Think About It: Bye Bye, Silly Old Bear
December 16, 2005
THINK ABOUT IT: Bye Bye, Silly Old Bear…
As further proof that the people running the Walt Disney Corporation and Shadow Government have totally lost their minds, it was announced last week that the makers of the new cartoon series, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, will personally exhume the grave of Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne and perform ritual desecrations on his corpse.
Okay, so they’re not going that far, but they may as well. In this new cartoon series, you see, they’re going to eliminate the character of Christopher Robin and replace him with a 6-year-old “tomboy.” The characters will also have a “new look.”
Memo to Disney: Knock if off, already. These characters have been around for 80 years. You don’t know better than the people who created them.
This is just the newest step in Disney’s neverending quest to take everything it used to be so good at and turn it into garbage. For example, let’s look at their idiotic stance that all new animation out of their studio be computer generated instead of traditional cell animation. Now I have nothing against CGI. The stuff Pixar has put out, like Toy Story and The Incredibles, are among the best animated movies ever made. But that’s because the stories and characters are so good, not because of what kind of tool was used to animate.
Last year Disney put out a direct-to-video movie, Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas, that revisualized all of the classic Disney characters as 3-D computer generated images. I watched that movie. And the writing was good, the stories were nice, the music was fine.
But the animation… it just felt wrong. Mickey Mouse just doesn’t work in three dimensions. Look at any classic image of the character. From any angle, you can still see both ears, nice and round, giving him his classic silhouette. That was a little in-joke from Walt himself. But it doesn’t work that way in 3-D. The ears shift around and look funky. So do the duck characters. I don’t care how many details you get in Uncle Scrooge’s coat with a computer.
Then I went back and watched Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, a traditionally-animated film from 1999. And man, it looked great. The animation was fluid and the characters were spot-on. Traditional animation works just as well as it ever did. Disney’s problem is in its writers, not its animators. There were even rumors, not long ago, that Disney was planning to remake Pinocchio shot-for-shot in CGI. If such a film were ever to see the light of day, it would be the cinematic equivalent of New Coke, only it would leave a far worse aftertaste.
But back to Winnie-the-Pooh. Nearly 80 years ago, A.A. Milne created Pooh bear and all his friends as companions for his son, who was the basis for Christopher Robin. In fact, the entire purpose of the Pooh books was to focus on the relationship of this little boy with his toys. In a very real sense, without Christopher Robin, there is no Winnie-the-Pooh.
So what does Disney do? They rip out the very character that the whole series was built around.
Disney apparently thinks that having a 6-year-old girl will attract - in their own words - an “older audience.”
Memo to Disney #2: This is WINNIE THE FREAKING POOH. You don’t need an “older audience!” The wonderful thing about the Hundred Acre Wood is that it is a world completely safe, completely without malice. If you go back and watch The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh, Disney’s first feature-length film with these characters, you will not find a single villain. There’s no bad guy. There’s no sense of danger, except from the imagined Heffalumps and Woozles. There’s just pure innocence and joy. And when a kid grows out of the age where such a world existed for them, they still look back at these characters and love them for what they remind them of.
Nancy Kanter of the Disney Channel told USA Today, “The feeling was these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide.”
First of all, Nancy, show me one thing that the current Disney animation crew has produced that will be as lovingly remembered in 80 years as Winnie-the-Pooh is today. Once you can show me that, then I’ll listen to their ideas as to how they can improve upon “timeless characters.”
Second, I don’t even really mind the idea of adding a new character. What ticks me off is that they’re getting rid of Christopher Robin. That would be like remaking Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and replacing Lou with an eight-foot-tall NBA player. It’s like putting out a new Chipmunks album and having Britney Spears sing Alvin’s lines. It would be like going down Sesame Street only to find that Bert now shares an apartment with Chandler from Friends and Ernie has joined the Coast Guard.
It’s idiotic.
Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin were literally made for each other. They belong together.
And the fact that I’m this mad about the whole thing at the age of 28 should tell you something. These characters matter, not just to my generation, but to generations both before and after mine.
The characters are “timeless” for a reason.
If there’s any comfort here it’s that 80 years from now - I’m sure - children will still be reading the stories of Christopher Robin and his Pooh bear, while this new kid will be a footnote in animation next to Merlin Mouse and Scrappy Doo.
Actually, I’d prefer Scrappy Doo. At least he’s got some history.
