Disneyhas been the dominant force in theanimationindustry for over one hundred years. Founded by brothersWaltandRoy Disney,they created revolutionary short films throughout the 1920s and 1930s before releasing their first animated feature film,Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. After its success proved that audiences could watch a 90-minutecartoon, the company continued to make more. Though they’ve gone through numerous ups and downs over the decades, they’ve grown to become one of the largest media conglomerates in the world.
Walt grew up on fairy tales and preferred to adapt them and inspirational stories into animated films rather than come up with entirely new ideas.Walt Disney was also notorious for changing stories to be accessible to general audiences, meaning that several stories had their darker themes and bittersweet endings stripped away for more uplifting ones. The company continued this practice long after Walt died in 1966, and while some of these movies are regarded as animated classics, it’s still fun to look back at the stories they originated from and see how much was lost in translation.
10’Tangled' (2010)
Rapunzel’s happily ever after was delayed due to her blind prince.
While Disney tried to keep 2D films alive during the 2000s, the box-office success ofTangledall but solidified that 3D was the way going forward. It’s seen by many as one ofDisney’s best films in the Revival erathanks to its stellar animation, catchy songs byAlan Menken, and its fresh, exciting update of theRapunzelfairytale. Besides changing the prince into the lovable rogue Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi) and giving Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) more agency in the story, they also omitted the dark and miserable ending right before the couple’s happily ever after.
When the prince discovers Rapunzel in the tower, he offers to marry her and help her escape. Unfortunately, Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy) learns of the plot; she cuts off Rapunzel’s hair and banishes her to a desert, and when the prince arrives,the witch lets him climb the hair before throwing him into a thorn patch, blinding him. It was many years later when the two lovers reunited, during which time Rapunzel had the prince’s children, and though her tears healed his eyes, one has to wonder how difficult it was to raise them in a desert.
9’Bambi' (1942)
Bambi’s animal kingdom was much colder and featured more death.
In 1937, Walt Disney got the film rights toBambi, a Life in the Woods, but struggled for a long time to get it produced due to World War II and feeling like his animation studio wasn’t good enough to bring the beauty of nature to life. He achieved the quality he wanted thanks to training his animators to draw realistic animals and assigningTyrus Wongto design the film’s gorgeous watercolor backgrounds. The film famously containsone of Disney’s saddest deaths, but overall,it’s a much more lighthearted and uplifting tale than the book.
The book delves into the mindset of the animals, which often meansthey’re portrayed as cold and emotionless by human standards, since they’re only concerned with survival. Even Bambi (John Sutherland) falls into this mentality when he meets his children as they’re waiting for their mother to return, and he coldly tells them they must learn to live on their own. There are also way more deaths in the book, including Bambi’s father (Fred Shields) and a male deer who, due to being nursed back to health by humans, walks into the gun of a hunter.
8’Hercules' (1997)
Hercules became a demi-god at the hands of his wife.
To work on their passion project,Treasure Planet,Disney’sbest directing duo, John Musker and Ron Clements, adapted the Greek myth of Heracles (Tate Donovan), though they went with the Roman spelling,Hercules. Their take on the myth was much more comical and has numerous parallels between Greek heroes and modern-day sports stars. However,it also streamlined many of Heracles' actual achievements for a universal Greek-mythology setting. Most notably, having their hero give up the offer of godhood to live as a mortal with his true love.
The mythological Heracles had pretty much the opposite ending, and it began when he saved his wife, Deianeira, from the centaur Nessus by shooting him with an arrow coated in hydra blood. Nessus used his dying breath to tell Deianeira that his blood would keep Heracles faithful to her, so she spread it in a robe and placed it on Heracles. The poisoned blood burned his skin terribly, soHeracles threw himself onto a funeral pyre. However, since his heroic deeds were so great in life, his divine spirit was welcomed to Mount Olympus.
7’Chicken Little' (2005)
Chicken Little met his end at the jaws of Foxy Loxy.
