The Disney Renaissance was a period of
time when Disney Animation was revived from a failing studio to a creative
and financially successful juggernaut. Wait, wait... this isn’t
the story about that, right? No, this is the tale of how it all ended. The Emperor’s New Groove spent over four years
spinning its wheels, until an opposing vision forced an eleventh hour restart. Now it's known
as a comedy cult classic, (hell yeah it is!) but then? It signaled the end of an era, and
was Disney’s most embarrassing Sh*t Show. Baloo? Baloo, get up! The Jungle Book, 1967, the last animated film
produced by Walt Disney himself. Without his leadership, Walt Disney Animation Studios fell
into chaos. Going through the motions, film after film, the magic was gone. By the 1980s the company
was about to be bought out and stripped for parts. Roy Disney (Walt’s nephew) brought in Michael
Eisner as CEO, in a last ditch effort to turn things around, just as Disney hit rock bottom
with The Black Cauldron. The misguided (and wildly over budget) film of 1985 couldn’t even get
halfway to breaking even. Things needed to change. Eisner appointed Jeffrey Katzenberg to head
the film division, with animation being of the utmost importance. Despite having no experience
in the medium, Katzenberg ruled with absolute authority. Ruthless and decisive, he demanded
perfection. For only spending an hour or so each week at the studio, he bred a dog-eat-dog
environment, where everyone should be willing to die for their work. And with Eisner breathing
down their necks about cutting costs, you either rose to the challenge or you needed
to find another job. It was callous and savage… but the results spoke for themselves. The Little Mermaid in 1989 was their biggest
film in 20 years. Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to be nominated for Best
Picture. Aladdin was the first animated film to make over $200 million dollars. And in 1994, The
Lion King was a legitimate cultural milestone. It became (and still remains) the highest
grossing traditionally animated film of all time. Katzenberg resurrected
Disney Animation… and that’s when he quit. He was passed over for a promotion because
Michael Eisner and Roy Disney grew tired of his showmanship and desire for full credit.
Katzenberg convinced Steven Spielberg to establish a new studio together, DreamWorks, and
they poached a great deal of Disney’s animators. Quality at Disney Animation almost immediately
dropped. The following production, Pocahontas, took a sharp dive in reception and was criticized
for its nearly flawless historical accuracy. The Hunchback of Notre Dame in ‘96, was the
harbinger for a massive leap in production costs. Hercules disappointed, Mulan was a step up. As
was Tarzan, but the film’s skyrocketing budget hardly made it worth it. And audiences' growing
fascination with computer animation didn’t help (thanks in large part to
Disney’s own co-venture, Pixar). Was traditional animation or
Disney’s legendary studio done for? Despite being a worldwide smash, The Lion
King’s production was fraught with issues. Original director George Scribner spent nearly a
year making a heartfelt, documentary-like film. But when Katzenberg forced it to be a musical,
Scribner couldn’t get behind the change and was fired. Co-directors Rob Minkoff and Roger Allers
were then tasked with saving the film. And that they did. Even though it was a musical, they were
still able to hit incredible emotional beats. Simba’s desperate attempts to wake his dead father
was a moment that Allers fiercely defended to keep in the movie (and rightfully lauded for).
