I grew up with Disney Princess movies and never grew out of them. There are the truly great ones, the middling but passably entertaining ones, and only a few duds, although even the worst ones aren't meritless. While Walt Disney Studios, now Walt Disney Animation Studios, has been making movies centered around fairy tale princesses since their very first feature film 80 years ago, the "Disney Princess" brand franchise only emerged in the early 2000s as a way to market officially licensed Disney products such as apparel, toys, books, videos and anything else that can be marked with a few familiar princess characters in order to get your children to scream and cry and do whatever it takes to get you, the parent, to indulge in the crass consumer-driven capitalistic culture on your little one's behalf. And it's beautiful. Now they have
Sofia the First and
Palace Pets, and eleven characters that are officially a part of the Disney Princess line. This article takes a look at 13 different Disney movies featuring 14 different heroines, 11 of which are currently part of the Disney Princess line and 3 of which are likely to be officially inducted soon enough. Not all of them are princesses exactly; Elsa's a queen (I mean, a lot of them become queens by the end of their movies, but Elsa becomes one pretty early in) and Mulan is neither born into a royal family or marries into one. Some people say Pocahontas isn't a princess, which is silly, because of course she is. So is Moana, even though she says she isn't. She doesn't know what she's talking about. She's a princess. There are other princess characters in Disney movies, but plans to make Giselle from ENCHANTED part of the lineup hit a snag over the rights to Amy Adams' likeness (it's an excellent movie, though), and nobody cares about Princess Eilonwy or THE BLACK CAULDRON. So, anyway, from the top:
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| All images via Disney |
SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
Premiered 21 December 1937
Directed by David Hand (supervising director), William Cottrell (sequence director), Wilfred Jackson (sequence director), Larry Morey (sequence director), Perce Pearce (sequence director) & Ben Sharpsteen (sequence director)
Featuring the Voices of: Adriana Caselotti, Lucille La Verne, Roy Atwell, Pinto Colvig, Otis Harlan, Scotty Matraw, Billy Gilbert, Harry Stockwell, Moroni Olsen, Stuart Buchanan
Rated G
83 minutes
The Princess
Snow White (voiced by Adriana Caselotti)
Age: 14
Kingdom: Unspecified, but Stylistically Germanic
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other(s): "The Prince"
Defining Trait(s): Optimism, Simplicity, Endurance
Signature Song: "Someday My Prince Will Come"
In terms of cinematic quality, the Disney Princesses come roaring out the gate with the classic SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, a pristine and simple musical fairy with elegance and a Gothic edge inspired by German Expressionism, but in terms of strong female characters, the "Fairest in All the Land" is about as unsatisfying as they come. To be perfectly fair, it's not like she's being upstaged by the Prince (voiced by Harry Stockwell), a character whose screen time was cut down significantly during production when the Disney animators realized they weren't sufficiently prepared to animate a "handsome" realistic human character yet. As for herself though, Snow White may be the most passive leading lady in the history of cinema, mostly cleaning and occasionally cooking throughout the hour and 23 minutes of the movie, and her big defining musical number is
"Someday My Prince Will Come", a song that sums her up existence pretty well. While she's a better role model than, say, Tyler Durden, there's nothing to her that would encourage impressionable young viewers to be a go-getter, and yet, I'm not sure it's as simple as an archaic patriarchal portrayal of a heroine. SNOW WHITE was produced and released in the midst of the Great Depression, and it became an international sensation, marketed as an "experience in happiness," portraying a young girl (the only character that most viewers, regardless of gender, would be likely to identify with, given the cartoonish style of the dwarfs and the absence of the Prince) afflicted with adversities and terrors which she responds to with stalwart optimism and a simplistic version of "good behavior" that is, when all seems lost, rewarded with salvation and a castle literally in the clouds. It almost looks as if she's died, portrayed in a metaphorical sense as a Prince (of Peace?) carries her away to the heavens. You may laugh, and that's fair; it's almost certainly not the intention of the filmmakers, but there's something to it, especially in the context of a world where the economy was at rock bottom, and people were looking everywhere and anywhere for answers. In the fairy tale world of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS, the Princess's answer was endurance and a kind nature.
