10 Things Jennifer Lee Needs to do as Disney Animation’s New Chief Creative Officer - Part One

After Disney Animation and Pixar’s disgraced chief creative officer John Lasseter announced his resignation last month, Disney were quick to confirm his replacements. Pete Docter, the director of Up and Inside Out, is replacing Lasseter at Pixar, whilst Frozen director Jennifer Lee is taking over as Chief Creative Officer at Disney Animation. Pete Docter is a safe and reliable choice, but Jennifer Lee is a much bigger risk, and her appointment is far more interesting. Coverage of the change in leadership has focused on the extent of Lasseter’s misconduct and the need to clean up the toxic culture at Disney and Pixar. In spite to this, Lee's appointment is a real cause for celebration, as it is incredibly significant to see a woman take charge of one of the oldest and most iconic animation studios in the world.

Although most of us are really pleased to see Lasseter go, (his behaviour has gone against everything Disney is meant to stand for), there is no denying that he did an excellent job as Disney Animation’s Chief Creative Officer. When he arrived in 2006, Disney was trying to recover from the failure of movies like Home on the Range and Chicken Little, but within a decade, they were providing megahits like Wreck-It-Ralph, Frozen, Zootropolis and Moana, reasserting their status as the most successful animation studio in the world. In many ways, Lee simply has to continue the formula which made Lasseter’s movies so successful, minus the bullying and sexual harassment which went on behind the scenes. However, she also has a golden opportunity to create change and make Disney Animation into a more diverse and innovative studio.

This article is so big that it will be separated into two parts. The first part will focus on the films themselves, and the approach Jennifer Lee should take to stories and characterisation as she seeks to maintain the winning blend of old and new which has defined Disney’s recent revival. The second part will focus on dealing with fans and critics, encouraging new talent, and most important of all, ensuring that Disney Animation moves on from the scandals which have undermined the reputation of the company.

(Note: This post contains spoilers for Frozen and Zootropolis...)

10 Things Jennifer Lee Needs to do as Chief Creative Officer - Part One

1. Focus on the Women

Lasseter’s resignation marks the third time Disney animation has lost an all-powerful and consistently successful creative head. When Walt Disney died in 1966 and Jeffrey Katzenberg was fired in 1994, Disney Animation entered major creative slumps which left the studio under threat of becoming irrelevant. Without Disney and Katzenberg, the studio lacked direction, and their attempts to move away from the classic fairy tale formula merely alienated their traditional audience. That said, Jennifer Lee has one key selling point which should ensure she does not repeat that same mistake – most of us expect her to take Disney Animation in a specific direction. It would be unwise (and possibly sexist) to imply that the first female Chief Creative Officer at Disney should focus entirely on female-led projects. However, Jennifer Lee is in a great position to encourage the development of new female characters and the emergence of new female writers and animators. In addition to Lee, women like Pamela Ribbon and Lauren MacMullan have played significant roles in Disney Animation’s recent hits, and it would be great if they were allowed to enjoy their moment in the spotlight. Emphasising female talent should give Disney Animation a clear vision and strategy under Lee, and this will make it easier to provide exciting and appealing movies…

Lee should also build on the iconic status of Disney’s existing library of female characters. Although adventure films with male leads (like Aladdin, The Lion King, Tarzan and Wreck-It Ralph) will always be an integral part of the Disney Animated canon, Disney’s princesses have usually been the most important (and profitable) characters provided by the studio. In fact, advertisements for Ralph Wrecks the Internet (Formerly Wreck It Ralph 2) have extensively promoted a scene where we get to meet all the Disney Princesses from Snow White to Moana. In 2012, the year the first Wreck-it Ralph movie was released, Disney Princess toys had generated $3 billion worldwide. Today, this revenue is probably far greater, and when you consider the sales for Frozen and Moana merchandise (Anna, Elsa and Moana are not officially listed as Disney Princesses, but they are considered part of this line-up by many fans) it becomes clear that Disney’s female leads are a total merchandising goldmine. For the most part, female protagonists are still a relative rarity in animated movies, but the Disney Princesses provide the most notable exception to this, as the most iconic and visible female leads in the genre. However, Disney Animation do not need to rely exclusively on one type of film. In addition to directing Frozen, Jennifer Lee co-wrote the recent Disney smash Zootropolis. This movie traded the historical fantasy of Disney Princess stories for a gritty modern setting, whilst keeping many of the tropes which have defined these movies in the past decade (Strong female lead, buddy adventure dynamic, self-referential humour, surprise villains). The Revival-era approach of alternating between Princess stories and more modern adventures has allowed Disney to provide their signature stories on a regular basis whilst preventing them from getting too tedious. With experience working on both types of tale, Jennifer Lee is well placed to continue balancing fairy tale tradition with stories which take Disney Animation in a variety of new directions, whilst maintaining the emphasis on strong female representation.

