More Thoughts on VR

I attended a one day conference on VR & Film, sponsored by SIRT and ETV Film Inc in mid-June.  There were hardware and software demonstrations, but I was particularly interested in the talks, where people involved in creating virtual reality explained the storytelling issues they encountered.

Having worked in cgi in the early years, I'm confident that the technical problems of VR will be solved over time.  My personal interest runs more towards how VR is going to communicate with audiences as a narrative medium.

Pretty much everyone agrees that VR has a resemblance to theatre in that the audience is free to look where they wish.  The stage has various techniques for directing the audience's attention, lighting being a major one.  If only one part of the stage is lit, the audience will naturally look there.  Jeff Preyra of 360 Storylabs pointed out that with a 360 degree camera, it was impossible to place lights, as they would always be visible.  For this reason, he felt that the future of VR storytelling would be motion capture avatars in cgi environments.  The virtual lights in cgi are invisible to the camera, so in a cgi environment, directors could still control lighting.

Preya felt that establishing shots would have to be longer as the audience would naturally want to look around an environment and take stock of who is present before watching whatever dramatic action is going to unfold.  This makes sense, though when returning to established locations it shouldn't be necessary and if you want to surprise the characters and the audience, you could start the action of a scene immediately to prevent the audience from knowing everything that was present.

Preyra also felt that musical scoring didn't work in VR.  As the viewer was in the scene, any music needed to have a visible source.  I'm not sure about this.  In the early years of talkies, there was music under the opening and closing titles, but none during the film unless there was a onscreen source such as a radio, phonograph or visible musicians.  However, by 1933, just a few years after talkies became the dominant form of movies, King Kong had dramatic scoring by Max Steiner throughout the film.  By the late 1930s, composers like Steiner, Newman, Korngold, Waxman, Hageman and Tiomkin were hard at work scoring films throughout their run times.

Ian Tuason of CFC Media Lab said that cameras could only move in straight lines, as any change in the camera's direction might clash with head movements of someone wearing a VR headset.  This makes sense on the face of it, but again a look at film history leads me to believe that it can be done.  Films in the 1930s and '40s routinely shot in ways where the camera's position operated separately from the camera's view.  In other words, the camera's location would physically move while the camera itself would change what it was pointing at.  What was standard, however, was someone moving on screen that gave the audience a focus.  So if a camera was tracking through a restaurant before stopping at a table where the main action was to take place, the camera would follow a waiter while it was moving.  In a VR situation, if there is an obvious center of interest on screen, like a character, the camera could move, changing it's spatial and angular relationship so long as the audience has a reason to stay focused on that character.

I feel the same way about cutting to a closer view.  If the audience is looking at a speaking character, cutting to a closer shot should not disorient the audience any more than it does in a conventional film.


The next five to ten years are going to be very interesting with regard to VR.  No doubt gaming will be a leader, as it's a natural for putting a player inside the game.  But just as games have evolved cut scenes to provide the player with narrative information, VR is going to evolve storytelling grammar in order to do the same.  Once that grammar exists, we'll find out if VR is going to be successful with audiences as a storytelling medium or if it's just a fad like stereoscopic 3D.

For my earlier thoughts on VR, go here.

An Aspect of Disney Films You Had Not Considered

The public thinks of Disney movies as entertainment.  Artists may think of them as inspiration.  Ron Suskind describes how Disney movies were the key to his autistic son overcoming isolation and learning to deal with the world in an excerpt from his book Life, Animated, to be published April 1.

The story is inspirational for watching someone overcome obstacles, but it's a reminder of the power of communication.  We don't consider what we're communicating in animation often enough, but Suskind's story should remind all of us that what we're communicating matters.

Go read it.  You won't be sorry.

Where Characters Come From

If you've ever created stories -- whether written, drawn or filmed -- you are familiar with the experience of having the characters dictate where the story is going to go.  You may start out pushing the characters through your plot, but if you're doing your job right, the characters start to drive events and you, as creator, just follow them to see what's going to happen.

Author Corey Doctorow has an interesting idea about why this occurs.  If you make stories or want to make stories, it's worth reading in full.

Complex Characters

In comments to my post on Toy Story 3, Daniel Caylor asked, "Can you give me some examples of rich characters from animation that have set the bar for you personally?"

While animation people are constantly yelling, "story, story story," I think that they have a very limited understanding of certain aspects of it. They understand plot and they understand personality, but I think that animation's understanding of character is pretty perfunctory.

Character in animation tends to be linear and go from A to B. Grumpy hates women and ends up loving Snow White. Pinocchio is irresponsible and then he's responsible. The plot moves these characters from one emotional place to another, but their growth is uncomplicated and easy. They don't have to struggle with their emotions in order to grow and don't have to give up anything along the way. It's no sacrifice for Pinocchio to stop being irresponsible. In fact, it's been nothing but a disaster for him.

Pixar has done better than average with their characters. In the original Toy Story, Woody has to give up his position in the toy social world and Andy's affections in order to grow. Buzz has to give up his illusion that he's a space ranger and not a collection of plastic parts. Giving up these things is painful but necessary.

However, in Toy Story 2, Woody has to give up something he never had: the adulation of crowds of children visiting him in a museum. Jessie has to give up her mistrust of people in order to be emotionally alive again, something that may take effort but is hardly much of a loss. In Toy Story 3, Andy is going to go to college whether his toys are in the attic, donated to the daycare or bestowed by him as a gift. While his choice represents his maturity, it isn't necessary for him to grow in life.

For this reason, I still feel that the original Toy Story is the best film of the three. It's the only one where the character growth has real costs .

One of my favorite scenes in The Incredibles is when Bob is leaving to go on a mission while pretending to be going to a business conference. His wife Helen is there to say goodbye. The dialogue is totally innocuous but the subtext is illuminating. At this point in the film, Bob's family takes second place to his egotistical need to be a hero. Helen believes he is having an affair. While she is wrong, the scene does show the the emotional gulf between them and their lack of communication. It's perhaps the most realistic portrayal of a marriage in any animated film.

Complex characters come from the script, not from the animation, which is why "story, story, story" rings so hollow to me. Look at two live action classics that I hope everyone has seen: Casablanca and The Searchers. In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart has to give up his romance with Ingrid Bergman in order to grow as a character. However, there's another level present here that's missing in animated films and that's ambiguity. Over the course of the film, the audience learns of Bogart's strong feelings for Bergman but also learns of his hatred of fascism. Bogart rigs a roulette game so that a young wife doesn't have to sleep with a government official in order to buy an exit visa. He approves of the playing of La Marseilles in the presence of Nazi officers. Until the end of the film, the audience is not sure what Bogart will do. There are several possible endings and all of them are believable based on the events of the film.

