The FilmNerds Blog

A blog post about the Pirates of the Caribbean movies? Man, I just keep digging myself deeper and deeper into this populist hole.

Avast, to the isle of Tortuga!

At this point, the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film has made over $620 million worldwide. Its success makes the decision to green-light a fifth film a no-brainer for Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, but I – along with most of the internet film nerd community – think there is reason to pause and re-consider an immediate course of action.

The dirt sheets are reporting that Johnny Depp isn’t sure he wants to come back for another turn as the series’ fulcrum point, Jack Sparrow. In addition, initial director Gore Verbinski has no interest in returning, and it’s questionable whether or not On Stranger Tides director Rob Marshall will be back. Reportedly, one of the series’ writers, Ted Elliot, has broken off a long-standing partnership with Terry Rossio and opted out of a fifth film, as well. Finally, the fourth film’s critical reception has been the lowest of all the (admittedly ill-received) sequels, with a 33% Rotten Tomatoes score.

So, we have the film nerds turning down a fifth helping, along with the lead actor, one of the writers, and a creative direction that is unclear and shaky. And yet, the newest film has a 65% user score on Rotten Tomatoes (granted, that’s barely passing), and again, has made over $620 million worldwide in just 12 days. Is it a bad business decision to overlook a lack of direction and meaningful interest for a potential cash-in on a popular brand? Yes, it absolutely is. The studio has a responsibility to itself to grow its brand, right?

Actually, no. I would argue that the ever-speedy downfall of Hollywood studios has been a blind determination to grow, despite most practical business sense pointing to the idea of diversification. Disney practices diversification across all of its interests, but doesn’t apply the idea to its stories, for some reason. The mistake the studio and the creative team behind this franchise have made is putting all of the stock of the Pirates of the Caribbean idea into the character of Jack Sparrow. There is no better evidence of this than this latest movie. My wife and I watched it this past weekend, and it is not the atrocious manifesto of Hollywood excess many critics have made it out to be. It is, however, a very boring and visually flat movie lacking a tangible emotional core. Say what you will about the first three movies – and maybe I’m alone in this – but by the end of At World’s End, I was invested in seeing Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley end up together. In On Stranger Tides, there is a muddy and confusing love story between characters played by Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz that has the strangest, most unsettling conclusion of any love story I’ve ever seen. Seriously, it’s almost brilliant in its emotional chaos.

Regardless, with this Sparrow-centric and visually dead entry, Bruckheimer and Disney have completely forsaken what makes this franchise special: the world. Think back to the them park ride the first film was based on… Did you go on that ride a thousand times for one character? For the thrills? For the laughs? No, you went because it was the best, most immersing anima-tronic ride at DisneyWorld (or the original at DisneyLand, depending on your geography). What is so satisfying about the original trilogy? The world that Gore Verbinski created is alive. Yes, the scripts are overloaded, the motivations are hard to follow, the formula is cynically transparent. However, in addition to delivering memorable characterizations, Verbinski crafted a fantasy landscape that is amazingly real and textural. In one film, he LITERALLY has characters emerging from the production design, and you believe it immediately because of the sun-burnt and corroded veneer that is smeared all over everything you see.

To be honest, that’s what brought me back to the theaters for the third movie. I had a lot of problems with the annoying onslaught of sequel cliches and character quips in Dead Man’s Chest, but in the interest of full transparency, going to a Pirates movie during the summer is the next-best thing to going to the beach itself. The atmosphere and the whimsical, anachronistic tone of these things is like candy. I found the third film to be really satisfying as a conclusion to a high-stakes love story, and as a further expansion of the series’ world. I just want to spend more time in this era, in this place, with these rules, but On Stranger Tides flat-out failed at giving that to me. If further entries can’t perpetuate the world, the whole thing isn’t worth it. So, let me re-state one simple statement:

Jack Sparrow is a supporting character.

For this franchise to be useful, interesting, or profitable in a long-term sense, Disney/Bruckheimer have to diversify. They cannot just react and feed specific fan appetite, because Jack Sparrow is tethered to Johnny Depp, and Depp should have the freedom to roam. Seriously, we may have lost of one of the best actors of his generation to the cynical workings of the Hollywood system. Let the guy experiment without Disney or Tim Burton spurring it on.

