The Disney Channel unveiled the studio’s next animated feature Saturday, previewing the trailer for The Princess and the Frog. You can catch it below.
Why should you care? After all, there isn’t a single TIE Fighter in it. No killer robots. Not a single laser blast or skyscraper-shattering explosion. The princess isn’t a scantily clad zombie, and the frog doesn’t transform into a missile-laden Porsche.
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But there’s also no all too familiar CGI, either. This is Disney’s long-awaited return to hand-drawn animation — moving away (temporarily) from the Pixar-dominated CG era of Toy Story, Cars, Shrek and Madagasgar. It’s the grand rally of the art form that brought us classics like Snow White, Dumbo, Fantasia and The Lion King. It’s the chance for anyone under the age of 21 to discover what intricately rendered animation drawn by a human hand with pen and ink looks like on a big screen. Any movie lover should root for such a big comeback.
The Pixar technique will take over full-time soon enough, and there’s nothing wrong with CG-animated movies. In fact, it’s fair to say that Pixar hasn’t made a bad movie yet. But there’s a richness and a soul to hand-drawn animation that the more high tech art form has yet to match. It’s easy enough to root against Disney on occasion, but here’s hoping this movie scores big. See for yourself:
As for the trailer itself, it looks great. But does it look good enough to get you excited about the return of classic Disney?
Thanks to AICN for finding this new trailer (for as long as it lasts).
The Princess and the Frog opens on December 11, 2009.
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29 Comments
The controversy surrounding this film astounds me. Movie was barely up on the storyboard and the people that claim to represent the minority in the country were screaming racism.
First, it is about time Disney gave us a black princess. We have every other nationality and race represented in the Princess World and this needed to be done. It may have taken them longer then it should have but kudos for doing it.
Second, I liked the original story for this movie. Her name was Maddy and she was a chamber maid with dreams when she meets the frog prince. Well, that’s when said racism supposedly reared its head. They said Maddy sounded too much like Mammy, which was a common nickname white slave owners used to refer to their black female house slaves. OK, seriously? I’m not black and I have never experienced that type of racism but does that really bother some people? I don’t see how Disney was trying to be racially insensitive here. The original story was better to me. Now she is a restaurant entrepreneur and she ends up at a ball in New Orleans and meets a frog that claims to be a prince that has been cursed by a voodoo preist ?What what? How the hell is that a good enough story for Disney to dust off the animation cells and start drawing again? Why is she in New Orleans? Because they have voodoo there? That’s a cheap way to advance your story.
So they changed the whole story to fit some people complaints but was that enough to satisfy them? Nope, now they are complaining that the prince is not black. You just can’t win with those sort of inch and mile people. Which is why I think Disney should have stayed with the original concept. The movie will still make a decent amount of money but I don’t think it will be their finest animated film.
Hype and marketer speak. It’s just a movie.
“The Pixar technique will take over full-time soon enough”- fake dichotomy. They are individual art forms, you can just as well tell painters to stop painting because they invented cameras.
Anyone else notice how the first 30 seconds is just solid wank?
Disney relies so much on its name and history these days. “From the studio that brought you these timeless classics” blah blah blah.
Rather than tout the film they’re promoting, they remind people of the popular films they’ve made before.
To me that seems like a sign that they’re running out of steam.
Also, pause at 0:57. Ouch…..
I’m glad that Disney is going back to its hand-drawn animation and this looks great so far.
Paul Young,
I agree w/ you on that
I really think that everyone is being sensitive, wasnt cinderella a maid too. Anyways like someone said its bout time we had a black disney princess
“Disney relies so much on its name and history these days. “From the studio that brought you these timeless classics” blah blah blah”
personally Xigbar you can be both right and wrong, these timeless classics were a great highlight of my childhood like countless others, and this magic is slowly starting to dissapear, i personally dont mind seeing that magic brought back in these little ways.
its good to see a return i miss it, but still there will be many, difficulties to say the least from various people, the whole racist jaunt is one of them.
@Saved Girl – Those are your opinions and you are entitled to them but the words you used to express yourself were completely unnecessary.
@SavedGirl
Geesh … Anyone who regularly sees my posts knows that I am no Obama supporter but geesh … take a step back … it’s an animated movie … which looks darn good BTW.
I no my 8-year old daughter, an aspiring artists herself (proud artist daddy smile here), is really looking forward to it.
Obviously my “no” should have been “know”.
A bad case of the early Monday morning Duh’s.
Sorry I’m late to the party. I deleted savedgirl’s comment and one response to it.
Vic
Being an illustrator, I must say that I am really excited to see a hand-drawn animated film from Disney again!
