When Walt Disney World opened the MGM-Hollywood Studios theme park in 1989, the “Magic of Disney Animation” was one of its most popular attractions. In part, this was because the theme park initially didn’t have that many attractions, thanks to contract disputes, unexpected delays and the initial plan to use part of the theme park as a working backlot, a plan which eventually proved impractical. But in part, it was because the “Magic of Disney Animation” offered a then-rare chance to see Disney animators in action in a working studio.
Of course, that meant that the animators there had to be given actual work to do.
Initially, the Florida studio—smaller than the California and Paris locations—worked on short segments of upcoming full length animated features. From a theme park and marketing perspective, this worked great. From a film production perspective, it was often a nightmare, with animators attempting to coordinate scenes from two coastlines, in the days prior to email. Eventually, studio executives agreed that this was not exactly the most efficient way of doing things. The production area was slightly expanded, and the Florida studio finally allowed to do its own full length animated features and shorts.
This meant, of course, needing to find full length animated features and shorts that the Florida studio could do. Executives compromised by sending the Florida the cheaper, lower budget full length animated features. Mulan, for example, with a budget of $90 million, went to the Florida studio, while Tarzan ($130 million), which was also a test case for developing the new, Deep Canvas animation software, stayed at the California studio.
Nearly everything that Disney planned after Mulan, however, was another high concept, prestige—read, expensive—feature, leaving executives again struggling to find work to keep animators busy and tourists entertained after Mulan. The Florida studio found itself stuck with a couple of animated shorts, some additional work on the behind schedule Tarzan, the low budget Lilo & Stitch, and, finally, an idea that had apparently been bouncing around the California studio for years—a little thing about a bear.
This later resulted in the rather uncomfortable realization that the films focused on POC characters—specifically, Mulan, Lilo & Stitch, and now Brother Bear—had been sent to the Florida studio, while the films more focused on white characters—Tarzan, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, and to a certain extent Home on the Range—stayed in California. This does not, however, seem to have been deliberate on anyone’s part: Kingdom of the Sun/The Emperor’s New Groove, set in South America, was the product of the California studio, as was Fantasia 2000, and Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear were not, at least initially, pitched as projects focused on POC characters. With Lilo & Stitch, the initial pitch focused on the destructive little alien, and with Brother Bear, the initial pitch was just “bear.” Of no particular ethnicity.
The idea of a film based on a bear was apparently the brainchild of Michael Eisner, who liked bears. He also liked the profits from The Lion King, at that point still Disney’s hands down most successful film, as well as the profits from the little stuffed lion toys that small children happily snatched off toy racks. A bear movie, he thought, would be great follow up for this.
Unfortunately, Eisner apparently had no ideas for the film beyond “bear.” With no other guidance, animators and executives tossed out various ideas. Some, noting that The Lion King had been based on Hamlet (at least according to Disney marketers), thought that the bear movie could be based on King Lear or Macbeth. Or possibly a Greek tragedy, like Antigone. Other animators suggested following the example of Bambi and just focusing on, well, bears.
A third group had some thought about doing a second film focused on Native Americans. This time, to avoid further controversy, the studio would also avoid any pretense of historical accuracy whatsoever, and instead present something loosely—very loosely—based on Native American culture. Others thought Alaska was a very pretty state that could inspire some lovely background art. Disney executives felt—very strongly—that the film should center on boys. Disney marketers wanted the film to bring back Phil Collins to replicate his success with Tarzan.
The final concept more or less mingles all of this: bears, something that is vaguely meant to be Inuit culture except set 10,000 years ago to handwave any cultural inaccuracies as “well, things change,” hints of tragedy and destiny, some cute bunnies, a very male cast, lots of bland Phil Collins songs, plus two comedians voicing Canadian moose.
About the moose. Look, I like Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, as far as that goes, and they can be funny, but their HI WE ARE VERY OBVIOUS CANADIAN MOOSE WHO SAY EH gets, how can I put this, tedious very quickly, even when they get stuck on mammoths, and even knowing that they are resurrecting their characters from their old SCTV show.