Disney should take hints from their biggest recent acquisition, Marvel. In their films and in their comics, Marvel tries hard to let the universe be king, rather than individual personalities. This allows stories to grow organically out of circumstance and contrast rather than marketing tactics or “screen” time. The Marvel Studio’s biggest cinematic misstep so far has been an over-reliance on star power in Iron Man 2. I am not against the star system, but in the game of expanded story universes, individuals must bow to a greater sense of place.

To be clear, nowhere in this post have I mentioned that I want this series to die. I just want it to survive healthily, instead of by artificial hype and repetition. So, here’s what would I like to see from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and what I think is necessary for the brand to stay alive beyond eventual fan fatigue:

1. Kick Out Jack Sparrow.

Again, Depp’s creation is a fun supporting character, but he’s become the false lead in this series. The “franchise lead hand-off” is a blockbuster maneuver that I can’t recall ever working, but it is something that seems to be happening to Jeremy Renner for both the Bourne series and the Mission:Impossible series. It’s a bold and painful move to separate a franchise from its MVP, but in a case like this, where the world of the story is so rich, I think it must be done.

2. An Expanded Universe.

Disney currently has at least two comics outlets: BOOM! and Marvel. A comic book series, like Dark Horse’s Star Wars comics, that explores ancillary characters and locations in the world of Pirates of the Caribbean would be fantastic, and a natural way to experiment and find new and interesting stories and creations. To be fair, On Stranger Tides does try to introduce a new direction in the form of a martyred missionary character, but the bored script and a dodgy performance just sink the attempt. A direction for a new feature should happen organically, grown out of fan interest in elements of the mythos presented in novels, video games, comics, and an animated series.

3. A Handbook.

Despite my appreciation for Curse of the Black Pearl and At World’s End, they’re plenty messy. In this world, a pirate seems to be a genetic malady. If an expanded universe does get created, things need to become clearer and stay that way. Disney: Pay Verbinski, Bruckheimer, Rossio, and Elliot a couple bucks to spend some time to make a “bible” for these stories. Rules, geography, and physical limitations are essential.

4. Some Respect.

On the great movie podcast All Movie Talk, co-host Stephen Keller once lamented that if only the American public had been more intelligent in 2003, we would have a Master & Commander trilogy rather than a Pirates trilogy. I agree with this to a certain degree, but I do appreciate the fantasy elements of these movies. That said, for my tastes, there could be more direct nods to the great swashbucklers in cinema history. Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk, and even Hook are adventures worthy of borrowing from and paying homage to.

 

5. Escape The Formula.

This latest film has only gone to show that the series has worked itself into a structural rut. It’s always a tricky balancing act to observe tradition and to fight formula in movie series. The case here is = [(Johnny Depp + Dueling Villians + Tragic Love Story + Sailor Mythology) Over Two Hours]. None of these, outside of the sailor mythology, are what make these movies special.  Color outside the lines, guys.

6. Thriftiness.

Here’s the big one. Disney/Bruckheimer are going to make fat bank off of another Pirates movie, so they’re logically going to spend another $200 million to make it. What if Depp isn’t on board, though? Will fans still come out to see it? It’s a sloppy catch-22, and should have been avoided by this point. If they’re serious about maintaining the Pirates brand, after testing the waters a bit with comics and games and animated series, the suits would be smart to show some thrift. Get a lean, mean script with interesting characters and a sharp dynamic, and shoot it for $60 million, with fantastic actors looking for a break. More studios could learn from District 9 and Hellboy, both of which created vivid, imaginative worlds for way less than $100 million. I should add that this is just a wiser practice in general. If Hollywood filmmakers could actually budget their mind-blowing allowances, there would be a lot more room to experiment and to make interesting movies, both of which – in the long term – make money.