Often cited asone of Disney’s worst movies,Chicken Littlewas the company’s first fully CGI film made without the support ofPixar. It takes huge liberties from the original story,expanding it from a simple fable about the dangers of jumping to conclusions and overreactingto a mean-spirited story about a kid being bulled by an entire town, alien invasions, and half-baked morals about fatherhood. Still, Chicken Little, voiced byZach Braff, comes out of the movie as a hero, which is more than can be said for the original story.
The originalChicken Little,also known asHenny Penny, is a very simple tale about an overreacting chicken who gathers a crowd of animals to warn the king that the sky is falling.When they come upon Foxy Loxy, voiced by Amy Sedaris in the movie, they are tricked into going into his lair and are devoured one by one, though some versions have Chicken Little survive. It helps to reinforce the fable’s moral, but if it had been kept in Disney’s already mean-spirited film, kids would have left the theater in tears.
Chicken Little
6’Robin Hood' (1973)
Robin Hood was brought to his end by a deceptive nun.
Robin Hoodis one of the most famous characters frommedieval fiction, and the Disney adaptation is one of the best for introducing people to his legend. It does a great job of streamlining his most famous tales and characters, such as his love for Maid Marian (voiced in the movie byMonica Evans), the archery contest where he’s almost killed by Prince John (voiced in the movie byPeter Ustinov), his loyalty to King Richard I, and his mantra of stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Though the film ends with Robin (Brian Bedford) marrying his love, he has a much more tragic fate later in his life.
One day, while out hunting, Robin felt ill and requested that Little John (Phil Harris) take him to his cousin, a prioress, for healing via bloodletting. However,the prioress uses the opportunity to kill Robin by draining most of his blood. Robin realizes the deception too late and only has enough strength to get Little John to hand him his bow, asking his trusted friend to bury him wherever his last arrow lands.
Robin Hood
5’The Little Mermaid' (1989)
The mermaid transformed into a sea foam.
The Little Mermaidis one of the most important films in Disney’s history. It kickstartedDisney’s beloved Renaissance erawith its Broadway-style musicals, memorable characters, and stellar animation. It was also a return to form for the company, as it was an adaptation of a fairy tale and hada very bittersweet ending that Disney replaced with the marriage of its two main characters.
The original tale by Hans Christian Andersendoes not see the mermaid (Jodi Benson) and the prince (Christopher Daniel Barnes) marry, for the prince does not love the mermaid and acts rather cruel to her, such as making her dance despite how much it hurts for her to walk on human legs. The mermaid is given the chance to kill him and use his blood to return to her true self, but ultimately chooses not to, causingher body to turn into sea foam when the prince marries another woman. However, because of her selfless action, she is transformed into a wind spirit and given the chance to earn a soul, since mermaids don’t have one, by doing good deeds for the next three centuries.
The Little Mermaid
A rebellious young mermaid, Ariel, longs to explore the human world and falls in love with Prince Eric after saving him from a shipwreck. Desperate to be with him, she makes a dangerous deal with the sea witch, Ursula, trading her voice for a chance to live on land, risking her life and her father’s kingdom in the process.
4’Sleeping Beauty' (1959)
Sleeping Beautyis one of Disney’s most beautiful films from a technical and musical standpoint. Although it possesses one of its best villains,its financial failure led to Disney adoptinga cheaper animation stylefor decades to save on production costs. When it comes to the original fairytale, the film uses the version told byThe Brothers Grimm, but several older versions of the tale exist, including one from 17th-century French writerCharles Perrault, and the Italian fairytaleSun, Moon, and Talia.Both of these versions contain the basic plot of a woman (Mary Costa) cursed into an enchanted sleep, but they get rather dark and continue past the point of marriage.