CINDERELLA
Released 14 March 1950
Directed by Clyde Geronomi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske
Featuring the Voices of: Ilene Woods, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, William Phipps, Lucille Bliss, Rhoda Williams, Jimmy MacDonald, Luis van Rooten, Don Barclay, Betty Lou Gerson
Rated G
75 minutes
The Princess
Cinderella (voiced by Ilene Woods)
Age: 19
Kingdom: Unspecified, but Stylistically French
Born Royal: No
Significant Other: "Prince Charming"
Defining Trait(s): Kindness, Goodness
Signature Song: "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes"
A lot changed at Walt Disney Productions in the 13 years between SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS and the second Disney Princess movie, CINDERELLA. World War II had come and gone, devastating studio finances by blocking off the European market for the very expensive productions of PINOCCHIO, BAMBI and FANTASIA, and a prolonged and intensely bitter animators strike had soured and ultimately dismantled the studio's creative atmosphere as it had existed before. "Package films" assembled from less expensive, short animated segments and live action had been a way to keep the studio afloat, but the Golden Age and the artistic fervor that had existed with it were gone. Although Walt Disney himself was significantly less involved with CINDERELLA than he'd been with SNOW WHITE or even SLEEPING BEAUTY to follow, it was the first feature length, fully animated narrative film the studio had made since BAMBI eight years before and hoped to be a return to that former glory. Even when I was little, I thought CINDERELLA was good, but there's nothing terribly special about it for me. It feels more manufactured than other Disney classics, very clean and sort of vanilla in tone. It's never particularly dark, no huntsmen trying to carve out the young girl's heart and no evil spells. Cinderella's basically a slave, so there's that, but they're pretty basic chores and the worst it gets is when she's locked in an attic so that she can't try on a shoe that will give her a one way ticket to Bonertown with the Prince. As for herself, Cinderella is pretty similar to Snow White, made by a spiteful stepmother to dress in rags and cook and clean. She's more actively pursuing her man, although maybe she's just as much pursuing a life outside of her laborious existence, as she makes herself a dress and does everything she can to get to the Royal Ball. She can't just endure; she has to work for what she wants in the most old-fashioned housewife-y ways possible, but in the end, even that's not enough. Because she's done all she can, the gap is then filled in by the Fairy Godmother (voiced by Verna Felton), a convenient device for a "God helps those who help themselves" sort of lesson, that then sends Cinderella on her way. Although she spends a lot of time working, her signature song is one of passively wishing,
"A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes". Her passion is in wishing.
SLEEPING BEAUTY
Released 29 January 1959
Directed by Clyde Geronimi (supervising director), Les Clark (sequence director), Eric Larson (sequence director) & Wolfgang Reitherman (sequence director)
Featuring the Voices of: Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Jo Allen, Barbara Luddy, Taylor Holmes, Bill Thompson, Candy Candido, Marvin Miller
Rated G
75 minutes
The Princess
Aurora (voiced by Mary Costa)
Age: 16
Kingdom: Unspecified, but Stylistically English
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other: Prince Philip
Defining Trait(s): Beauty, Song
Signature Song: "Once Upon a Dream"
While it's not as though he ignored anything that came afterward, SLEEPING BEAUTY is the last animated feature that Walt Disney himself expended a lot of personal interest, as by that time, his time and creative energies were mostly directed toward theme parks, but the story of Sleeping Beauty was one that enthused over for years and was in some ways a chance to revisit the ideas of SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS with the knowledge and resources he'd since acquired. Disney's version of the Snow White story had incorporated at least one major plot element from Sleeping Beauty after all; that of the true love's kiss that awakens the cursed princess (in the usual Snow White story, the breaking of the spell is as simple as removing the bite of apple from her throat). As successful as SNOW WHITE was with audiences and critics alike, there were a lot of things about it that bugged Walt whenever he looked back at it, things that were now permanent (unlike George Lucas, who would have just gone in there and changed whatever he wanted while hiding the original prints). The subplot involving the Prince, who was captured by the Wicked Queen who taunted him in her dungeon before his dramatic escape, had to be scrapped from SNOW WHITE, and was then realized in SLEEPING BEAUTY. At $6 million, it was the most expensive production at the studio up until that time and for a while to follow, made in a distinct, somewhat experimental design that resembles stained-glass windows or medieval tapestries. A lot of it is beautiful, especially the scenery paintings, but as a whole, I'd say it's more bold and interesting that it is pleasing to the eye. It's rigid and cold, but interesting to look at, kind of like the panoramas of scenes from the film in the Sleeping Beauty's Castle walk-through at Disneyland but not so exciting. SLEEPING BEAUTY is more interesting than CINDERELLA, but I think even the latter is more watchable. It's a very ambitious misfire full of noble intentions and mythic qualities, but without enough of the human element. As for the titular Princess, often referred to in pop culture simply as "Sleeping Beauty", but named "Aurora" in the movie and "Briar Rose" while raised in hiding, she's certainly the least impactful Disney Princess ever. She's given the gifts of beauty and song by the fairies at the beginning of the film, so she can sing like every other Disney Princess and looks like Audrey Hepburn with blonde hair, and she dreams vaguely about meeting a fella during her signature musical number
"Once Upon a Dream", but things don't really get moving until she falls asleep. It's not like she's even doing anything when she pricks her finger on the spinning wheel; she's simply drawn to it, zombie-like, by fate. She's less apparently zombie-esque during her couple of other scenes, but she might as well be. There's not a lot of story here, but for what there is, it's not Aurora's story. It's Philip's, but he's a similarly bland character, although at least he's active, a heroic prince archetype. Aurora barely even says anything. There was a prolonged search for the "right voice" in order to make SLEEPING BEAUTY, which they finally found in Mary Costa, but she only has 18 lines of dialogue. She doesn't do anything before she needs to be rescued. She isn't doing anything when she winds up needing to be rescued. She gets kissed, opens her eyes and smiles (in a pretty weird shot, I might add) and then they dance for a while. She's not a character. She's a loose concept.
