Posts Tagged ‘Liefacts’
Wednesday, December 4th, 2013
- The movie is based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Snow Queen.” It sticks pretty closely to the original story, aside from the characters, plot, and lack of religious overtones.
- This is the first Disney animated feature to include three princesses as main characters — Anna, Ella (who becomes queen), and the secret surprise princess seen briefly after the credits.
- With the release of Frozen, Disney is one step closer to having an animated feature to represent each of the countries in Epcot’s World Showcase. The Emperor’s New Groove, Mulan, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Great Mouse Detective, and Brother Bear cover all but Japan, and that will be taken care of when Big Hero 6 is released next year. After that, the company will concentrate on making features themed to the various areas of Future World.
- The film had a short production schedule, so instead of going to Norway to study the environment, animators were sealed in a commercial meat locker over a weekend.
- A live reindeer was brought into the animation studio to help with the development of Sven’s dialogue.
- Over the years, Disney has tried many times to bring an adaptation of “The Snow Queen” to the screen, but the movie kept being derailed during the character-design process. A breakthrough came when John Lasseter suggested that if they stopped making character maquettes out of ice, they might not keep melting away before more progress could be made.
- The title was cut from The Snow Queen to Frozen because the film was running too long.
- Frozen is Disney’s first computer-animated feature since last year’s Wreck-It Ralph.
Tags: Frozen, Liefacts, The Snow Queen
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Monday, November 25th, 2013
- Disney chose the spelling “dwarfs” over “dwarves” out of fear that some Americans might pronounce the “v” as the Roman numeral five.
- Originally, Walt Disney wanted all of the dwarfs other than Doc to be named Billy.
- The Wicked Queen was named after the Wicked Witch of the West.
- The prince was going to have a larger part in the story until test audiences reported that he was consistently being upstaged by other moving objects.
- Snow White was originally given her name as a product tie-in for Ivory Snow — the same detergent that to this day Disneyland uses during the holidays to make fake snow on Main Street.
- The soap-product tie in is also why the film has such a long segment devoted to washing up.
- After the film’s release, American apple sales plummeted by 78%, but national disdain for stepparents skyrocketed.
- The actor who performed the voice of Dopey wasn’t Mel Blanc (among others).
- Andy Devine auditioned for the part of the Huntsman, but didn’t get it because of his voice.
- After being revived by the Prince’s kiss, Snow White is technically a zombie.
Tags: Liefacts
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Wednesday, November 20th, 2013
- The ancient Chinese story that served as the basis for Mulan was also the inspiration for the Marilyn Monroe feature Some Like It Hot.
- Because she is not royalty, Mulan is not an official Disney princess. She is, however, an honorary princess, much like Jessica Rabbit and The Mad Hatter.
- A cricket was featured in the film because in China it is considered good luck to not eat one.
- Mulan was not the first Disney feature about cross dressing. That honor belongs to 1959’s The Shaggy Dog.
- After the film’s release there was some disappointment in the more “politically correct” areas of Hollywood that the actors cast for various parts in the film did not more close match their character’s ethnic origins. For example, Mushu — a dragon — was voiced by Eddie Murphy — a comedian. Disney did not move forward with the precedent set in Pocahontas in which the character of Meeko was voiced by an actual raccoon.
- Mulan was originally given a “15” rating in Great Britain because of “a depiction of excessive numbers of nude adults in a children’s film.”
- For the year after Mulan was released, Tinker Bell in the nightly Disneyland fireworks display was replaced by a mannequin of Shan Yu, which was gloriously detonated during the fireworks finale.
Tags: Liefacts
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