How and Why Disney Ruined Chicken Little

oh son these people are from hollywood the one thing they will never do is mess with a good storm oh chicken little how do i describe such a film well i'm convinced that the only time and place this movie could have been made is the 2000s i mean in no other decade was animation as tone dead as it was back then not that hollywood didn't spawn bad animated movies before but in the 2000s you have to consider one itsy bitsy factor so yes basically shrek condemned an entire decade of bad animated films to be filled to the brim with famous actors and pop culture references even more so than before and chicken little is no different it's a mess from beginning to end i mean the movie is not good its morals are rotten and apparently it was just as much of a travesty to make it as it is to watch it in fact there's so much wrong with chicken little that i'm going to have to do two videos about it today we'll be looking at why the movie is such a mess and on the next one it's bad morals and characters and we'll hopefully get to all that in a moment but if you excuse me right now i have to find a place to hide if i want to avoid a beating so bear with me for a minute okay okay okay i'm maybe far from my jogging days but i do think we managed to lose him hey penelope penelope sorry oh it's fine just help me barricade the door okay i don't know what will work to keep that big lug out uh mister what is this place [Music] good heavens it's the old containment hall this is where they kept all the experiments in progress you know hmm weird i thought mars so had this place torn down and how do you know that oh this place and i we go way back it created a plethora of memories i wish to forget and some that well i rather not like what i could very well elaborate but i'm going to need a little favor first a little quid pro quo pro squids what here just untie me and i'll explain everything yeah but i'm pretty sure that if i untie you mr edgar will get pretty mad at me oh who cares what that old lummox thinks i do i care for what everyone thinks especially if they're thinking about me i don't want to end up like the axolotl guy and besides keeping you under control it's just one of the first roles the staff must follow around you well that and the other big three for example well we can't allow you to have any sharp objects let you talk to anyone outside the bunker or mention the 2000s or you go into a trance and start speaking nonsense yes just like that and speaking of the 2000s it was an incredibly messy decade for disney previous micromanagement led to a lot of creative talent and business allies to leave the company its ceo was accused of underfunding projects and mistreating employees they had huge economical failures and well the animation department was complicated because on the one hand they experimented and created beautiful spectacles of animation storytelling that will forever inspire the generations to come and on the other hand those beautiful films were not really that profitable and were pulling up mediocre returns for huge investments all my life i've been waiting for an opportunity like this and here it is screaming go delbert go delbert mix all of that with the fact that pixar were also getting sick of disney at the time they wanted to rework their contract to have more authority over their properties on the premise that they were making hit after hit after hit with little to no appreciation and it was disney that needed them to make 3d films and not the other way around so in the middle of this turmoil and economic crisis disney needed to get back on their feet disney needed a hero a hail mary pass raw power they needed a chicken so executives hatched a plan [Music] to create a new movie that were catered to old and new audiences alike so they brought in mark dindle the director of cats don't dance mark kennedy one of the writers for hercules and randy fuelmer one of the producers for the emperor's new groove and so the three worked hard to develop a new idea for a film and eventually decided to do a modern retelling of an old fable goldilocks and you know it's chicken little well not even then it was henny penny maybe some of you know that the movie is based off the fable of the same name but the version i knew was by the name of henny penny one among the many stories and fables my nanny used to tell me henry penny is about a little female chick who wanders happily through the woods until an acorn falls on her head not fully understanding the situation her overactive imagination fills in the blanks coming to the conclusion that if what hit her came from the sky and if there's nothing there then the sky itself must be falling so in a rush of panic she goes to warn all of her friends like goosey lucy cocky locky turkey lurky and ducky dordles all of them eventually believe her thus creating mass panic and havoc and in the middle of this hurley burley they decide the best course of action in order to save everyone is to inform the farmer or the king depending on the version you hear but to get to him they must first go through the long path in the woods so the merry group of avian friends set on their mission to warn everyone of their impending doom unfortunately for them foxy loxy who heard the whole commotion from afar hatched a plan and managed to intercept the group she told them that she believed them and because this was such a dire situation they mustn't waste any time and go through the shortcut conveniently placed right by her cave and of course the gullible group believes her so one by one they enter the cave with foxy loxy leading them into the dark obviously the ending depends on the version some tried to downplay the situation