THE LITTLE MERMAID
Released 17 November 1989
Directed by Ron Clements & John Musker
Featuring the Voices of: Jodi Benson, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Pat Carroll, Samuel E. Wright, Kenneth Mars, Buddy Hackett, Jason Marin, Ben Wright, Paddi Edwards, Edie McClurg, Rene Auberjonois
Rated G
82 minutes
The Princess
Ariel (voiced by Jodi Benson)
Age: 16
Kingdom: Atlantica and Unspecified, but Stylistically Mediterranean
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other: Prince Eric
Defining Trait(s): Motivated, Rebellious, Initiative
Signature Song: "Part of Your World"
There's a full 40-year stretch in between SLEEPING BEAUTY and THE LITTLE MERMAID (I guess you could count Princess Eilonwy from THE BLACK CAULDRON, but that movie is dumb and so is Princess Eilonwy), and that stretch is populated from movies ranging from "Sucksville" (i.e. ROBIN HOOD) to "pretty good" (i.e. THE RESCUERS, THE FOX AND THE HOUND), but none of them with certified Disney Princesses. THE LITTLE MERMAID is the starting point for the "Disney Renaissance", a 10-year, 10-film period of critical acclaim and success for Walt Disney Animation (conveniently forgetting the box office failure of THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER and the mixed critical response of POCAHONTAS) that came after the studio and the company as a whole had hit dire straits in the mid-1980s when they were nearly scrapped for parts by corporate raiders and the hugely expensive THE BLACK CAULDRON was a box office disaster. THE LITTLE MERMAID was the movie that proved definitively that Disney was back on top of the animation game and won two Oscars (Best Original Score and Best Original Song (
"Under the Sea")), the first Oscars won by a Disney film since MARY POPPINS. THE LITTLE MERMAID was a friggin' home run and my personal favorite Disney Princess movie, and although she was still met with a lot of the usual criticisms, Ariel was a huge improvement on her predecessors and remains a pretty solid "strong female character", as they say. Her primary objective is still to marry the man of her dreams, and that doesn't
have to be what every woman wants, but Ariel wants that and there's nothing wrong or anti-woman about it. She barely knows the guy and her tactics are a little extreme, but it's a fairy tale, so we just do the best we can, and some people like romance, okay? At least she has motivations and she's certainly willing to act in order to get what she wants, and it's not like her entire exist revolves around getting laid. She collects things from the human world, has a hunger for knowledge (although, unfortunately, her main source of information is a comically moronic seagull), and hell if she isn't disobedient (not
always the best character trait, but definitely on improvement on the passive docility of earlier Disney Princesses). Tell her not to go to the surface? She goes to the surface. Tell her not to go see the Sea Witch? She goes to see the Sea Witch. She's a go-getter, too. She takes risks. She'll make a bet of eternal consequences to get a pair of legs and whatever comes with them (*cough*cough*), which some might say is dumb, but I like to think she knows what she's doing and wants it bad enough to go big or go home. It's actually pretty badass. It's a little weird during the climactic scene when she's left helpless at the center of a whirlpool while giant Ursula takes potshots at her with the trident until Prince Eric (voiced by Christopher Daniel Barnes) drives a splintered ship's bow through Ursula's belly while she's struck by lightning and her fleshy chunks rain down on masses of cheering merpeople, in the classic "damsel in distress" tradition, but hey, she rescued Prince Eric's soggy butt from the shipwreck when they first met, so now they're even. I love THE LITTLE MERMAID. It's just great.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
Released 22 November 1991
Directed by Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise
Featuring the Voices of: Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, Richard White, Jerry Orbach, David Ogden Stiers, Angela Lansbury, Rex Everhart, Bradley Michael Pierce, Jesse Corti, Jo Anne Worley, Tony Jay
Rated G
84 minutes
The Princess
Belle (voiced by Paige O'Hara)
Age: 17
Kingdom: France or French Region
Born Royal: No
Significant Other: "The Beast"
Defining Traits: Stockholm Syndrome, Bibliophilia, Devotion
Signature Song: "Belle (Reprise)"
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is similar to the Israel-Palestine conflict in that it's an incredibly frustrating problem that I just want to throw my hands up at even though no one gives a damn what I think about it. It's one of the most beloved Disney films, and it's a strong candidate for most critically-acclaimed. It was the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and to date, the only traditionally animated Best Picture nominee (as opposed to computer-animated). People love it and it's very highly regarded. It's marvelously made. You watch that thing on high definition Blu-ray, and it's just beautiful. It's pristine, with crisp and fluid animation, beautifully designed characters, and the ambition of scenes like the climactic rooftop fight in the pouring rain or the iconic crane shot during the ballroom waltz (check out those reflections on the floor!) is spectacular. I love the unabashedly Broadway musical style with a big introductory number, and the songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are rightly classics. It's also a fatally flawed story that thinks it's progressive and feminist while actually being about a mentally and emotionally abusive relationship that makes me feel bad for the bad guy(s). Partially modeled after Katharine Hepburn as Jo March from LITTLE WOMEN and supposedly a feminist response to THE LITTLE MERMAID's Ariel (oh, for