2. Start Trends, Don’t Follow Them

The failures of movies like The Black Cauldron and Treasure Planet illustrates the fact that Disney are usually  not very good at following contemporary trends. It takes years to create an animated film, and a style popular and relevant when production starts can become painfully dated by the time it is released. The best way of demonstrating this is by examining the films which Disney Animation were providing at the turn of the millennium. At the time, animation studios were trying to make their movies more ‘adult’ and appeal to the stereotypically masculine audience for action blockbusters. Although movies like Titan AE and The Road to Eldorado underwhelmed at the Box Office, Disney persevered regardless, and this led to the failures of Atlantis and Treasure Planet. It is probably not a coincidence that Disney’s most successful movie of the early 2000’s was Lilo and Stitch, which did not adhere to this overly masculine approach. This movie was boosted by a marketing campaign which inserted the destructive alien Stitch into several recent Disney hits, paying tribute to the iconic nature of movies such as Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin at a time when the studio seemed to be turning its back on these.

Eventually, Disney Animation’s decision to defy conventions and create a new distinctive style would lead to their resurgence. During the 2000’s, the dominance of the Shrek movies led to numerous attempts to copy their irreverent parodies of classic fairy tales. Initially, Disney wanted to emulate them with a film called Rapunzel Unbraided, a modern and silly take on the famous Brothers Grimm story Rapunzel. For this adaptation, a pair of ordinary Americans would be sucked into the fairy tale after a witch turns Rapunzel into a squirrel. However, Disney Animation eventually rejected this in favour of Tangled, a straightforward and reasonably faithful (though still comedic) adaptation of the well-known fairy tale. The success of Tangled proved that it was possible to maintain the classic Disney style in the more cynical modern age, and this inspired Disney Animation to establish the traditional but also subversive new approach which would define the films of their ‘Revival’ period.

Following Disney’s dominance in the During the 1990s, animation studios bent over backwards to copy the successful recipe of the Disney Renaissance films. Films like Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Thumbelina, Quest for Camelot and Anastasia aimed to emulate the assertive female leads, colourful sidekicks, intimidating villains and catchy songs to varying degrees of success. Though they have acquired large fandoms in recent years (Anastasia has become a popular Broadway Musical, whilst Quest for Camelot gave us the iconic Classical Crossover song ‘The Prayer’) these films were widely criticised for their derivative nature. This contributed to fatigue with the Disney Renaissance formula, which led to their movies falling out of fashion. The films of Pixar and Dreamworks provided a clear alternative, but they soon became overwhelmed by imitators as well. However, there is a greater diversity today, with numerous rival studios having different styles. Some may specialise in specific genres (comedy for Illumination, adventure for Dreamworks) or specific forms of animation (the stop-motion of Laika) but they all ensure that studios have a unique selling point with less need to chase trends.  In this environment, it is necessary for Jennifer Lee to preserve a distinctive approach whilst also updating it enough to remain fresh and appealing.

3. Preserve Links to the Past

Disney have been most successful when drawing on their reputation for providing magical and escapist fairy tales. When he took over at Disney Animation, John Lasseter made no secret of the fact that he wanted to return the studio to its roots. He greenlit The Princess and the Frog, the first hand-drawn Disney film in half a decade and brought back several writers and animators who had left the studio or been forced out during the shift to CGI. In an interview in 2009, he claimed that it was “ridiculous” to dismiss 2D movies as old-fashioned and attributed their demise to “bad storytelling”, also promising that Disney would return to releasing traditionally animated films on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this did not occur and the experiment with traditional animation formally ended in 2013, when numerous animators were laid off and Disney president Bob Iger announced that the studio were no longer creating any new hand-drawn films. However, many of the Disney veterans who returned during this period, including Chris Buck, Ron Clements and John Musker, stayed to work on the CGI films. Collaborating with newer directors and screenwriters like Jennifer Lee, Don Hall and Chris Williams, they lent their experience to the creation of megahits like Frozen and Moana. This encouraged the combination of old storytelling and new ideas which allowed these films to be so popular.

Demands for hand-drawn animation have remained persistent, but this classic form of filmmaking has failed to make much of an impact in an era dominated by technological advances. After The Princess and the Frog struggled in a competitive Winter 2009 season dominated by motion-capture 3D epic Avatar, Disney Animation dropped the traditional 2D animated style (with the exception of 2011’s widely overlooked Winnie the Pooh reboot), with the classic Disney approach being applied to the stories rather than the techniques used to create them. However, traditional animation has not been discarded entirely, as the 2012 short Paperman received acclaim for its use of new technology to place 2D faces and items into a 3D environment, whilst Moana used traditional drawing to depict Maui’s living tattoo Mini Maui. Today, traditional animation is widely seen as being too old fashioned, with only smaller and more independent studios such as Cartoon Saloon and GKIDS continuing to use it. However, the acclaim they have earned has firmly proved that 2D films are now synonymous with high quality and have entirely lost their reputation for mediocrity. If Jennifer Lee wants to take a risk and increase Disney’s artistic credibility, then providing one of two traditional animations to accompany the now-standard CGI movies would be a good idea.