The Lion King, Alladin, Beauty & The Beast–especially B&TB are some of the best films ever! Then we have The Jungle Book, Fantasia, Snow White, it is amazing to see realistic movements from hand drawn charactes. Brad Bird makes note of this in The Jungle Book, the movements of Bagera, Baloo, Khan are amazing!
I saw this trailer a couple of days ago and while watching it thought to myself “This is Disney back on form”.
I’m not talking about story or characters or humour or dialogue, Bolt showed us that Disney was still capable of all that (though that’s no indication that this film will have all that, but with Lassater behind them, there’s a good chance), but I’m talking about animation.
Their last animated theatrical feature was Home on the Range. Now, I didn’t see that film (didn’t it feature Rosanne Barr?), but from the trailers I saw it was pretty stylized to a point where it didn’t seem to permeate Disney Quality as well as other Disney animated films have (again, just in animation). Even the animation of the Emperors New Groove had a charm to it and that was extremely stylized.
But this, like I said, a return to form. I’m liking what I’m seeing.
- • Beginning Off-topic post • -
@SK-47
Illustrator and Graphic Artist here, too.
Do you have a Deviant Art account?
mine is
http://ejtomlinson.deviantart.com/
-• Off-topic post terminated • -
Hey, as long as we’re sharing…
http://joshi38.deviantart.com
And to keep things on topic, I was a little hesitant about Lassater taking Alan Menken away from scoring duties on this film and replacing him with Randy Newman. Menken and his late Songwriting partner, Howard Ashman were very instrumental in the introduction of the golden era of Disney when they came on board for The Little Mermaid and I thought he would be very well utilized to bring back some classic Disney with this film. But now, considering the New Orleans setting, I think Newman’s style will fit pretty well. Plus, Menken did Enchanted (amazingly well) and will be doing Rapunzel, so we’re not left wanting.
Sorry Vic, I went a bit overboard on my response. Grr.
Back on topic, I like the idea of Disney bringing back hand-drawn animation. I love the movies like Toy Story and The Incredibles, but I feel that the hand-drawn stuff has more human feel to it with more emotion.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m very happy to see hand-drawn animation back on the screen but I’m just not very fond of this particular story. It seems forced to me. CGI can be very high quality when they want it to be but hand drawn wins every time in my book. Maybe they should “reboot” Steamboat Willie”?
@Paul Young
“she was a chamber maid with dreams when she meets the frog prince.”
So, essentially, Cinderella with frogs? Sorry, while the original story is good, it’s a little too short and the set up is somewhat clichéd, especially considering Disney’s past library, people would have just seen a knock off of old Disney movies.
Plus, the title of this film used to be “The Frog Princess”, the whole thing was always meant to be a slightly different take on the classic story. Will this be the greatest Disney movie? Doubtful, but I do see it being quite a good movie overall.
LOL
Next people are going to try an tell me that Disney is doing this film in an effort to “return focus to the plight of New Orleans and other Southern Bayou regions effected by Hurricane Katrina.”
I didn’t see Saved Girl’s comment, but this I know: those who always claim to be able to “enjoy the magic of Disney” probably haven’t had their culture stereotyped in a Disney film. Yet.
And I’m wracking my brain, honestly I am, but has any other Disney Princess besides this black princess (or is she Creole, which is different) ever had to spend a portion of the movie looking like some ugly creature?
Does any other toy or doll version of a Disney Princess come packaged with some ugly creature version of herself? Cuz this one most likely will!
I’m not saying (as a black dude) that this is all racism and prejudice or some evil conspiracy. Aside from Walt’s Nazi-love issue, I don’t think of modern Disney as an evil empire. Disney is a culture whore, pure and simple. They make money off feeding us revered American experience. A whole cultural milestone in our contrary (for kids and pro athletes alike) is a mecca to Disney World. Part of most American childrens’ childhoods involve Disney, as much as it does Coca-cola or Summer BBQs.
The “bad Disney” stuff (Songs of the South, for example, which this movie slightly reminds me of) has always been representative of the prevailing cultural attitudes held by the audience of the time.
Problem is, now that audience has gotten so much more diverse, and yeah, people are going to call Disney out on any B.S., b/c ours is not the same world where Songs of the South was A-ok to show to children. These movies now reach a lot of different Americans from different cultures and backgrounds, and they all deserve to have their kids or their family “feel the magic” without feeling disrespected. Isn’t that the standard we all hold?
You don’t hear all this hoopla over Pixar films-how do those guys manage to always aviod offending particular races or cultures? Hmmm?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6163710.ece
Here’s the story I found a few weeks ago where I read that people even had a problem with the movie.
“As for the claim that the New Orleans setting and voodoo themes play on black stereotypes, the source said: ‘New Orleans is an ideal setting for an American fairytale set in the jazz age — it’s all part of the fabric of the story.’”