Anyway. The moose are, fortunately enough, a pretty minor part of the film, which mostly focuses on the story of three brothers, wise leader type Sitka, middle brother Denali, and young brother Kenai, who just can’t wait to be big and have his manhood ceremony and all that, and if you are having problems distinguishing them, no worries, since just a few minutes in, one of them is dead and another one is a bear, making it much easier to tell them apart.
This happens largely because Kenai is the sort of thoughtless teenager who, despite being told about twenty times to tie up the fish so that it’s safe from bears, does not, in fact, tie up the fish so that it’s safe from bears. Kenai chases after the bear, leading to an encounter that leaves Sitka dead. A furious Kenai kills the bear. Led by the now dead Sitka, the spirits transform Kenai into a bear in retribution. This also transforms Brother Bear’s aspect ratio and color palette: as Kenai awakes in bear form, the film stretches, filling the screen, and the colors brighten, as if to show us just how much we humans miss by not being bears.
I’m sorry to say that Kenai is not overly impressed by the brightened color palette and wider view, but only wants to be an angsty human again. That, the tribe’s wise woman informs him, can only be done by the spirits, which apparently requires traveling for days and days and days to the mountain where the lights hit the earth, even though the spirits were RIGHT THERE transforming things just a few hours previously, so why, exactly, they can now only be reached on this one mountain is not at all clear.
Also not at all clear: why Denali, who just a few scenes previously was correctly refusing to blame the bear for his brother’s death, now decides he has to hunt bear-Kenai in revenge for the deaths of both his brothers. Yes, the film does throw in a brief scene of Denali remembering Kenai arguing that the bear partly responsible for Sitka’s death needed to be killed, and that a real man would go after the bear—but the film also threw in several scenes showing that Denali doesn’t think much of Kenai’s judgment or advice, and going after that bear seemingly led to Kenai’s death, so it’s unclear why Denali’s response to all of this is to pick up a spear and go after the bear again. Even if the bear did, apparently, kill both of his brothers, and even if he’s weighed down by guilt.
Quite clear: just why Koda, the small bear cub who insists on traveling with Kenai to the mountain and the lights and the salmon run, has been abandoned by his mother. That is, clear to pretty much everyone not named Kenai. (The movie’s attempt to present this reveal as a surprise mostly reveals, yet again, that Kenai is not exactly the most observant human or bear.) Since Kenai is more than a bit of a dolt, he lets Koda guide him to the salmon run and the mountain with the lights, somewhat protecting the smaller bear while learning something along the way.
This is meant to be the cheerful, bonding part of the film—with the exception of a brief chase over a volcano which should get more characters killed than it does—and yet, it turns into the completely predictable, much more boring part of the film. It’s colorful, and the bears are cute, but it’s also soporific. To keep myself awake, I started asking questions.
For instance: if this tale is, indeed, set in a time when mammoths still walked North America, then why is every other mammal on screen a distinctly modern species from the 20th/21st century? I guess we can argue that bears and rabbits and salmon haven’t changed that much, but what are modern moose doing there? Since Kenai still has fairly good control over his paws, why doesn’t he draw some sort of picture message for Denali? Why doesn’t Tanana let Denali know what’s happened? Given that when Denali finally catches up with Kenai for the third time, Kenai happens to be near a number of other bears, why is Denali so sure that he has the right bear. Is Denali just a serial killer?
That’s just the practical questions. On the ethical side, well—the film really really really wants us to believe that hunting is evil and everyone should get along with bears and certainly not hurt them, going right to the point of calling human hunters monsters. It’s a typical Disney message, of course, and one I generally applaud, but one that’s slightly lost by showing us bears happily hunting and eating fish, and one that ignores that the original human/bear confrontation in the film started off not because hunting is evil, but because of human carelessness—Kenai not tying up the fish properly—and, technically, theft—with the bear stealing Kenai’s fish. In other words, no one in the film started out intending to attack or hunt bears, and I can’t help but think that both the bears and the humans are going to go right back to hunting once the cameras are gone.
Brother Bear does do a few things well: the lights on the glacier and in the sky are glorious. Many of the bear scenes are adorable. The trick with the aspect ratio, if somewhat lost on the Netflix transfer (watch this on Blu-Ray), works decently enough as a storytelling device, and I like the way that, as a bear, Kenai’s vision isn’t just widened, but brightened: the entire color palette changes, only to dim again when Denahi is in view.