4. Take Risks

The movie which allowed Jennifer Lee to take power at Disney Animation after just seven years with the studio was undoubtedly Frozen, which is still the most successful Disney Animation film of all time. Frozen became such a unique hit because it unafraid to take risks and subvert the traditional template, with the traditional romantic certainties of Disney Princess films being challenged and defied as Anna and Elsa’s relationship takes centre stage. Although some Disney films (such as The Little Mermaid and Enchanted) had pointed out the problems with 'True Loves Kiss' before, Frozen was the first to clearly demonstrate that the bond between sisters is more powerful and important. One of the most controversial twists in Frozen – and one of the twists most central to this message - is the reveal that the seemingly friendly and supportive Prince Hans has actually been a manipulative scheming villain for the whole movie. Regardless of your opinions on the character and the way the twist is handled (It is probably better in concept than in practise), you must admire Jennifer Lee for taking such a provocative approach. ‘Prince Charming’ turning out to be a horrible person or outright villain is hardly new in the fairy tale genre (see Into the Woods and the Shrek sequels), but as those well-known examples are primarily comedic, it is rare to see this trope played for both drama and shock value. Jennifer Lee did not just dismantle the image of a nauseatingly perfect Prince Charming who will solve all your problems, she actively dynamited it, and this is the sort of bold attitude which should be encouraged from a studio which has become synonymous with overly safe and sanitised fairy tales. Frozen’s bold and subversive approach made it an iconic hit, but Jennifer Lee cannot continue recycling its winning formula indefinitely. This is most apparent when you compare the acclaim the film received to the considerably cooler reception given to the new Broadway version, written (but not directed) by Lee. With the exception of some structural and cosmetic changes, the Broadway adaptation of Frozen stays close to the template of the film, but a narrative which was so bold and interesting in 2013 lost a lot of its spontaneity after almost half a decade. We have enjoyed Anna and Elsa’s initial adventures enough times – now Lee needs to venture into unknown territory, whether by giving Anna and Elsa new stories or creating new heroes for audiences of all ages.

5. Provide Original Films

With Ralph Wrecks the Internet and Frozen 2, Disney Animation are trying to turn their recent hits into full franchises. However, focusing too much on a handful of iconic brands would be an unwise approach. Pixar’s decline since 2010 has been heavily tied to their overreliance on sequels. Most of these movies were very good (with the conspicuous exception of Cars 2), but Pixar were previously known for their bold and innovative approach, so films set in a familiar world with familiar characters inevitably seem like a downgrade most of the time. This has also affected Disney Animation as well. Disney Animation fans are anxious about sequels, in no small part due to the widely criticised direct to video sequels to Disney Animation classics created by DisneyToon studios between the mid 1990s to the mid 2000s (This group of movies ranges from Bambi 2 to Brother Bear 2). Disney Animation themselves have not done many sequels, but Ralph Wrecks the Internet and Frozen 2 mark the first time the studio has done two sequels in consecutive years, and here have also been rumours of a sequel to Zootropolis. The occasional sequel is not a problem, but greenlighting several in quick succession whilst delaying and eventually cancelling the original animated project Gigantic has sent the message that Disney Animation are actively prioritising sequels at the expense of new projects. This approach is unnecessary, as Disney franchises can continue outside of film, with Big Hero 6 and Tangled being turned into perfectly serviceable TV series. Therefore, Jennifer Lee should be free to focus on greenlighting new work. In addition, she should consider resurrecting discarded projects – After all, the decision to take long-gestating fairy tale films out of development hell led to Tangled and Frozen…

The pivot towards sequels may have been encouraged by the sense that Disney has already adapted the majority of children’s stories. However, there are numerous fairy tales, myths and legends all over the world which would be ideal for the studio, including several with strong and compelling female leads. The Norwegian fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon gender flips the archetypal fairy tale plot by depicting a girl going on an adventure to rescue a prince from a villainous troll. The Six Swans features a tenacious heroine who overcomes a variety of obstacles to free her brothers from a curse. The Icelandic fairy tale The Horse Gullfaxi and the Sword Gunnfoder subverts one of the most infamous fairy tale tropes by featuring a loving and heroic stepmother as one of the protagonists. These three stories alone could provide Disney Animation with at least 5 further years of success and popularity, and this is before we consider thousands of other fairy tales which have been told for centuries. There is no shortage of material to turn into hit films, and Jennifer Lee needs to be open to greenlighting new films and new ideas to take advantage of this. In the statement she made when her new role was confirmed, Lee stated that “telling original stories” was one of her primary aims. Hopefully, these stories will build on Disney Animation’s past hits, allowing the studio to evolve and provide entertainment which can resonate with today’s audiences whilst also inspiring and enchanting future generations.

(Part Two of this Article Will Follow Soon...)