goodness-freaking-sakes), Belle's feminist aspects are frustratingly superficial. She likes books, and um, well, that's mostly it. She's obviously more an active player in her own story than Disney Princesses of the classic era, and the scene in which she makes a conscious choice to replace her father as the Beast's prisoner is one of my favorites. For the most part though, this feminist makeover of a Disney Princess feels like someone putting on glasses to appear smart. But the character of Belle isn't so much the problem. She's fine. She's a fairly nondescript bibliophile who loves (maybe enables?) her father and isn't afraid to make a bigger ass of a man already making an ass of himself. It's the story around her and the way that everyone seems okay with what just happened once all is said and done. At some point during my childhood, it occurred to me how horrible Gaston's death was, plummeting from the castle balcony into a deep canyon and screaming all the way, not long after he'd been reduced to a pleading mess when the Beast had gained the upper hand in their fight. I mean, yes, he did sneak a pretty nasty stab wound into the Beast's ribs during a clearly established timeout, so maybe he had it coming at that point, but I still feel bad for the poor bastard. Neither the Beast or Gaston is a good option, but it pisses me off that the Beast gets off the hook thanks to an apparent case of Stockholm Syndrome while Gaston is splattered at the bottom of a crevice. Look at each suitor's starting point. We have Gaston, the "evil" villain; he's a hunter, which is rarely a good thing to be in a Disney movie, but this is set in medieval times and it's a respectable profession back then. He courts Belle for the wrong reasons, those being that in town, there's only she who is beautiful as he, and he has a pretty arrogant and entitled attitude toward her. He's a conceited ass, and like the overly confident guy who proposes to his date over the Jumbotron in a crowded sports arena, Gaston gets the town together to wait outside Belle's house while he invites himself in and aggressively asks for her hand in marriage. Harshly but understandably, she sends him tumbling right through the back door and into the muddy pig's wallow for the whole town to see. It's around here that Gaston goes from being an ass to being genuinely mean, plotting to have Belle's father locked up in the lunatic asylum unless she marries him. Now, the Beast locks up Belle's father in a freezing dungeon before he's even met her, simply because the Beast is cruel. Call me old-fashioned, but that seems worse than being a rude, conceited hunter. Then, the Beast decides to keep Belle as his prisoner (her idea, to be perfectly fair) and throws her father into a terrifying spider-carriage before they can even say goodbye to each other. We are not getting better here. She doesn't want to eat dinner with him (understandable; he's been a real asshole up to this point), so he decides to starve her, but thankfully, his sentient furnishings intervene before that can happen. She sneaks into his secret man-cave at one point, and then he really loses it, yelling and roaring and breaking things menacingly until she's sent fleeing into the snow. See, that's not okay. Things get a little better when he murders some wolves to keep them from eating her, and then they bond while she cleans his wounds (it's the least she could do, being his prisoner and all). Then he gives her a library, which is probably the nicest thing a kidnapper ever gave to his victim, and it's great because he can now court her without any competition (just try it, candle, you'll be lighting bathrooms in a second). Suddenly, the guy keeping her hostage is "changing" and wouldn't you know it, but the only guy she's allowed to ever be around starts to seem like a romantic option. He gets the girl, and Gaston falls off a castle! What if Gaston had
started with locking Belle's father up instead of building to that? Maybe he'd be the one getting some sweet nookie at the end and a bit of happily ever after, but no. And then everyone talks about what a beautiful story it is about not judging a book by it cover! No! That book put your dad in a prison to rot, and then put you in a prison to show you what a nice guy he is! No! Pisses me right off. Stop saying she's a feminist heroine. She's not. She's a victim and probably has some mental health issues to work through.
ALADDIN
Released 25 November 1992
Directed by Ron Clements & John Musker
Featuring the Voices of: Scott Weinger, Robin Williams, Linda Larkin, Jonathan Freeman, Gilbert Gottfried, Douglas Seale, Jim Cummings, Brad Kane, Lea Salonga, Frank Welker, Charlie Adler, Corey Burton
Rated G
90 minutes
The Princess
Jasmine (voiced by Linda Larkin, singing by Lea Salonga)
Age: 15
Kingdom: Agrabah
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other: Aladdin
Defining Traits: Strong Will, Choice
Signature Song: None
Princess Jasmine is weird because she's an undeniable staple of the Disney Princess brand, but ALADDIN isn't even her movie. It isn't even like SLEEPING BEAUTY where Aurora is a nothing character but at least her name is in the title. Jasmine doesn't get a title. She doesn't have a man as an objective. She's Aladdin's objective, except, you know, not an 'object'. Didn't it also seem like all the "wrong kinds of girls" liked Jasmine best, or was that just my experience growing up? On the big fat plus side, she's the first case of Disney branching out into non-white princesses, finally bringing a little bit of racial/cultural diversity in after several decades. The respect with which Middle Eastern culture is depicted is obviously in question, but then again, from my white privileged perspective, it seems roughly equivalent to Disney's fairy tale versions of European regions with dashing knights, witches, dragons and an absence of feudalism. Jasmine is noted for her midriff-revealing outfit, which makes her the second-most revealingly dressed Disney Princess (after Ariel, who usually wears nothing more than a seashell bra, even after she gets her gams), and while I don't know a lot about Middle Eastern clothing in medieval times, I assume that it's a pretty Westernized version of an Arabian princess. Bringing racial diversity into the Disney canon is a double-edged sword, because animation is largely based in caricature, but racial caricatures are a big no-no, and everyone in the foreground ends up looking like they came from the same basic template of visually appealing heroes and heroines, except for the villain, who has a slightly darker skin tone and Nancy Reagan's face. Jasmine's look is partially modeled after white actress Jennifer Connelly, and her skin tone is slightly darker than previous Disney Princesses, but still on the light side for sure. Character-wise, she's similar to Audrey Hepburn in ROMAN HOLIDAY, a rogue princess trapped by her ultra-comfortable life (oh, the hardship!) and who doesn't want to get married until she does want to (reasonable). She's also the only Disney Princess to suck face with the villain of the movie, to the chagrin of some critics who disdain the "sexualized" behavior of a character who uses her feminine wiles to get the job done, but hey, if you've got 'em, why not? Outside of the quick thinking to put her tongue in Jafar's mouth, Jasmine isn't terribly bright (she's says she a fast learner, but the facts don't line up) as she unintentionally steals an apple (and nearly loses her hand as a penalty in what's probably the most culturally insensitive scene of the movie since the removal of the
"Where they cut off your ear if the don't like your face," line from the opening number), and she can't even catch on to Aladdin's pervasive B.S.
