Part III: Critical Analysis of Disney Princess Films

In case you're wondering what this is all about, first go here and then here, so that this conclusion to our  critical summaries of Disney princess movies can end with the appropriate amount of catharsis and awe.  Once you're finished with Parts I and II, grab a snack, get comfy, and enjoy the final entry in this systematic trampling of your favorite childhood films.

1998- "Mulan"

Mulan is expected by her society to be a docile bride-in-training, but her personality is too independent and outspoken for that load of nonsense. Instead, after her elderly father is called to the fast-approaching war with the Huns because he is the only male in the family, Mulan literally picks up her father's sword and runs away to ancient Chinese bootcamp, where being a huge klutz repeatedly gets her into trouble. She'll be sentenced to death if she's discovered impersonating a male soldier, but she takes the risk in order to save her father from inevitable death at the hands of the Huns. You'll notice we didn't really make fun of anything about this movie in this paragraph. That's because the only problem with Mulan is the fact that she was somehow considered dull enough to be a "Disney Princess" in the first place. Because Mulan is freaking awesome. 

Hey, remember that time when Cinderella had to leave that party early before all her fairy magic wore off? Neither do we, because we were too busy watching Mulan kill hundreds of invading huns with an avalanche. "Mulan" is an awesome movie. Solid music throughout, a complete lack of obnoxious side-characters in favor of an Eddie Murphy dragon and a cricket, a legitimately frightening villain, and the second best animated training sequence ever created (first best). Mulan kicks butt, and really our only criticism of the movie as a whole is her dishonorable addition to the Disney princess canon.

You see, "Disney Princess" isn't just a categorization or title, it's actually the name of a media franchise owned by the Walt Disney company, created basically as a way of promoting their most popular heroines and making sure that every little girl in America buys a Cinderella lunchbox (and heck, even some of the little boys, since it's 2013 and we're so over gender stereotypes). The "Disney Princess" is a brand in every sense of the word. So see if you can spot what's weird about this picture:

The first thing you ought to notice is that Belle is the only true Brunette beauty in the whole lineup, 

but that's not really what we're getting at.

Sparkling victorian-era dresses, tiaras, flowing locks of professionally done hair, supermodel posing... and then Mulan, all the way in the back looking around thinking "What the heck am I even doing here?". Seriously, she wears the "Are you serious?" expression of one who is far too cool to be hanging around that lot of girly-girls. In every way, Mulan does not fit the mold of the "Disney Princess".

First, she is the only member of this glittery group of gossips that isn't a princess at all. Out of the current eleven official Princesses, eight are born royalty. Two more (Belle and Tiana) marry into a royal family. Pocahontas is a princess, but also the only other lady in the group besides Mulan who doesn't wear a flowing ball-gown, and is therefore thrust to the back of the line-up and hidden by more colorful and traditional princess stereotypes. Mulan isn't of royal birth, and doesn't demonstrate anything in common with the personalities of those bland rodent-serenading princesses from pre-1989, nor does she demonstrate the desire to break out of her pampered life and have wild adventures like the popular females from the '90s. Mulan doesn't run away in search for adventure, she runs away to blast the villain Shan Yu right in his ugly face with a rocket so her father can live out his days in peace.

Against literally any other princess, we'd be rooting for this guy instead.

Mulan kind of has a complicated relationship with general Li, because things often get complicated when the guy you have a crush on leaves you in the frozen wilderness to die. Nevertheless, a budding romance begins at the very end of the film. Since this is the Disney universe, we'll go ahead and assume they marry (we're told this in fact does occur at the end of a sequel we shall refuse to acknowledge) in which case she still isn't a princess in any way. So we hear you arguing "Well she's still the female lead and any female lead in a Disney movie is a "Disney Princess", right?

Wrong on all accounts.

Without giving away too much of our next article, "The Forgotten Princesses", there are plenty of awesome Disney females who got snubbed by the princess club.

For example, where's Jane? "Tarzan" was released the summer after "Mulan", and Jane wears the dress, has the spunk, and woos the king of the whole freaking jungle. Tarzan was a box office success, unlike "The Black Cauldron" (*sigh*.....poor Eilonwy....we hope some studio buys the rights to "The Chronicles of Prydain" soon, babygirl). The only reason we can think of not to include Jane is that her story parallels Belle's in many ways, and they look kinda similar.

Eilonwy; opinionated and independent several years before Disney decided that was "OK".

But Jane's absence from the elite eleven isn't nearly as shocking as fan-favorites like Esmerelda (who was denied membership on the grounds of her being a whore) and Meg from "Hercules", who was probably offered a spot on the roster and turned it down because screw princesses.

"Do I look like I want to be a part of your little girls' club?"