But there’s the problem, right? Studios like Disney and Bruckheimer and the rest need a fast turnaround to satiate investors watching quarterly profits. So, a lean, mean Pirates picture might not pay off with $600 million worldwide in 12 days. However, it may very well make $300 million over a few months, build word-of-mouth, make for a successful home video release, build interest in other stories within the brand, promote new characters in the world of the story, and ultimately pay off with a sequel that makes over $1 billion. If this seems like a sure thing, that’s because it’s EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED with the first and second films in the series. However, that kind of strategy takes more patience, more discipline, more risk, and more trial-and-error than bloated Hollywood studios can afford… or more than they think they can afford, at least.

Regardless, I wish the best for the franchise, despite feeling like one of the few internet movie geeks that actually enjoys these movies. I feel they’ve yet to reach their full potential, which is quite obviously within grasp. There really are some great adventure stories to be told in the world of Pirates of the Caribbean. But alas, until Jerry gets my fruit basket and starts returning my text messages, I’ll just have to settle for listening to Hans Zimmer’s amazing At World’s End score on loop while watching Corona commercials on YouTube.

 

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

When last I encountered a re-release of an older film on this countdown, I tried reviewing the movie (as I’ve done with all the other films in the project) from the perspective of a 2010 viewer. That film was The Rescuers, one of three Disney Animated Classics re-released in 1983 during a particularly dry period at Disney’s animation studios. The reaction I received for that piece was easily stronger than any other installment of this series, in large part because I felt The Rescuers didn’t stack up well against the rest of the Disney catalog. I feel it’s only fair to judge Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs against the same standard.

The 1983 re-release was Disney’s seventh full-scale national release of the 1937 feature film that essentially invented animation as a feature-film genre and was single-handedly responsible for transforming Walt Disney Productions from a novelty animation studio into one of the most powerful entertainment companies on the planet. It was an astonishing commercial force the instant it was released, becoming the highest grossing film of all time (until it was beaten one year later by Gone With the Wind) and succeeding at bringing in audiences again and again, as was proven by its surprising $30.1 million haul during the 1983 re-release.

Often a film with such lasting commercial appeal tends to be more than just a crowd-pleaser. If it wows audiences at screenings held nearly fifty years apart, there’s probably something to it. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sticks out to me as quite a different viewing experience than most of the other Disney Animated Classics, perhaps because it’s so much less concerned with following the precedent set by other animated features. Since there were no animated features to take inspiration from, Disney and his team looked to other examples of filmmaking in which the filmmakers took advantage of film’s ability to bend reality, specifically European expressionist cinema. After all, in Disney’s eyes animation was simply another way to tell a story with moving images and as a filmmaker, it was his job to tell a story that was both believable and remarkable at the same time.

That European influence is quite evident in some of the film’s darker scenes, which are far more numerous than I’d remembered. Many people reference the sequence in which Snow White runs away through a scary forest (a scene that apparently caused a mass outbreak of children peeing in their theater seats back in 1937) but there are little touches here and there that are less immediately scary and more disturbing upon reflection. As the Queen flees her castle through the dungeon, she nearly trips on a skeleton frozen in a desperate reach for a jug of water. The Queen screeches a sadistic taunt of “Thirsty?” at her victim and then cackles as she kicks his bones into a pile on the floor.

Another remarkably dark detail that sticks out would be the pair of buzzards that first appear when they overhear the Queen talking about her plan to kill Snow White and then smile as they take off to follow behind her. Later the buzzards appear again after the Queen falls off a cliff and is presumably crushed by a giant rock. They give the camera a big long grin before taking off and circling down off the cliff…to eat the Queen’s dead body! Both of these incidents are probably things that simply wouldn’t be understood by children, which is why they work in the context of the film, but as I said they are far more dark than what we typically see in any other Disney feature that came after Snow White.

It’s definitely not all dark though and the lighter side of the film is clearly drawn from two of the more popular film genres of the day, the musical and the slapstick comedy. Snow White’s songs (written by Frank Churchill) all feel very much like the kind of fare you’d typically hear in mainstream movies of the late ’30s, particularly “I’m Wishing”, which is cleverly built around the visual gag of the echoing wishing well, and the classic ballad “Some Day My Prince Will Come”.

Probably the biggest musical highlight for me on this re-watch was also one of the best examples of the film’s clear slapstick comedy influence. “The Silly Song” is a spectacularly creative, Marx Brothers-inspired bit of anarchic comedy filmmaking.