In The Searchers, the John Wayne character is both attached to his brother's family (in particular his brother's wife) and has a maniacal hatred of Comanches. When his brother's family is murdered, the women raped and his young niece abducted, he spends 10 years searching for her. The audience is not sure what he will do when he finds her. Will he rescue her or kill her for having been "defiled" by living with Comanches?

Animated films tend to be plot heavy and because they are generally family friendly, the endings can be taken for granted. Suspense lies in how the characters will reach the happy ending more than how the characters will grow. Plot dominates character, where in the best live action films, character dominates plot. Indeed, plot should be growing out of what characters want. In too many animated films, the characters are initially passive and simply respond to events the plot sets in motion. That's the case in all the Toy Story films.

Clarity, Logic and Entertainment

Last week, the 4th year students at Sheridan had a screening of their story reels. I mentor 10 of those students, out of 108 this year.

I've been looking at my students' reels as they developed since September, but it's always different seeing work with an audience. It struck me that there are three stages the students have to tackle in order to make a successful film, and various films were already at different stages.

The first is clarity. Can an audience understand what's happening on screen? I've asked students to explain something I don't understand about their films and their explanations make sense, but what's in their heads hasn't been communicated on the screen. Things, often important things, get left out. Clarity is pretty easy to achieve once a storyboard or story reel is shown to a few people, as they inevitably ask questions about things they don't understand.

Logic is a bit tougher. Getting the events of a film and the characters' behavior to be consistent and logical takes some doing. Some films have problems with tone; they signal to the audience that they're one type of film and then become another. That could potentially work in a longer film, but it's tough to get an audience to make a sharp emotional turn in less than two minutes. Other times, a film starts off with a theme and then contradicts itself by the end. Sometimes, there's a lack of consistency in terms of plot or character; events don't make sense based on what an audience would expect.

Logic is harder to fix than clarity. It sometimes means tearing up a story and rebuilding it, which can be a lot of work. It also means sacrificing something that the film maker probably wants to keep and getting a student to give something up is often a difficult task.

The toughest problem is entertainment, and you're never really sure what you've got until you get an audience reaction. I had a couple of students doing films that built up to punchlines. While they were clear and logical, the punchlines didn't get the expected response. Reworking the endings to evoke a laugh is going to be difficult as entertainment isn't as clear cut as clarity or logic.

If I could wish for anything for animation artists, it would be for more audience contact. Stand-up comics get good by constantly honing their material based on audience reaction. Actors or directors who start out in theatre do the same. Even bands that play bars get feedback.

Animators (especially those working in TV or games) exist in a vacuum. Feature animators have it a little better but still have to wait years to learn whether what they've done is successful or not. Animation people as different as Walt Disney and Bob Clampett viewed their films with audiences on a regular basis, measuring their intentions against the results. It took both of them years to solidify their ability to entertain, as it did Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Friz Freleng.

People with the ability to entertain an audience are the ones most in demand. While some people may have a flair for it, I believe it's like any other skill and can be honed through practice. The problem for animation artists is that they have so few opportunities for audience feedback.

The Sheridan students now have their own experience of watching their films with an audience as well as feedback from friends and instructors. The films generally get better between the story reels and the final films as the students continue to polish their work. However, I wonder how much better the films would be if the students had more experience with audience reactions and I wonder the same about the whole animation business.

Sleeping Beauty Puts Me to Sleep

My sentiments, exactly.

I just watched the new DVD release of Sleeping Beauty. It’s the first time I’ve seen the film in over a decade and maybe two. It has never been one of my favourites, but watching it now I’m struck by how poor the story and characterizations are. If not for the high production values and the presence of artists that I know to be more than capable, I would say that Sleeping Beauty is a poor imitation of a Disney film.

I am not a fan of Eyvind Earle’s artwork. I don’t have any insightful reasons for that; it just leaves me cold. Beyond Earle’s design style, I’m also not one who is impressed by detail. For me, all stories are about people and if the visuals don’t support a worthwhile story and characters, they are wasted. It’s no different than the common refrain that a particular movie isn’t very good, but the special effects are great. If a movie isn’t very good, I don’t care about any of the elements.

The story of Sleeping Beauty is ludicrous. An evil fairy is insulted for not being invited to a party, so she puts a curse on the princess in the cradle. By the sunset of her sixteenth birthday, the princess will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die. I can’t begin to fathom how absurd this is. If Maleficent is angry enough to kill the child, why not do it on the spot? Why drag out the process for 16 years? And why a spinning wheel? Why not a disease or a fall or choking on food? This may be what the fairy tale original demands, but the Disney studio was never shy about rewriting its source material.

What’s worse is that Maleficent has no motivation to speak of beyond being miffed. Does she have a history with the royal family? Have the three good fairies caused her trouble in the past? Is she unable to have a child of her own? We are told nothing. Furthermore, Maleficent is a dolt. Her henchman search for the princess unsuccessfully for 16 years and she only questions them closely at the end of that time? What’s she been doing all those years? Watching the clock?

The three good fairies are even more empty-headed than Maleficent. They know that the curse will expire at sundown on the princess’s sixteenth birthday. They put away their wands so that their magic will not draw attention to her. Yet with hours to go, they bring out the wands and tip off the bad guys. Their reasons for using magic are also unbelievable. They’ve been living in the woods for 16 years and haven’t figured out how to make clothing or prepare food? Who made the princess’s clothing as she grew? What have they been eating all this time?

This stupidity is compounded by them bringing the princess back to the castle before the sun sets. Instead of leaving her hidden in the woods until the curse expires, they tempt fate by bring her out into the open. Why? The only reason I can think of is because the story artists couldn’t think of anything better. There is no logic to this.

What’s most disappointing is that the good fairies and Maleficent are the most interesting characters in the film. The king and queen have longed to have a child. When they finally do, they are forced to give up all contact with her for 16 years in order to protect her life. In the interim, they have no other children. Imagine the psychological stress these parents would endure and how their loss would colour their entire lives. That’s meaty material, but the film ignores the Queen entirely and the king is barely more fleshed out. When it comes to the climax of the film, the royal family is literally asleep, unable to influence events in any way. When the king and queen are finally reunited with their daughter, the sum total of the emotion displayed is a hug.

The two kings are more poorly developed than the two kings in the Fleischer version of Gulliver’s Travels. It isn’t often you can credit the Fleischers with better character development than Disney, but it is absolutely the case here.

