Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Emperor's New Groove 34: The Death of Disney Sequels

There's been a big shake-up at Disney, all for the better in my opinion. One of the new mandates has been to cancel all direct-to-video sequels of Disney's popular movies. Says one of the new bigwigs at Disney, they "generally dislike direct-to-video sequels because the quality of the stories and production usually pales in comparison with the originals." Amen to that. I mean, does anyone really want five hundred sequels to The Emperor's New Groove with the level of animation found on Saturday morning TV? Here's a list of planned Disney sequels that were thankfully cancelled:

The Little Mermaid 5: Ariel On Ice - The Little Mermaid's ship ends up going off-course in a storm and ends up in Antarctica. Now she can't swim in the water or walk on land; she has to ice-skate everywhere. This was an attempt to create a movie that leads directly into a Disney On Ice production.

Toy Story 4: Product Placement - An interactive DVD that features a parade of the latest and greatest toys. If the viewer wants one of the toys, they can just hit the "enter" button and purchase it automatically from Amazon.com. There was a minimal plot planned where Buzz and Woody end up locked in a toy store overnight, but the real purpose was to create a new engine to drive toy sales.

Cinderella 4: Regime Change - Due to protests from his people and human-rights groups, Prince Charming declares his kingdom a democracy and calls for open elections. Things get worse when Cinderella's evil stepmother is elected President and Cinderella is stripped of her royalty, forced to become her stepmother's servant once again. Though devastated at first, Cinderella learns from her friendly animals and her fairy godmother that true happiness comes not from beautiful dresses, pretty shoes, material wealth, or fame, but from within. This was intended to end the so-called Disney Princesses' licensing campaign, which research showed was making little girls materialistic and egotistical. That one might not have been so bad.

4 comments:

Maurice Mitchell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Maurice Mitchell said...

Thank goodness. I've never seen any of them thankfully, but I could never see the point of them anyway. Why dillute a popular movie with poor imitations?
LOL. The best thing about the "list" is that they were so well done I had to think twice about pretty much all of them. The Cinderalla one's my favorite though.

Anonymous said...

Dear Sir,
Nothing worse than a pointless sequel.

Signed
Joel Schumacher, Syvester Stallone and George Lucas.

Maurice Mitchell said...

Dear Sir,
One more sequel to add to the list "The Black Hole 2".
Signed
Disney