Watching Snow White today, you can feel the combination of uncertainty and brazen confidence that must have been driving the Disney team as they attempted to enter the uncharted territory of making a “real movie” using their “gimmicky” animation techniques and it’s almost thrilling to watch. There must have been times when people around the team, and maybe even people within the team, expressed doubts about whether the general public would be willing to sit through a full-length film that was entirely animated (Walt’s own wife once told him “no one’s ever going to pay a dime to see a dwarf picture.”). It wasn’t a guaranteed success and even if it was, Disney’s team probably had no notion that they were going to make cinematic history. They were doing what they were doing because they loved their craft and they loved doing things with it that no one else had ever dreamed of doing before. That the film’s financial success literally built Walt Disney Studios was a worthy result of their hugely risky creative endeavor.

While most film fans today could look at any frame or shot from this film and tell you what it was, I wonder how many have actually watched it all the way through in the last five years. As the art of hand-drawn animation breathes its last, I’d highly recommend to all lovers of great film to give this a re-watch and see the birth of this great and unfortunately fading art form and remember that in the beginning, it was just a great film that happened to be animated.

Next Up: Gene Hackman, Robert Stack and Patrick Swayze star in the Vietnam P.O.W. drama Uncommon Valor.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

Amazingly, this is just the third film on this list so far that I had already seen before I began this project (which is exactly why I started this journey in the first place) after The Rescuers and A Christmas Story. I watched Never Cry Wolf back in middle school as part of a science project, presumably about wolves although the only thing I could tell you about the movie for years until now was that it featured quite a bit of footage of the male lead’s butt.

Which brings me to why this film, which most people probably haven’t heard of, is arguably one of the most important and influential titles on this countdown. Despite having no big name stars, no flashy special effects, no romance, no explosions and none of the other easily marketable features of a typical 1983 blockbuster, Never Cry Wolf hauled in $29.6 million without ever playing on more than 540 screens at its widest release.

What exactly grabbed the attention of audiences is still a bit unclear. It opened in competition with runaway hits like Terms of Endearment and The Big Chill but still managed to grab enough of the teen and adult audience to pull off a respectable haul. Critics loved the film almost unanimously from the beginning, earning an emphatic two thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert along with a number of other major critics (The New York Times’ Vincent Canby hated it but as I’ve discovered from this project, Canby sounded like he hated almost every movie he saw).

The commercial and critical success of Never Cry Wolf helped spur on one of the biggest studio moves of the 1980s, Disney’s decision to get into business of making movies for grown-ups. Walt Disney Pictures had already flirted with the idea of slightly more adult-oriented material with movies like Take Down, The Black Hole and Tron with mixed reactions in each case. While many of Disney’s PG-releases were critically praised, they also took their share of lumps from parents who believed the Disney label should not associate itself with material unsuitable for a young audience.

Disney took a slightly different approach with Never Cry Wolf, leaving their company logo off most of the marketing materials (see the included poster) so as not to overly emphasize the Disney brand. While the movie does contain some nudity and bad language, none of it seems gratuitous or unnecessary in context, which is probably why Never Cry Wolf served as the positive counterpart to Disney’s other adult-oriented experiment in 1983, the critically panned and parent-enraging Trenchcoat. The combination of Never Cry Wolf‘s success and the PR nightmare caused by Trenchcoat seemed to be the final push Disney needed to spin off its own separate label made specifically for adult-themed films, Touchstone Pictures, which launched the next year.

As for the movie itself, director Carol Ballard (a Lucas/Coppola disciple) tells the story of a biologist in the 1940s who takes on the assignment of studying arctic wolves in Alaska to determine whether or not they were the cause of a big drop in the caribou population. At the time, no one had ever seen a wolf hunt and kill a caribou and before declaring all out war on the species, the government was looking for confirmation from a scientist. From that premise, the film takes a turn into part nature documentary, part character study as the scientist (played by Charles Martin Smith) narrates his thoughts as he works alone in the wilderness for months with nothing but wolves and mice to keep him company.