The princess is stuck in the woods for 16 years. Has she had contact with anyone besides the three fairies? Has she ever encountered men? She dreams of romance, so she has to be aware of them. She can see the castle from the woods. Has she never been curious to visit it, just as a tourist? If the princess has any thoughts, the audience is not privy to them. In dramatic terms, she has no motivation; she seeks romance, but only in the most generic way. Unlike later Disney heroines like Ariel, she does nothing to find or sustain her relationship. The prince finds her in the woods and she falls instantly in love. Is it possible to be more passive?

The prince is over-matched by Maleficent if not for the fairies. Every step of the way, they use magic to allow him to escape and battle the dragon. Why don’t they cut out the middle man and just battle Maleficent themselves? What’s worse, they put the inhabitants of the King’s castle to sleep, so why don’t they do the same to the inhabitants of Maleficent’s? That would have saved everyone a lot of effort.

There are many Disney features done while Disney himself was alive that suffer from story structure problems. What was usually present, though, were memorable personalities. Many claim that Sleeping Beauty suffered due to Disney’s interest in Disneyland and the studio’s TV work. That may be so, but the film looks like the studio forgot everything it knew about story and character when it made this film. The fact that nobody could see this or stop it, plus the fact that so much money was spent to finish the film, resulted in major layoffs and marginalized the animation department. While some people celebrate this film, I see it as a self-inflicted wound.

Bill Plympton's Idiots and Angels

I've always had mixed feelings about Bill Plympton. He draws beautifully. His short films always provoke a strong audience reaction. He is an inspiration as an entrepreneur, having developed his own market niche where he creates the films he wants to and makes a living at it. Where most independent animators produce shorts, Plympton has directed at least five features.

On the other hand, I think that Plympton's animation is starved for drawings. While I understand the economic necessity of limiting the amount of artwork he produces for a film, the animation and stories often feel padded as a result. While Plympton is a strong draftsman, he has trouble portraying weight and momentum in motion. Perhaps my greatest reservation about him is the shallowness of his characters. This isn't much of a problem in his shorts, which tend to be very gag driven, but becomes a larger problem in his features.

Idiots and Angels is Plympton's latest. I saw it screened at the Toronto After Dark festival where it played to a large audience and got a good response. The story is a morality tale about a thoroughly unlikeable character who sprouts angel wings. The character and the wings battle for control of the character's actions and his soul.

While many people thought that Wall-E was daring for doing without dialogue for forty minutes, Plympton has essentially made a silent feature. For eighty minutes, there is no dialogue and the storytelling doesn't suffer for it. What is lacking, however, is depth in the characterizations. With the exception of the main character, the characters' personalities do not evolve over the course of the film. Plympton is good at communicating who they are, but once their personalities are established, the characters never grow or do anything unexpected. This lack of complexity is the film's weakest point. While eighty minutes is short for a feature, the film still feels padded because the characterizations are static. Plympton adds fantasy sequences and visually interesting direction (he does some marvelous things with match cuts), but all stories are about people, and these people aren't interesting enough to fully hold our attention.

I've seen I Married a Strange Person and Hair High and think that this film is stronger than either of those features. There is no question that Plympton is advancing as a film maker, but I wish that his progress was faster. Economics may prevent him from ever putting more animation into his features, but the scripts could be improved. I wonder what Plympton could do if he had stronger characterizations to work with? Perhaps he should adapt an existing story or collaborate with another writer.

Idiots and Angels is definitely worth seeing. It contains some deft visual storytelling, some excellent gags and an intriguing premise, but I'm still waiting (and hoping) for Bill Plympton to make an animated feature that will banish my mixed feelings.

For a look at the film's trailer, go here.

Wall-E

(There are spoilers galore here, so be warned.)

The last thing I'm going to do is try to make a message movie!

-Andrew Stanton

Andrew Stanton may not be trying to send a message, but that doesn't mean that it isn't there. Unfortunately, it overwhelms the main character and the message itself is only half-baked. The half that's there describes the problem; the missing half has to do with responsibility and offering a solution.

The film presents the audience with a monopoly capitalist economy gone mad. Buy N Large seems to be the only remaining business on the planet and it is so blind to the effects of its way of doing business that it finds it easier to transport its customers and system into space than to change its ways. The people who consume in this society are sheep. So long as they are entertained and distracted, they give no thought to the waste building up around them.

There is apparently no moral price to pay for this. The business isn't condemned for polluting the Earth and the consumers are not condemned for their willingness to attach themelves to the corporate teat. If the film has a villain, it's a ship's computer system that isn't flexible enough to deal with altered circumstances. Once the ship returns to Earth, there is no awareness of what got the humans into trouble in the first place or any plan for avoiding the problem in the future. No one takes responsibility, and that seems okay with Andrew Stanton. The humans get home, Wall-E gets a girl friend and that's all that seems to matter.

This isn't the first time that an animated feature has flirted with a message and then backed away from it. Chicken Run and Madagascar both deal with meat-eating as a threat but can't indict the meat-eating audience. Wall-E can't indict mindless consumption when Disney and Pixar are asking the audience to buy the DVD and whatever merchandise that this (and previous) movies have deposited on store shelves. When the point of a film is to generate profit, you can't expect the film to criticize the process by which the profit is made. That puts the film in an impossible situation.

And the strange thing is that it didn't have to be there. The film is called Wall-E, but the film seems to lose interest in him once the humans show up. The humans' situation overwhelms his love story, and the humans are not well-developed characters. The film abandons character for plot. Wall-E isn't even aware of what the plant means for the humans; he just wants to make sure Eve gets it, hoping that the gift will bring them closer emotionally. She also doesn't understand why it's important, simply that it's her prime directive.

That means there's a giant disconnect between the robots' and human's motivations. Had Wall-E understood the larger repercussions of the plant, at least the two stories would have been tied together. Instead they're separate and neither is particularly satisfying. Wall-E is treated as a child-like character, so his feelings for Eve can't go beyond the limits of puppy love. The humans have fouled their own nest and lack any initiative, so why should the audience care about them?

Science fiction requires that any novel ideas make sense, but there are big logic flaws in this film. If the Axiom's computers know that they've been directed not to return to Earth, why are they bothering to send the space probes there? What possible reason would the computers have for not notifying the humans that the Earth can't be rehabilitated? The humans seem totally satisfied on the ship, so what difference would it make?

Why, when the Axiom tilts, do people slide to the side? Either the ship has artificial gravity, in which case the people will be pulled towards the floors regardless of the ship's orientation (there is no 'up' in space), or the ship has no gravity, in which case the room would shift but the people would stay stationary.

