Cinema Bestius: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Heigh Ho! Heigh Ho! It’s off to work we go…

#10 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

How terrific is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs? Sergei Eisenstein (Yes, the Battleship Potemkin guy) called it “the greatest film ever made.” How groundbreaking is this movie as the first feature-length cartoon? Some people at the time thought that humans could not sit through a cartoon if it were longer than ten minutes. I do not know what these naysayers thought would happen upon the eleventh minute of viewing animation: Bleeding eyeballs? Mild nausea? Madness? Discomfiting discharge? Fatal case of “the whimsies?”

There, the Pope is now officially the first critic to mention the beloved Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the same sentence as “discomfiting discharge.”

The Plot In Brief: An evil Queen thinks she is the fairest in the land. She has an acolyte in the form of a Magic Mirror who tells her that she is the fairest on a pretty much daily basis. Then one fateful day Snow White, a delightful young lady and friend to small animals, is suddenly judged to be the fairest. This is somewhat contentious because even though the Evil Queen won the Electoral College, Snow White won the popular vote. The evil Queen loses her shit and orders Snow White killed.

The poor huntsman given this dirty job is a bleeding-heart liberal who opposes the death penalty. He takes pity on Snow White and sets her free in the forest. (Presumably he believes that dainty princess/bluebird-whisperer Snow White has had extensive outdoor survival training, and will somehow prevail.) Snow White befriends some forest creatures and eventually comes upon a little cottage.

The cottage belongs to the titular dwarfs (I keep wondering if Walt Disney deliberately misspelled “dwarves” so that he might copyright the term.) The dwarfs find Snow White charming and invite her in. She quickly improves their lives: she cleans their house, she makes them food, and she shows them how to bathe. With their chances of being right-swiped on their Tinder profiles greatly improved, the dwarfs become quite attached to Snow White. The Wicked Queen, meanwhile, learns of the huntsman’s subterfuge and vows to take guaranteed health insurance away from the dwarfs. (Actually it’s been a while since I have screened this one; this plot summary may not be 100% accurate.)

The animation here is without peer. At the time, Disney was famous for scrapping weeks of animation if it was not up to his high standard. In fact, this feature project was so close to his heart that, during the meeting in which he introduced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to his animation team, Walt acted out the entire story, playing all the parts himself, over the course of ninety minutes. I love Walt.

As we would come to expect from future Disney features, the songs are tuneful and catchy; highlights include “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” “Whistle While You Work,” and the now iconic “Heigh Ho.” In fact, John Lennon wrote the Beatles’ song “Do You Want To Know A Secret?” after seeing Snow White. He was inspired by the Snow White song “I’m Wishing,” and originally wrote the lyrics, “Do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell… standing by a wishing well?” The Pope is not making this up.

Even Popes like to have fun—and I like to play “The Dwarf Game!” I cannot be the only one who, after screening the film, enjoys making up names for dwarfs who did not quite make it into the movie. Disney and his animators wound up choosing the iconic seven’s names from a much longer list that originally included such memorable monikers as Baldy, Burpee, Dizzy, Gabby, Jumpy, Lazy, Nifty, Puffy, Shorty, Sniffy, Stuffy, Swifty, Tubby, and Wheezy. So dive in and make up your own B-List!

Here is my list of Lesser Dwarfs: Prickly, Tickly, Scabby, Dabby, Maybe, Crybaby, Coffee, Coughy, Coffy, Slappy, Picky, Louie, Chewy, Easy, Sleazy, Anxious, Ambivalent, Cautious, Gluten-Free, Crispy Crunch, and Boss Man Jim.

Post your favorite “also-ran” dwarfs in the comments section below.

AN ANNOYING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PAUSE: I am old enough to still remember when the Disney organization had its classic animated features on a seven-year theatrical re-release schedule. In the days before home video, Disney realized that, about every seven years, nature would provide a new, untapped audience of children who had never seen these wonderful movies on the big screen. Thanks to that program, I got to see Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, and other early classics in an honest-to-God movie theater. I treasure those memories and wish Disney would bring this program back. Parents need an alternative if the only movie for kids on a given weekend is The Secret Life of Pets! What parent would not instead opt for the original Lady and the Tramp, Jungle Book, or even The Fox and the Hound?

Listen up, Disney. There is money to be made.

Snow White’s Three Miracles: A perfectly realized fairy-tale narrative with a plucky heroine, terrific comic relief, and one of the greatest villains in movie history; animation that represented a huge leap forward from Disney’s previous “Silly Symphony” shorts; and a wonderful message for children—two of the most important things in life are empathy and friendship.