saying all of the animals escaped or that only some of them got eaten i mean most people do this to spare kids the trauma but my nanny wasn't most people she was hardcore the lady survived machismo and discrimination so not only did all of the animals die but she was so hardcore that she went into detail explaining on how to kill and de-bone a chicken right by my bedside what do you think something as weak as child sensitivity was going to stop her well you thought wrong my god she was a great woman so yes moving on think about it for a moment and i mean the fable not my weird childhood stories what lessons can you take out of henny penny stuff like don't jump to conclusions make decisions based on logic don't believe everything people tell you offer a reason and solutions instead of creating panic people can be gullible and some people will take chaos as an opportunity to profit from said gullible ones all of those interpretations are valid and would make great morals for any story and most cultures agree since those seem to be the core undebatable concepts accepted by most of the globe except for one country well not all of america of course but for some reason there seems to be some people that actually decided to see the story as a tale of bravery about speaking your mind and sticking to your gut even when you feel like the sky is falling basically corrupting the message into spout whatever nonsense you feel like as long as you believe in it ironic but anyways during disney's turmoils the filmmakers read the fable of henny penny not chicken little have that in mind and decided to try and make a modern adaptation of it and while i couldn't find any specific scripts and notes i managed to piece together the main original ideas so the story was going to originally focus on henny penny a really anxious and weak little girl with an overactive imagination that constantly fills her head with fear and outlandish worst case scenario that is not a vampire rising from his coffin that is just a house settling that is not a hungry wolf that is just an old branch swaying in the wind everything's safe everything's normal everything is just oh what was that this causes her to be mocked by her classmates and be perceived as crazy by the tao and to summarize dindles and fuelma's version they had in mind to start the film with a hand-drawn retelling of the original fable narrated by turkey lurkey mayor in the film who was going to have a bigger role in the story after that we were supposed to meet penny and go through her daily life and struggles on a regular school day and afterwards meet her parents in here we discover that both of them are alive and that bob pluck is not in fact a narcissistic superficial monster of a parent that even puts lydia soprano to shame but in fact a caring parent that is simply overwhelmed with the crazy behavior of his daughter this is not about my love for her well when you get upset like this morning it's hard to tell i had reason to be upset last night i was attacked and thrown down the stairs because i was a space alien coming to put her brain in a blender the night before she thought i was a werewolf coming to suck a blood with the empire what a vampire sucks your blood a werewolf tears you apart limb from limb in an uncontrollable blind rage and you can even make the case that this is a representation of stuff like anxiety disorders and adhd chloe cluck penny's mother was alive in this version and would serve as a counterbalance for bob basically serving as a moral guide to keep him from going over the line with their daughter after some confrontation and reconciliation penny decides that enough is enough and that it's time for her to overcome her fears and gain some respect from her peers in order to do this she convinces her parents to allow her to go to summer camp with all of her friends the summer camp was going to focus more on nature and physical activities with foxy loxy constantly bullying the main group and being one of the major antagonists so with the help of her friends and some sheep councillors that would often show their support and affection towards penny she would eventually grow and prove herself before summer's over but not everything was going to be so peaceful as an evil group of wolves would kidnap and replace the sheep counsellors in order to fatten up the kids and eat them at a great banquet in the final act with the only ones knowing about this plan being penny and her friends of course no one believes them so it's up to this group of outcasts to save the day as you can tell this movie was going to focus more on the emotional journey of penny and her family alongside moral elements of finding nemo the structure of daddy day camp and the final act of barnyard i don't know about you but it sounds perfect to me i mean how much perfect can you get [Music] now is the point that some of you may be asking why is the final product about chicken little and not henny penny then i mean it seemed like a fine concept so why was it changed well the version i just told you about was in fact approved and already into development but a lot of people in disney's management wanted to do some um so yes let's go over the changes for starters penny was changed into chicken little for two reasons reason one was because when presented with the idea then disney ceo and betrayer of the shareholders michael eisner said that he wanted the lead to be a male he argued that growing physically weak and small is a bigger deal for a boy than a girl and as you can see the creators were thrilled with this idea about a year and a half into working on the movie uh we went across the street and showed it to michael eisner but mr hornsby had a vision and michael the