Two human figures, their coveralls decorated with patterns of lavender glow, walk onto a game court that draws itself in lines of colored light within the clear plastic walls and floor. At the sound of a buzzer, the game begins -- a futuristic blend of handball, jai alai and Frisbee, using a disc of light instead of a ball or a piece of plastic. The players catch the shining disc in a hooked sleeve that covers one hand, then hurl it back at each other. The contest is fast and ruthless. A player loses; he drops through a slit in the floor to his death. The victorious gladiator is returned to his cell and imprisoned behind a flickering force field. He will fight in another futuristic duel...
Far away, across a gap that can be bridged only by human imagination and celluloid, a dainty mouse in a tattered shawl is trying to find an entrance into a cluster of rosebushes. She looks around nervously, fearing attack by a ferocious cat, but she perserveres. Somewhere within the thorny tangle lies the hidden headquarters of a group of super-intelligent rats, rats whose IQ's had been raised when they were used in experiments by the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH). Only these rats can save her home and her gravely ill child from destruction by the farmer's plow. At last, she finds a hidden trap door. Cautiously, she enters a spiny interior, lit with flashes of electricity...
Tron, from the Walt Disney Studio, and The Secret of NIMH, from Don Bluth/Aurora Productions, are two very different films, created by disparate techniques that mark the boundaries of animation. The dazzling, computer-generated imagery of Tron represents the cutting edge of contemporary technology; the carefully rendered drawings of NIMH hark back to the detailed, illustrative style of the late Thirties and early Forties. Yet each is being presented as the heritor of the tradition of frame-by-frame filmmaking established by Walt Disney.
Disney was a complex figure to whom no one was indifferent. He has been damned as a capitalist and a fascist, praised as an entertainer and a humanitarian. But admirers and detractors alike concede that no one had a greater influence on the development of animation. Virtually every technique in the animator's repertory was discovered or refined by artists at his studio. Disney also possessed an uncanny understanding of what would please audiences and how it should be presented to them. His talents as a storyteller and story editor have been widely and deservedly praised.
He remained an innovator and imaginative filmmaker until his death. The animated features created at his studio constitute a legacy of excellence unequaled by Thalberg or Chaplin. Now he is dead -- 16 years -- and the question of who if anyone has inherited his mantle of quality, imagination, innovation, and storyteling is widely disputed.
For anyone from 15 to 50 who grew up in America, the Disney animated features were a staple of childhood, their imagery reinforced by toys, games, comic books and other merchandise. But the Disney artists did not set out to create "classics." Their films were intended to please the general public, but they were also experiments and advancements in the art of animation. Snow White, Fantasia, and Sleeping Beauty were revelations of what could be done in the medium, as were Dumbo, Pinocchio, Bambi, and the others, to varying degrees.
Many of these films were not accepted as classics and future standarts of entertainment when they were first released: Fantasia, Pinocchio, and Sleeping Beauty all lost money initially. Writing in The Nation, Franz Hoellering called Fantasia "a promising monstrosity." Dorothy Thompson, the syndicated pundit, saw it as another indication of the collapse of the civilized world.
Many of the "Silly Symphonies" and early Disney shorts were also experiments. The Old Mill (1937) was a dramatic study in mood, and a test for the newly devised multi-plane animation camera. The female characters in The Goddess of Spring (1934), Broken Toys (1935) and Cookie Carnival (1935) provided training for the animators who would draw Snow White.
This spirit of advancement and experimentation faltered after Disney's death in 1966; some critics trace the decline from The Jungle Book (1967), the first animated feature to be released after his death. Obviously, the death of the man who had created and guided the studio, according to his personal vision, since its inception was a serious blow. His otherwise capable staff seemed unable to proceed without its leader. Disney lost its hold on the family audiences as the studio ossified.
Certainly the quality of the animated features declined. The artists seemed to be trying to "do Disney" instead of advancing the art of animation as they had in the past. The Aristocats (1970) and Robin Hood (1973) are the worst animated features in the studio's canon. Ironically, both are weakest in the area in which Disney films were traditionally strong: story. Both films were successful commercially, but there was little competition in the family market. The late Sixties were the nadir of American animation: It looked as if the art might vanish, outside of Saturday morning kidvid and the work of a few independent filmmakers.