There’s an interesting appeal to the early part of the film very similar to Robert Zemeckis’ Castaway in that our hero is dropped into the middle of an unfamiliar environment with very few instructions or supplies. The movie takes its time moving forward from here, allowing us to imagine what we would do in the same situation.

The story progresses from harsh and brutal winter to a springtime setting that truly shows off the natural beauty of the Alaskan and Canadian countryside where the film was shot, particularly in a series of stunning crane shots that follow Smith as he creeps through the hillside spying on a caribou herd.

In addition to the amazing, nature documentary-quality cinematography (which by the way took two years of filming), the film won an Oscar for its sound design, another feature that’s typically a big point of emphasis for nature documentaries. Of particular note would be the terrifically disgusting sound effects that accompany the infamous mouse eating sequence in the film.

While Charles Martin Smith does an admirable job of wearing his emotions on his face with almost no dialog for the length of the film, a nice pair of bookend scenes by Brian Dennehy (seen earlier in this series in Gorky Park) give us a nice entrance and exit out of and back into the world of man. Dennehy plays a larger than life pilot responsible for dropping off and picking up Smith and is a perfect contrast to Smith’s meek, mousey nerd.

And yes, just as I remembered from my childhood, there’s about 20 minutes worth of Charles Martin Smith running bare-assed through the prairie as he chases alongside a pack of wolves hunting the weakest and sickliest of the caribou herd. It’s a bit of a trippy sequence with plenty of frenetic editing and the suggestion that Smith has “become one” with the pack but in context, it’s an important emotional moment in the film and is the perfect example of what Disney was hoping to accomplish with the Touchstone label: creating genuinely relevant and artistically compelling film moments that for whatever reason just weren’t suitable for kids.

What I like most about Never Cry Wolf is that while it’s certainly a film about nature and animals, it never overly anthropomorphizes the creatures. Yes, the wolves are shown to be social creatures with families and relationships and yes, issues about the exploitation of the environment by man are brought up but none of these points are overplayed in the way so many other films (including films from Disney) so often do. This is a movie that lets the facts and details convey its environmentalist message on their own without any condescending and preachy speeches.

Again, I’m a bit baffled as to exactly how this movie was able to round up almost $30 million worth of business but when it comes to entertainment value and unique visuals, this movie delivers like any spectacular blockbuster should. The sheer technical achievement and patience required to film wild, untrained animals in a way that fits into a specific storyline is an impressive (not to mention dangerous) feat that holds up as impressive even today.

Next Up: We stay with the Mouse House as I review Disney’s 1983 re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

In my original post on the 1983 re-release of Disney’s 1977 animated feature The Rescuers, I was initially unable to find out exactly what was behind the re-release, a question that was thankfully answered by some of our readers (check the comments section on my Rescuers post). In short, the answer is that in addition to a number of other factors, The Rescuers re-release provided Disney with an opportunity for a theatrical venue for its first attempt in three decades at a new Mickey Mouse cartoon. Disney’s franchise character had remained a major part of Disney’s overall branding but with no new material since the 1953 short “The Simple Things”, the character’s street cred was beginning to fade among Disney’s key target audience, children.

As reader David Wright pointed out, Disney was in the midst of a minor crisis in 1983, dealing with a major management transition as Roy Disney Jr. stepped down as well as a shifting of focus towards other revenue sources such as the theme parks and the newly-launched Disney Channel. Still, The Rescuers was a popular title in 1983 and the added bonus of a brand new Christmas-themed Mickey Mouse short was surely a big part of the draw for this release so I felt it deserved its own post here in Back to the Movies.

In terms of the story, I probably don’t have to say much. Odds are you’ve already seen one of the other 42 film adaptations of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (that includes made-for-TV movies) so you know the drill: Scrooge is mean, three ghosts, Tiny Tim, a cooked goose for everyone. The main distinguishing quality here is that all the classic characters are played by established Disney characters, some from the Mickey Mouse clan and some from various other Disney animated features.