This is a point we'll have to explore in a future article, but for now it should suffice to simply acknowledge that being a female lead doesn't get you into the club. You've got to avoid having any semblance of a cool backstory, you can't be a box office failure, and most importantly you must  keep the group's ethnic diversity ratio intact. Also, you can't be based off of anyone in real life because Disney won't pay the royalties to add you to their official Princess brand.

So as far as we can tell, Mulan wasn't added to the lineup because she was an actual princess, nor was she added just because she was the female lead of a successful movie for the Disney animation studio. She was likely elected to the elite group to increase the diversity Disney has been trying so hard to achieve ever since clever observers started blasting the animation studio in school projects and uploading their resulting homework to Youtube.

2009- "The Princess And The Frog"

Speaking of diversity. This is what happens when Disney attempts to apply everything they learned in their 80 years of animation into one movie, assuming that if all the right elements are in there, it will be successful. The result was a movie that nobody thought was bad, but was forgettable and only noteworthy for its unique southern setting. Tiana, who is a revamped Cinderella with attitude, is working two jobs so she can open up her own restaurant, just like every girl...uh...dreams. She's inspired by her dead father, which should surprise nobody by now (of the elite eleven, only four princesses have both a mom and a dad. Two of those four princesses are raised to adulthood outside of their royal home by a third party. Mulan only has both parents because she made it so).

A prince comes to town, and a voodoo guy turns him into a frog because the plot demanded it. Tiana kisses him and (SPOILER) is also turned into a frog. They have adventures in the bayou and lots of cajun laughs are had. At the end, the annoying firefly becomes a star and the two frogs get married in a swamp. Then they kiss, and since Tiana is now married to a prince, she is a princess and therefore breaks the froggy curse. Seriously. Meanwhile the evil voodoo witch doctor is killed by shadow demons in accordance with the longstanding nightmarish Disney tradition.

The problem with "The Princess and the Frog" is that we've all seen this movie before, in every other Disney movie ever. It's just not a classic, Tiana and the prince aren't memorable characters like Jasmine and Aladdin or Belle and Beast. It also suffers from being only the second best adaptation of this fairytale.

2010- We Finally Get To Bash "Tangled"

Where to begin? "Tangled" is the Disney adaptation of Rapunzel. You know the story, a helpless princess is locked in a tall tower far, far away from civilization, waiting for the day she is to be rescued by-wait what? She's not locked in the tower at all? She's just up there....painting? Oy. Let's go back to the beginning...

There's a magic youth-preserving flower that only an old enchantress knows about. "Enchantress" here doesn't mean the same thing it does in "Beauty and the Beast", since in "Tangled" the enchantress really doesn't display any magical abilities. Like, at all. The wife of the generic king falls deathly ill and the king searches the wilderness for the fabled magical flower, which he somehow finds and boils into a medicine for his wife, who then gives birth to a daughter with hair infused with the flower's magic. 

The "enchantress" steals the baby girl out of her crib--this being the first of at least three examples of the palace's complete lack of security (#2 crown gets stolen, #3 capital fugitive escapes)--and runs off with her so that she can stay young, prompting a dramatic search for the king's only child and her kidnapper. The king's men, who miraculously located one tiny flower in the vast countryside just thirty seconds prior in the film, are now unable to locate a massive freaking tower, which, as far as we can tell from watching the movie, is about a day's ride from the palace.

It seems like it would be hard to miss.

Rapunzel grows up in that tower, never touching grass beneath her feet or leaving the tower for any reason for 18 solid years. Don't worry though, it's not like she's locked up there in shackles plotting her R-rated revenge on the old enchantress (what disney villain would ever be so cruel?). Instead, she paints and plays games and even sings a song about all the activities she entertains herself with day after day, and never once decides captivity was bad enough to ever just, you know, leave. I'm sure the king and queen will love hearing about all the times the enchantress left her unattended for days at a time and she just stayed up in her tower anyway.

Enter Flynn. Flynn is cool. He points out to the princess that, um, yeah she can just leave if she wants, and they set out to return to the palace, neither of them aware that Rapunzel is the missing princess. There's a really awkward song in a bar that reminds everyone it's trying to be a musical movie even though it's not. Flynn repeatedly out-awesomes everybody on-screen, though Maximus does his best to keep up. 

"Maximus, you and me in our own spinoff movie, what do you say?"

The evil enchantress, who displays no more evidence of being evil than any over-protective mom, convinces the dim princess to go back to the tower where she finally figures out she's the princess, and then Flynn comes to rescue her and immediately gets shivved. Credit the enchantress one thing, she doesn't sit around bantering about how she's going to kill someone, she just stabs them real good and they die. Flynn's dying breath escapes him as he slices off Rapunzel's hair, which causes the enchantress to wither away and fall out of the tower's window. Flynn pretty much dies, fortunately Rapunzel cries unicorn blood tears and Flynn is brought back from the great beyond.