So, immediately after finishing the film, Allers was given a project of his
own, and Disney had high hopes. The studio was looking into ancient South
American cultures for their next setting, and Allers loved the visuals of the Incan culture,
of a city in the clouds. He dove into their myths and was inspired by a god who created the sun
by pulling in a distant star. Combined with Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, Allers’
story centered on the selfish emperor Manco (voiced by David Spade) who swaps places with a
lookalike peasant, Pacha (played by a then-unknown Owen Wilson). The sorceress Yzma (a very game
Eartha Kitt) capitalizes on the situation by transforming Manco into a mute llama and coercing
Pacha into her evil plan of banishing the sun (which she believes robbed her of her beauty) by
summoning the god of death. The movie was big to say the least… not to mention Pacha’s romance with
the emperor’s fiance, Manco learning humility (and love) from a female llama-herder, a 10,000
year old rock helping Yzma, and the grand finale of Pacha lassoing the sun back into
position. Allers was swinging for the fences. Kingdom of the Sun kicked off at the
tail end of 1994. But what started as a prestigious project from Disney’s new golden
boy, morphed into an overly elaborate concept, crushing under the weight of its own
ambition. It wasn’t coming together, even though there were pieces that showed
great promise. As Disney grew worried, there was a frequently used phrase among the
studio: “Remember The Lion King.” As if to say, don’t disturb the genius at work. That said,
things were going to get even more complicated. Starting with The Little Mermaid, Disney clearly
tapped into something by hiring Broadway talent to write their songs. But they took it a step
further... Why have radio ads when you can have a chart topping ballad? The combination of Elton
John and Lion King turned out to be a gold mine, so hiring popular musicians became the
norm. Bette Midler, Christina Aguilera, Phil Collins, Michael Bolton… "This is the tale of Captain Jack Sparrow!" "...what?" This time around, Allers asked
Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, aka Sting. Sting saw what Elton had achieved and
was excited by the challenge. Once he agreed in July of 1997, his wife, Trudie Styler, asked if
she could film the experience as they went along. Fearing that Sting didn’t understand how
rocky the animation process would be, Disney figured that if Styler was
documenting it all, Sting would stick it out. With his writing partner, David
Hartley, Sting got to work on six songs. Sting joined at a bad time. Producer Randy
Fullmer started pressuring Allers to make some serious changes. To help, Fullmer reached
out to Mark Dindal to be Aller’s co-director. Dindal had worked as an effects animator
(with Allers) on Little Mermaid before leaving Disney to direct Cats Don’t
Dance for Turner Feature Animation. See, that studio was collapsing in the
midst of a merger with Warner Bros… [Laughs] Hi, excuse me, two seconds here. Um,
can we stay focused? This story is about Disney, not Warner Bros. Ok, you got it? Let’s
move ahead. Sorry to slow you down. [Laughs] Point is, Dindal saw the writing on the
wall, and gladly came back to Disney. Together, Allers and Dindal attempted
to restructure Kingdom of the Sun. Yet any alterations undermined the
songs Sting had already written (whether it was removed characters or general
themes). Sting was losing patience with Allers. "I'm telling a story and what
you've done here... you've taken out the two lines that encapsulate
the whole thing, for me." "And that's... bad?" Ultimately, Allers was committed to too many
pieces and he struggled cutting any of it. To him, remove one piece and it all fell apart. To Disney,
put it all together, it didn’t add up to anything. Allers wanted to honor a culture,
Disney wanted an audience pleaser. President of Feature Animation Peter Schneider and
Vice-President Thomas Schumacher didn’t want to control Allers’ vision, but not forcing changes
perpetuated a lack of progress. Four years in, a third of the film roughly animated, Schneider &
Schumacher held a screening and it didn’t go well. "For me, so much of the movie
isn't working. I just don't know who I'm supposed to care about, what I'm watching,
the pace seems really, really wacky, like just so leaden, and I'm not having much fun." What they did like were the quick and
funny sequences that Dindal had directed. They asked him for some thoughts on how
to fix the film… and liked what he had to say. Suddenly, Disney was questioning
the viability of Allers ever delivering. Allers got feedback from the other directors at
the studio, and he started to make some changes. So he requested a six month extension to
refocus... Michael Eisner would not hear it. Disney was committed to multiple merchandisers
(key among them of course, was McDonald’s Happy Meals) and a delay would cost millions. Plus,
on top of all of this, Jeffery Katzenberg (Eisner’s now mortal enemy) seemingly stole
the setting for the film and ordered Dreamworks Animation to beat Disney to release. The
top brass marched into Fullmer’s office, saying they had two weeks to come up with a
solution or they would axe the whole film. Schneider & Schumacher decided to
split Allers and Dindal into two teams, and give them those two weeks to pitch their
ideas of how to save this sinking ship. And just like that the Kingdom of the Sun
team was competing against each other, instead of supporting their director.