It appears when two of the humans touch, it's a novel experience for them. So where do the babies on board come from?

If the ship disposal unit hurls tons of garbage into space, where does the ship get the raw material to keep manufacturing the crap that it sells to humans? Where are they getting all that rocket fuel for repeated probe trips, since there are several Eves on the probe mother ship and I assume that they've been sending probes for several hundred years?

A film that wants to be taken seriously has to do more than choose a serious subject. Wall-E flirts with big issues, but doesn't do them justice. The film is getting good reviews and will undoubtedly make money, but I found it to be a major disappointment.

Conflict and Tension

Having just seen Surf's Up, I was struck by the nature of conflict in the film compared to Ratatouille. Both films have animals who are obsessed with something and that obsession brings them into conflict with those around them. While I enjoyed Surf's Up, the nature of the conflict in that film is much less compelling than in Ratatouille and I think that is one reason for the film's relative failure at the box office. To date, Ratatouille has earned $206 million domestically while Surf's Up has earned under $59 million. Surf's Up also did significantly poorer than Sony's first cgi feature Open Season, which grossed $85 million.

The key issue is how much danger the character's objective creates. In Ratatouille, Remy's urge to cook great meals puts him in mortal danger from humans. The woman who owns the country cottage uses a gun against the rats and Linguini is charged with drowning Remy when he is caught in the kitchen. Furthermore, Remy's desire to cook brings him into conflict with is own family. His father refuses to believe that humans will ever accept rats and it causes a rift between them.

In Surf's Up, Cody's jeopardy is at a much lower level. His desire to surf may annoy his mother and brother, but there is no threat to any of them or their relationship as a result. His desire to win the surfing competition puts him in danger with regard to the ocean, but poses no threat to the wider community.

In Ratatouille, we learn that Remy is a genius cook, but in Surf's Up, we learn that Cody has an unrealistic view of his abilities, so while we root for Remy to overcome obstacles, we know that Cody has to fail before he can succeed. This reduces the tension as the initial failure is inevitable.

The genius of Ratatouille is that the basic situation -- a rat who wants to prepare human food -- immediately puts Remy in conflict with everybody around him. For Remy to succeed, he literally has to change the world, changing the rat perspective on people and the human perspective on rats. The weakness of Surf's Up is that for Cody to succeed, he only has to change himself. The external conflicts he faces are mild and the stakes are low.

Ratatouille relates everything in the film to the central conflict. The question of Linguini's parentage and the ownership of the restaurant don't concern Remy directly but still have an impact on Remy's objective. The business in Surf's Up with Chicken Joe and the aboriginal penguins is a comedic detour that produces laughs but doesn't contribute to the conflict.

Surf's Up is worth watching. Tom Sito and Keith Lango both have good things to say about it. Lango points out the high quality of the acting and I agree. While it's probably wrong to use the word "naturalistic" with regard to surfing penguins, the truth is that the acting is believable and subtle. It doesn't call attention to itself, yet it's as expressive as the voice work, which is of a high quality.

However, dramatic conflict is the mainspring that powers a movie and the danger is that low-key conflict results in a lack of audience enthusiasm.

More on Motion Capture and Beowulf

The differences between motion capture and animation are wider than people think. It's not simply a question of technique.

With motion capture, motion exists in the real world. It gets sampled and then applied to a computer character. With animation, the motion does not exist in the real world. It is constructed and only exists when the images are rapidly displayed, creating the illusion of motion. That describes the process.

There are several differences philosophically, however. Motion capture seeks to convince an audience through the accumulation of detail. When it falls short -- when it is criticized for looking like a waxworks -- it is due to insufficient detail in the motion. Therefore, the goal of motion capture is to increase detail to the point where it is indistinguishable from live action. As Ken Ralston says,

Trust me, when you’re sitting in dailies talking about Anthony Hopkins’s armpit hair for an hour, you know there’s a lot of effort that goes into every pore of the skin, into every eye and eyebrow. It’s a massive puzzle that has to be broken apart and then put back together again.

By contrast, good animation seeks to eliminate unnecessary detail in order to arrive at the expressive essence of a motion. Motion capture concerns itself with addition; animation with subtraction.

If animators look down on motion capture technicians, it is because of the relationship that these two groups have with essence. If there is an essence in a motion captured performance, it comes from the actor. The job of the motion capture technicians is to accurately reproduce it. Any animated additions they make are a result of the technology's shortcomings or the director's change of heart. By contrast, an animator, if successful, creates the essence of the motion. This is no small distinction. There is a world of difference between reproduction and creation.

* * *

(Spoilers below.)

By the time Beowulf kills Grendel, we know that lust leads him to lie. His account of the swimming race is verbally different from the evidence offered on screen. He claims to have lost due to sea monsters, but the visuals indicate that he lost due to a sexual dalliance with a mermaid. It is clear that Beowulf also lusts after the queen. Based on what the audience has already seen, it isn't necessary for Grendel's mother to promise Beowulf a crown. He would have sex with her for no other reason than her beauty.

When Beowulf returns from the cave, claiming to have killed Grendel's mother, he learns the truth from the king before the king commits suicide. Now Beowulf should understand that his lust has led him and his kingdom towards further disaster. Does Beowulf agonize over this? No. He doesn't return to Grendel's mother until after the kingdom is attacked. Does he rein in his lust as a result? No, he takes a mistress. There is no self-awareness in Beowulf's actions, only in his dreams of more monsters.

When Anthony Hopkins' king confronts Grendel, neither can kill the other. While they are enemies, their blood relationship complicates their situation and renders action impossible. When Beowulf confronts the dragon who is his son, he has no emotional conflict as to what he must do. The only emotion between Beowulf and the dragon is hatred.

Beowulf's lack of self-knowledge (not realizing how lust overwhelms his best interests and destroys his integrity) and lack of complexity (no qualms over the need to kill his only son) are what make him, and the resulting film, so empty-headed. The question is not whether Beowulf is successful as an example of motion capture; the question is whether he is a fully realized character. The answer to this question is not the level of detail reproduced; it is the nature of the character's essence.

Some may be tempted to blame the script by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, but I blame Robert Zemeckis. Any director who understands a scene can add subtext to it by directing the performances, choosing who the camera should be looking at and how a character should be reacting at any given moment. Beowulf is a character with little self-knowledge, even as he dies. The other characters in the film are cut from the same cloth. This is why the technique, even if flawless, is worthless in this case. Ultimately, the detail must lead us to some essence, but Beowulf hasn't any.