Beginning with UPA in the Fifties, the focus of creativity in animation had shifted away from the big studios to the independent animators, small studios, commercial animators, and the National Film Board of Canada. These artists were creating new techniques, and graphic styles, new ways of seeing and of dealing with unusual and controversial subjects. A measure of their success is revealed in the Academy Awards for Animated Short: The last time a major studio won was in 1969, when the irreverent It's Tough To Be A Bird, created by Ward Kimball at Disney, won over entries from the National Film Board of Canada and the Hubley Studio. Since then, all of the winners and the vast majority of the nominees have come from small studios.
Significantly, the rebirth of interest in animation was not sparked by a major new release from Disney. The craze for nostalgia led to a re-discovery of the animation from the "golden age" of the Thirties and Forties. Audiences were once again entertained by the ricky-ticky animation of the old Betty Boop films, the Cagneyesque grace and bravado of the Warner Brothers shorts, the rambunctious antics of the early Mickey Mouse cartoons.
The biggest factor was the popularity of two features that were distinctly un-Disney in style and context: Yellow Submarine (1968) and Fritz the Cat (1972). Each in its way continued the tradition of bold experimentation that had characterized the best Disney films. George Dunning's Yellow Submarine introduced a wildly imaginative graphic look and an unconventional style of animation. With Fritz the Cat, Ralph Bakshi proved that animation could handle controversial subject matter -- a fact UPA and many of the foreign and independent studios had suggested nearly two decades earlier. Neither of these films was directed at the traditional Disney audience, but the studio's supremacy in animation had never been seriously challenged before. George Lucas landed the most telling blow by providing innovative fantasies and powerful storytelling and proving that the broad audience Disney had once dominated not only lived, but was capable of shattering all boxoffice records.
During the Seventies, the Disney Studio began making efforts toward a comeback. One major step was the recruitment and training of young animators, which had been ignored for years. Having assembled an unmatched team of animators, the studio had let them make films without considering the future. As these artists began to retire and die, the questions of who would replace them and how their knowledge of the art could be transmitted took on a new urgency.
"I don't know why it took so long to establish a training program," remarks Eric Larson, one of the "Nine Old Men" and training director at the Disney School of Animation. "We didn't get frightened about the future until around 1970. Even after Walt died, it didn't seem to dawn on us that the same people couldn't keep working forever."
One of the artists who came to the studio at this time was Don Bluth. He had worked there in 1956 as an assistant animator on Sleeping Beauty, but had left after a year and a half to go on a Mormon mission to Argentina and to pursue his education. When he returned he worked on Robin Hood, Winnie The Pooh and Tigger Too (1974), and The Rescuers (1977). This last, a charming feature with a strong story and serviceable animation, announced the emergence of a new generation of Disney animators. The film was a significant commercial succes, outdrawing Star Wars in some parts of Europe.
Bluth became the acknowledged head of Disney's young animators. He served as director of animation of Pete's Dragon (1978), and overly long but technically sophisticated blend of animation and live action. He directed the rather saccharine featurette The Small One (1978), which won an Oscar nomination, then began working on The Fox and the Hound.
In September of 1979, Bluth resigned from Disney. With him went Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, two young animators with whom he had been working at home for several years. Subsequently, fourteen other animators and assistants left Disney to join Bluth's nascent studio. This group represented a substantial portion of the young artists Disney had recruited and trained, and the parting was not without bitterness on both sides. Although individual friendships exist between Disney and Bluth animators, little love is lost between the two groups, with each insisting they're better off without the other. Bluth compares the situation to the gentlemanly rivalry that might exist between two baseball teams: In fact, it is more personal and more bitter. Perhaps friction is inevitable in a medium that requires collaboration among so many artistic egos. But the industry and art form of animation are now split by the sort of strife that came to King Arthur's round table, after Arthur was dispatched.
The kingdome was in chaos. Disney moved the release date of The Fox and the Hound back a year and began a new recruitment and training program. In 1981, the Disney School of Animation was established with the stated goal of doubling the animation staff. The same year, The Fox and the Hound was released and garnered the highest initial return for an animated film in the studio's history. This handsome, if unexciting, feature contained one sequence -- the hound's fight with a vicious grizzly -- that represented the finest animation to come out of the Disney Studio since The Jungle Book. And work continued on other frame-by-frame projects, including Tron.
"We want to follow the philosophy of Disney himself, who was always interested in progress and change," declared Tom Wilhite, the studio's production chief. "Perhaps change hasn't occurred as often as it should here, but we feel we're moving in the right direction with the kinds of pictures we have in production now -- pictures that are different from what other people are doing and that involve new artists. We're discovering the essence of what made this studio what it is: change, chance, risk-taking, escapes, innovation, upbeat films."