Overall the movie trades back and forth between being a light but forgettable comedy, and a tired played-out musical movie about a girl and a boy who somewhat reluctantly fall in love. But Rapunzel is based on a classic fairytale, and thus the princess was added to the Disney princess canon anyway, since the movie was the third most successful Disney film ever in North America, behind "The Lion King" and "Beauty and the Beast". Tangled made just under 201 million dollars on this continent, just 59 million dollars short of the film's estimated budget.

Wait, what?

Holy crap, making "Tangled" cost $260 Million dollars?! Is that not alarming you? Maybe we should put that number in perspective. "Tangled" is not only the most expensive animated film ever made, it is the second most expensive film of all freaking time. "Avatar" cost about 20 million dollars less than Tangled, and was lauded by all to be a cinematic and visual masterpiece, a technological wonder by most standards. And for twenty million more we got.....Tangled? Seriously? You give Peter Jackson 260 Million dollars to work with, you know what he gives you in return? 

This.

Eleven hours of undeniably epic live-action adventure, an awe-inspiring adaptation of perhaps the greatest fantasy universe of all time, a trilogy of movies laced with A-list actors and colossal battle scenes on a more massive scale than anything ever attempted. The Lord of The Rings movies created an entire elaborate world, based on books that practically invented an entire genre. For the same amount of money that funded the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, Disney brought us.......Tangled. Maybe it's just us, but when we watched "Tangled", we noted a seriously disappointing lack of Balrog.

2012- "Brother Bear"....wait, oops...."Brave"

"Brave" is a "Disney Pixar" film, it says so right on the poster. What that means is over the course of the movie, you'll be able to spot the brilliant glimmers of Pixar's genius unfortunately cloaked by the dull unimaginative storyline dragging the rest of the movie down. Pixar does things a certain way, and before Disney bought them that way was a process that always involved a new original story and a tradition of exceptionally creative movie-making. Disney bought Pixar in 2006, and immediately began pumping out sequels and slapping the trusted Pixar brand on movies like "Cars 2". Disney and Pixar don't exactly get along since the two share very different standards; Pixar relies on creative excellence and an established reputation for being awesome in order to be successful, while Disney manufactures pre-packaged family-friendly movies with less regard for originality, since they've got so much money it just doesn't matter. Pixar is the Indie music scene with the rare real talent, and Disney is the major record label with the cash and the hookups to get their mediocre pop-sensation's song playing on every radio station every ten minutes, whether people like it or not. 

So when it comes to "Brave", you watch the first fifteen minutes which is both hilarious and exciting, and you think you know where the movie's going; Merida is a princess who would rather be a warrior, and is pretty awesome at rock-climbing and archery and all the stuff she shouldn't enjoy because "she's a princess" (Jasmine, Ariel, and Pocahontas all sympathize). So naturally, you think she's gonna run away and have adventures and kill that seriously possessed bear from the beginning of the movie to prove her prowess as a warrior or something. 

But then it just turns into the plot from "Brother Bear" except for it's Merida's proper mother who is tricked into transforming into a big ol clumsy bear (insert Mother Bear joke here). And then all the hilarity and clever moments from the first fifteen minutes fades into a distant memory and "Brave" ends with a whimper. If there's one member of the elite eleven princesses who doesn't seem like she belongs there, Merida almost seems more out of place than Mulan. We've already established that merely being a princess isn't what gets you "in", so the fact that she's a member of the club was probably in the interest of marketing purposes and nothing else. Brave was cool for a little while when you thought the story was going to actually be clever and hey, scottish accents are always a plus. Brave was just disappointing, for all the things it could have been.

This marks the bittersweet end of our analysis of the various Disney Princesses from the past 80 years, but if you think it's the last article we'll post about Disney movies, worry not; we have projects underway in the draft room that you may enjoy. This series of articles has been our most successful and most viewed to date, so keep telling your friends about this blog and check back soon for more updates.


-L

Part II: A Critical Analysis of Disney Princess Films

Continued from yesterday's article, we now enter the golden age of '90s Disney classics, with the aim to truly think through these various fairy tales and find out if any of them are really all they're cracked up to be.

1991- "Beauty And The Beast"

Let's be upfront about this- "Beauty and the Beast" is probably the best of all Disney Princess movies. We almost don't want to include it in our spree of witty hate we're currently offering the Disney classics here on this blog. Almost.

