When the Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment nearly five years ago, one of the first questions several fans started asking themselves was which of their over 5,000 properties would get adapted into an animated feature film, particularly by Pixar Studios, in view of their original take on superheroes with the modern classic The Incredibles. It was speculated that the characters less likely to sell tickets in a live-action movie would be the better candidates, like the lesser-known Doctor Strange.
When the announcement finally came that a Marvel property would get the animated treatment, I was personally disappointed on two counts, the first being that the property, Big Hero 6 was not only relatively obscure but relatively recent, and the second being that it was the mother studio, Walt Disney Animation, and not (at the time) the more prestigious Pixar that would be bringing the property to the big screen.
The choice of an obscure property, as opposed to something I would have wanted to see, made sense to me, although I still grumbled; after all, I would imagine Marvel's priority is still giving its properties the live-action treatment, such that if a particular character or team of characters has an even remotely decent chance of striking gold at the box office, they would prefer to give it the Marvel studio treatment. After all, they're releasing a movie starring a talking raccoon later this year. Such, therefore, is their resolve to bring their library to the big screen.
The decision to have Disney Studios and not Pixar Studios handle the movie was slightly more irksome, though. To me, it felt at the time, like Disney was handing over what should have been a prized project (considering, especially, that the three Marvel movies that have been released since Disney acquired the company have grossed over THREE BILLION DOLLARS at the global box office), to its B-team. After all, these were the people responsible for forgettable fluff like Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons and Bolt. My stance on the matter softened late in 2012, though, when I was thoroughly impressed by Wreck-It-Ralph, Disney Studios' offering for that year, which I actually liked better than Pixar's Brave. I knew then that this new, John-Lasseter-era Disney Animation was capable of more than just musicals; this was a movie that spoke to nerds like me, and it made some pretty decent bank to boot. Not only that, but Pixar's star lost a little bit of its luster after Cars 2 was savaged by critics and snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a first for any Pixar film since the Academy started giving out Oscars for Best Animated Feature. They sort of bounced back the next year with Brave, but it was no longer quite the same.
Still, I could not help but feel that the Marvel property was being handled by the less "illustrious" of the Disney-owned animation outfits.
Then, Frozen came out, and it was a whole new ballgame.
For the benefit of anyone living under a rock, Frozen, an animated film which I reviewed here, isn't just a movie; it's a pop-culture phenomenon, the likes of which are rather rare. Not even the fact that the movie has grossed a BILLION dollars worldwide can quite encapsulate its impact on the popular consciousness. The theme song, "Let It Go" has become an anthem for female empowerment and has been translated into a gazillion languages by now, including languages of countries that don't actually have snow. In my review, I noted that Disney Studios seemed to be following a strategy of alternating between movies "for girls" and movies "for boys" but the truth is that a film does not make a billion dollars or reap that many awards simply by pandering to a specific demographic. Frozen is a movie for everyone, children and adults, audiences and critics, nearly all of whom have embraced it to a degree not seen in years. This is arguably Walt Disney Studios' most groundbreaking movie in years...and it didn't come from Pixar. The fact that Frozen won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is even more notable for the fact that last year's Pixar offering, the prequel Monsters University, wasn't even nominated.
For the first time since 1995, when Toy Story outgrossed Pocahontas, and set the stage for Pixar Studios' utter domination of its counterparts at Walt Disney Animation Studios for years thereafter (a creative edge that, in fact, precipitated quite a bit of haggling in the mid-2000s when Pixar thought of taking their product elsewhere), the mother studio is now the "A" team.
And the very first film that Walt Disney Animation will release, post-Frozen is...Marvel's Big Hero 6.
Now they can put "from the studio that brought you Frozen" and "from the minds that gave you The Avengers," all on the same poster. Imagine that.
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