Pixar avoids offending anyone because all of their films involve non-human characters, except The Incredibles.
You make a good point Kofi and it’s funny I haven’t seen anyone report on that because it is very valid. They just seem to be focused on whether the prince was black on not, at least according the article I just posted above.
BTW, you didn’t need to read SavedGirl’s post or the ridiculous response to it. That kind of ignorance and stupidity seems to be overflowing in our country still.
I feel that Disney cannot win when it comes to racism. If they had done another white princess people would say they were excluding black people. They do a black princess (and yes I agree this took a bit too much of a long time) and at the mention of the word ‘black’ people seem to be scrutinising every detail to claim it is racist. It makes it a bit more understandable why they might have avoided the issue.
I remember reading someone complaining about it when they thought the prince was going to be black – that this obviously showed a black girl wasn’t good enough for a white man. Now the tables have turned and so have the complaints? And yes Tiana will have to have something bad happen to her (be a chambermaid at the start or turned into a frog). The film will be a bit dull otherwise.
I can’t help but feel that in Shrek, even if the story had been indentical but Fiona black, the ending where she chooses to be an ogre would have been attacked as racist.
Though it is not quite a princess, in Beauty and the Beast you would be hard pressed to find a ‘Beast’ toy that wasn’t a bit hairy and in Sword and the Stone, Arthur was turned into a lot of animals so metamorphosis isn’t exactly a new idea. As the other tales are just adaptations of more famous ones it can be argued they weren’t turned into anything because it wouldn’t have really made sense with the plot? Though I can see Kofi’s point about this being the first Disney princess to have it happen to. I may be a bit bias though because I think frogs are cute
Though of course I appreciate everyone has their own opinion, I again can’t see how Disney could have made any sort of film with Tiana as the lead without offending somebody. I will be happy to take the film for what it is – a cartoon for children – and look forward to seeing little girls in pretty Tiana dresses
)
Sorry that got a bit long tehe.
OMG, politically correct racial BS is everywhere, geez. It’s a story, if the story says XYZ if whatever race, that’s what race that person is, who cares. But having a black princess, I’m all for it since I’m dating a black girl, lol.
What I don’t like about this clip is the fact that the frog doesn’t seem too concerned in the beginning about having been turned into a frog. He seemed more interested in being cute and flirtatious than anything else. I know it’s supposed to be funny, but the situation can be funny without every character trying to be. Look at Finding Nemo, when Marlin lost Nemo, he wasn’t making jokes and flirting with Dory, he seemed genuinely concerned and scared, yet the movie was hilarious. I really hated the frog’s attitude from what we saw here…
this is not about race in my view. i never looked at this movie in that way or any other!!! i wish ppl would stop with the whole controversial disney princess thing, its just a movie!! and it happens to be one of my favorite classic stories!!! to me i think this disney herione is gonna win over everybody, and it has nothing to do with race!!! i personally can’t stand pixar, thoes movies are too childish compared to the art and emotion of the animated films.
the only pixar movies i actually liked was toy story and a bug’s life but either than that i can’t stand this whole pixar craze!!! i’m glad that disney is getting back into the traditional style, with that i was really impressed with how the movie Enchanted turned out and i can’t wait for this one!!!no i don’t think pixar will take over completely not after Enchanted and the Princess and the Frog!!! sure thoes films are the longest to make but ppl still enjoy them to this day that’s why they’re classics!!! when this film gets out there its gonna put disney back in the classic swing of things!!!!
i dont like how people get all overworked about when disney targets a diffrent race. its just a movie and its good that they show alittle diversity in there movies when was the last animated movie u saw with a black indian native american etc proganist. and i think tianna looked cute as a frog. its not like they made her turn into a giant spider or somthing. disney does animal movies. the original story sounded good and it may have taught somthing thats how tthings were back in the early 1920s/30s. bit from the looks of the comercial it looks cute. i love the prince hehe. hes a funny frog and he looked cute as a prince 2 so much personality as compared 2 other earlier movies like snow white where hes in it 4 like 5 minutes and hopefully they get 2 know each other and become friends like in the beauty and the beast instead of love at 1st sight or watever . that wont hold a relationshipp 2 gether.
wow this is really long lol got carried away but i cant wait
I just hate the frog’s attitude, makes it hard for my to sympathize with him…
to deffend the frog thing most princesses didnt even speak for half the movie like arial lost her voice snow white died and sleeping beauty was asleep even mulan wasn’t even female most of the movie
I don’t believe this movie is meant to offend anyone. The battle against racism is a long, difficult road, and movies must make their part, but movies are starting to change somehow. As to Disney, well, I just hope they stop offending ME as a common man with this endless princess stuff. That’s another form of racism: just write us fairytales about common people!
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