"Did you think I was stupid?" she asks Aladdin accusingly. Yes, a little bit. It's a pretty direct effort to make a feminist princess, and a more successful one than Belle, but it's Aladdin's movie, and he gets to do all the cool stuff like flying a magic carpet through a crumbling fiery cave and fighting a giant sorcerer snake. Jasmine doesn't even get a signature song. She gets a part in
"A Whole New World". It's a nice song. Won an Oscar.
POCAHONTAS
Released 23 June 1995
Directed by Mike Gabriel & Eric Goldberg
Featuring the Voices of: Irene Bedard, Mel Gibson, David Ogden Stiers, Judy Kuhn, Russell Means, Christian Bale, Linda Hunt, Billy Connolly, Joe Baker, Michelle St. John, Gordon Tootoosis, James Apaumut Fall, Jim Cummings
Rated G
82 minutes
The Princess
Pocahontas
Age: 18
Kingdom: Algonquin Virginia
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other: John Smith
Defining Trait(s): Perceptive, Adventurous, Shamanistic
Signature Song: "Just Around the Riverbend"
POCAHONTAS doesn't get enough credit for being a pretty bad movie. Of the ten movies included within the Disney Renaissance, this is the only one that is not only not good but the negatives end up outweighing the positives. It's a shame, because there's something to it, the idea of an animated American historical epic romance and the movie looks handsome, but what should be epic feels slight and while the movie tries very hard to be a "politically correct" and racially conscious take on the history of European colonization in North America, it's a bizarrely misguided misfire. It's rarely as bold as it needs to be, attempting to boil complex themes of racial tension and colonialism down to a goofy villain (depicted as an effeminate fop with bows in his hair compared to male lead John Smith, who's depicted as an Aryan
ubermensch), basic greed and the by then standard of an overly strict father figure. You want to have people shooting each other? Then you might just have to lose the G rating because obviously unscathed people falling at the sound of a musket shot does not have the same impact (in any case, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME opened with the main character's mother murdered vividly on the cathedral steps in the opening scene, and that was rated G). The whole thing feels weirdly minor, rushed and kind of all over the place. Pocahontas herself is sort of the only Disney Princess to date based on a historical figure rather than based on literature or an original concept, however, I say "sort of" because the similarities between Disney's Pocahontas and the real-life Matoaka, nicknamed Pocahontas and who later changed her name to Rebecca Rolfe. This Pocahontas is a full-grown young woman, not to mention a buffed-up nature babe who would be a strong contender for hottest Disney Princess (in a shallow, purely physical sense, of course) if she had a more discernible nose (seriously, it comes and goes, but she'd probably win in the body category), and she's a shaman. Like any respectable Disney Princess, she has her animal sidekicks, Meeko the raccoon and Flit the hummingbird, but she also talks to sassy grandma trees (not a Grandmother Willow fan) and magically speaks English when the time comes. She has "manic pixie dream girl" traits, being inordinately quirky and bold, cliff-diving just because and complaining that her betrothed Kocoum isn't smiley enough, and her relationship with male lead John Smith is one of the weirdest and most inconsequential of any Disney Princess romances. Their love ballad,
"If I Never Knew You" was cut late in production, which throws the pacing off, and their bond is never as strong as it's intended to be. They meet, he listens to her about respecting nature and how her people aren't savages, then her dad tries to kill him, so she stops daddy, and then John gets shot and has to go back to England, so they say goodbye. Big whoop. Pocahontas is the second non-white Disney Princess, but unlike Jasmine (who was voiced by white actress Linda Larkin), she's appropriately voiced by Native American actress Irene Bedard, with singing provided by not-Native American Judy Kuhn.