In nomine Disney, et Dopey, y spiritu Grimm, Amen.

Heath Holland On...Rankin/Bass, The Hobbit and Finding Closure in Middle Earth

by Heath Holland

The Hobbit is to Rankin/Bass what Rankin/Bass is to Christmas.

When it comes to the holidays, Rankin/Bass owns me. The studio behind classic television specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman, as well as minor classics like Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town and even the Halloween-themed Mad Monster Party, are as much a part of my holiday viewing habits as Kevin McCallister and Buddy the Elf. It’s kind of amazing that one studio has such a hold on my traditions, or how easily I can be hardwired toward certain annual patterns. How do companies and studios work their way into our lives this way? Only two of the eight existing Star Wars movies have had December release dates so far, but I already associate Christmas with Star Wars. Thanks to the release dates of Peter Jackson’s six Middle-Earth movies and their multiple holiday-timed DVD Blu-ray releases, Christmas will also always be the time for Hobbits and quests over misty mountains. Maybe that’s what makes the combination of Rankin/Bass and their adaptation of The Hobbit such a perfect match for Christmas traditions.

A quick overview of the Rankin/Bass lifespan looks something like this: the 1960s were the golden age where they burned brightest and produced their best, most memorable material. The 1970s were still pretty good, but definitely a bit behind the times; they weren’t doing their best work. The 1980s were their supernova years when they pumped out scores of episodes for successful syndicated shows like Thundercats and Silver Hawks, and released their best-received theatrical film The Last Unicorn. Unfortunately, the party ended in 1987, when Rankin/Bass Productions shuttered its doors and fell silent.

It’s during those middling years of the 1970s that the studio produced their adaptation of The Hobbit, and it was a big deal. Ralph Bakshi had not yet mounted his ambitious rotoscope-animated telling of the first half of The Lord of the Rings, meaning that the Rankin/Bass movie was the first attempt by anyone to make a feature-length filmed version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous story. I’ll be upfront about the fact that it’s not necessarily a home run and is somewhat flawed. On the surface, The Hobbit seems made for animation; the lush and varied landscapes, the huge cast of characters, the fantastic creatures, and the ever-increasing epic scope of the story would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce for a live-action film (as we would one day discover), while animation could convey every single odd beat of the story at a small fraction of that cost. The adventures of Bilbo, Gandalf, and the thirteen dwarves who make their way to the Lonely Mountain to confront Smaug the Dragon and reclaim the heritage that has been stolen from them does indeed seem to lend itself to animation over live-action. I think, for the most part, Rankin/Bass did a remarkable job with the film. The film was created for American television under the assumption that successful viewing figures would lead to a theatrical run (which apparently never happened, at least in America). Because of this high profile, no expense was spared, and its 3-million-dollar-budget was the highest of any TV animated film ever at the time. The animation is pretty great, completed by a Japanese studio called Topcraft, which would later morph into Studio Ghibli, one of the giants in the anime industry. The voice talent was of an equal pedigree. Orson Bean, John Hurt, Thurl Ravenscroft and Paul Frees (without both of whom Disneyland wouldn’t be the same), Otto Preminger, Richard Boone, and even Hans Conried, the man who voiced Captain Hook in Disney’s Peter Pan, lend their vocal talent. We are used to celebrity voice casting today, but this didn’t exist back in the 1970s; the cast for The Hobbit, while perhaps not instantly recognizable to a modern audience, is made up of very talented film and television actors from that era of entertainment.

Given that they had no roadmap other than the book itself and their track record for making entertainment that appealed to all ages, Rankin/Bass played it as safe as possible and used the original story as their map. There was no input from the Tolkien estate: Tolkien himself had passed away in 1973 and probably wouldn’t have been amenable toward the cartoon anyway. He despised Walt Disney Animation for being too cute and insubstantial (fun fact: Walt Disney considered adapting The Hobbit themselves, but decided it couldn’t be done without abandoning the light tone they were known for), and was very harsh in his demands that any film adaptation adhere stringently to his books. To their credit, Rankin/Bass seems to have tried very hard to create something that would have made the professor proud.

By nature and necessity, though, some changes had to be made in order to bring the story to life as a motion picture. Perhaps the most controversial of these was the decision to add musical narration in the form of singer/songwriter Glenn Yarbrough, a quaver-voiced folk singer who waxes on and on about “the greatest adventure” that Bilbo Baggins is about to begin. I like it, but I understand why others do not. Also working against the film, Tolkien fans are notoriously hard to please. The New York Times ran a piece on this animated movie on November 27th, 1977, the night the film premiered on NBC (during the holiday season, no less) and pointed out this fact and the gamble that Rankin/Bass were taking by investing so much in the adaptation. In general, the biggest complaint die-hards of the book have is that it condenses the story far too much and the characters themselves are too much of a caricature. However, the same New York Times article goes on to say that perhaps the then-new crop of fantasy movies like Star Wars owe their success to Tolkien in the first place and regards the animated film as an achievement.