"Weenie Villains"

Will Finn made a comment about weenie villains that got me thinking about the interplay between Disney villains and the threat of death.

Except for Snow White, the early Disney features didn't have single villains. Pinocchio has Stromboli, Honest John, the Coachman and Monstro. Dumbo has the elephants, the circus patrons, the clowns and the ringmaster. Bambi has the hunters, their dogs, their fire, but also winter and male rivals. I think that this kind of villainy is in line with the complexity of the Depression. There was general frustration that there was nobody to blame or hold accountable for the economic collapse. It was a multifaceted problem, and so audiences of the time were able to deal with the idea that obstacles and threats come from many sources.

Once World War II arrived, you've got individuals who are singled out as the root causes of the problem: Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo. In the post-war world, Stalin, Kruschev and Mao take their places. Once Disney got back to full length animated features with Cinderella, only three of the films through the retirement of the nine old men had multiple sources of conflict and not single villains.

Alice in Wonderland is more of a road movie than one where the Queen of Hearts is the source of conflict. Lady and the Tramp is very situational, with Lady having to deal with the repercussions of a new baby in the family. If there's a villain in the film, it's the rat, but the rat doesn't drive the film the way that Cinderella's stepmother or Captain Hook drive theirs. The other film that is somewhat situational is The Sword in the Stone, where the medieval society prevents Wart from realizing his potential and only a miracle can free him from serfdom. There is Madam Mim, but like the rat in Lady and the Tramp, she hardly motivates the majority of Wart's troubles.

Cinderella, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, Robin Hood and The Rescuers are all driven by villains. However, here is where the "weenie" part comes in. Prior to Peter Pan, no Disney villains in features had bumbling sidekicks. (Honest John has Gideon in Pinocchio, but Honest John himself is not the threat; it's where he takes Pinocchio that's the problem.) Comic sidekicks for villains are also present in Dalmatians, Robin Hood and The Rescuers. In some films, like Pan, Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, Robin Hood and The Rescuers, the villains are treated comically themselves.

This is why death doesn't seem as threatening in the later Disney features. It may be present, but there's so much comedy surrounding the villains or the climaxes (Baloo is tossing off one-liners while Shere Khan is attacking), that the films are winking at the audience, reassuring them not to get too worried.

There is no winking in early Disney features. The conflicts and obstacles facing the characters are not funny, which is why the threat of death is taken seriously.

Ratatouille: Food for Thought

Now that Brad Bird has directed three feature films, certain themes are becoming apparent. The first is that society persecutes the talented. Perhaps the Iron Giant shouldn't be thought of as talented so much as alien, but certainly The Incredibles and Remy are talented and all three films feature persecution.

The characters struggle to overcome the persecution, but not because of the persecution itself but because the persecution stands in the way of them exercising their talents. Bird appears to feel that talent should rise to the top and that others should willingly defer to talent. This is where the charge of elitism, and even fascism, are leveled at Bird. What he never shows is how talent has to be developed and refined. The Iron Giant is built with all his capabilities. The Incredibles are presumably born with super powers. Remy is born with a genius nose.

Contrast this with Joe Johnston's film October Sky, based on Homer Hickam's book Rocket Boys. It's about a group of boys in a mining town who are inspired by Sputnik to take up rocketry. The standard path in the town is for boys to graduate high school and enter the mines, so the boys stand out for wanting something different from the social norm. While the town attempts to discourage their efforts, especially when it appears that one of their rockets caused a fire, the film also deals with the boys struggling to figure out rocketry and documents their early failures. As talented as these boys might be, it takes effort to develop their talents.

As an artist, Bird has to know this. There's no way that his first work was as good as what he's doing now. For whatever reason, though, the maturation of talent doesn't interest him. The abilities of Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Remy are fully formed.

For Bird, ambition is not for personal glory, it's simply to reach a position where talent can be exercised. This is an interesting contrast to John Lasseter's characters in Toy Story and Cars. In those films, Woody and Lightning McQueen attempt to lead out of ego and only discover happiness when they forsake ambition. Both directors deal with ambition, but it signifies completely different types of characters.

In Lasseter's world, ambition always pits a character against a rival. Success can only come by overcoming a competitor. For Bird, the talented are either all in agreement (like the supers in The Incredibles), or unique like Remy or the Iron Giant. What would happen in Bird's world if two equally talented protagonists attempted to express their talents towards competing ends?

By avoiding the struggle to develop a character's talents or having a character compete against equally talented opponents, Bird slants his films heavily towards his chosen characters. In much the way the Disney princesses are fated to ascend to their rightful places, Bird's characters also triumph. While the princesses live in fantasy worlds, Bird's live in ours, but his films are just as much fairy tales as the Disney films. Bird's characters don't compromise and aren't diminished by a hostile environment. Their talents are fully exercised and they accomplish everything they're capable of. And if that isn't a fantasy, I don't know what is.

Paprika

There's an article in the N.Y. Times about Paprika, the Japanese animated feature that will open in N.Y. and L.A. on May 25. The article quotes director Satoshi Kon, whose other films include Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers.

“In Japan not just children but adults in their 20s and 30s will chose anime and manga as a means of escape from their real lives,” Mr. Kon said, referring to the thick, novelistic Japanese comic books. “But I think there is a danger too. If you go into that world, it is very vivid and colorful and seductive, but there are big traps within that, particularly if you let your real world deteriorate as a result.”

“On television and through the Internet people are being seduced by the sweetness of illusion and the sweetness of dreams,” Mr. Kon continued. “It is necessary to have that relief, because without it life is too difficult. But I think the amount of fantasy that people are being fed through the media has become disproportionate. I believe in a balance between real life and imagination. Anime should not be just another means of escape.”

You can see the trailer for the film here.

Right & Wrong: Morality and the Story Structure of Pinocchio

(This article is based on a paper given at the first conference of the Society for Animation Studies, held in Los Angeles, California in 1989 and was later printed in Animato #20.)

Pinocchio (1940), the Disney studio’s second feature-length cartoon, presented story problems that were in stark contrast to those of the studio’s first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). In that film, the source material was a short fairy tale documented by the Brothers Grimm. The primary story challenge lay in fleshing out the tale to sustain a feature film. With Pinocchio the situation was reversed: the novel by Collodi was lengthy and chock-full of incident. The challenge was to choose which incidents to preserve or adapt, and to find a way to structure them. The studio used Pinocchio’s ongoing moral education as its approach to each segment of the film.

