My Top 5 Unsung Disney Heroes

Some Disney characters choose to fade into the background. They could be surrendering the stage to an undisputed champion,  just happy to be doing their job, or wary of yet more slings and arrows. They don't end up on the backbench because they're dull or unexciting, but because they have a stronger sense of tact, survival instinct or …

Frozen vs. The Snow Queen

Christmas can be full of excitement, snowy landscapes and family bickering. So what better time to look at Disney’s Frozen?(1) Based on The Snow Queen (2), it’s about two sisters forced apart by fear and together again by love, and the story enjoyed a similar bout of see-sawing. There were talks about an adaptation way back in 1943 …

Disney Play Cupid Again – 4 More Couples They Had to Clean Up

Due to popular demand (read: one request), I've once again played matchmaker between Disney couples and the originals. All four dates went terribly, but that's what you came to see, wasn't it? #4: Rapunzel and Eugene/ Rapunzel and the prince From: Tangled Disney version Despite being movie-star attractive, Rapunzel and Eugene are non-plussed by the other's good looks and …

My Top 5 Stupidest Disney Secrets

Some Disney characters will do idiotic things for the power of love, their pride (literal or not), or just to keep the story exciting, and this usually involves keeping secrets. They say hindsight is a wonderful thing, but for these five cases, it wasn't really necessary. Here are five films where the characters could have saved …

The Rescuers vs. Miss Bianca

With its female co-star, female villain and subliminal female nudity, Disney's The Rescuers saw more ladies get the limelight. Released in 1977, it was a testament to Bernard and Bianca's prowess. Not only did the mice rescue little orphan Penny, but they also lifted Disney out of a rut by securing their first big hit since Walt's death in 1966. …

Mickey the Merciful…? Part Two – Who Disney Killed Off

Continuing our (my) bout of morbid fascination, let's now look at some characters who survived the original but were doomed by Disney. Yes, this does actually happen from time to time, as these four will attest: #4: The Sea Witch Film: The Little Mermaid Original Version Left to continue organ-trading/spell-casting Disney Doom Impaled by ship's …

Mickey the Merciful: Part One – Who Disney Saved

Some of their characters have surprisingly horrible ends, so Disney don't always shy away from including darker elements in their films. That said, there are still occasions when they can't compete with the originals, so I thought we could look at a different kind of death match: a morbidly curious list of characters Disney decided …

My Top 5 Mute Disney Characters

Sometimes the characters that say nothing can be the most compelling. We can only gauge their emotions through their movements, reactions or the musical score,  if we can gauge anything about them at all. I thought I would give a nod to my top five Disney characters who never utter a word and can therefore …

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs vs. Sneewittchen

Who would've thought that the story of a wicked queen, a princess, seven dwarfs and an apple could have kick-started the legacy of one of the biggest animation studios of all time? Nobody apparently, as not only did Walt Disney have to mortgage both his house and studio to finance the film, but pretty much …

The Fox and the Hound vs. The Fox and the Hound

It's rather apt that Disney's The Fox and the Hound and Daniel P. Mannix's The Fox and the Hound are about as compatible as, um, a real life fox and hound. Part of the reason was good old fashioned politics. To carry on the Disney legacy, many "new bloods" were hired to work with the …

Disney vs. Nature #3: The Lion King

With Prince George continuing the Circle of Life here in jolly old England, what better time to revisit The Lion King, until recently the highest grossing Disney film of all time and the first without any human characters whatsoever. Even without opposable thumbs, clothes, vehicles or tools, these characters still managed to grab our attention long …

My Top 5 Male Disney Characters

I haven't posted in this section for a while, so I thought I would add my undoubtedly long-awaited list of favourite male characters. I should probably say from the outset that I don't have a thing for bad boys, and I'm not condoning the behaviour of any of these chaps, but each of them have …

Five Characters Disney Took to the Dark Side

Disney's recent acquisition of Lucasfilm (and subsequent demolition of Lucas Arts, boo!) has reminded me that they can be just as adept at ramping up the evil as covering their characters in glitter and rainbows. Not all of them started off on the side of Luke and Yoda, but here are five characters the House of …

Pocahontas vs. The Story of Pocahontas

Given the liberties Disney have taken with some of their stories, most audiences will take their films with a pinch of salt. However, if it’s based on the life of a real person, the resulting taste can be a bitter one at best. In the case of Pocahontas, it can be positively poisonous. Set in 17th …

Disney vs. Nature #2: Dinosaur

Long ago, on an untouched Earth, giant lizard-like animals walked, grazed and hunted in their millions. Can you imagine a more awesome sight? Disney couldn't, hence their first non-Pixar CGI project: Dinosaur, a computer-animated film that integrates CGI characters with real life photography and footage. To make sure it was as convincing as possible, Disney …