For me personally, there’s something about the Rankin/Bass movie that draws me in and holds me captive. There’s a sort of wonderful melancholy that hangs over the whole story, like a distant memory of a happier, better time that is gone and isn’t coming back. This is present in Peter Jackson’s version of this story as well, but somehow gets buried under the weight of the many diversions, side quests, and amusement-park-ride sequences with which Jackson populates the films. And yet, the animated film doesn’t work like the book does; it lacks the length and depth of the source material.

This is where closure comes in. I’ve struggled for years now with my love of Tolkien’s world, his book The Hobbit, and my failure to completely connect to any of the adaptations of that book. I’ve been wanting the cinematic experience to replicate the feeling I get from reading the books. This is never going to happen, just as going to see the new movie with Spider-Man or The Avengers is never going to give me the same pure feeling I get from reading those characters in a comic book. If I’m being honest, most of the comic books aren’t that great, either. I’m chasing the magic of those few experiences that really impacted me and changed me, even though the rarity of the experience is what made it magical in the first place. When I watch these adaptations of things that I love, especially Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, I have to accept them for what they are and stop expecting them to give me the same feeling as reading that book so many years ago. Peter Jackson’s universe and the animated landscape of the Rankin/Bass film bring new ideas and visuals to the table, and that’s their strength. They make that world feel real. It doesn’t have to be a literal, word-for-word translation from page to screen to still have value, and it doesn’t have to be a great film. Most films are not great; I still watch and enjoy them. Such acceptance requires me to get out of my own way, which is definitely not an easy thing to do.

Revisiting a movie like Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit is a tricky thing because I’m chasing an experience from long ago, living on the fumes of that magic. It becomes difficult to discern between the quality of the film and the feeling that the film gives me. Maybe fans of a thing are the most unreliable sources for objective opinions on that thing because they’re speaking from a place of passion. Still, I think there’s something special about this movie, just like I think there’s something special about the studio that produced it. Rankin/Bass still exist in a fragmented, corporate version of what they once were, but the production studio that made these classics is no more. Their failures far outweighed their successes, as is the way of all things, but it’s their successes that I remember, especially around this time of year when their holiday fare is ubiquitous. Unlike many of their biggest successes, The Hobbit doesn’t play constantly on cable and isn’t a beloved classic. I’m not even sure that it’s a GOOD movie. But I do know that I admire it for being peculiar and different, and for coming closer than any other movie to touching that place within me that Tolkien’s words created.

Heath Holland On...5 Reasons Transformers: The Movie Still Matters

by Heath Holland

It’s been thirty years since the ongoing war between the Autobots and the Decepticons first hit a movie screen and it still hasn’t been done better.

Despite tepid reviews from critics and the passionate Transformers fan base, the movie franchise that Michael Bay built looks like it’s going to be sticking around for at least the next few years, and probably even longer than that. Plans have even moved forward on a shared universe for Hasbro’s many properties a la the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so you’ll probably be hearing about Autobots and Decepticons when your 80, whether you like it or not. In fact, between all the various Transformers-related movies and cartoons that Hasbro continues to authorize, total market saturation seems to be their ultimate goal.

If you’ve been following along here for a while, you’ll know that I have a love/hate relationship with the giant robots and that I’m constantly wrestling with my feelings for the property even though the people in charge of it (particularly the movies) don’t seem to understand its potential and frequently take the laziest path in effort to get people to a theater. Like every kid who grew up during the 1980s, I loved the Transformers cartoon and toys during their heyday from 1984-1987, and like every kid in the 1980s, I was a victim of marketing brainwashing. In 1981, newly-elected president Ronald Reagan passed legislation that allowed corporations to market things specifically toward children. The ‘70s had been a tumultuous decade for children’s entertainment, with watchdog groups and child psychologists determining that kids couldn’t tell the difference between entertainment and advertising; therefore, laws were put into place to prevent this from happening. When Reagan deregulated children’s entertainment, what followed was a golden age of toys and cartoons that fed off of one another. Characters like He-Man and Rainbow Bright and Care Bears and the Thundercats only existed to sell us toys, but we didn’t care. It was an unprecedented era of creativity for us that allowed us to manifest our wildest dreams in action figure form on the playground. The cartoons served as the inspiration, the jumping-off points for our own adventures.