The movie opens to a disguised enchantress knocking on the door of spoiled prince's castle, offering him a rose for a night's shelter. Upon the unkind prince's refusal, he's transformed into a horrible beast and has until his twenty-first birthday to find true love before the aforementioned rose quits blossoming and he is trapped as a monster for eternity (awesome). Also, everybody is turned into household objects.

Why? Because otherwise Lumiere wouldn't be very cool.

Enter Belle. Belle has the most legitimate claim for the "Best Disney Princess" crown. She's the first Disney princess (the first Disney character at all, actually) who demonstrates a relatable personality, depth of character, independence, bravery, and other queenly attributes. She's willing to sacrifice for her family, so much so that she takes her father's spot in the Beast's prison thus setting off all the events that follow. She runs away, almost gets killed by demon-wolves, Beast saves her, they start tolerating each other, Gaston the super-douche storms the castle and tries to kill the Beast, true love, laser show, and finally *bam* Beast is now a handsome prince and Belle is still Belle, and the household items turn back into people.

"Lumiere, where did we put all of our actual furniture?"

This would be a happy ending for everyone, so long as one ignores the fact that Belle is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. 

Stockholm syndrome is a "psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors or abusers, sometimes to the point of defending them, and sometimes the feeling of love for the captor shows. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness".

First, Beast imprisons Belle in a castle that no sane villager will ever go near for fear of its dark cursed past. Her chances of escaping are zero, especially considering the fact that all the friendly household objects don't want her to leave, seeing as how their curse will last forever just as Beast's will if he doesn't find love (which is kind of a jerk move on the Enchantress' part, since the castle staff never did anything wrong). So all your favorite Beauty and the Beast characters have secret selfish motives of their own. Next, Beast orders Belle to dine with him and she refuses, so Beast attempts to starve her; a friendly candelabra is the only reason Belle doesn't rot in her monstrous captor's dungeon.



That scene right there was taken straight from the abusive relationship handbook. Woman hides in a closet, drunk dead-beat dad yells at her to come to dinner, upon her refusal he insincerely tries to act like he's not about to beat the living daylights out of her, and upon her continued refusal he throws a tantrum and tells her to die for all he cares. This scene will ring hauntingly familiar to the millions of victims of this sort of domestic abuse each year.

Next, Beast chases her out of the castle and into the wolf-infested woods, which contains as much symbolism as you want it to. In what is supposed to be the turning point of their relationship, Beast rescues her from the wolves and brings her back to the castle. Belle starts to believe the Beast has some good in him since he saved her from the perilous woods that he himself chased her into in the first place. Belle stitches Beast up, and Beast succeeds in winning Belle's heart by catering to her one hobby; her love of books. From that point on, Belle is hooked in her new relationship where she displays every single characteristic of one suffering from traumatic bonding.

"You're so much nicer when you aren't starving me or chasing me into wolf-infested woods".

Which seems more likely: that Belle, the level-headed small-town girl that she is, legitimately fell in love with this selfish, black-hearted, fanged beast, despite her open rejection of any advances from the many good-looking (and less psychotic) men in town in favor of her independence? Independence, after all, is her most endearing quality. Or did Belle's natural evolutionary coping mechanism kick in, as it does in the case of a shocking percentage of kidnapped persons? And for those of you calling foul, thinking Stockholm syndrome wouldn't break the curse, the exact wording of the curse is as follows:



There's no talk of "true love" or a special kiss here, just that he must "earn" the love of another before the rose quit blooming, which contains as much symbolism as you want it to. 

1992- "Aladdin"

We're just going to ignore the rampant racism in this movie, or we'll be here all day.

Jafar is an evil Vizier, and he wants a magical lamp containing a genie hidden in the mystical "Cave of Wonders". By our count, that sentence contains at least three solid band names. Aladdin is the first great male lead of a Disney princess movie. He's a thief by trade, and he's assisted by Abu the monkey, one of the better side characters around. Aladdin meets a disguised princess Jasmine, the first of four consecutive ethnically diverse Disney princesses. They dig each other, and then Aladdin is arrested and Jafar reports to Jasmine that her plucky street thief has been executed. 

In actuality, Aladdin is lead to the Cave of Wonders where he is instructed to "touch nothing but the lamp". Jafar, the cunning man that he is, who barely knows Aladdin enough to know his name, is trusting a convicted thief to enter a cave containing all the riches of the desert and retrieve the most powerful object in existence.

The Cave of Wonders, from your friends at the Disney nightmare factory.

They meet a flying carpet, who has ten times the personality princess Jasmine does despite never uttering a line because it's a carpet, and apparently talking inanimate objects are suddenly beneath Disney, since "Beauty and the Beast" was so last year. 