And I have to admit, I kind of like the end, where Kenai decides to remain a bear. Sure, it’s telegraphed, and sure, even with the telegraphing, it doesn’t really make all that much sense: surely, the entire point of all of this in the first place was to turn Kenai into a better human, not a better bear. And I’m not really sure that I entirely buy Kenai’s argument that “Koda needs me.” Little Koda certainly needs a family, but I’m not really sure that Kenai needs to stay a bear to be that family. After all, Koda and Kenai do share a (brief) moment as cub and human as well, and seem to do just fine. More to the point, Kenai—as the film frequently points out—is not very good at being a bear. He has no idea how to get himself out of traps—or how to avoid them. He has no idea how to hunt for salmon, a kinda critical part of the bear feeding process. He knows nothing about bear society. Koda spends quite a bit of time taking care of him.
But anyone who realizes that a life of playing in water with bears sounds a lot more fun than a life with angsty humans gets my vote. Especially when said humans—and their spirits—get all angsty just because you forgot to be responsible for one moment in a day meant to be a big party for you, and half of said humans mock a totem dedicated to the importance of love. You go, laid back, playful bears. You go.
Brother Bear might have had the time to fix its flaws in storytelling and humor, but instead, the film found itself suddenly rushed to production when the California studio realized that its next production, Home on the Range, was not going to be ready in time to meet its 2003 release date, leaving Disney without a 2003 release. To avoid that issue, portions of Brother Bear were hastily shipped off to the Paris studio to be finished up, allowing the film to be released in November 2003—coincidentally (at least according to some Disney sources) just as the platinum edition DVD of The Lion King hit stores in time for Christmas.
The comparison did Brother Bear very little favors, especially since even with the aspect ratio and coloration stunts and the lovely light effects, nothing in Brother Bear came even close to The Lion King’s opening and wildebeest stunt sequences. Rather than showcasing another triumph in Disney animation, the result seemed instead to showcase just how much Disney had declined since the peak of the Disney Renaissance.
Perhaps partly as a result of this, Brother Bear received mixed reviews, though it did decently enough at the box office, bringing in $250.4 million—one of the few Disney animated films between the Disney Renaissance and the later John Lasseter period to earn any sort of profit at all, if just slightly overshadowed by another little film released that same year, Finding Nemo, which brought in $940.3 million (and counting.)
Disney released the now-standard merchandise of clothing, trading pins, and plush toys—notably bears. The film is still widely available on DVD, Blu-Ray and various streaming services. Brother Bear also spawned the now seemingly mandatory sequel, Brother Bear 2, featuring a bear and a human girl slowly falling in love—I’d say you have to watch the video to get it, except that I would not be performing my duty if I urged anyone to watch that video.
And yet, slowly, the film fell into obscurity. A little more than a decade later, although unrelated toy bears and Finding Nemo merchandise can be found pretty much everywhere throughout the theme parks, the Brother Bear merchandise had mostly vanished, except with the ubiquitous trading pins.
The Florida studio had already closed its doors. With animated film after animated film flopping, Disney executives decided that the experiment of running separate animation studios in California, Florida and Paris had run its course, closing both the Florida and Paris studios shortly after the release of Brother Bear. A painful closure, especially since all three of the full length animated films mostly produced in Florida—Mulan, Lilo & Stitch, and Brother Bear—had been hits.
Indeed, of the three films that pulled a profit during the ten year doldrums between the end of the Disney Renaissance (the 1999 Tarzan) and the beginning of the John Lasseter era (the 2009 The Princess and the Frog), exactly none were made at the California studio. Dinosaur, the third financial success, was produced in California, but not at the Disney Animation Studios.
And yet, the Florida and Paris studios were the ones to close. The “Magic of Disney Animation” was turned into a character meet and greet area, with some interactive games, a room where an artist would run tourists through the steps of creating very simple Disney characters (I drew Chip AND Mickey AND Donald), and the ubiquitous store selling Disney fine art. In July 2015, this, too, closed, to be replaced by the Star Wars Launch Bay, putting Star Wars props and character meet and greets in the rooms where Disney animators had once worked.