Feeling like kids with divorced parents, they admired Allers passion and skill,
but knew the film was a lost cause. Na uh!
Ya huh! Meanwhile, they thoroughly enjoyed the creativity
happening with Dindal. And adding unneeded pressure was a documentary crew who were very
interested in zeroing in on the personal struggles of everyone involved. Two weeks later, Allers
pitched his solution, but it was still a big, complex drama with heavy themes. Dindal on the
other hand, suggested a complete overhaul. Along with storyboardist Chris Williams, they pitched
a much simpler story, but most importantly, one that leaned almost entirely into comedy. During
Allers’ pitch, Schneider & Schumacher sat quietly. During Dindal’s, they laughed uncontrollably.
Allers knew the decision before it was made. "Probably, you know, one of my biggest faults was
to try to pull all these different elements and maybe I tried to hold on too many ingredients or
something. I don't know. I sort of feel like I'm standing here with like fragments of my confetti
falling through my fingers. It's - it's. I mean... I don't know. I was up half the night just sort
of grieving over this whole thing, you know?" With Pocahontas and Hunchback as slight setbacks,
Disney wasn’t sure that operatic grandeur was the key to past successes, and there was a real
fear that their films were becoming formulaic. On September 23 of 1998, Dindal was promoted
to director and given the green light to start over. Dindal apologized to Allers, saying this
was never his intention and asked Allers if he wanted to stay on as co-director. Allers
couldn’t bear to do it. Though he felt no ill will towards Dindal or the others, he wanted to
move on, and joined Lilo & Stitch’s production. Schneider & Schumacher told Eisner their plan.
But to restart the project, Dindal would need pre-production time to settle the story and
determine new character designs, background styles and the like. Which ironically, would still
delay the film the 6 months Allers asked for. Eisner gave them the extension. Kingdom of
the Sun was moved from the summer of 2000, to Christmas. However to fill the release date,
the incredibly beleaguered production of Dinosaur was forced to move up, compromising that
film’s quality. Pushing Kingdom to December, also allowed further distance from the March
release of Dreamworks’ The Road to El Dorado (a certain Katzenberg-produced film
also set in pre-colonial South America, with music by Elton John). Dindal and his team
looked at what they liked about the current film. David Spade, Eartha Kitt, and an Incan prince
learning humility after turning into a llama. "Yay! I'm a llama again! ...wait." Literally everything else was thrown out.
No more romances, no retelling of myths, no more most of the cast. Now it was
just a buddy-road comedy, between (a now older, fatherly) Pacha and
Manco, who was renamed Kuzco. "Yeah why did they change Manco?" "I think it means [bleep] in Japanese.
And that's not what bothered them. It means bad movie in Turkish
and they didn't want that." Now titled The Emperor’s New Groove, Dindal had
18 months to produce every inch of a new film. He asked David Reynolds to make the movie funnier.
Reynolds was currently a script doctor for Disney, but he was also a staff writer on Late
Night with Conan O’Brien. So with Dindal, Chris Wiliams and Randy Fullmer, the sense of
humor in the room was dialed up to eleven. It also meant meetings would devolve into 45
minutes of screwing around, followed by 15 minutes of truly concentrated creativity. Their
rushed timeline meant oversight was rare at best, so they adopted an anything-goes attitude.