The downside of this was that most of the cartoons that sprung up during the 1980s were visually impressive and filled with great character designs (to sell toys, see), but a bit lacking in the plot department. As someone who will probably always be approximately 40% partially stuck in the 1980s, I can admit to you that, while I love these shows, there’s usually not a whole lot there as far as substance. That was fine given the times, and I’m okay with that now. However, I always thought the Transformers were different, and I still do. I still watch my DVDs of the classic cartoon series, and I get bored of hearing people my age saying things like “I can’t watch that show anymore. It doesn’t hold up.” If I had a nickel for every time someone has told me that, I’d have like…17 nickels. Which I guess isn’t that much. Sure, the stories tend to be repetitive, but I’ve always found things to appreciate when I look back on them with my adult eyes (these episodes were often written by middle-aged movie buffs, comic book nerds, and science fiction fans, after all), and I’ve always how much ground the series covered over its four-year-run. Maybe I’m making excuses so I don’t have to grow up. But maybe I’m not. Maybe Michael Bay and the filmmakers behind the new movies, even Hasbro themselves, have forgotten what made these characters resonate with kids 30 years ago.

For me and a whole bunch of nerds hovering around 40, the pinnacle of Transformers storytelling is the theatrical film that hit screens in 1986 because it changed everything. Newer movies may fare better in terms of complexity and characterization, but fans like myself will always hold this movie as the peak of awesomeness for the franchise. This is not simply nostalgia; I aim to back this up with examples. Here are my five reasons that Transformers: The Movie still matters (and is better than Michael Bay’s movies).

5) The Visual Style. The syndicated television series was the product of a collaboration between Sunbow Productions and Marvel Productions, a subsidiary of Marvel Comics (and the same people behind G.I. Joe, the sister show to The Transformers). Animation was largely done by the Japanese company Toei, with some work being picked up by a handful of other Japanese studios. For the movie, the budget was raised to six times that of a standard episode, and it really showed. Toei spearheaded the entire production of the movie; they would spend the 1990s as one of the leaders in the animation field with their work on Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z, but for a lot of us, this was our first exposure to what they were capable of creating. Unlike the television series, which took place primarily in the daytime under bright blue skies and the backgrounds of dry deserts and desolate canyons, Transformers: The Movie took place in the darker environment of wild space and strange, mechanical landscapes. Nothing at all was familiar about the battlegrounds of the movie, lending the film a tone that was unsettling. The animation itself was—and still is—jaw-dropping. The rounded, soft edges of the television series were gone. These robots looked and felt incredibly dangerous. What we didn’t know at the time is that many of us had just been given our first glimpse at true anime, and it was stunning.

4) The Music. The cute theme song from the series with the robot voice saying “more than meets the eye” was gone. In its place was a score from Vince DiCola that felt edgy and threatening. Also new were a bunch of hard rock songs, once again making the movie feel important and a little dangerous. The band Lion handles the title song, and I can’t begin to tell you what an impression it made at the time. I still love it and it’s still on my iPod. I listened to it today to get psyched up for writing this. Inspirational power rocker Stan Bush contributed two songs to the soundtrack with “The Touch” and “Dare.” The first was written for the Stallone movie Cobra, but didn’t make it into the film. While Boogie Nights probably used “The Touch” better and made it a pop culture meme, it was Transformers: The Movie where the song originally appeared and garnered a whole bunch of fans the first time around. There was also a “Weird Al” Yankovic called “Dare to Be Stupid,” and both this song and Stan Bush’s “The Touch” ended up on a single. The soundtrack to the film didn’t break any Billboard records, but it became a cult classic that endures to this day and has been reissued with the rest of Vince DiCola’s score. The music was a crucial element in the success of Transformers: The Movie and made it feel fresh and edgy for a wide audience. This factor can’t be underestimated.

3) The Voice Cast. While now probably relegated to the “who cares” department by everyone other than ‘80s buffs, the movie featured some notable celebrity actors in the vocal department for added credibility alongside the already-established stalwarts from the TV series. Judd Nelson was coming off the one-two punch of The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire when he appeared as Hot Rod, a character of extreme importance to the expanding mythology (spoilers: he takes Optimus Prime’s place as the new leader). Robert Stack (The Untouchables) is Ultra Magnus, and Monty Python’s Eric Idle is Wreck-Gar (a character I still can’t stand). Leonard Nimoy is Galvatron, another extremely pivotal character for the story, cast no doubt for the credibility that he would have brought to the production. For a movie that is essentially very hard science fiction, Spock himself lends the role a weight and importance that would have resonated with the older viewers who had a history with Star Trek and hard science fiction. The most astonishing and strange casting choice is Orson Welles as Unicron, the Transformers version of Galactus, a planet-eating force of destruction. Fitting? Welles died just five days after he finished recording his lines for the animated movie, making this his final film performance. I’m sure his family was very proud. When you add these established Hollywood actors to the outstanding vocal work of series regulars Peter Cullen and Frank Welker (neither of whom get enough credit as actors), you have an incredibly strong set of performances that ground the story in the same kind of grave and important tone that the film sought and achieved.