MULAN
Released 19 June 1998
Directed by Tony Bancroft & Barry Cook
Featuring the Voices of: Ming-Na Wen, Lea Salonga, BD Wong, Eddie Murphy, June Foray, Soon-Tek Oh, Freda Foh Shen, Harvey Fierstein, Gedde Watanabe, Jerry Tondo, George Takei, Donny Osmond
Rated G
87 minutes
The "Princess"
Fa Mulan (voiced by Ming-Na Wen, singing by Lea Salonga)
Age: 16
Kingdom: China
Born Royal: No
Significant Other: Captain Li Shang
Defining Trait(s): Driven, Perceptive, Loyal, Clever
Signature Song: "Reflection"
Despite being part of the official Disney Princess line, Mulan is the only character of that brand who is unequivocally not a princess. Even though a character in Disney's most recent animated feature MOANA wryly states in a moment of meta humor,
"If you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you're a princess," everyone else in the Disney Princess lineup at least has some clearly stated royal standing by inheritance or marriage, whether by marrying a prince like Cinderella or Belle, or born to a king, sultan, chief or other ruler like Ariel, Jasmine or Pocahontas. Mulan is the daughter of a Chinese nobleman and the movie concludes with the budding courtship between her and a military general (ignoring the straight-to-video sequel), but in a literal sense, she's not a princess. She does, however, bring an East Asian presence to the line up, which is obviously good. She also has the highest body count of any Disney Princess by a substantial margin, killing hundreds of Hun soldiers and blowing one up to an excessive degree, compared to the next runner-up who might be either Tiana or Belle, both of whom contribute indirectly to the death of their respective films' main villains. Mulan is one of the most feminist-friendly of the group, coming from a movie that deals directly with gender-issues, as she cuts her hair, absconds with her father's armor and joins the Chinese army to prevent her aged father (the only male of the family) from having to go. The movie itself is very good and somewhat underrated within the Disney Renaissance, but it also suffers from a NAPOLEON DYNAMITE syndrome in which overly enthusiastic corners of Disney fandom can take the wind out of it (high school in central Utah taught me to temporarily hate
"I'll Make a Man Out of You", a song that fills out an actually pretty great training montage despite a weirdly homoerotic-sounding title, not helped by knowing the song is performed by Donny Osmond). It's basically a war movie, which is pretty unique for the animation medium and Disney, and draws lightly upon Asian/anime influences for its look. As with other later films to come out of the Disney Renaissance, one of its biggest weaknesses is the "comic sidekick" character, in this case being the "travel-size" dragon Mushu, voiced by Eddie Murphy, who occasionally interrupts the tone and flow of the movie for rants that aren't particularly funny. The best humor in the movie comes from the TOOTSIE-style gender-bending situations as Mulan, disguised as the male "Ping", struggles to fit in with her overtly masculine and brutish fellow soldiers, including a solidly hilarious bathing sequence. While obviously a Westernized version of a Chinese legend, the character of Mulan is a reasonably strong female model, characterized by quick wits that save the day on a few occasions and help her stand out among her peers, good intentions, likable clumsiness and independent desires. One point of contention that some critics hold against her is the relationship with Captain Shang, which, admittedly, is more disconnected from the rest of the story here than other Disney romances and could easily enough be removed, but also, who cares? If Mulan wants a man, she can get with one. Hell, she almost single-handedly won a major war and saved his ass more than once. Probably so she could be all over that once the war was over.
THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG
Released 11 December 2009
Directed by Ron Clements & John Musker
Featuring the Voices of: Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Michael Leon-Wooley, Jim Cummings, Keith David, Jennifer Cody, Jenifer Lewis, Peter Bartlett, John Goodman, Oprah Winfrey, Terrence Howard
Rated G
97 minutes
The Princess
Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni Rose)
Age: 19
Kingdom: New Orleans, Maldonia
Born Royal: No
Significant Other: Prince Naveen
Defining Trait(s): Hard Working, Realist
Signature Song: "Almost There"
THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG was, like THE LITTLE MERMAID, a conscious course-correction for Disney Animation spearheaded in large part by John Lasseter, who became Disney Animation's Chief Creative Officer in 2006 with the Disney Company's acquisition of Pixar. The Clements and Musker-directed TREASURE PLANET was such an expensive flop in 2002 following a string of increasingly unprofitable hand-drawn animated features that the studio had decided to switch over to computer animation entirely, a decision that was heavily criticized by Disney fans. Lasseter brought back many of the animation stars of the Disney Renaissance, including Clements and Musker, to create a new traditionally-animated musical fairy tale. Man, I was so pumped for this back in 2009. The result was fine. It's no LITTLE MERMAID. In fact, it's pretty middling, but it's great that they brought back old-fashioned animation for it and a shame that Lasseter's decision to keep the option open hasn't been put to more use (yeah, it's been kept alive in the animated shorts, but after WINNIE THE POOH in 2011, a lot of the productions intended for traditional animation have switched over to computer animation by choice of their directors, and there are no traditionally animated features currently upcoming). For the first new Disney Princess in 14 years (unless you count Giselle from the animation/live-action hybrid partial parody ENCHANTED from 2007, who was considered to join the Disney Princess brand, but ultimately did not due to the implications of copyrighting Giselle actress Amy Adams's likeness indefinitely), they simply couldn't pass up the opportunity to finally deliver on a black princess. Disney, for all their tireless P.R. efforts, are a favorite target of criticisms for allegedly perpetuating a white collar, conservative status quo agenda (it's okay, they're pretty big, they can take a lot of criticism, and sometimes they deserve it), and for goodness sake, it was pretty crazy that it had taken them that long to make a black princess. But it's an expectation that's pretty tricky to deliver on, because there are a lot of people scrutinizing every detail to extract an insidious agenda, whether it's about naming the main character "Maddy" (too close to "Mammy", so they changed her name to "Tiana") or having her work as a chambermaid (changed to waitress), and ideally, children will be watching the movie for generations to come, so it should meet high standards for what values children may derive from it. If anything, Tiana is a good role model, but she's also kind of boring. She's a go-getter, a businesswoman with big dreams of opening a glamorous New Orleans restaurant, finagling to buy an old mill and working multiple jobs to pay for it, but she's also cynical and except perhaps in an art-deco
"Almost There" musical sequence where we see her as vibrant and glamorous socialite of the Roaring 20s, she's just not very exciting. That's the thing about THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG. It's solid, good even, and there's a whole lot to admire in it, but neither it nor it's heroine feel as special or exciting as they should be. But no, really, it's good. Simply "good."