The problems that Pinocchio’s characters must deal with are different from those in other Disney films. In Show White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, the main characters are victims of injustice who are eventually restored to their rightful places. In Dumbo, the main character is an outcast who triumphs over a birth defect. These characters are innocent of wrongdoing and have done nothing to warrant the problems they face. In Pinocchio, the characters Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket and Geppetto are faced with dilemmas, and their own actions result in them becoming victims of evil. Only by behaving in a moral fashion can they avoid or escape evil. While they eventually learn to act correctly, the triumph over evil is never final. Each decision exposes them again to the possibility of victimization, so each decision must be morally based.

The film is structured around three episodes of capture and escape, each more dangerous than the last: Stromboli’s birdcage, Pleasure Island and Monstro’s belly. In each case, the failure to know the difference between right and wrong results in a character being captured. The consequences of wrong decisions literally move the character away from their own humanity and towards a more primitive state. In each episode, the character that knows the difference between right and wrong is the one who is able to effect the escape of the others.

Geppetto is a lonely woodcarver who lives an isolated existence. Throughout the film, he interacts with only four characters, three of whom are animals: Cleo the fish, Figaro the cat, and Monstro the whale. His isolation is softened somewhat by his work, which recreates the diversity of the outside world. His clocks and music boxes display domestic animals and people in various roles and occupations. Ducks, sheep, birds and bees are all featured. Society is represented by a church bell-ringer, a mother spanking a child, musicians, dancers, hunters, butchers, and a drunk. However, none of these creations are capable of interaction, and Geppetto feels the lack of human companionship. For this reason, he creates the puppet Pinocchio. His wish upon a star is that Pinocchio “might be a real boy.”

His wish is granted by the Blue Fairy, who brings Pinocchio to life but does not make him human. That advanced state must be earned by learning the difference beween right and wrong. As Pinocchio has no idea what the difference is, Jiminy Cricket is pressed into service as his conscience.

Pinocchio’s first morning begins with a multiplane tracking shot, starting on church bells and featuring the town awakening. We see birds, tradesmen, mothers, and children. In short, we are looking at the clocks and music boxes of Geppetto’s workshop made flesh. The shot concludes by focusing on Geppetto’s residence as the door opens and Pinocchio prepares for this first day at school. One would think that Geppetto would accompany his new son, guiding him and protecting him in a world Pinocchio has never experienced. However Geppetto sends Pinocchio on his way alone and returns to his isolation. It is a mistake that all the characters in the film will live to regret. Eventually, Pinocchio will be responsible for drawing Geppetto out of his workshop but it will be under much more troubled circumstances.

Jiminy Cricket also fumbles his responsibilities on this morning. Having slept late, he reaches Pinocchio after Honest John and Gideon, two small-time crooks, have convinced the puppet to become an actor. Their motivation is to sell him to a puppeteer named Stromboli. While Jiminy informs Pinocchio that he should go to school, Pinocchio ignores him and marches off with the two villains.

To his credit, Jiminy pursues Pinocchio, but after seeing Pinocchio become a success on stage he doubts his own advice. “Maybe I was wrong,” he says. “What does an actor need with a conscience anyway?” Jiminy decides to give up his role as conscience and seeks out Pinocchio to wish him luck.

Pinocchio’s success is an illusion. While he is popular with the audience, Stromboli, the puppet master, sees him as a slave and locks him in a wooden birdcage to prevent him from returning home. Having made the wrong moral decision, Pinocchio has forfeited his ability to control his own fate. This will also be a consequence of the traps to come.

When Jiminy arrives, he unsuccessfully attempts to pick the birdcage’s lock. Pinocchio tries to take the blame for the situation, but Jiminy doesn’t let him. “It was my fault,” Jiminy says, “I shouldn’t have walked out on you.” His doubts about Pinocchio’s choice and his abandonment of Pinocchio have rendered him powerless to free Pinocchio. In this film, only those who are morally right have the power to take positive action.

As no one has the moral high ground, it falls to the Blue Fairy to intercede. When she does so, Pinocchio fails a moral test that reveals another aspect of punishment in the film. When the Fairy asks for an explanation, Pinocchio lies. As he does, his nose grows. It not only grows, it becomes more tree-like. With each successive lie, it sprouts leaves, buds, flowers, and a nest with two birds. With the final lie, the leaves fall and the birds fly away.

In Snow White, the characters’ inner states are expressed through the surrounding environment. As Snow White flees the Hunstman, her own fear and shock are mirrored in the threatening trees that surround her. When the Queen transforms herself into a hag, the room spins around her. When the dwarfs pursue the Queen, a thunderstorm is a measure of their rage and is the instrument of her death.

In Pinocchio, it’s not the environment but the characters’ own bodies that reflect their inner states. If Pinocchio is balanced between being a creature of wood and flesh, it is clear that with each lie, he becomes more a tree and less a person. Throughout the film, when a character makes a bad moral decision he reverts to a more primitive physical state. Moral transgression equals physical regression. As the Blue Fairy comments, “a boy who wont’ be good might must as well be made of wood.” With this reprimand, she frees Pinocchio from the cage and sends him on his way.

As Pinocchio and Jiminy run home to Geppetto, Pinocchio is once again stopped by Honest John and once again put on the wrong road. This time, he’s headed for Pleasure Island, where, as Honest John says, “every day’s a holiday and kids have nothing to do but play.” These events are so similar to Pinocchio’s first encounter with Honest John that Jiminy feels compelled to mutter “here we go again” to the audience. But this time, there is a crucial difference. Jiminy has learned from the first trap and will not falter again. He has no doubts this time that he is right. His moral certainty will enable him to free Pinocchio from the film’s second trap, Pleasure Island.

The Coachman who takes the boys to the island is kidnapping them, though all the boys go willingly. It is a place where kids can run wild, indulging themselves in all the vices that polite society frowns on. Smoking, drinking, vandalism, fighting, and pool playing are the activities of choice on the isle, and there is no shortage of what the Coachman refers to as “stupid little boys” who are anxious to take advantage of the opportunities.

The penalty the boys pay for making the wrong decision is to become donkeys, losing all vestiges of their humanity in the process. The Coachman then crates them and sells them. As Pinocchio was poised between tree and human in Stromboli’s birdcage, the boys are posed between animal and human on the island, and the balance is tipped irrevocably to the animal. Again, moral transgression equals physical regression, and like Pinocchio in the birdcage, their lack of morals has lost them the ability to control their own destinies.