Raja the tiger appears in like two scenes and gets a name, but "Carpet" and "Genie" is the best

they can do for the carpet and the genie.

Genie helps everyone escape the collapsing cave and Aladdin goes to work wishing for all the same stuff you'd wish for if you had a magic lamp. He is transformed into a prince (which we're guessing was the celebrity equivalent at the time) and amasses an entourage, using his magic carpet as his primary mode of transportation, which was as luxurious as it got back in 11th century Agrabah. Aladdin uses his princely appearance and hype to merit an introduction to Jasmine, who is more into outlaws then princes. 

They share a carpet ride (which seriously must have been the ancient middle-eastern manifestation of a Ducati motorcycle) and she suspects that he is the charming thief she met earlier. Instead of just being like "Yeah that guy you really liked is me, and now I have a genie who grants wishes!" Aladdin instead decides to draw out the movie unnecessarily and makes up some BS about how sometimes he pretends to be a street thief because potential decapitation for being caught is fun. 

They kiss.

Female viewers swoon.

Aladdin is captured by Jafar and thrown into the ocean but gets saved by the genie with wish number two. Jafar gets his hands on the lamp and uses it to do what Maleficent could've done without a genie's assistance, taking over the kingdom and then transforming into a giant snake while Jasmine watches on from inside a giant hourglass, which threatens to suffocate her in a matter of minutes. And we just realized how everything Jafar does is seriously awesome. 

This is problematic.

Jafar uses his final wish to become a giant red genie, who is then sucked into a black oil lamp and chucked into the cave of wonders. The sultan allows Jasmine and Aladdin to be together and everybody goes home happy, especially because Aladdin frees the genie with his final wish. 

Throughout the entire movie, the major wrench in the love story is Aladdin freaking out because first Jasmine has to marry a prince, which he isn't. So he uses his first wish to appear a prince, so he can be with Jasmine. Then Jasmine doesn't want a prince, she wants her street thief guy, which is who Aladdin truly is, which he can't tell her because of no good reason whatsoever. The end of the movie is basically "Hey Jazz, sorry, but I'm not a prince, it was all a facade. I'm actually the guy you wanted to be with all along, assisted by an omnipotent genie, a flying carpet, and a stylish monkey".

There's a lot in this movie trying to distract you from the fact that it's all about a poor boy trying to get into the pants of the vapid, spoiled princess. 

Any of Aladdin's heroic acts are motivated by his desire to be with the princess, and not in an "Aww how sweet!" kind of way, but more in a "broke orphan thief's got to dream of something" kind of way. Considering the rug and the genie do most of the heavy lifting, Aladdin really doesn't prove that he's changed much from the carefree street rat we see in the beginning of the movie. True, he does free the genie with his final wish, but only after he got everything he could've possibly wanted. He doesn't wish genie free out of compassion for a loyal friend in shackles much like the ones he himself wore in a dungeon earlier in the film; Aladdin wishes him free because he's going home with the princess and his life is pretty much as awesome as it'll ever be. 

1995- "Pocahontas"

Disney, tactfully handling potentially racist animation since 1953.

Continuing Disney's formula for box office success re-discoverd in 1989, Pocahontas is about the forbidden love of a princess who longs for adventure, and a man who everyone else in her society disapproves of, in case you hadn't gotten your fill of that yet from "Aladdin" and "The Little Mermaid", and you didn't want to wait another couple years for "Tangled" and "Brave" to come around. 

Disney took some creative liberties regarding Pocahontas' true origin. The final product isn't really based on any actual events other then "sometimes British settlers and Native Americans didn't get along". For example, Pocahontas was actually 12 years old when she (allegedly) saved John Smith's life by getting in the way of her father's beat-down stick. But that sort of thing never stopped Disney from manufacturing a love story before, considering Ariel was only 15 when she (almost) got married. 

But picking apart Pocahontas' historical inaccuracy would make for a long and boring read. Instead we'll just walk through what Disney presented us with, which happens to be a long and boring movie.

John Smith is a blonde ken doll of a man, sailing across the ocean to the new world, saving the life of constant plot-furthering device Thomas along the way. Governor Ratcliffe is in search of gold in order to reach a higher station in life, so good for him. He's the bad guy because he's the only fat character in the whole movie, and apparently that's all young audiences need to infer a person's character. Meanwhile, Pocahontas is busy being a Disney princess, starved for adventure and betrothed to the most awesome dude in the entire freaking movie, Kocoum. That's right, poor Belle was trapped between choosing the obnoxious Gaston and the abusive Beast, and Pocahontas is having trouble deciding between the proven warrior alpha male and future leader of her tribe, and a strong-chinned foreigner. 

