Disney Lies

Even as the U.S. domestic box office receipts for WALL*E pass the 27 trillion Zimbabwe dollar mark, new controversy is brewing over some of the film’s more disturbing content. “I was really surprised by all the cannibalism,” said Stew Eaton, dubious spokesperson for Americans Against Theaters Exposing Youth to Outrageous Ugliness. “The robot steals a dead robots shoes, which is bad enough, but then we see that he has this trailer filled with containers of parts of his fellow beings, and he uses those parts to feed his own desire to survive — literally cannibalizing the dead so he may live! At the end of the film Eve is dragged into the circle of hideousness and feeds WALL*E bits of his fellows until he returns to life, but when he returns his mind is gone — because he has succumbed to what is obviously prion disease, a condition common among cannibals who eat brains!”

Eaton paused for a moment and asked us why we had stopped eating our lunch, then continued without waiting for answer. “And it wasn’t just the robot! Think about all those people on that space ship. They’ve been there 700 years, we don’t see signs that anyone ages, but there are babies being born. Why isn’t the place bursting at the seams? Because they’re drinking soylent green Slurpees, that’s why! The evidence is everywhere, clear as the Fourth of July. This might as well have been the Donner Party cartoon.”

We contacted Disney’s Ethics Officer for comment, but he was at lunch — and his secretary was missing. Coincidence? We hope so.

Not much is known about Disney’s 2012 feature, King of the Elves. All we can be sure of is that it’s the story of a man living in the swamps of Mississippi who puts together a band of elves to help him live his dream of performing as an Elvis impersonator.

Pixar’s sequel to Cars, Cars 2 — Rise of the Machines, will arrive on screens in the summer of 2012. This time, things are looking good for Lightning McQueen as he continues to win races and gain fame. But what he doesn’t know is that his pal Mater has stumbled upon a computer chip that certain secret scientists thought had long ago been crushed in an industrial accident. After accidentally releasing its potential, Mater enlists Lightning to help him fight a growing army of horrible hybrid vehicles — half electric, and half alive.

The final direct-to-DVD Tinker Bell feature, Tinker Bell — A Winter Tale sees Tink in trouble once again! This time, her childhood friend Polixenes comes to visit, and everything is fine for the first nine months until Polixenes decides it’s time to go home. Tink gets her pal Queen Herman to convince him to stay, and Herman does so easily. But this makes Tink suspiscious, which drives her completely insane with the thought that Herman might be pregnant and she starts trying to poison people. Hilarity ensues.

For Christmas 2011, Pixar will release The Bear and the Bow, the story of an independent Scottish princess archer bear struggling with the burden of having too many attributes pre-assigned to her character. Because of this, she has an argument and runs away to England where she puts on green tights, leads a band of royalist thieves, shoots an arrow with another arrow, and falls in love with the beautiful Maid Marion (making her Disney’s second gay animated bear).

Newt from Pixar will appear in the summer of 2001. This film asks the question, “What happens when the last two newts on the earth are a male and a female that hate each other?” and answers, “We’ll give you a hint: ‘dodo bird.’”

This direct-to-DVD Tinker Bell film will be the most complex to date, involving as it does three separate plot threads intertwined with the celebration of the wedding of the Duke of Thesaruses and Hippolady, queen of the Amazons. This film will introduce Titania, queen of the fairies, and a group of rude mechanical creatures that perform a cartoon feature within the cartoon. Puck, the hockey puck from the original Toy Story, make s a guest appearance.

With the 2010 release of Rapunzel, Disney will only have four common fairy tales left to make feature films out of (The Princess and the Pea, Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Plato’s Republic). Knowing that they are nearing the end, Disney is pulling out all the stops on this one, using cutting-edge computer animation and filming the entire production in something called Hair-O-Vision.

Originally, Rapunzel was to be titled Rapunzel Unbraided, but an episode of Mythbusters dealing with the usefulness of hair for climbing proved that braided hair was actually stronger than unbraided hair, climbing wise, and if Rapunzel was going to have braided hair, they couldn’t advertise that she would be unbraided (for legal reasons).

Although by the title you might think that you are mistaken for thinking that this is Toy Story 3in 3D, it actually is. This is Pixar’s second Toy Story sequel, and the end of the first Toy Story Trilogy.

In this installment, Buzz has come to accept the fact that Emperor Zurg is his father but seeks a retreat to commune with the little green aliens so that he can focus his mind and resist the Zurg’s temptations as he tries to get Buzz to join Dark Starcommand.

Meanwhile, Woody and the rest of the gang have ventured into the neighbor’s yard where they plan to blow up a satellite dish because they mistakenly believe that it emits signals that protect Zurg’s unfinished Nurf space station from attack. But it’s a trap! Only with the help of a group of wild, weed-dwelling Care Bears can our heroes escape.

After this film, Pixar plans to take a lengthy break from making Toy Story sequels, after which they will complete the trilogy of TS prequels in which we see each toy’s incredible assembly-line origin and learn that Sid (from Toy Story 1) is really only one boy out of an army of toy-abusing child clones.

Although by the title you might think that this is Toy Story 23, it isn’t. Instead, it’s Pixar’s original Toy Story sequel with a special pair of glasses and greater storytelling depth. The story has been thoroughly revised to take advantage of the new visual technology. This time around, Woodie discovers that he was once the star of Wood’s Roundup 3D, a three-dimensional television show in which buildings and plants painted on wooden flats seem to jump out of the screen. This film will be notable for adding three new three-dimensional characters to the Toy Story pantheon: Jessie (a yodeling cowgirl), Bullseye (a horse named after a steak sauce), and the Prospector (sort of a fat, bearded combination of Santa Claus and Hitler).

The rerelease of this film in 3D is scheduled for February 12, 2010, to coincide with Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday 3D.