The star of the show is obviously Scrooge, played by the Disney character inspired by him, Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge was already a well-established comic book character for Disney (ask our contributor Ben Stark sometime if you’d like to hear more about that) but had appeared on film just once prior to Mickey’s Christmas Carol (in 1967′s Scrooge McDuck and Money). Scrooge is voiced here by the man who continued to voice the character throughout the ’80s and ’90s as the character became more popular, veteran TV actor Alan Young (best known as Wilbur from “Mister Ed”).

Mickey plays the part of kindly Bob Cratchett while Goofy is brilliantly cast as the ghost of Jacob Marley and Donald Duck (voiced for one last time by legendary voice actor Clarence Nash) plays Scrooge’s chipper nephew. Disney’s choices for the three Christmas ghosts were a little interesting but mostly good fits, with Jiminy Cricket playing the Ghost of Christmas Past, the giant from Mickey and the Bean Stalk as the Ghost of Christmas Present (a bit of an obscure choice but it works) and Mickey’s old arch-nemesis Pete as the Ghost of Christmas Future.

With a slim running time of just 24 minutes, the story gets a pretty quick treatment and works as a sort of quick parable that is especially effective for younger audiences. I remember seeing this as a child (I’m going to guess it was in the late ’80s when NBC had the TV rights to it) and remember this being my first introduction to the story of A Christmas Carol. I certainly wouldn’t say this cartoon highlights some of the elements like nostalgia and regret that other adaptations have done such a wonderful job with (including the Muppet version, which features for my money the most emotionally rich portrayal of Scrooge I’ve seen courtesy of Michael Caine) but in terms of introducing a young audience to this timeless story, it certainly covers all the bases.

This short is pretty easy to find these days, whether on DVD (as part of the Walt Disney Treasures box set), on TV (it currently airs on ABC Family every December) or on the internet, though you didn’t hear that from me (just search for it on Youtube).

Read my Back to the Movies review for The 1983 re-release of The Rescuers.

Earlier this week, Disney announced that Guillermo del Toro would be helming a film version of its classic theme park attraction The Haunted Mansion (no, you’re not crazy; they already tried it once with Eddie Murphy back in 2003). This marks Disney’s latest attempt to turn one of its theme park attractions into a movie franchise, with previous attempts meeting varying levels of success (Pirates of the Caribbean yes, Country Bear Jamboree no).

In light of that news and because I spent my middle school years visiting Walt Disney World on a weekly basis, I decided to come up with three pitches for new movies or even movie franchises that could be built around classic Disney theme park attractions. Now most of the rides in Disney’s theme parks are based on films, so this list is based only on rides or attractions with no ties to pre-existing films.

The Hall of Presidents

The Ride: One of the original opening day attractions in the Magic Kingdom back in 1971, The Hall of Presidents features Audio-Animatronic figures of every US President. The leaders of the free world come to life on stage and offer their timeless wisdom to the crowd of bored children who would rather be on Splash Mountain.

The Pitch: Night at the Museum meets 1776. A wax museum with figures of all the presidents comes to life at night and personalities clash. Bill Clinton and JFK set out to crash a sorority slumber party. George W. Bush keeps calling FDR “Hot Wheels” and pushing him perilously fast through the hallways. William Henry Harrison dies in the first five minutes. Plenty of opportunities for stunt casting (your suggestions are welcome below).

It’s A Small World

The Ride: A musical boat ride through all the countries of the world, united by the spirit of unity and the desire to crush the remaining sanity of parents with their endless, repetitive melody.

The Pitch: High School Musical set in the United Nations. When the new Secretary General takes office, he decides to use his background in musical theater to resolve the world’s problems and demands that all UN speeches be delivered in the form of a song. The magic of music begins to loosen up those uptight UN delegates as world peace and spontaneous choreography begin to break out everywhere. The love ballad duet between the Israeli and Iranian delegations is truly a show-stopper.

Maelstrom

The Ride: Located in the Norway pavilion at EPCOT, this ride takes visitors on a journey through Norwegian mythology, complete with vikings and angry trolls.