That sounds so familiar.

Pocahontas hangs out with John and introduces him to "Grandmother Willow" (we're sorry, any actual natives reading this) and the two decide they love each other because Pocahontas believes John to be more exciting than her current fiance. Little does she know that John Smith is the least exciting character in this entire movie, including the raccoon. We sort of get an idea as to why Pocahontas wants an adventurous romance with John, but there's no real motivation given for John's interest in Pocahontas, which just adds to his dull masculine one-sidedness. John risks the lives of everyone in the film as much as Pocahontas does, except he ought to know better, since he's on the side that brought the guns. 

There's a song about painting with the colors of wind, and its lyrics relate hilariously to what it must have been like to experience 17th century acid. Pocahontas sings in an expository fashion, explaining to John the connection all humans share with the world around them and other stereotypical native-sounding beliefs.

Yeah.

The chief declares war on Jamestown, and the movie actually starts getting interesting ten minutes before the end credits. John Smith is saved by Pocahontas, which sounds heroic except that this whole conflict is her fault in the first place, and she already caused her tribe's best warrior to be shot by Thomas the plot-device. 

John takes a bullet for the chief and gets in is good graces, the englishmen mutiny and arrest the governor, and Smith is carried off on a stretcher so he can return home to receive medical treatment. By "home" we're going to hope they mean back in Jamestown, because traveling all the way back across the Atlantic with a bullet embedded in your lung isn't something people generally survive. 

Then again, neither is face-first parachute-less base jumping.

This is the point where Disney knows they're onto something: ethnic diversity, forbidden love that conquers all, animals that follow around the leads to make the story less bland, never ever ever any parental figures, dashes of racism....all these elements that have existed since Disney's first animated feature film are now meshing together to create the same money-making love story again and again. Nicholas Sparks would be proud, if he were capable of acknowledging other people's work. Tool. 

Don't miss what is certain to be an exciting conclusion to this observational adventure, in our next article: Critical Analysis of Disney Princess Films Part III, "Mulan" to "Brave". We can't wait to finally make fun of "Tangled".


-L

Part I: A Critical Analysis Of Disney Princess Films

To date, the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon consists of 52 films, and a little bit of research into the Disney timeline reveals the obvious highs and lows the studio has weathered over the last century. Those of you fortunate enough to be born in the '90s happened to be growing up in the second great age of animated Disney hits, and would be able to respond quickly and confidently to the question "So, which is greatest of them all"?

See what we did there?

This article has admittedly been stuck in the draft room for some time now, as there is so much ground to cover and so many angles to approach an article about Disney films. After much deliberation (and an unfortunate number of scuffles in the break room), our chief editor made an executive decision to avoid any sort of grading system and abandon the search for which Disney movie ought to be considered the "Best", at least for the time being. If there's a demand for a comprehensive analysis of which Disney princess or movie is the "greatest", that may be a post for a future date. For now, we're content with our final product: most people have an opinion concerning which Disney princess movie is the best, but how much brainpower have you devoted to finding out which Disney princess movie is the worst?

**Editor's note: The Disney Princess Canon currently consists of 11 princesses; we'll be structuring these articles in such a way that your favorite will inevitably be bashed at some point. Don't think any less of us because of it, it's just kind of our business to hate on things once in a while.**

1937- "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

So it begins.

Snow White is where it all began. Cutesy animals, doe-eyed princesses, death of parental figures in the opening minutes of the story, thinly veiled racism, and all those other staple Disney characteristics. Snow White is the template that became so many future successes for Disney, and you have to give it a little credit for being the first of its kind. Unfortunately it's also like 70 years old, and this isn't VH1's top 100 rock songs where the top five spots go to songs you've never heard because they "started it all". We don't care if "Snow White" started it all-- it's nobody's favorite, and for good reason.

Now, if this were a discussion about which Disney movie's source material is the most awesome it may be a different story. Unfortunately for the Disney adaptation, though the villain is undeniably creepy (especially in her old hag makeup), the hero prince is awfully bland, and the side characters are all lame except for Doc. To quickly recap the story (in case your parents didn't let you watch movies ever), the evil queen (and Snow White's step mom, because duh) wants to be the prettiest lady around, and when Snow White rises to contend for the prettiest lady title, the witch tries to get rid of her and Snow White flees through the woods to go live with seven adult men in what was the original token horrifying moment of a children's animated film--a tradition that would be carried on for the next 80 years.

Some scars run deep.

It seems the animators were told they couldn't get away with showing the true ending of the tale which results in the evil queen dancing until she drops dead in a pair of red-hot iron shoes, and ultimately decided to just make Snow White's escape into the woods a little extra terrifying instead as a way of sneaking a little childhood trauma into the mix. That's not to say the actual ending isn't any less morbid.

