Jim on Film
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Telling Everybody:
Brother Bear Is On Its Way

With the box office failure of Treasure Planet, the tradition of hand-drawn animation at Walt Disney Feature Animation is in nearly the same boat it was in before the success of Lilo and Stitch. While Disney has announced that the film Angel and Her No Good Sister, formerly titled My Peoples, will include hand-drawn animation, there are no other major projects down the pike that are known to use the technique.

What this means is that the success of Brother Bear is imperative to secure the jobs of the animators whose work we’ve admired for so many years and to continue to see films produced in the style we’ve grown to love. With the announcement that DreamWorks has ended production of hand-drawn animation after the box office failure of Sinbad, the need for box office success becomes even more important.

Brother Bear already has much going for it. Trailers were attached to copies of Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean, both of which have been large-scale box office smashes for the studio. And not only were there trailers attached, the trailers actually suggested that the film might be good (as opposed to the drippy and vague trailers for Treasure Planet). They suggested an epic scope with tinges of both drama and comedy-in fact, the opening weekend crowd at the Finding Nemo screening I attended seemed to eat it up.

That’s a good start.

But it’s not enough. As the release date draws near, Disney needs to continue to market the film appropriately to ensure a booming box office once the film is released into the very busy Holiday film season.

First of all, Lilo and Stitch has shown that there is a demand for films that are animated using traditional techniques. Furthermore, it has also shown that there is a market for animated films that are not pure comedies. In other words, a film doesn’t have to be another Toy Story, Shrek, or Ice Age to be successful. There is hope for Brother Bear, as long as it is marketed right.

Secondly, the current group of high school and college-aged moviegoers, which is the age-group that drives ticket sales, grew up with the lavish musical films of the early-1990s. Their childhoods are marked with fond memories of Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, and so on . . . They are ripe for the nostalgia of such films. In fact, this past year, I had numerous of my high school students comment to me on how Disney needs to make the animated films like they used to-with music and cute characters-as opposed to the non-musicals and adventure stories of recent years.

Thirdly, Disney has really strayed from what has marked their most successful films. I have really enjoyed every single film created by Walt Disney Feature Animation released in the last five years, but they have strayed from what people have loved about Disney animation. Films like DreamWorks’ Road to El Dorado and Sinbad as well as Disney’s own Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet have all been square pegs in the round holes of what moviegoers wanted to see. To an extent, Disney has lost its connection to its core audience, and it needs to reconstruct that bridge again. They need to remind everyone of the magic of hand-drawn Disney animation-remind them why the love films such as Cinderella, The Jungle Book, and The Little Mermaid.

So, based upon these guidelines, I offer the following suggestions in marketing Brother Bear.

Suggestion One: Draw the Connection
In the late 80s and early 90s, when Disney was reviving its commitment to animation, they often drew connections between their greatest animated films and the current animated film they were advertising. This drew a parallel between the beloved films of the past and the new film, suggesting that if the viewer liked Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Peter Pan, they would love the latest film offering. It also helped establish the sense of history about these films, the sense that people were seeing the continuation of a great entertainment tradition.

Disney’s animated films aren’t just great films; they have a special place in the collective heart of America. So many people in this country can remember laughing with Dopey, being touched by the death of Bambi’s mother, or singing along with Prince Ali. If Disney was to market Brother Bear subtly making these connections, it would remind people of the potential entertainment value Brother Bear will have. Those who grew up with the films of the early 90s would be reminded of that special Disney magic and those from other generations would be reminded of that special Disney magic from their generations.

Suggestion Two: Draw the Right Connections
After the string of successes that theoretically ended with The Lion King in 1994, Disney did everything to make connections with those films to every new film that came along. Advertising screamed out, “You’re gonna love Hercules just like you loved Aladdin!�? and “The same guys who made Beauty and the Beast made Atlantis: The Lost Empire!�? and so on. With every film, these reminders came until they meant nothing because they became so overused that people read through them, perhaps even perceiving that these later films were just rehashes of a perceived formula. Disney needs to remember that they do have more than four films that people love in their canon.