They had streamlined the film so immensely, it allowed them to string together a series
of ridiculous sketches just for the fun of it. And their new character, Kronk, became a
sounding board of their weirdest ideas. "Ugh, he's doing his own theme music?" They would get excited about a new bonkers
sequence, repeatedly pull in the actors and hand them a few pages (a full script was never
written out). The four main cast members were actively encouraged to improvise, to the point,
they weren’t even sure what the movie was anymore. One of the reasons for the studio’s history
of success was Walt Disney’s focus on story, rather than gags. It set them apart from
the absurdness of Fliescher, Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera. Each film maintained a truth
to its characters and setting (a verisimilitude, if you will). And they rarely deviated from that
(the Genie in Aladdin being a rare exception). And here was Emperor’s New Groove, where squirrels
make balloon animals and trampoline salesmen exist in the 13th century. They recruited Adam West for
a manic scene involving an army of scarecrows. Those four months of work went right out the
window when Disney nixed it as too insane. They even discussed using actual footage of a space
shuttle launch to see how far they could push it. "But what does that have to do with any-"
"No, no. He's got a point." That’s where they drew the
line. $40 million later, Fullmer was ordered to produce some real
results. From the outside looking in, Eisner saw a bunch of children wasting the
company’s time and money. Yet in reality, Dindal was making a lot of headway. Their
first screening was a resounding success. "This group may have come in with reduced expectations..."
[Laughter] "I had no idea what I was
walking into. I had no idea!" "What a surprise." "It was a great surprise!" "After you've gone through
this long black, dark tunnel, then you can really appreciate
how great of a moment this was. After 10 minutes or 15 minutes, Peter and Tom
say 'well, we've said everything we need to say. We're going to take off. Keep going!' I've
never experienced anything like that before." "Oh yeah, it's all coming together." Oh yeah and Sting! Dindal’s revamp plans
meant all of Sting’s songs made no sense in the context of the new film. Obviously furious,
he felt the movie’s new direction was below him, as he much preferred Aller’s philosophical
version. He did eventually provide two songs; one during the credits that is a stark
contrast to the film that preceded it, and another that ended up being
sung by Tom Jones. Despite all that, the final straw for him was the ending of the
film. Kuzco’s original goal is to demolish Pacha’s home to build a theme park. At the end,
he decides to relocate it to an adjacent hill. The staunch environmentalist Sting thought it
undermined the movie’s only remaining moral. "I've been aware for a while now that
my vision of the world and Disney's may be at odds. I can only be candid. But there's
something intrinsically faulty with this film and I find it very difficult to continue working
on something that goes against my beliefs. I offer my views humbly and I look forward
to your response. Yours sincerely, me." Disney and Dindal agreed, questioning
how they didn’t think of it first, and made the alteration to the ending. Following
a last minute composer reshuffle (which was par for the course at that point), it was a mad dash
to finish the film in time. But they did it... The Emperor’s New Groove released on December
15th, 2000. Disney didn’t know how to market the film, and chose to spend most
of that budget on 102 Dalmatians. Both films ended up getting sleighed by Jim
Carrey in How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Costing a baffling $100 million (and very little
of it on screen), Emperor’s New Groove bombed. Reviews were great, with most ok with the belly
laughs substituting the usual Disney ambition. However, the year was rough for Walt Disney
Animation Studios. Their more experimental films Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur barely broke even,
then their flagship production of New Groove failed. It was the nail in the coffin. The
renaissance was over. The studio fell once again into a dark period. Roger Allers, Mark Dindal,
Randy Fullmer, Peter Schneider, Tom Schumacher, and even Michael Eisner. would all leave
shortly after. And it would be 10 more years before they made another megahit (chiefly because
Pixar’s John Lasseter and Ed Catmull took over). Trudie Styler’s documentary, The Sweatbox (which
chronicled New Groove’s six year journey), debuted at Toronto International Film Festival in 2002…
and was immediately buried by Disney. Perhaps dreading its unflattering look at their creative
process, the film now only exists in pirated form. Looking over the studio’s legendary feature film
history, Emperor’s New Groove was like a record scratch. It wasn’t a romantic fable; it was a
wacky farce. More Chuck Jones than Walt Disney. In a way, it was ahead of its time. It signaled a
change for animated films, from the Shakesperian dramas to heartfelt, slapstick comedies.
A trend that absolutely continues today. And for the generation that grew up on it?
It has Kronk, the greatest henchmen ever, plus all the best memes, and we don’t care
if it bombed, it’s a certified cult classic! "Well, you got me. By all
accounts, it doesn't make sense."