But if Brother Bear marked the end of the Florida animation studio, it was not quite the end of Disney’s hand drawn animated films. One more major financial disaster was needed before Disney began its nearly complete retreat from the art form it had mastered in the 1930s and produced steadily every decade since.
Home on the Range, coming up next.
Mari Ness lives in central Florida.
When my son was 5 or so, we watched this ad nauseam on DVD. He loved it. And, I have to say, it’s not so terrible, but it only grew on me so much. I, too, like the fact that Kenai stays a bear.
Last July, my daughter and I were in the Art of Animation studio on the penultimate day it was open. We got to draw Olaf. :)
Apparently, this movie is so forgettable that I’ve never seen it, even though I own a copy. I’m reasonably certain my mother gave it to my son because you have to get your grandchild something for his birthday, but three-year-olds don’t express a lot of preferences, so why not get last year’s Disney movie? I’ll have to ask my son if he ever remembers watching it.
One. I really look forward to Thursday afternoons and your incredibly researched and nuanced take on the art AND business of animation. Thanks.
Two. Are you thinking of taking all this, maybe adding some more research, and producing a book? Because I will buy the s%$t out of that book.
Home on the Range??? I appreciate you’re work but I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it through an analysis of that one. I could never get past the male cows with udders.
A funny story about Eisner and bears: He noticed that his son was watching Saturday Morning Cartoons (hopefully I don’t have to explain what those are), and eating gummy bears. And he though, “By Jove! Let’s combine the two!” And because of that we have Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears. Worth watching, especially if you grew up on 80s animated fare.
When I was last at Art of Animation, we did Pluto. The facilitator didn’t want to do anything anybody had already done, and someone in our group had done the Art of Animation quite a bit before. It was a pity, though, because I wanted to draw Pooh (the bear).
I remember enjoying this movie. I have the two-disc DVD in my library sitting next to another Disney bear movie with a title that starts with B, and have watched it a few times. I’ll have to watch it again and actually pay attention to the plot holes.
Also, anybody else think Tanana grew up to be Grandmother Willow?
@@.-@. You’re thinking Barnyard (2006). I think.
I never saw Home on the Range, but I keep forgetting it was made by Disney; it seemed, even in pictures and previews, to be exactly the kind of mid-range Disney knockoff that was replaced by all the Funny Animals In CGI movies these days.
…conversely, I note, attempting to stay more on topic, I did see Brother Bear. In theater, even! I went with a friend who was very into bears, and who adored it. I, being not particularly bear-mad at the time, spend most of the movie thinking “Well, I’m not rooting for this protagonist or his annoying sidekick at all, but the scenery is nice” with occasional bouts of “Those moose are making a joke based on references to things I don’t recognize, and have forgotten to be funny in any way that is not connected to getting the reference, which seems like a poor idea in a movie aimed at children who probably won’t get the reference either.”
What can I say? It was not a movie so engaging that I didn’t have the leisure for long thoughts.
I remember seeing the movie, on DVD, and thinking a lot of the scenery was pretty but the heavy handed PC sermonizing and not really likeable characters really turned me off. Not really one of Disney’s best, for sure.
The scenery was nice, but I didn’t like the part where the shaman or whoever it was chose everyone’s totem for them. Or announced it, I forget which, it’s been a decade or so. Anyway, I figure if I had a totem, I wouldn’t need anyone else to tell me what it was. Agree that if there are mammoths, there should be saberteeth, giant lions, and short-faced bears–now that’d be a movie…
I originally saw this in German, due to a spur of the moment decision rather than taking our usual effort to see American films in English, and then again later in English. And I have to say that for once the dubbed version was actually better. For one thing Koda’s voice wasn’t so relentlessly modern and trying to be hip, which really bothered me a lot for some reason. In German, he’s more Mowgli and less Terk as it were.
The moose work a lot better, too. As much as I love Bob and Doug McKenzie (and Strange Brew remains something of a favorite), their shtick really doesn’t work here. In German, they called the moose Benny and Björn and gave them really thick Swedish accents. OK, it’s an older reference than Bob and Doug, but it worked for me.