Tron is decidedly an innovation -- and a risk. While computer animation has been used in science-fiction films before, this $20-million production represents the first time it has been used to create three-dimensional effects. Computer simulations are being used in place of models and to augment the sets and costumes. The look is unique: Tron is designed to resemble a video game come to life.
"I wish I could say we agreed to do the film because we were so terribly foresighted we foresaw the popularity of computer games," grins Wilhite, "but it wouldn't be quite true. We bought the project in the summer of 1980. It wasn't until Christmas of 1980 that all the articles began to appear about how all the best toys were electronic."
In some ways, Tron is the ultimate electronic toy. The script, written by director Steven Lisberger and producer Don Kushner, postulates an alternate reality within an enormous computer owned by ENCOM, a gigantic communications conglomerate. Programs that reflect the personalities of their creators inhabit the electronic realm. Flynn (Jeff Bridges), a computer genius and video game wizard, becomes trapped in this world when he attempts to block ENCOM's theft of programs he and his friends have devised. There he is forced to compete in the video games that have been turned into gladitorial contests. He forges an alliance with a security program named Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), and together they set out to challenge the Master Control Program that rules and tyrannizes the electronic world.
Advance footage of Tron suggests that the script may have some problems (the Master Control Program announcing in its rumbling voice: "When somebody pushes me, I push back") And Jeff Bridges' performance as Flynn, the wild 'n' crazy computer whiz, seems somewhat less than arresting.
It doesn't matter. The computer effects in Tron are so dazzling they can easily carry the picture. It promises to be the most visually revolutionary film since 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some of the visuals look like nothing else that's ever been put on a movie screen: Their computer-generated shapes and textures don't correspond exactly to anything that really exists. The light (motor) cycles look something like drawings and something like photographs, but not entirely either. As they streak across a grid of lines of blue light, walls spring up behind them, like the wake of a speed boat, forming complicated patterns.
Once the dimensions and shape of an object like the light cycle has been "fed" into a computer, its movements can be choreographed in three dimensions. Because it operates according to mathematical formulae, the computer can maintain perspective in its images to infinity. If information about the location and intensity of a light source is included, the machine can add shadows and reflections where they should occur.
These images are generated on special high-resolution video monitors which may contain as many as two milion pixels, or points of light. Each pixel is assigned a color value (a digital formula that specifies the percentages of red, blue and green) and an intensity value that indicates its relative brighness: Approximately four million individual pieces of information are required to create the image for one frame of film. Once generated, the image is photographed and combined with the footage of the actors. Most of the computer work is being done by Information International Inc. (Triple-I) of Culver City, CA, and Mathematical Applications Group Inc. (MAGI) of New York.
Some of the images are semi-abstract, rather than concrete: a pattern of still and moving points of light that suggests a city seen from an airplane; patterns of glowing colors that resemble electronic circuitry building themselves into a three-dimensional construct of increasing complexity; kaleidoscope explosions of color; tracking shots into infinite black depths, sprinkled with dots of light so perfectly matched to perspective that they are disorienting to watch.
"Tron introduced a tremendous amount of new, young, special effects talent into the studio," says Wilhite. "Disney has a reputation for excellence in special effects, but the men who worked on films like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Darby O'Gill and the Little People, and Mary Poppins have retired or died. It was important for us to replace them.
"Tron also opened up a number of areas of experimentation," he continues. "We have one series of tests being done that involved only the computer -- its limitations and its strength. We also have animators at work on a test project based on Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. The characters are being drawn by hand, but the inking and painting, the background art and the camera moves are all being done by computer. This allows the artists to bond the warm, organic qualities of hand-drawn animation to the three-dimensional world of the computer. The two techniques can be used together to accomplish things that couldn't be done using either exclusively. The computer can also make what comes out on the finished film much closer to the original product of the artist's hand and eye but eliminating a lot of middlemen: It's just the animator and the computer programmer."
Disney also has a number of conventionally animated projects in production. This Christmas, Mickey Mouse will return to the screen after an absence of thirty years in Mickey's Christmas Carol, a re-telling of Dickens' venerable chestnut "as the Disney players might do it." Mickey is Bob Cratchit, Scrooge McDuck is Ebenezer Scrooge, Goofy is Marley's Ghost, Jiminy Cricket is the Ghost of Christmas Past, Willie the Giant is Christmas Present, and Black Pete is Christmas Yet To Come.