The Pitch: Pirates of the Caribbean with vikings. Granted, Disney already owns Marvel and thus owns the upcoming Thor movie which deals heavily in Norse mythology but there’s an opportunity to go more of a whimsical adventure route with this type of material. Johnny Depp would of course play the womanizing drunk viking.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

We come to a curious installment on this list of the Top 50 releases of 1983 as for the first time we are dealing with a re-release of an older film. I considered skipping The Rescuers since it was originally released in 1977 but thinking back on why I started this project, which was to re-create the 1983 movie-going experience, I decided ultimately to include it.

I’ve been unable to find any further background regarding this (if you have any information, please drop some knowledge on me in the comments section below) but Disney’s theatrical strategy for the year 1983 appears to be fairly simple: money for old rope. Disney re-released three of its previous hits in 1983 (Robin Hood, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Rescuers), usually pairing the films with a new animated short (in the case of The Rescuers it was Mickey’s Christmas Carol).

There are a few likely reasons behind this strategy. Firstly, the home video market in 1983 was still in its infancy and for many Disney fans a re-release was their only opportunity to see some of their favorite classics again. Secondly, with the exit of the original crew of Disney animators following The Rescuers, the new Disney crew was having a bit of trouble creating the same kind of magic that their predecessors had managed to turn out on a regular basis. Disney’s releases throughout the 80′s releases were certainly never major financial disasters but they failed to capture audiences and critics in the same way that so many of the great ’60s and ’70s Disney films had and perhaps the folks in Burbank were beginning to get just a little bit concerned about maintaining the integrity of the Disney brand.

Whatever the reasoning, Disney’s strategy paid off as its three re-releases dominated the G-rated movie market in 1983. The Rescuers raked in $21 million and finished second among G-rated releases behind its older sister, Snow White (more on her in a few months, I guess).

While it ranked as a major success for Disney both during its initial release and its 1983 re-release, I think it’s safe to say that The Rescuers doesn’t appear to hold the same cache today among fans of the Disney Animated Classics. Most of us could sing a song from or recite a line or two from One Hundred and One Dalmations, The Jungle Book or Robin Hood but does anyone out there really have a distinct, specific moment from The Rescuers that sticks out in your mind?

That’s not to say that it’s an unenjoyable film while you’re watching it, just that it doesn’t seem to have the same resonance that some of its Disney brethren have. The heroes are likable enough, two mice named Bernard (Bob Newhart) and Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor) set out on a mission to rescue an almost unbearably cutesy little girl named Penny. Bernard and Miss Bianca work for the Rescue Aid Society, a sort of mouse version of the United Nations complete with ever-so-slightly offensive Asian mice.

Penny is an orphan who has been kidnapped by Madame Medusa (voiced by Geraldine Page in her most menacing role until Interiors), a pawnshop owner who needs a small child to fit down a whole in the Louisiana bayou so she can obtain a fantastic jewel called the Devil’s Eye. It’s not a premise we dwell on for very long as essentially the point is that Madame Medusa is putting the girl’s life at risk and doesn’t care.

Madame Medusa has her fun moments but as Disney villains go, I’m betting she’s one of the least recognizable today. I suspect that’s because there’s not much originality to her. She’s basically a slight variation on Cruella de Vil, arguably one of the greatest and most memorable of all the Disney villains. Disney animators were initially considering using Cruella as the villain in The Rescuers, an idea that was ultimately shunned out of a desire to avoid producing sequels. Frankly, I think it would have been a good idea but I appreciate Disney’s desire to create something new, something studios certainly don’t bend over backwards to do these days.

Plot-wise, The Rescuers just feels a lot like its main villain, largely unoriginal and cobbled together with elements from previous Disney movies. It’s a fun ride but you’re left in the end feeling that you haven’t really seen anything new.

One thing that is rather original about the film is the opening sequence, a rather artfully put together montage of canvas paintings set to the film’s theme song “Who Will Rescue Me”. The song is pretty corny but the visuals are very interesting and unlike anything I remember seeing in other Disney films.

I wish I was going to get a chance to review an original Disney film from 1983 rather than a re-release because it would give me a better feel for what kind of content Disney was really producing during that era. As it is, I have to be content watching a film that I’m sure a lot of people enjoyed revisiting in theaters but that just doesn’t hold up as a particularly memorable film years later.

Next Up: The second Stephen King adaptation on our countdown, Christine.