Disney

All good things must come to an end, and so it was at Walt Disney Studios. The Golden Age of feature film animation had started with Snow White And The Seven Dwarves in 1937. By the end of the 1970's it was all but gone. As the studio entered the 1980's the things had gone from bad to worse. Walt was gone, and so it seemed was the magic. Most of The 9 Old Men had either retired or passed away. The studio leadership was considering closing the animated studio and moving on to live-action films only. It was a dark time for the artists and creative folks at the Mouse House. A shadow had fallen. Sounds pretty much like the beginning of a Tolkien tale, doesn't it?

Enter a new regime. Michael Eisner became the new head of the company, and Jeffrey Katzenberg teamed up with Walt's brother Roy Disney to head the new studio. The first thing they did was banish the animation studios from the Disney lot and set them up in warehouse-like trailers in the middle of industry nowhere. It looked like the axe had finally fallen. But the exile turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to this new generation of Disney talent. Under the new leadership the creative forces banded together and began to do something they hadn't in a long time. They began to dream once again.

The time was that following the death of a good king, England was left without a clear heir to the throne. During the time without a king, England had descended into dark times. Suddenly as if through divine intervention a sword appeared in an anvil of stone. An inscription decreed that whosoever could remove the sword would become king. Think you’ve heard the story before? Well, of course you have. It is none other than the story of King Arthur. Most of us have heard the many stories. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone that Walt Disney himself was quite taken with the tale, when you consider it it’s about as natural a fit as one can find. Disney’s early works were replete with tales of seemingly ordinary people with extraordinary destinies. From Sleeping Beauty to Cinderella, Walt had put his own touch to many such tales.

Our story begins in this England of dark times. A wizard named Martin… eh, that’s Merlin … is sitting in his humble room awaiting the arrival of a special lad. Gifted with the ability to see forward in time, Merlin knows that this lad will soon be arriving, and it will be his responsibility to educate the boy. When the young man referred to as The Wart does arrive, it seems unlikely he could be destined for much of anything. He’s rather physically awkward and appears none too ambitious. Still, Marvin, that is to say, Merlin, takes on the task with an eagerness that becomes somewhat annoying to his companion, the owl Archimedes. The lessons involve for the most part magical transformations and a few catchy tunes. Before long “The Wart” aka Arthur finds and fulfills his destiny. This story is more about the journey than the destination. Arthur doesn’t have his encounter with the sword, often erroneously identified as Excalibur, until the last minutes of the film. There is a hint that more stories would follow, but they never really did.

"All this has happened before and will all happen again. But this time it happened in London. It happened on a quiet street in Bloomsbury. That corner house is the house of the Darling family, and Peter Pan chose this particular house because these were people who believed in him..."

In 1953 with a little help from some Walt Disney magic, generations of children, and adults, of course, would learn to believe in the boy who never grew up. Peter Pan began in the imagination of writer J. M. Barrie. He appeared in a number of works from the Scottish author beginning in 1902 with The Little White Bird. The character had always been a favorite of Walt Disney himself, and it was originally intended as his second animated feature following Snow White. It became quickly apparent that the technology wasn't quite where he needed it to be to tell the story he wanted to tell. It was put on a shelf, but never forgotten. The rights to the character were willed to the children of a Children's Hospital in London, and it was from there that Walt managed to obtain the film rights for the animated feature we have today. Peter Pan has enjoyed success in pretty much every medium possible. There have been hugely popular stage productions where Peter was usually played by a woman. The character has appeared in film, music, comics, television, radio plays and, of course, printed form. He's an endearing and certainly enduring character who has now added high-definition Blu-ray to the list.