The classic characters move as they always did, although some of the voices have changed -- Scrooge speaks with a rather dull Scottish burr. Their physical appearances are taken from the era of The Brave Little Tailor -- certainly the handsomest design for Mickey. The story has been softened in the traditional Disney fashion: Scrooge does not consign the poor to workhouses, jails or death; nor is he forced to confront the specters of Ignorance and Want. A Christmas Carol has been animated at least twice before, by UPA as a vehicle for Mr. Magoo (1962) and by Richard Williams (1971) in an Oscar-winning adaptation that incorporated the look of nineteenth-century steel engravings. But audiences never seem to tire of the story, and this lavish short (budgeted at $3.5 million) is likely to become a holiday standard.
More important for the future of the studio than the film's immediate success is the esprit de corps director Burny Mattinson has developed in the animators, who look on the film as a communal project, rather than a job. That sort of spirit was an essential element of studio animation in its heyday.
Further in the future -- probably in 1985 -- lies The Black Cauldron, an adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's fantasies about the mythical land of Prydain. The film is still in the early stages of production, which makes it virtually impossible to judge how well it will present its material. Pencil tests of the animation of the gwythaints, the pterodactyl-like messengers of the evil Horned King, look effective and exciting.
Also in pre-production is Basil of Baker Street, the animated adventures of a Holmesian mouse, and Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, a combination of animation and live action. Its premise is that animated characters really exist and only work in cartoons, the way ordinary people work in offices. Roger, a six-foot rabbit with a touch of Tex Avery, has to hire a live-action detective of the hard-boiled, Dashiell Hammett school to clear him of a murder rap. The pre-production sketches look like lots of fun.
The most unusual piece of animation in preparation at Disney is Darrell Von Citter's Fun with Mr. Future, a cartoon short that satirizes the flat, graphic animation of UPA and the There's-a-wonderful-future-waiting-for-you corn that Disneyland used to dish out on the "Carousel of Progress." Delightfully irreverent and off-the-wall, Mr. Future is slated for limited distribution with Tron, but deserves national release.
With all this animation in production, Disney seems to be reasserting its former preeminence in the field. What of the challenge offered by Bluth?
"I have no grudge against Don Bluth," concludes Wilhite. "I liked him, personally, and the people who are working with him. But he seems to be obsessed with recreating Disney of the Forties. It's fine for him to talk about reclaiming the glories of the past, but they already exist in our vaults. We feel it's more important to do good films now, so that in 2020, people will look back on the work done during the 1980's as glories of the past."
Yet, Don Bluth has been heralded and presented as the heir to the classic animation of Disney. His studio was formed, like Disney's, in humble circumstances with a core of artists dedicated to their leader and their art. After leaving Disney, Bluth's studio produced Banjo, the Woodpile Cat (1980), a twenty-four-minute short subsequently purchased by ABC-TV, and a two-minute animated sequence in the live-action musical Xanadu. Banjo was done in Bluth's garage on a cooperative basis, with the artists working when they could for no pay but shares in the film's future earnings. In 1980, Bluth formed "an exclusive association" with Aurora Productions, which helped to finance his feature debut, The Secret of NIMH, with a $7 million production budget and another $4.5 million for prints and advertising.
"Disney was a master storyteller, which is what we'd like to be," says Bluth, looking up from a desk piled high with art supplies. His studio, which is littered with papers, drawings. and reels of film, contrasts sharply with the quiet elegance of Wilhite's office. "There will be no 'second Disney.' It's wonderful that his success could occur, and he could show all that animation can be. Unfortunately, his legacy has been left to those who would chop it up and sell it in the meat market. But he didn't tell all the stories. We want to understand how he told stories and then go from there.
"The audience must be able to identify the charcters for an animated feature to be successful," Bluth emphasizes. "Believability is the key: The experience must not be intruded upon by sketchy lines or visible brush strokes or amateurish color styling. If we're trying to get an audience to identify with Mrs. Brisby, they should not be reminded that she was created with a pencil -- that would make them less likely to believe that she has feelings, that she's real. We hide the artist in artistry to insure the success of the most important factor in the film: identification."
The most cursory glance at Bluth's work reveals the strong stylistic influence of Disney. But Bluth lacks the spirit of experimentation that characterized the best Disney films. His attitude is reminiscent of the Renaissance architects who turned their backs on recent centuries of art to return to the principles of the ancients.