Jiminy is committed to sticking by Pinocchio this time. The verbal and physical abuse he takes at the hands of Lampwick, Pinocchio’s new-found companion, causes him to walk away in anger, but he never doubts the rightness of his position. It’s this moral strength that is crucial in altering Jiminy’s role in the second escape. Where he was once powerless to open a lock, he now discovers the fate of the boys and is able to guide Pinocchio to an escape route before it is too late. Pinocchio avoids turning completely into a donkey, but has a donkey tail and ears as evidence of his wrong-doing.

The two escape by jumping off a cliff into the ocean. Pinocchio hesitates, but Jiminy urges him on, explaining that it’s the only way out. When they reach the shore, they head straight for Geppetto’s shop, and this time they are not sidetracked. Unfortunately, Geppetto is not there. A bird sent by the Blue Fairy drops a note explaining that Geppetto was out searching for Pinocchio and has been swallowed by Monstro the whale.

It is finally Pinocchio’s turn to exhibit some moral strength. He immediately takes off to rescue his father. Jiminy is frightened by Monstro’s reputation, but Pinocchio is undeterred. When they reach the water’s edge, Pinocchio shows none of his previous reluctance to jump in. Pinocchio’s correct decision has entitled and empowered him to be Geppetto’s rescuer. Significantly, Jiminy remains outside Monstro when Pinocchio finds Geppetto, and is a passive observer of the rescue. Pinocchio’s internal conscience has developed to the point where Jiminy’s guidance is no longer needed.

As the boys of Pleasure Island had their humanity submerged into their donkey bodies, Geppetto is submerged within Monstro, the film’s third and most dangerous trap. Like the boys, Geppetto fails to distinguish between right and wrong. On Pinocchio’s first morning of life, Geppetto sent him off to school alone. While Geppetto yearns for human interaction, he is only willing to imitate the superficial aspects of it in the same way his woodcarvings imitate only the superficial aspects of village life.

The film’s climax contains a series of reversals. Where the moral movement within the film has thus far been one of regression, it now turns to progression. As Pinocchio frees Geppetto, he literally and morally extracts the human from the animal. Geppetto is free of Monstro, and Pinocchio has asserted his humanity over his donkey characteristics.

Ironically, the tool used to accomplish this is fire. During Pinocchio’s first night of life, he naively set his finger on fire and looked at it with delight. Geppetto realizing the threat, grabbed Pinocchio and extinguished the flame in Cleo’s fishbowl. The elements of fire and water now reverse their functions. Pinocchio builds a large fire, causing Monstro to sneeze and expel them. Where fire was the threat and water the means of rescue, fire now rescues the characters and water threatens them.

The fire enrages Monstro, and he attempts to kill Pinocchio and Geppetto. He destroys their raft and leaves them swimming for their lives. In another reversal, Geppetto again seeks to separate from Pinocchio. This time he is motivated by fatherly love and not apathy. He urges Pinocchio to save himself and swim for shore, as he is too weak to do so. Pinocchio is not about to sacrifice his father for his own freedom and pulls him beyond some rocks to a cove that Monstro cannot reach. Geppetto is safe, but Pinocchio drowns in the rescue.

Having learned the difference between right and wrong and having acted in a moral fashion, Pinocchio has earned the right to become human. The Blue Fairy revives him, and all traces of his wooden and animal selves vanish. Humanity has triumphed over lower states of being.

Pinocchio and Geppetto celebrate, and Jiminy leaves, claiming that, “this is where I came in.” But it really isn’t. While the joy of Pinocchio’s first night has been recaptured, the characters have developed a stronger moral base. Pinocchio has been transfigured by his moral growth. Though the characters have seen their dreams come true, it has taken far more than just wishing on a star. It has taken the ability to tell right from wrong in a world where morality has very tangible implications.

What type of morality does this film champion? Pinocchio’s initial dilemma between going to school or going on the stage implies a sort of middle-class, Boy Scout morality. I think the film’s choice of school has to be seen in the context of the film’s later choices. Morality is not an abstract system that has to be adhered to for its own sake. Morality in this film clearly represents the opposites of selfishness and selflessness. Will a character indulge himself with no regard for the others in his life, or will he act in a way that strengthens his relationship with his loved ones? The film sees morality as a structure for strengthening the bonds between parents and children and between friends. It is this aspect of the film that gives it its emotional power and prevents it from degenerating into a lecture on proper behavior.

The villains in this film are immoral because they are so self-indulgent. Their search for gratification threatens everyone they come in contact with. Their moral choices do not support others; they exploit others. Unlike those of other Disney movies, Pinocchio’s villains are not neutralized or destroyed. Honest John, Stromboli, the Coachman, and Monstro all live on to continue being evil and to prey on the morally weak.

It is the task of each character in this film to constantly assert his morality through his decisions. Behaving in a moral fashion is the only way to avoid becoming a victim of exploitation, to maintain ties to loved ones, and the only way to become truly human.

Seduced by Supporting Characters

It's interesting to me how passive Disney's main characters often are. That flies in the face of the current wisdom about "the hero's journey," where the main character is confronted by obstacles that he or she has to overcome. In many Disney films, the main characters don't do a lot to help themselves. Often, they react to what's happening to them, but there's no goal that they're trying to achieve.

What Disney features do, and do well, is create interesting supporting characters who are the ones who drive the plot forward. Dumbo's an outcast, but it's Timothy who becomes a surrogate parent and tries to find a place for Dumbo within the circus world. Mowgli is content in the jungle, but it's Bagheera and Baloo who take charge of him to prevent him from becoming Shere Khan's victim. I haven't watched Sleeping Beauty in years, but does Aurora do anything to improve her situation or is it her three guardian fairies who drive the plot forward?

Main characters should have character arcs. They end up in a different place from where they start; the events of the story force them to grow. Supporting characters don't need arcs; they get by purely on the strength of their personalities. Because they're free from having to change, they can be eccentric or mannered so long as they're entertaining.

If you look at Disney films from the standpoint of character arcs, you realize that the main characters aren't necessarily who you think they are. Snow White's main character is Grumpy. Peter Pan's main character is Wendy, though she's hardly central to Disney's version. One of the problems with Alice in Wonderland is that Alice has no arc and neither does anybody else. The same might be true for Sleeping Beauty and Robin Hood. Stuff happens, but do any of the characters grow?

The danger is that supporting characters run away with the movie. You can point to supporting characters who have more personality and audience appeal than main characters. The dwarfs are more interesting than Snow White. Everybody is more interesting than Alice in Alice in Wonderland and Wart in The Sword and the Stone.

In fact, all the Reitherman films suffer from weak character arcs and have supporting characters dominating the action. Without a strong narrative drive, the animators during the Reitherman years indulged in personality for its own sake. Certainly there are great bits of animation there, but they exist in a story vacuum.