TANGLED
Released 24 November 2010
Directed by Nathan Greno & Byron Howard
Featuring the Voices of: Mandy Moore, Zachary Levi, Donna Murphy, Ron Perlman, M.C. Gainey, Jeffrey Tambor, Brad Garrett, Paul F. Thompkins, Richard Kiel
Rated PG for brief mild violence.
100 minutes
The Princess
Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore)
Age: 17
Kingdom: Corona
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other: Flynn Rider
Defining Trait(s): Artistic, Adventurous, Intuitive
Signature Song: "When Will My Life Begin?"
TANGLED is a knock-out and a little weird as a princess movie. It's the first computer-animated Disney Princess film, made in a visually distinctive, luminescent style inspired by Jean-Honore Fragonard's
The Swing on a
colossal budget of $260 million dollars (for comparison, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS cost $245 million in 2015 dollars), but you can't argue with the results. TANGLED looks positively sumptuous. It's also quite clearly Rapunzel's story (as opposed to Jasmine in ALADDIN or Aurora in SLEEPING BEAUTY, both of whom play second fiddle to the more active male counterpart), but Flynn Rider is a co-lead in addition to narrating the movie. After the lukewarm success of THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, TANGLED strives for gender neutrality. In terms of tying together the soaring romance of a good old-fashioned princess movie and the whole and strong female characterizations that modern storytelling demands, TANGLED hits the sweet spot. Rapunzel doesn't conform too heavily to any established Disney Princess type. She makes decisions based on her own personality, intelligence and motivations. TANGLED doesn't attempt to be a commentary on Disney's fairy tale romances like FROZEN or an out-and-out rejection of the princess type like BRAVE, but it's also beyond the perfunctory romances, damsels in distress and demure powder puff girls of earlier Disney Princesses. Rapunzel is a fully formed character, a bohemian, self-taught astronomer, artist and everything else, kind of like SHREK's Fiona but less cartoonish. She doesn't jump right into the G-rated version of bed with her male co-star at the first opportune moment, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of romancing either, especially considering what they go through together. Rapunzel is solid, and so is TANGLED. In terms of following the Disney formula, delivering on a love story and strong, modern characters, they are the pinnacles of the Disney Princess brand.
BRAVE
Released 22 June 2012
Directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman
Featuring the Voices of: Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, Peigi Barker, Steven Cree, Steve Purcell
Rated PG for some scary action and rude humor.
93 minutes
The Princess
Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald)
Age: 16
Kingdom: Scotland
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other: None
Defining Traits: Adventurous, Strong Willed, Impulsive
Signature Song: "Touch the Sky"
I was so excited for BRAVE before it came out. I was pumped for it when was called
The Bear and the Bow and was being directed by Brenda Chapman, co-director of the hugely underrated THE PRINCE OF EGYPT and head of story on THE LION KING. I was less pumped for it when Pixar pushed her off of the production, and after CARS 2 revealed that the once-infallible animation studio was now fallible. Even then, it was one of my most anticipated movies of 2012, and it turned out to be merely okay. Okay-ish. I don't know, it hasn't exactly gotten better on repeat viewings. It goes wrong in a lot of ways, with some clearly unsettled issues about story and tone, but worst of all, it feels distant and impersonal. That is liable to happen when you take a personal project from one storyteller and give to another with completely different tendencies. Merida is a bald-faced effort to make a feminist princess, without the subtleties or nuances of her recent Disney Animation counterpart heroines, although perhaps this would work better with Chapman's artistic voice guiding the mother-daughter story to the finish rather than Pixar mainstay Mark Andrews. As it is, she feels like what an earnest but disconnected boys' club would come up with when asked to invent a strong, feminist-friendly princess. She not only has no interest in being married off a the moment, which isn't exactly unique among Disney Princesses, but she's downright asexual. It's not just that romance doesn't play into this story for her, which would be fine, but she has zero interest or aspirations. I mean, technically, there's nothing wrong with that, but she's kind of boring. Her passions revolve almost entirely around archery and other sports. She's like Gaston from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST except she only shoots at targets. She's a bore. The decision to make her, not unattractive, but without any typically sexualized traits present in every other Disney Princess is an interesting and admirable move, although, of course, her 2D makeover to introduce her to the Disney Princess marketing line undid that and resulted in a minor controversy and disapproval from Chapman. Merida is like BRAVE, made up of impressive technical and artistic decisions that lack any sense of real personality or heart, despite the undeniable efforts made. She's a good role model who's hard to care about. She does, however, have a fantastic Scottish brogue, courtesy of the always wonderful Kelly Macdonald.
FROZEN
Released 27 November 2013
Directed by Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee
Featuring the Voices of: Kristin Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, Santino Fontana, Alan Tudyk, Ciaran Hinds, Chris Williams, Maia Wilson
Rated PG for some action and mild rude humor.