Beginning with the Italian version, the sleeping woman is not woken up by true love’s kiss;the king who finds her forces himself upon her unconscious form, and nine months later, she wakes up when one of her newborn children sucks out the splinter of flax stuck under her fingernail while trying to breastfeed. If that wasn’t bad enough, the king brings her and the kids home to his furious wife, who attempts to have them killed and fed to him. Perrault’s version thankfully does away with the nonconsensual sex and cheating elements, with his final antagonist being the prince’s jealous mother.
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
3’The Fox and the Hound' (1981)
The fox and the hound did not survive their own story.
The Fox and the Houndis one of Disney’s most famous examples ofa film that survived a troubled production.In summary, numerous factions emerged during production, mainly between new animators who wanted to recapture Disney’s magic, and management who wanted the movie to be safe and formulaic. The result isa film that has a strong message about friendship overcoming societal expectations, but it bears absolutely no resemblance to the book outside the two main characters being a domesticated fox and a hunting dog.
Besides being mortal enemies in the book, neither Tod (Mickey Rooney) nor Copper (Kurt Russell) makes it out of the story alive.Tod dies of exhaustion after being chased all night by Copper, and while Copper lives a while longer, he is eventually put down by his Master, voiced byJack Albertsonin the film, who has to live in a retirement home that doesn’t allow dogs. Several side characters are also killed in the book, including Tod’s mate and Copper’s fellow hunting dog, Chief (Pat Buttram), whose survival in the film led to many arguments during its production.
The Fox and the Hound
2’The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (1996)
Quasimodo killed Frollo after Esmeralda is hanged.
There are few Disney films as polarizing asThe Hunchback of Notre Dame. On the one hand, it’s a dark story about corruption, prejudice, obsession, society’s tendencies to alienate those it deems unworthy, and includes one ofDisney’s most vile villains, Frollo (Tony Jay). Yet it also contains out-of-place slapstick and a trio of annoying gargoyles–Jason Alexander,Charles Kimbrough, andMary Wickes– who spout anachronistic jokes, which is only scratching the surface of how Disney toned down the original novel byVictor Hugo.
Besides whitewashing the characters, the biggest change has to be the ending, whereEsmeralda is hanged on the order of Frolloafter Clopin leads a failed attempt to rescue her. To make it worse, Esmeralda, who was voiced byDemi Moorein the movie, was reunited with her birth mother just before the hanging, though she tragically dies trying to save Esmeralda. When Quasimodo (Tom Hulce) learns of her death, he kills Frollo, seeks out Esmeralda’s corpse, and lies with her until he dies.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Disney’s take on the original novel written in 1831, The Huntchback of Notre Dame is an animated musical drama that sees a kind-hearted, deformed young man named Quasimodo who yearns to see the outside world is forced to live alone in the Notre Dame Cathedral as a bell ringer. When a group of traveling performers arrives in town, Quasimodo takes his chance to head out to see them, and his life is changed forever by a chance encounter with the equally kind-hearted Esmerelda. However, his caretaker, the cruel and iron-fisted Frollo, intends to hunt the Romani people down, jeopardizing the travelers' lives.
1’Pocahontas' (1995)
Pocahontas and her history were completely whitewashed.
AfterBeauty and the Beastbecame the first animated film in history nominated for the Academy Award for Best Feature, Disney was eager to make a film that would win it. They gathered all their best talent to work onPocahontaswhile their B-team worked onThe Lion Kingto tide audiences over. Suffice it to say,The Lion Kingis regarded as one of their greatest movies, whilePocahontasisone of their greatest misfires.
The issue with the film is that it’s not adapting mythology or fiction, but real events and people in a disingenuous way. The most egregious of these is by agingPocahontas(Irene Bedard), who was eleven when Jamestown was established, so that she could have a romantic story with a highly sanitized and heroic depiction ofJohn Smith, voiced byMel Gibsonin the movie.It’s also hard not to overlookthe fact that the film tries to make both sides in the wrongdespite the English settlers literally invading land that doesn’t belong to them, and all the evils of the English being piled onto the film’s villain,John Ratcliffe(David Ogden Stiers), who in real life was more tolerant to the Powhatans than Smith.
