Preview: Disney and Pixar’s movies for 2010, 2011 and 2012
Earlier this week, to a packed house of Disney employees, journalists, and people who had just sneaked in on the off-chance John Lasseter presented a showcase of Disney and Pixar’s slate for the next couple of years.
It was appropriately hosted at the Odeon in London’s West End, because there’s a distinctly Anglocentric feel to many of the animated treats in store. I’m going to skim through the highlights and give you a flavour of what’s coming from the animation powerhouse over the next few years.
Toy Story and Toy Story 2 are set to appear as a 3D double bill in a cinema somewhere near you in the run-up to Toy Story 3’s release. It’s worth remembering that younger relatives may never have seen these movies at all – certainly not on a big screen, so it’s worth posing as the generous aunt or uncle (or parent if you must) in order to justify your own attendance.
Toy Story 3 shows Andy setting off to college, and represents a poignant end to the series...as well as a messy new beginning.
Female readers may be interested to know that vinyl heart-throb Ken, of Ken & Barbie fame, features heavily in the new movie. Ken will be voiced by Michael Keaton – there’s also allegedly a thespian hedgehog called Mister Pricklepants joining the gang, but I couldn’t be sure whether we (and Timothy Dalton) might be on the end of a wicked Lasseter joke.
Joining the massed ranks of the Disney Princesses next year will be Rapunzel and her 70 foot long prehensile hairdo. Sassier than any of her predecessors she’s to be voiced by Mandy Moore. Who is older than Pixar. Just.
Then things start getting British:
Lasseter infuriatingly refused to satisfy my desire for an Incredibles sequel and instead touted Cars 2. A Hitchcockian tale of ‘the wrong man’ being taken for a master-spy it features a very British character called Fin McMissile who looks for all the world like an alternate universe Aston Martin. Taking in most of the major European cities it concludes with a chase around London, which will probably put a number of legendary landmarks unnaturally close to one another.
If your taste is for gentler fare, you can look forward to a continuation of the Winnie-the-Pooh story in Spring 2011. Using AA Milne story elements not incorporated in the 1966 Disney production it retains the same watercolour painting and typosgraphic playfulness that characterised the original film.
The Bear And The Bow is a Scottish-set adventure featuring a slew of British thesps (Billy Connolly and Emma Thompson have major parts) and although not much finished footage was available to see the production visuals promised the technical wizardry of Pixar melded to the romance and drama of classic Disney. There is, it’s important to note, no prince in this movie.
Lasseter went on to show clips from a whole slew of Tinkerbell movies set to premiere over the next couple of years. There will be five in total – including Tinkerbell and The Great Fairy Rescue which is set in..you guessed it..England.
Saving the best for last, we were then treated to half an hour of upcoming hand-drawn animation The Princess And The Frog. The look is pure classic Disney, harking back to the style of The Aristocrats, but is unusually set in a very definite timeframe. Woodrow Wilson has just come to power in the pre-credits sequence and the main action of the film is emphatically set in Jazz Age New Orleans. Randy Newman is on hand again with some more of those irresistible songs.
In an age where 3D CGI has become the standard, it’s a bold step to create something so classic-looking but I predict that The Princess And The Frog will become one of those hardy perennials that every family with a young daughter will posesss.
Having seen Disney’s slate, it’s easy to see why they bought Marvel: There’s very little there for young boys. Cars, perhaps and arguably Toy Story but they both skew to a younger demographic than Disney’s ever-growing legion of Princesses.
If you’re the kind of person who end up taking small relations to the cinema quite a bit, Disney have got the little girls covered.
