''By the time they're five or six, they're not interested in being princesses,'' says Dafna Lemish, who chairs the radio and TV department at Southern Illinois University and is an expert in the role of media in children's lives. ''They're interested in being hot, in being cool. Clearly, they see this is what society values.''
MGA Entertainment, the maker of Bratz dolls, knocked the toy industry's blonde bombshell off her stilettos by recognising how little girls' interests have morphed.
''You've got to go with the times,'' MGA's chief executive, Isaac Larian, says. ''You can't keep selling what the mothers and the fathers played with before. You've got to see life through their lens.''
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