However, the German version has one horrible flaw. For the closing credits, rather than using the English version of the song or having a German singer do the German version, they have Phil Collins singing what is clearly a poorly learned phonetic version of the German lyrics. It’s painful, and I can only conclude that they did that for most of the major foreign languages. Horrible, just horrible,
That is a bit unfair. It is fairly well accepted practice in folklore of all sorts that the spirits can find you at any time they want, but if you want to petition them for something then you go to their house.
I kept waiting for the moose to talk about beer and I’ve never even seen Strange Brew. I always thought it was weird the guy stayed a bear. Doesn’t that mean he left his human brother alone so his bear brother wouldn’t have to be? I can’t really remember because I’ve only seen this movie once . It was part of my nephews Disney collection.
My complaints:
The BIG one: The most dangerous animal to a bear cub is an ADULT MALE BEAR. Adult males will kill a cub any chance they get. The way things work in the bear world, the cub is unlikely to be the random male’s offspring. But, the female will will more quickly go into heat after the cub dies, giving the male a better chance reproducing with her and passing on his genes. Males are also known to EAT the cubs they kill.
The next big one: We’re in Alaska of several thousand years ago and the ice age is still going strong. No one is going vegetarian. The Alaskans of just a century ago wouldn’t have survived without meat in their diet or without fur parkas. Agriculture hadn’t been invented yet and there weren’t any herd animals to provide milk and cheese even if most of the Native Americans of this time weren’t lactose intolerant. Sorry, but if you want them to quit hunting, give them a reason other wanting to starve to death and freeze.
Another big one: Sorry, folks, but bears do not live by salmon alone. Yes, they’re omnivores. Berries are great. But mammals, including large ones with Canadian accents, are always acceptable fare, and I’m not just talking moose. Even today, when bears have rather more cause to fear humans, humans get eaten by bears. This has never been a one-sided predation issue. Yes, Koda’s mother was just protecting her cub (yes, female bears are notoriously aggressive when protecting their cubs and they tend to perceive nearly everything as a potential threat. But, they live in a world where every male of their own species is out to kill their young. They’ve earned their over-protectiveness), but that doesn’t change the fact that bears–and this goes especially for the big bears up north–are not the safest of neighbors.
Minor Gripe: Most hunting cultures tend to think large, successful hunter animals are cool. I never bought Kenai thinking bears were bad totems.
I vaguely recall the trailers, but never watched the film. Sounds like Brave wasn’t the first animated film where people turning into bears (and possibly back) is a major plot-driver.
Most of us are used to thinking of Disney as a vast unstoppable surely-extremely-wealthy juggernaut of a company, at least before Pixar and its ilk entered the scene. The backstories in this blog series — how did you learn all this stuff?? — strikingly reveal how chronically imperiled its reputation and finances were and are. But of course. Who would’ve thought that films cost money to make and mediocre or maligned ones are bad for the bottom line /sarcasm directed at myself.
They would have made more money off me if they had more widely-marketed hyena toys for The Lion King. I have two hyena plushies and neither are Lion King ones, which I would’ve preferred at the time.
I guess I’ll be the one to stand up for the movie. First of all, it looks gorgeous, especially the way the film moves from scenery of rich earthtones to glacial blues from one scene to the next, and the opening into the 2.35 screen ratio introduces a sea of colour to rival Dorothy stepping into Oz. Secondly, it’s resolutely unhip at a time (the Shrek era) in animated features when this was a faux pas. There’s a sincerity to the movie’s dealings with the superficialities that separate Earth’s beings (really it’s about intolerance and xenophobia–same as The Fox and the Sound–but Disney addresses this stuff through animals.) I guess I feel that while Brother Bear isn’t top-drawer Disney, it invests faithfully in its conventions, and that counts for a lot. It also doesn’t take the easy route (the Beauty and the Beast route) with its ending.
DemetriosX @10
Man, I hope Strange Brew is covered on the Movie Rewatch of Great Nostalgia. It’s one of the more interesting takes on Hamlet.
