Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Disney's Rapunzel

It's the popular thing to do now to rag on Disney for "watering down" the classic fairy tales and fables, as if Disney's somehow ruined those stories so that they can never be enjoyed again. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the original, darker versions of these stories too, but there's no reason that they shouldn't be tamed a bit to give young children a safe way to try them out. My five-year-old son is still uncomfortable with parts of Disney's Snow White and The Jungle Book, so dumping the originals on him is out of the question. I'd rather his introduction to these stories be a positive experience so that when he's ready, he can be excited about exploring the original versions on his own terms.

So, I say all that to say that I'm excited that Disney is apparently not only getting back into the 2D animated feature game, but that it looks like they might be doing it with another classic fairy tale: Rapunzel.

Update: John from The Disney Blog clarifies in the comments to this post that when Rapunzel's all done, it'll look like a 3D CGI film, even though they've used traditional animation in the process. But he also says that Disney is returning to 2D with The Frog Princess.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Rapunzel is actually a CG-animation film. But it does involve some hand drawing in the intial stages, then the CG is laid over to make a 3D effect.

The Frog Princess looks like it will be Disney's first full length feature that returns to Hand Drawn animation for its primary character animation. I can't wait!

-John
http://thedisneyblog.com

Michael May said...

D'ohp! I was confused about that. Thanks for the clarification.

Love your blog, by the way.

West said...

I vaguely remember the tale, but I recall having positive associations with it.

I'd heard nothing about this upcoming flick, though. Thanks, again.

Michael May said...

I don't remember much more than the big tower and "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair." I think they've probably got a lot of leeway on this story.

West said...

If "Hercules" was any indication, they'll take full advantage of said leeway.

I kinda liked Herc, by the way. It was purdy.

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