2) Consequences. As in the kind of consequences that rocked an entire generation. Remember how I was talking about how tame and watered down everything was after the Reagan administration lifted the ban on marketing to children? While the syndicated Transformers cartoon had plot development and moved things forward, kids assumed that everything was going to be okay when the credits rolled. Our heroes would live to fight another day and the enemies would never win in the end. Cartoons from the 1980s are reliable in their commitment to the status quo because every episode could be someone’s first. Transformers: The Movie changed that forever. The amount of robot carnage that takes place in this movie was alarming and totally effed up. While the main legacy of this movie is that it killed Optimus Prime, it’s less talked about that this movie also kills a TON of main characters. The same robots that we had watched as kids every day after school escape with a witty comment are the same robots that we see completely obliterated in the most violent of ways. Heroes lay on the ground with smoke pouring from their mouths and eyes. What’s more, these characters STAYED DEAD. Starscream, a slimy character with mutinous aspirations of power, gets literally disintegrated BY A BIG GUN. We watch, almost in slow motion, and he freezes and slowly begins to fall apart in dead pieces. While some of these characters would return in later, newer versions of the TV show (or in the last handful of episodes of the television series a year later), their deaths were real. And they mattered. Ultimately this decision was made for the most soulless and corporate of reasons: the old line of toys needed to be retired so they could crank out a whole batch of new toys and make more money. The unintended message being sent to us kids, though, was that sometimes you can try your best and still not succeed. Good may ultimately win, but you might not be around to see it. Oh, and EVERYTHING DIES.

1) It Changed Everything. Piggybacking off the previous point, the changes that occurred in the movie weren’t just temporary events meant to invoke a sense of drama. Michael Bay’s Transformers films consistently and overtly copy the most important beats of Transformers: The Movie without seeming to understand why they mattered. Bay’s movies try to mimic the impact of certain character deaths, but they don’t understand that for us to really care about those deaths, there has to be a real loss and a real change. You can’t kill of a character and then bring them back in the same movie and have there be any real impact. Nothing has been lost. Transformers: The Movie, through total accident, made the deaths in the movie really matter. When Optimus Prime dies, he doesn’t return before the end of the movie. And when sad children gathered around their TV sets for new episodes of the syndicated show in the fall of 1986, they wouldn’t find him there, either. Optimus Prime was still dead, and so were all the characters who bit the big one in the movie. We had a new leader and a new group of Autobots waging the eternal war. Years had passed since the last episode. Characters we knew as children now had children of their own. Optimus Prime did eventually return at the very tail end of the third season in 1987, some nine months after his character died. Not coincidentally, his return basically marked the end of the series. I wonder what audiences would think of a Michael Bay movie where most of the heroes die and never come back and where the surviving ones look so different that they’re unrecognizable. What about if the action moved off Earth completely and instead took place in the future on a series of strange planets inhabited by creatures that weren’t remotely humanoid and there were no human actors?

Thirty years on, I still find new things to appreciate about Transformers: The Movie. It’s far from perfect and was birthed out of some pretty cynical and greedy circumstances, and yet it transcends those origins to become something truly special. It was created as nothing more than a 90 minute toy commercial designed to herald a new toy line, and yet it became something so much more. It was a perfect culmination of what had come before. May I blow your mind? Transformers should probably have stayed in the 1980s. It was so of its time and this was such a fitting cinematic outing for the robots in disguise, it’s almost a shame that it’s become so watered down in an attempt to wring every last bit of life out of it. Better to let it be a thing of nostalgia that can be looked back on fondly. That’s not going to happen, though, and these robots are here forever. Thankfully Shout! Factory has recently released this film on Blu-ray for the 30th Anniversary. This is a good thing, because demand for the movie has not waned and copies of the out-of-print previous edition of the DVD from 2006 (before the first Michael Bay movie even existed) were soaring up to around 100 dollars on the secondary market. Like the Autobots and Decepticons themselves, fandom for the Transformers never goes away, and as more new content is created around these characters, it becomes apparent that they’ve never been as relevant—or awesome, funny, cool, messed up, and disposable—as they were in 1986’s Transformers: The Movie.