102 minutes
The Princess
Anna (voiced by Kristin Bell)
Age: 18
Kingdom: Arendelle
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other: Kristoff
Defining Traits: Impulsive, Extroverted, Loyal
Signature Song: "For the First Time in Forever"
The Queen
Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel)
Age: 21
Kingdom: Arendelle
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other: None
Defining Traits: Cautious, Sympathetic, Independent
Signature Song: "Let It Go"
Although Anna and Elsa have not yet been inducted to the official Disney Princess franchise line, and technically Elsa is a queen shortly after the movie gets going, it's only a matter of time. FROZEN is a strange and difficult beast. It was huge, and is Walt Disney Animation's highest-grossing film, out-grossing the long-time record-holder THE LION KING and becoming the first WDA production to gross a billion dollars worldwide. It signaled a new renaissance for the studio, certainly in terms of cultural resonance and financial success, even as the preceding few WDA movies had been increasingly well-received. TANGLED is practically perfect, but what it didn't have, which FROZEN does, was any standout musical numbers. In a Disney movie, that's about as important as the quality of the characters or the story, or in the case of the narratively flawed FROZEN, the songs are much more important to its success than the story. The story about sisters and the twist on the fairy tale notion of true love helped too, but the runaway success of FROZEN rests primarily with
"Let It Go". The story is inspired in the loosest sense by Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale
The Snow Queen, a very strange and impressionistic fairy tale about a young girl's quest to save her friend (a boy) from the spell-like grip of the sinister Snow Queen. After trying to adapt it for years, the solution was finally to make the main character and the Snow Queen sisters and pretty much quit trying to make it an adaptation at all. However, major aspects of it remain half-baked, most prominently the postmodern twist on Prince Charming in which Anna's love-at-first-sight, Prince Hans, turns out to be a dastardly villain in a very sharp third act twist. None of Hans's actions, behavior or character at all aligns with this twist, in fact, everything about him runs directly to the contrary, even things Anna and Elsa know nothing about, such as distributing blankets to Arendelle's subjects in their absence and then persuading Elsa not harm the Duke of Wesselton's men, even when not doing so would surely help his revealed cause. Elsa's vaguely defined powers to create unlimited amounts of precipitation and ice and to create fully living and personified ice golems out of nothingness don't bother me nearly so much as Hans. It's like if Bruce Willis turned out to be dead the whole time at the end of THE SIXTH SENSE, but there was no scene at the beginning where he got shot and he was clearly carrying on conversations with his wife throughout the movie. Anna is a likable and standard rom-com style of character, the "adorkable" one, with a few typical Disney Princess traits such as spunkiness and aspirations to romance, but her twist of giving an act of true love by sacrificing herself for Elsa is where she really comes into her own, and it works much better than that crappy Hans twist. Elsa, understandably, is the real breakout character of the movie (even eclipsing the heavily marketed snowman comic sidekick, Olaf), a complex and empowering Disney royal who's raised in fear by sympathetic parents, blossoms in isolated independence and finds acceptance in her true self. A lot of the postmodern revisions to the Disney Princess formula in FROZEN are a little ham-fisted, but the character of Elsa works organically. I saw FROZEN before its official release date, before any speculation began, and even though there's clearly nothing obvious about it, she struck me as a gay character, which I can't fully explain (although I have tried twice and both got more page views than anything else I've ever posted). Between TANGLED and FROZEN, TANGLED is clearly the better film by a long shot, but
"Let It Go",
"For the First Time in Forever", and
"Frozen Heart" are all so fantastic, Elsa's such a great and fresh character, and maybe some of it comes down to timing. I wouldn't call it a four out of four now, but I remember why I did when it came out.
MOANA
Released 23 November 2016
Directed by Ron Clements & John Musker
Featuring the Voices of: Auli'i Cravalho, Dwayne Johnson, Rachel House, Temuera Morrison, Jemaine Clement, Nicole Scherzinger, Alan Tudyk, Oscar Knightley
Rated PG for peril, some scary images and brief thematic elements.
107 minutes
The Princess
Moana (voiced by Auli'i Cravalho)
Age: 16
Kingdom: Motunui
Born Royal: Yes
Significant Other: None
Defining Traits: Adventurous, Selfless, Empathetic
Signature Song: "How Far I'll Go"
Outside of Merida, who is from a Pixar production, Moana is Disney's first princess not rooted in any pre-established fairy tale, history or folklore. She and her story are wholly original material rendered from a blank starting point, credited to seven different story people and one separate screenwriter. The word "moana" is Hawaiian and Maori and translates roughly to mean "ocean." The first computer-animated production from the legendary WDA directing team of Ron Clements and John Musker, MOANA, like other Clements/Musker joints is peppy, comedic and self-referential but also very beautiful and emotional. The first time I saw it, I thought it was fine, but it didn't impress me terribly. It took a second viewing to really get there. It's still not perfect; it's a little cutesy and there's no
"Let It Go"-sized show-stopping numbers, and I'm still not sure where I am with Tamatoa, the kind of funny but tonally out-there giant crab. But you notice things the second time around, like how Moana doesn't just happen to be the "chosen one" by the ocean, but that the ocean chose her when she decided to act on compassion above selfish gain as a child. Moana is a great character, sharp and adventurous, but imperfect, and frequently the long-suffering target of her co-star Maui's mocking. Interestingly, while FROZEN puts its post-modern twist on Disney Princesses front and center, MOANA more subtly eschews the idea of romance altogether. That's not to parrot the frequently recurring misguided criticism of these movies that can't stand that a strong and layered heroine might also have marital or romantic ambitions, but the cool thing about MOANA is that it's never even an issue. It's a road trip-style buddy movie between a guy and a girl, and they're just platonic buddies. No big deal. Of course, if romance did come up, it would be a little weird because she's 16 and his age is unspecified but presumably around as old as the Earth itself.
