When you Wish upon a Star

Disney's The Princess and the Frog

I've just watched the above trailer for Disney's The Princess and the Frog (out this Friday, woo). I'd not seen a trailer for it in full before now, just a couple of TV spots in the last few weeks. YouTube actually has two or three different ones, but out of the ones I found this is the better. The trailer starts by reminding us that "hey look, Disney are good at hand-drawn animation" and emphasising their attempts to please all those whiners who believe Disney don't deliver good films anymore by returning to classic animation. They've also returned to fairytale adaptation, something they've also avoided doing since about 1989, and something which they've created a reputation for doing annoyingly well. The trailer follows with the promise that we're about to discover what happens to the princess after she kisses the frog- so already we're aware this isn't going to be the sanitised versions of familiar stories like we saw in Snow White and Cinderella. This hopefully means that Disney have been a fair bit more liberal with the narrative and the various themes in their adaptation than they have been previously- sure there's some seriously evil bad guys in previous movies (Maleficent and Ursula spring immediately to mind) but if Disney really want to make a point this film has got to be less 'soft and squidgy' and more gritty and tough. Think Emperor's New Groove meets Meet The Robinsons maybe. Something we can get our teeth into.

Disney have a habit recently of referring to all their past work in their trailers. This is commonplace, it's rare in a trailer not to see "From the director of...." or "The producer of .... brings you....." but one trailer for the recent release of Disney Pixar's Up somewhat takes the biscuit, 'clip-merging' all eight of their previous hits in the opening 30 seconds before even mentioning the "next great adventure" they'll take us on. Same for The Princess and the Frog, we take a rapid journey through various sketch-realisation sequences for Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and The Little Mermaid before showing a similar sequence to reveal Princess Tiana, our heroine for the new movie. Sure they're stating a good case by parading all their previous hit films, but doesn't it show a certain amount of doubt on Disney's part? Are the trailers asking for forgiveness incase this movie doesn't live up to our expectations? Or on the other hand, is the message more 'you thought these were good? Well watch out'.

I hope it's the latter.

On a different note, I've just watched a trailer for Streetdance 3D. Check it out, it looks fantastic.

Charley
I want, I want, I want, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine, now, now, NOW! - Hook, Tristar 1991