I really liked Brother Bear as a kid, I remember it mostly as a lesson about responsability and being a good brother(I’m the eldest of 3, I saw myself in the opening). I appreciate your reviews, they made me rewatch many Disney movies I haven’t seen in more than a decade, and although now I can see the flaws, I still think they are mostly great and teach good values most children need to learn. Your next review is the only one I’ll not read and that is not gonna make me rewatch the movie. As a kid I couldn’t get to watch the first 5 minutes of Home on the Range, I didn’t even remember it was made by Disney, nowadays I doubt I’d be able to endure 30 seconds, good luck with that one.
Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas made this movie, eh? As a old-time Bob & Doug McKenzie fan, I smiled every time they strolled on screen. In my mind, some of the funniest comic relief Disney has ever inserted into a movie.
wiredog @16: I thought about giving a shout out to Leigh in my post. I’m not sure if it really fits with her brief for the series, though. Is it sffnal enough? And Strange Brew as Hamlet. I’m gonna have to think about that one for a while.
Just watched this one :) My 5 year old watched with me, and he sat throught he movie, but I’m not sure he’ll ever want to rewatch it (as opposed to Chicken Little, which, go figure, is still one of his favorites and in fact we had to watch in the minivan during our road trip ;) ).
I liked it – it’s pretty average, I’d say. I thought the animation was gorgeous, and one of the high points of the film (then again, I’ve always been interested in Alaska and have wanted to visit there since I picked it to do a report on in elementary school, so the type of landscape its depicting is one of my favorites and I adore anything having to do with the Northern Lights). I couldn’t help but think of Clan of the Cave Bear (which I read in college) when they were talking about assigning totems and what not :) I know that whatever culture/spirituality they came up with for the Inuit in this story is a mishmash of things, but I did enjoy the worldbuilding and the shaman (shawoman?). I wish we could have spent more time with them, honestly!
As for the bear part of the story, I’ll say I liked it better than Brave (something about that movie missed the mark for me). I also was pretty sure right from the start you were going to find out that Koda was orphaned by Kenai. And as for the other comments on his behavior and the movie being hard on him, I think one thing to point out that I haven’t seen anybody point out is that, while, yes the bear did steal fish (which I’m not sure you can blame an animal for given that it wasn’t even tied up and I doubt animals have the concept of theft anyway – of course if they find food they are going to eat it), once Kenai tracked the bear down he began to throw rocks at her and antagonize her because he was so frustrated over the basket. So, really, I think he initiated and escalated that conflict and in away really does bear (no pun intended) a lot of the responsibility for the events that led to Sitka’s (and of course the bear’s) death.
It was also a tad weird at the end to see the Mama spirit bear just send her son off with the bear-Kenai (who murdered her) but I guess in Northern Lights Heaven, Sitka and Mama Bear were able to work out their differences and come to an understanding/enlightenment ;)
I have no familiarity with the characters the moose were based off of (in fact, it was bugging me the whole time that one of them sounded really familiar to me until Joe mentioned that one of them was Rick Moranis) but I guess that makes the beer gag (one of them does mention wanting to eat some barley on a bed of hops at the end) make sense :) I just thought it was funny because I like beer ;)
Come on now… you’ve watched the whole movie and created a post for it, but you still can’t get a character’s name right? It’s “Denahi”, not “Denali”.
The middle brothers name is Denahi not Denali. Unfortunately makes me distrust any information in this article
I loved this movie as a teenager and rediscovered it as an adult. The depth this movie has is unusual for a Disney cartoon and is perhaps meant for older children. It’s not the typical Princess meets Prince happily ever after story which is a breath of fresh air. The spirits worked to show that it’s the journey you have to go through to understand what mistakes you’ve made so that you can grow in the ways you need to for your own benefit and make up for the faults you’ve committed. Who cares about the Moose, it’s obvious they were added for humor to lighten things up and they did exactly that. The storyline is pretty serious regarding respect, death, revenge, guilt and how those emotions imprint on our actions. As far as Denahi, we can of course understand why he let the older brothers death remain in it’s place but sought revenge for the younger. Humans tend to have more rage and less sense when traumatic events take place in succession. Whoever wrote this article has no depth and maybe it went over your head versus under your butt. I’m saddened there won’t be a Brother Bear 3. Maybe it would of lost some of the authenticity to the storyline, but with the correct writers it could of been just as good or better.