very first time he said i think chicken little would be more interesting as a boy then he felt if you're small that's a bigger problem for a boy than a girl what if i joined the baseball team and since he is our boss he won he won that argument [Music] and reason number two was because a marketing search at the time indicated that girls could watch a film where the lead was male but boys wouldn't if the lead was female understandable as you see disney just kind of forgot about their repertoire from the last 60 years so yes penny was gender swapped into a boy and subsequently her love interests the ugly duckling into a girl so even though dindel and falmer weren't completely on board with the idea they decided to keep an open mind so for a time everything went pretty much as planned to their original vision so animation writing marketing and the higher-ups all lived in peace until management decided to attack first only walt himself master of all of these branches could keep them in line but when chicken little needed him the most he vanished actually he didn't vanish he was long dead by that time like almost by 40 years by then so david staton came aboard who is he you may ask what you don't keep a poster of him in your room he kind of fell into obscurity in recent memory but back then he was the brand new president of walt disney feature animation along with michael eisner he was one of the main executives pushing for more direct-to-dvd sequels and simplifying concepts for films he wanted disney to mainly focus and by mainly i mean totally in cgi animation and drop 2d all together in terms of film which resulted in the florida studio being closed down the main animation equipment being sold and many traditional animators losing their jobs so mere days after his appointment as president dindal and fuelmer presented him with the idea for a film an idea that was already accepted by the previous president and well into development mind you and david was so delighted with the idea that he described it as a train wreck and ordered them to start from scratch to suit his own ideas for the film look you can say whatever you want about david staton he's not such a bad guy he helped him bring an internal piece to the studio and lay at the groundworks for cgi fairy tale movies that would later become tangled and frozen but to come to an already existing project and force everyone to start from scratch just to suit your ideas better well let's just say it's not optimal he's an [ __ ] so he wanted to rework the story of penny and change it into something about loser farm animals having to fight off aliens while the farmer was away with the prettier ones in the country fair or something like that jimmy you're not jimmy listen nobody was thrilled to completely rework the movie at this point so everyone just assumed that the project was going to get canned but dindel and fuelmer didn't give up so with the help of mark kennedy they reworked the movie in mere months to not only fit eisen's desire for a sex change but also stanton's vision as well this dropped the wolf plotline and replaced it with aliens [Music] after that eisner and the rest of the executives decided that the movie should focus more on comedy and sports action that he thought would appeal to boys so the camp was replaced by the baseball game and emotional scenes were dropped for hilarious stuff like this p how about tinkle piddlewiz okay subject change other producers thought that since chicken little was a boy he shouldn't be so prone to fear and weird so his personality was changed to be more cool on the other hand david wanted to simplify the movie even further so ordered to cut down characters introductions character development scenes and well he eliminated some characters altogether some he simplified so much they might as well be different characters so dindel and fuelmer went along with these ideas because refusing would mean the entire project being cancelled like other properties so let's try to encapsulate all of these changes as to why this movie doesn't work first contextually it is easier to assume that a character is able to overcome personal struggles over the course of an entire summer as compared to an afternoon by focusing more on comedy at the expense of emotional journey you'll sacrifice the emotional core of the movie the storyline about chicken little and the ugly duckling falling in love is literally acknowledged once in the beginning and brought up out of nowhere in the ending by eliminating emotional scenes you'll literally mess up the character evolution making some characters appear as shallow or superficial and hinder the development of character relationships and by cramming as much pop culture references and songs as possible you literally annoy any reasonable parent in a five mile radius of the movie and every problem i just mentioned is just the middle of the iceberg at this point mind you we haven't explored the awful resolution execution and messy morals the film has to offer but we'll do that on the next video so if we can take a lesson from chicken little it's that even if you have the best intentions to do something good some people will stand in the way to do whatever they see fit and that sometimes it's better to count your losses and save up your strength and ideas for a later date rather than having your vision corrupted and become a solar shell of what it once was that's it for today and i'll see you [Music] you soon right you'll be scared so come on i dare you tell me where to go [Music]

Channel: Buried Entertainment

Views: 61,415

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Id: GIGmnD2yU-A

Length: 20min 2sec (1202 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022