Blake M. Petit feels equally as strong about the Looney Tunes. Maybe even stronger. Contact him with comments, suggestions or the combination to thaw Walt Disney out of his cryogenic chamber so he can start clearing house at BlakePT@cox.net, visit him on the web at Evertime Realms and view the Evertime Realms Livejournal, blakemp
THINK ABOUT IT: Bye Bye, Silly Old Bear…
As further proof that the people running the Walt Disney Corporation and Shadow Government have totally lost their minds, it was announced last week that the makers of the new cartoon series, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, will personally exhume the grave of Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne and perform ritual desecrations on his corpse.
Okay, so they’re not going that far, but they may as well. In this new cartoon series, you see, they’re going to eliminate the character of Christopher Robin and replace him with a 6-year-old “tomboy.” The characters will also have a “new look.”
Memo to Disney: Knock if off, already. These characters have been around for 80 years. You don’t know better than the people who created them.
This is just the newest step in Disney’s neverending quest to take everything it used to be so good at and turn it into garbage. For example, let’s look at their idiotic stance that all new animation out of their studio be computer generated instead of traditional cell animation. Now I have nothing against CGI. The stuff Pixar has put out, like Toy Story and The Incredibles, are among the best animated movies ever made. But that’s because the stories and characters are so good, not because of what kind of tool was used to animate.
Last year Disney put out a direct-to-video movie, Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas, that revisualized all of the classic Disney characters as 3-D computer generated images. I watched that movie. And the writing was good, the stories were nice, the music was fine.
But the animation… it just felt wrong. Mickey Mouse just doesn’t work in three dimensions. Look at any classic image of the character. From any angle, you can still see both ears, nice and round, giving him his classic silhouette. That was a little in-joke from Walt himself. But it doesn’t work that way in 3-D. The ears shift around and look funky. So do the duck characters. I don’t care how many details you get in Uncle Scrooge’s coat with a computer.
Then I went back and watched Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, a traditionally-animated film from 1999. And man, it looked great. The animation was fluid and the characters were spot-on. Traditional animation works just as well as it ever did. Disney’s problem is in its writers, not its animators. There were even rumors, not long ago, that Disney was planning to remake Pinocchio shot-for-shot in CGI. If such a film were ever to see the light of day, it would be the cinematic equivalent of New Coke, only it would leave a far worse aftertaste.
But back to Winnie-the-Pooh. Nearly 80 years ago, A.A. Milne created Pooh bear and all his friends as companions for his son, who was the basis for Christopher Robin. In fact, the entire purpose of the Pooh books was to focus on the relationship of this little boy with his toys. In a very real sense, without Christopher Robin, there is no Winnie-the-Pooh.
So what does Disney do? They rip out the very character that the whole series was built around.
Disney apparently thinks that having a 6-year-old girl will attract - in their own words - an “older audience.”
Memo to Disney #2: This is WINNIE THE FREAKING POOH. You don’t need an “older audience!” The wonderful thing about the Hundred Acre Wood is that it is a world completely safe, completely without malice. If you go back and watch The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh, Disney’s first feature-length film with these characters, you will not find a single villain. There’s no bad guy. There’s no sense of danger, except from the imagined Heffalumps and Woozles. There’s just pure innocence and joy. And when a kid grows out of the age where such a world existed for them, they still look back at these characters and love them for what they remind them of.
Nancy Kanter of the Disney Channel told USA Today, “The feeling was these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide.”
First of all, Nancy, show me one thing that the current Disney animation crew has produced that will be as lovingly remembered in 80 years as Winnie-the-Pooh is today. Once you can show me that, then I’ll listen to their ideas as to how they can improve upon “timeless characters.”
Second, I don’t even really mind the idea of adding a new character. What ticks me off is that they’re getting rid of Christopher Robin. That would be like remaking Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and replacing Lou with an eight-foot-tall NBA player. It’s like putting out a new Chipmunks album and having Britney Spears sing Alvin’s lines. It would be like going down Sesame Street only to find that Bert now shares an apartment with Chandler from Friends and Ernie has joined the Coast Guard.
It’s idiotic.
Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin were literally made for each other. They belong together.
And the fact that I’m this mad about the whole thing at the age of 28 should tell you something. These characters matter, not just to my generation, but to generations both before and after mine.
The characters are “timeless” for a reason.
If there’s any comfort here it’s that 80 years from now - I’m sure - children will still be reading the stories of Christopher Robin and his Pooh bear, while this new kid will be a footnote in animation next to Merlin Mouse and Scrappy Doo.
Actually, I’d prefer Scrappy Doo. At least he’s got some history.
Blake M. Petit feels equally as strong about the Looney Tunes. Maybe even stronger. Contact him with comments, suggestions or the combination to thaw Walt Disney out of his cryogenic chamber so he can start clearing house at BlakePT@cox.net, visit him on the web at Evertime Realms and view the Evertime Realms Livejournal, blakemp