Disney vs. Nature #1: Brother Bear

It's not just the source text that requires Disney to tweak their stories, either for the sake of cinema, or to avoid reducing their average audience to a quivering mess of tears and denial. Mother Nature is just as guilty a party here, and since there are some great Disney films that I can't include …

Tangled vs. Rapunzel

Our first foray into CGI Disney, Tangled is based on the tale of Rapunzel, the girl with the long golden hair who uses it as a ladder to let people into her tower. Interestingly, the DVD box says the source text is "hilarious", which is a slight departure from the original claim of "inspires Nazism". Okay, that's an …

Disney Play Cupid: 7 Couples They Had to Clean Up

You'd be hard pushed to find a Disney film without a spot of romance, but is the same true of their original stories? The short answer is yes, but that doesn't mean that they have the same outcome, or that the romance was a good idea in the first place. Or that it even existed …

The Hunchback of Notre Dame vs. Notre-Dame de Paris

The 1996 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame saw Disney take more than a few risks with their storytelling. Featuring darker adult topics such as religious genocide and lust, it also toed the line with some pole dancing and the first openly gay Disney character (non-human, but it's a start). Since this left many people …

My Top 5 Disney Scores

I don't know much about music, but I know what I like, and there are several Disney scores that have stuck in my mind long after the film has finished. Unfortunately, these pieces usually get shafted in favour of the catchy songs, but I would advise you to check out the following. I'm cheating slightly …

Tarzan vs. Tarzan of the Apes

Set in the early 20th Century, Disney’s Tarzan is the story of a man who is raised by apes in the wilds of Africa and  discovered by his own kind years later. Cue the “nature versus nurture” argument, identity crises on both sides, and lots of partial nudity. One of the most popular and famous …

My Top 5 Female Disney Characters

This is not me procrastinating, honest. I was just doing more research for the next post and realised there are some rather cool female Disney characters that don't get shouted about all that often. And when I say "characters", I actually mean it, as these ladies are more than just damsels in distress, if they …

Sleeping Beauty vs. Sole, Luna e Talia

Sleeping Beauty is based on the story of a princess who is put to sleep by an evil curse and awakened years later by a handsome prince. The tale of the laziest dating method ever may go back as far as 14th Century Spain, so as you can imagine, tracking down an appropriate source text …

My Top 5 Scariest Disney Villains

My sincere apologies for the lack of posts lately. This is entirely due to preoccupation and laziness on my part, but I will post more "vs." articles very soon. Next on the list is Sleeping Beauty. In the meantime, here is a "Top 5" post to join the legions of others on the internet. Facebook …

Hercules vs. Heracles

Set in Ancient Greece, Hercules is by far one of Disney's most happy-go-lucky films. It's about Zeus' mortal son Hercules, who seeks to regain his place among the other gods on Mount Olympus by becoming a true hero. Helping him along the way are his trainer Philoctetes (voiced by Danny De Vito), love interest Megara, …

Aladdin vs. Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp

Aladdin is based on one of the best known stories from the One Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights collection. It's the tale of a peasant boy who finds a magical oil lamp with a genie inside, who grants him pretty much anything he wishes. There are many variations of the story (thanks in …

The Jungle Book vs. The Jungle Books

Disney's The Jungle Book is inspired by Rudyard Kipling's novel The Jungle Books - specifically, the stories of Mowgli, a young boy raised by animals who must one day return to the man village. For anyone unfamiliar with the non-cake-related Mr. Kipling, he was considered to be one of England's finest writers and poets during …

Bambi vs. Bambi: A Life in the Woods

Simba and Mufasa weren't the first animal royalty to stand nobly atop a cliff. Otherwise known as "the one where his mum gets shot", Bambi is pure vintage Disney and was released in 1942. It's based on the 1928 novel by Felix Salten (born Siegmund Salzmann), a Jewish Hungarian living in Austria. Due to the …

The Little Mermaid vs. Den Lille Havfrue

The Little Mermaid is based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale of a mermaid who falls in love with a prince and becomes human. It marked the beginning of the Disney renaissance in the late 1980s, with the studio returning to what they did best: animated re-tellings of classic stories. Since you’d have a job …

Mulan vs. The Legend of Hua Mulan

Based on a legend from medieval China, Mulan is the story of a girl who disguises herself as a man and goes to war in place of her father. At the time of the film's release in 1998, it was widely rumoured that the Chinese government banned it because they were so insulted by Disney's …