The first of many nightmare-inspired character deaths from your friends at Disney.

1950- "Cinderella"

Cinderella, the classic rags to riches tale. Disney's Cinderella is the core of the Disney empire- dresses, princes, castles, ugly step mothers, helpful little critters, and an utter lack of character development. You know how the story goes, the servant girl Ella has a fairy godmother who goes all "What Not To Wear" on her filthy servant girl clothes and gives her a dream date with the prince. He falls in love with her at the royal prom because she's got more style than the other princesses, she falls in love with him because his royalty is her ticket out of latrine duty, and then Ella's curfew is up and she books it home so Prince Charming (which is his real freaking name) doesn't find out she's from the 'hood. After an utterly bewildering contest the prince devises to find his gold-digging wench, he finds Ella again and the two live happily ever after in a loveless marriage.

"Goodness me, it's a good thing no other girl in the kingdom wears a size 6".

This entire story is devoid of any meaning other than "Fairy godmothers can get you out of a tight spot". There isn't a hint of anything interesting about Cinderella or her prince, and even the villain is pretty boring, and this is Disney we're talking about-- Disney animators usually make the villain the best character of all. The most danger anyone faces the entire movie is the consequences Ella must face when she doesn't keep to her midnight curfew. Even one of the best classic side characters can't keep the bland leads from rendering the entire movie hopelessly dull. Cinderella's prince is the original nameless "Prince charming", and he claims the title "most cardboard cutout prince of all time" (which by the way is an astonishing feat, when you consider the possible contenders for that title).

Jaq does his best to contain his frustration.

There's no moral to the story, no chemistry between the leads, no reason Cinderella should even be the protagonist at all except that freaking demon cat hates her, and the viewing audience automatically sides with any who oppose that demon cat. What even happens in this movie? Cinderella hates her life and feels unjustly treated? Good thing fairy godmother shows up and fixes everything or Ella's fate would be the same as thousands of other servant girls in the kingdom unlucky enough to lack such supernatural help. The climax of this film isn't Ella standing up for herself and gaining some sort of empowerment or self-confidence in the face of her ugly step-sisters; instead she gets carried away in the arms of a stranger she met on the dance floor a few nights prior. Cinderella sucks, and her resulting marriage to the prince has about as much chance of success as any relationship spawned from "The Bachelor".  The only positive thing coming out of this story is the fact that Ella's kids will benefit from a dad who always sends his monthly check on time.

1959- "Sleeping Beauty"

"Sleeping Beauty" is the first major winner in this evaluation of Disney classics. This film excels in all the areas "Snow White" ultimately failed. Yes, "Sleeping Beauty" is dated and paced relatively slowly, but at least it has some things going for it.

Let's start with the princess- Aurora is one of the most underrated princesses ever. First of all, it's a major plot device in almost every Disney film that the princess lead is the most beautiful woman in the land, a plot device that causes issues in both "Snow White" and "Cinderella" because the animation doesn't portray that description all that well. Aurora avoids this plot hole by actually living up to her own hype, as the Disney animators created one of the cuter (and underrated) animated princesses around.

In the Mind Grenades offices, statements like that will get you assaulted 
by the vicious "Team Jasmine" guys.

Aurora isn't a rags to riches story of course, she's born a princess and therefore into privilege. However, that doesn't cost her much favor since instead of finding her way into royalty by arbitrary means like Cinderella, or growing up a spoiled princess all her life like Jas-um, others, Aurora is a rare combination of a woman with actual royal blood and rights to the kingdom, and the grace of a modest upbringing in a cottage surrounded by cutesy animals. Of all the Disney princesses, Aurora might make the most respectable queen at a future date.

But that's not even the best part of the movie, nor is the animation--which is pretty cool even by today's standards. No, the star of this show is the first truly great Disney villain, maybe the best ever. The reason Aurora's growing up in a woodland cottage with a couple of fairies instead of within the castle walls is a terrifying curse from one bad lady.

If you think she's one of those "Just break her staff and she'll lose her powers!" villains,

you're painfully unaware of just how real it got in here. 

Maleficent is what every antagonist ought to be: straight up evil. There's no depressing backstory explaining why or how she became the very mistress of evil incarnate, no insecurity or fear that one day Aurora would rise up and vanquish her, she just is. She's got the attitude of the Joker and "all the powers of Hell" to back it up. In fact, in the Disney film at least, there's no reason why she crashes baby Aurora's party in the first place. She just storms in, places a wicked curse on the child, then peaces out in a flash of green lightning just to prove how inescapably evil she is.

And the only weapon the kingdom has against this is three colorful fairies. 