In the early Disney features, the main characters were often passive, but the films always generated enough sympathy for them that the supporting characters had a focus. In the '50's and '60's, the studio was less concerned with generating sympathy but didn't always compensate for it by making the main characters more active. Instead, the studio was seduced by the entertainment value of its supporting characters, but without them having sympathetic or active leads to support, the films became collections of vaudeville bits, entertaining in themselves, but not as satisfying.

Rather than have straight leads supported by comic relief, which was the way things used to be done, now the leads are comedians themselves. We've got Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy in Shrek, Albert Brooks in Finding Nemo, Billy Crystal and John Goodman in Monsters, Inc, Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary in Ice Age and Zach Braff and Garry Marshall in Chicken Little. The new paradigm is that it's easier to graft a character arc onto a quirky supporting character than to take a straight lead with an arc and make the character quirky. The supporting character mentality has essentially taken over the films.

The Importance of Sympathy

This was written in 2003 for Apatoons. I'm posting it because I think it's interesting and it relates to something I'm going to write about the differences between leading and supporting characters.

The conventional thinking these days about film scripts is that you need a main character to actively struggle against obstacles to achieve a goal. Thinking of characters, I found it interesting that some of the most successful early animated features starred passive characters.

Snow White is almost an entirely passive character. She yearns for her prince, but does nothing to win him. She is a victim of the evil Queen and is rescued by the prince. The only positive action that Snow White takes in the film is to befriend animals and to serve as a housekeeper for the dwarfs.

Why should we care about her if she doesn’t struggle to achieve a goal? The reason, so far as I can see, is that we’re sympathetic to her. Sympathy turns out to be a major factor in whether or not an audience roots for a character and based on animation history, the character can be passive or active.

I can think of only three ways to make a character sympathetic. If a character obviously does not have the ability to protect himself or herself, if the character is treated unfairly for any reason, or if the character is attempting to help another, more needy, character. A character who is defenseless, the victim of injustice or altruistic will automatically gain audience sympathy.

The only case I can think of where possibly selfish behavior gains sympathy is a character attempting to be with someone he or she loves. My guess is that love and companionship are seen as necessities of life like food, clothing and shelter. Anyone who is deprived of these is seen as the victim of injustice and not someone who is striving selfishly.

We care about Snow White because she is naïve, someone who has no understanding of the Queen’s jealousy. She has no way of defending herself against a hunter with a knife or against the Queen’s magic. Because Snow White has done nothing to incite the Queen’s jealousy, the attacks on her are all unjust.

There are other characters besides Snow White that are passive yet sympathetic. Dumbo is ostracized by the other elephants. He loses his mother, who is locked up for defending him. He is the victim of Timothy’s plan for the elephant pyramid. He is the victim of the ringmaster’s decision to make him a clown. He unknowingly drinks water laced with alcohol. The only positive action that Dumbo takes in the entire film is to fly without the magic feather at the climax.

Like Snow White, he gains the sympathy of the audience by being a defenseless victim of injustice. Dumbo is a baby, hardly the type of character to have the resources (emotional or otherwise) to fight back. He’s not responsible for his large ears, which provoke taunts and cause him to trip.

Pinocchio is an active character, but again one who is innocent of the world. Because the entire film hinges on Pinocchio telling the difference between right and wrong, he has to make decisions. The fact that Pinocchio puts himself into trouble, as opposed to Snow White or Dumbo, makes him a less sympathetic character. Disney changed Pinocchio from a troublemaker to an ignorant child, so we don’t dislike him. However, the fact that Pinocchio places himself into danger makes him less sympathetic. Perhaps this is why Pinocchio was a relative failure compared to the other early features.

Bambi is another passive character. His first year, he experiences everything for the first time, being shown the world by his mother and Thumper. In his second year, his only goal is to hook up with Faline. The rest of the time, he’s purely reactive: fighting off a rival, hunters, their dogs and fire. Bambi gets our sympathy because as a baby he’s defenseless and has done nothing to provoke the attacks against him.

Note how all the main characters in the early Disney films are children who are undeserving victims. Whether they are active or passive, I think that’s the key to why audiences are sympathetic to the characters. Disney’s use of child characters continued throughout the animated features and the later live action features. Children as protagonists guarantee that the characters are sympathetic because they’re defenseless.

As the Disney features progressed, the characters became more active, but always remained sympathetic.

Cinderella is not quite as passive as Snow White in that she attempts to go to the ball and makes her own dress. However, she is still unable to achieve her goals by herself. She’s another innocent victim. Her stepmother is actively suppressing her in favor of her own daughters, so once again, our sympathy goes to Cinderella, as she is not responsible for living with a selfish stepmother.

In The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Mulan, we have female characters who are far more active in achieving their goals than Snow White or Cinderella, but they are still all sympathetic. Ariel is attempting to win the love of Eric and is being prevented by her father (the “selfish” injustice exception). Belle and Mulan both sacrifice themselves to save their fathers, the altruistic path.

101 Dalmatians is an interesting case, splitting the active and passive characters between the dog parents and pups. The parents are active in searching for their children. The children are mostly passive victims. Both have our sympathy. The parents have it because they’ve been robbed of their children. The children have it because they will be killed and turned into a coat. While the kidnapping motif has been used repeatedly in recent animated features, it’s interesting that none of the other cases split up a child and parent. The Rescuers, Raggedy Ann and Andy and Toy Story 2 do not invoke the parent-child bond. Finding Nemo, while not a kidnapping story with the same evil motivation as Dalmatians or The Rescuers, does replicate the parent-child separation and has gone on to great box office success. The film also mirrors Dalmatians in that Marlin is active and Nemo mostly passive (until the end).

Recent Disney films have avoided using children as their main characters and have not evoked much sympathy either. Hercules is an active character who is attempting to achieve the goal of returning to Olympus, but does this make him sympathetic? Can the audience be sympathetic to somebody who feels being human makes him second class? Treasure Planet fails to make Jim sympathetic. The early scene of him as a child with his mother shows that he could be nice, but doesn’t explain the root of his surliness. Is there any reason to feel sympathetic for Milo in Atlantis? Does the fact that Lilo and Stitch has a child protagonist account for some of the box office success relative to Hercules, Atlantis and Treasure Planet?

Another of the cliches of screenwriting is that the audience needs a character to root for. All well and good, but the reason the audience will root for a character is because the character is sympathetic. From what I can see the only way to establish this is to make the character defenseless, the victim of injustice or engaged in an altruistic act.