"I haven't seen an innovative animated film since Fantasia," Bluth states matter-of-factly. "The scribbly 'Zagreb style' is no more like classical animation than jazz is like classical music. Some of those films are extremely clever, but they can't hold an audience for more than about ten minutes. An audience can't identify with a drawing. Until we can evolve a new style, we're stuck with the old, illustrative one. We'll break new ground at some point, but we can't predict where. We won't rush out just to do something new. We'll break new ground if it's necessary to tell a story."
The story of The Secret of NIMH is based on Robert O'Brien's Newbery Award-winning novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. A widowed mouse -- here named Mrs. Brisby, is unable to leave when her home is threatened by a farmer's spring plowing, because one of her children has pneumonia and cannot be moved. At the advice of the Great Owl, she seeks the aid of some rats whose IQ's were greatly increased when they were used in experiments at the Naional Institute for Mental Health. The rats, in turn, are split by a conflict between their venerable leader, Nicodemus, and a power-hungry rebel, Jenner. After numerous adventures, all ends well, with Mrs. Brisby and the rats established in new, safe quarters, wiser and braver for their experiences.
A look at completed footage suggests that The Secret of NIMH is the work of a very talented group of artists. The animation is smooth and polished, the characers move with convincing weight and style of motion. Numerous lighting effects -- traditionally used only by Disney -- lend a richness to the look of the film. When Nicodemus lights a candle in the beginning of the picture, its glow gradually fills the space around it, changing the colors of its surroundings and casting realistic shadows. When Mrs. Brisby goes to visit the Great Owl in his gloomy lair, considerable suspense is built up as a monstrous spider with venom dripping from its fangs stalks the tiny mouse.
The animation of the broader characters is generally more successful than the smaller ones. Jeremy, the klutzy crow who befriends Mrs. Brisby, is drawn with expansive good humor. He looks a lot like Maleficent's raven in Sleeping Beauty, but moves very differently: His falls and stumbles are well-timed and well-drawn.
Not all of Mrs. Brisby's gestures can be read as expressions of her personality; some of them seem to be business invented by the artists to keep her from holding still for too long. Bluth's animators are still learning to act through their drawings, and the dainty gestures of characters like Mrs. Brisby are particularly difficult to animate. Animation is a medium of caricature, and the more broadly a movement can be made, the more effectively it will play. A delicate character is more difficult to animate because its features and movements cnnot be distorted and exaggerated the way a broader character like Jeremy's can.
Another Disney tradition Bluth has followed is finding top-quality voices for the characters. The vocal cast of NIMH included Derek Jacobi as Nicodemus, Dom DeLuise as Jeremy, John Carradine as the Great Owl, and Hermione Baddeley as an irascible shrew. Actors and actresses of this stature give the characters depth and power they otherwise would not have.
The greatest weakness in NIMH is a tendency toward visual overkill. Bluth has succumbed to a temptation that vitiates the work of many filmmakers eager to demonstrate their technical expertise: cluttering the frame with too many details. Many of the techniques used in NIMH are too difficult and expensive to be used extensively today, even by Disney. These techniques produce effects like transparent shadows, glowing fireflies, crackling bolts of energy, sparkles of dew, gleams on surfaces, etc. But more can be less, and a plethora of moving details can distract the eye of the viewer from the main action of a scene. When Mrs. Brisby visits the chemist Mr. Ages in his laboratory, the characers are all but lost amid the many sparkes, shadows, reflections, wisps of smoke and splashing droplets.
Overall, The Secret of NIMH looks like an extremely impressive debut film; one that suggests these artists may be capable of really extraordinary work, given more time and training. NIMH is not yet the work of masters, and it seems a bit premature to describe it as ushering in a new age of animation, as the publicity campaign of MGM/UA (the distributors of the film) declares. That sort of rhetorical overkill only detracts from Bluth's very real achievements. The key to the success of The Secret of NIMH with audiences will be how effectively it tells its story. Bluth's second feature, based on an original story and budgeted at $11 million, is already going into production.
Where does the future of the animated feature lie -- with the futuristic imagery of Tron or the meticulous drawings of NIMH? It is difficult to predict the path any art will follow, but the future of high quality animation seems much more secure today than it did 50 years ago, when Walt Disney and a mouse embarked on a course that created an empire and a standard. It is not clear he exactly has a heir. Audiences now can choose among a variety of styles and subjects. But the existence of those choices is probably the healthiest sign for the future of that most difficult and flexible of art forms, animation.