Alas, despite one of the greatest animated villains ever, if you sit down and watch this movie expecting to see something cool then you'll have to wait for the last ten minutes. This is one boring movie, despite great animation and a cool villain, and even a prince with a name (Phillip) and some actual screen time to establish that he's pretty cool. The opening credits to "Sleeping Beauty" take like 8 minutes to roll and is backed by some sort of old-school chamber choir music that drags on until finally the movie begins. Then you've got to forge through Aurora falling asleep due to the curse, a scene of pointless drinking with the king and some bard, and other slow developments for the next 60 minutes until finally Phillip emerges to kick some butt. You're then rewarded for your superhuman patience with this scene:

"Yeah, we actually hate kids"--Disney 

1989- "The Little Mermaid"

Ugh.

The Little Mermaid. Where to even begin. This was a story apparently written and directed by a bossy fourteen year-old girl. It opens with Princess Ariel suffering from Rapunzel  syndrome, feeling trapped in a boring world devoid of adventure. Except Rapunzel was isolated in a studio apartment-sized tower two hundred feet in the air, and Ariel was confined to the entire freaking ocean.

It's like the walls are closing in.

Everything about The Little Mermaid is just wrong. Let's take this step by step: She sees Prince Eric on a fishing boat (a fishing boat...a fishing boat) and falls in love instantly, which is fine, we understand it's a Disney movie and inter-species love at first sight is totally a thing. Her dad is Poseidon renamed King Triton, and he's understandably unhappy with his daughter's decision to be an idiotic teenage girl, considering his six other daughters are behaving just fine. Ariel freaks out at how totally unfair her daddy is being and sells her voice to an evil octopus witch-doctor, which is bad, since if she doesn't get with Eric like right away, the witch will steal her soul and turn her into a sad shriveled sea plant. In exchange for her voice, Ariel gets feet and then somehow avoids drowning immediately as a human in the crushing depths of the ocean. Ariel washes ashore. The part of the deal where every step she takes is akin to walking on hot knife-points is unfortunately omitted. 

Which just has to be symbolic of teenage romance in general.

And speaking of things left out of the Disney version, it should be noted that a major reason the Ariel from the original tale wanted to be human was because humans have immortal souls and go to heaven, and merfolk dissolve into foam and cease to exist completely when they die. That part is kind of important. No matter.

Ariel hangs out in Eric's castle. Eric is smitten with Ariel because he likes his women silent, which is weird since he knows his true love saved him and sang to him earlier in the movie. The witch, Ursula, interferes with the lovers in the form of a brunette lady that isn't even hot, but mesmerizes the prince with Ariel's stolen voice. They almost get married, then they don't because everyone turns back into whatever creatures they were at the start of the film. Plot happens. Ursula is made ruler of the ocean when King Triton bails Ariel out of her stupidity and instead offers himself to fulfill the soul-snatching devil-woman's contract (which should've been void anyway since it was signed by a minor without parental consent). 

Ursula uses her new powers to....to grow really big....which is both stupid to a frustrating degree, and yet also (somehow) more frightening than any other possibility. Eric kills her by running his boat into her over-inflated bosom, and then marries Ariel while all of her (totally jealous) sisters look on and a giant pretty rainbow covers the sky. Seriously.

Ariel is irrational, reckless, one-dimensional, selfish, and otherwise terrible at being the film's protagonist. Eric is dopey and boring but he's the prince, that's his job. Princes in Disney movies are the source material for male leads in live-action chick flicks: one-dimensional with zero character flaws and no hobbies or interests that aren't directly related to being the perfect boyfriend. 

This man has made a living with the personality of a graham cracker, and 

a smile that looks like it causes him extreme pain.

And in true Disney form, none of Ariel's character flaws are overcome or explored throughout the film, instead they are pardoned by a daddy who controls the ocean and she gets what she wants in the end. This is a movie about a spoiled rich girl who wants a guy, and that guy seems like he's into another girl for a while but that girl turns out to be a fat ugly witch (naturally) so he chooses the spoiled rich girl instead and they live happily ever after, once her dad bails her out of all the massive trouble she caused. 

Just in case that description alone still doesn't make Ariel sound like the real bad guy, consider the fact that after Ariel and Eric's wedding, sea food is now off the menu unless Ariel is okay with chomping on her musical sea-pals, which means one of two things: 

1) Ariel is a monster and embraces her human side, eating seafood with the rest of her new society.

2) Eric's kingdom is about to take a depressing dive since its entire economy is now at risk. 

For the sake of attention spans and aesthetics, this article will pick up tomorrow with "Part II: Belle and the rest of the '90s". Don't miss it.



-L