The Madcap Adventure And Some Hidden Fun In The Last “Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse” Adventure – “Steamboat Silly”

Mickey Mouse has lived many lives over his nearly 100 years. He’s been a sorcerer, composer of silly symphonies, and cultural icon. However, in Steamboat Silly – the final short of The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse – the most famous mouse in the world returns to his roots.

The short—now streaming on Disney+—starts harmlessly enough. Mickey and his friends Donald, Daisy, Goofy, and Minnie sit down to enjoy some of Mickey’s home movies. That includes the one that started it all: 1928’s Steamboat Willie. However, soon Mickey finds himself overrun by hundreds of his monochrome character from the original short, resulting in a madcap adventure.

Paul Rudish—the executive producer and supervising director of The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse—pointed out that a madcap Mickey is vital to this final short, and to the history of the character himself.

“Our goal was to bring him back to the new audiences,” Rudish said. He added that the short’s silly nature harkens back to the original Mickey Mouse cartoons of the ’20s and ’30s thanks to their surrealism, physical comedy, and pantomime acting.

The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse—which started in 2013 as simply Mickey Mouse shorts—updated Mickey for a new generation using some of the character’s initial rough edges. He’s still the lovable company mascot that he’s been for decades, but now with a little extra spice as the zany scamp he was from the start.

“I wanted to return to that flavor of Mickey and that vibe, but not replicate them,” Rudish said. “We didn’t want to go, ‘Look, here’s a 1930s cartoon.’ We wanted to take the sensibilities of those things but then put that through the lens of a team of modern artists.” After more than 120 episodes, the Mickey Mouse shorts are coming to an end, but its impact is undeniable. The shorts have won multiple Emmy and Annie Awards, been screened at the Venice Film Festival, and led to Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida and Disneyland Park in California—Mickey’s first Disney Parks ride-through attraction. But Mickey has been beloved ever since he stepped foot on that steamboat in 1928. What made this latest version so popular?

“Our Mickey is a bit flawed,” Rudish said. “I think people responded to that. They root for the cheerful optimist, but it’s not always an easy road.” Also, Mickey still represents “the ongoing message of ‘if you’ve got big dreams and you really try hard, you can make them come true,” according to Rudish. “Mickey has always been an icon of that idea,” he said. “It’s inspirational.”

Steamboat Silly balances the past and present of Mickey while also maintaining the comedy—and sometimes even avant-garde essence—of Rudish’s shorts. For example, The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse crew not only drew inspiration from the early days of Mickey in terms of look and feel for “Steamboat Silly,” but also in terms of its sound. This included a technique from the 1920s in which the tempo of the short’s music and action syncs up—a term that is still known as “Mickey Mousing” in Hollywood.

“There’s a portion in the middle, a very action-packed set piece that takes up maybe the middle third of the cartoon, which in particular is at a very, very high tempo, which was used a lot in cartoons in the ’20s and ’30s,” said Christopher Willis, the shorts’ composer. Willis mentioned that a lot of the cartoons from the early days of animation took popular songs and sped them up. He tried to replicate that for this final short. “I wanted a tempo so high that I wasn’t sure at first if the band would be able to play that quickly,” he said

One thing eagle-eared listeners might notice also is the audio quality, sounding dated at first as the Willie’s run about town and growing to match the modern quality as the Willies embed themselves throughout the city.

Steamboat Silly is not just a celebration of Mickey, however. It’s a celebration of Disney as the company commemorates its 100th anniversary, and as such, is bursting at the seams with easter eggs and details. Here are just a few that we caught:

When we first see Mickey arrive with his box of trinkets, we see him in costume garb from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and The Band Concert, and his box even includes an original Mickey Mouse plush toy.

Aside from the design of Steamboat Willie coming to life in a similar style to the original, there is a certain grain on the character to give it the similar age when he interacts with Mickey. There are plenty of references to the original short throughout Steamboat Silly, including a moment where Willie is playing with some underground piping and their control wheels, mimicking the staple move of the character that is also widely known as the opening title card for the Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Another moment sees the Willies attacking Donald and Goofy the same way that Willie approached animals in the original short, using them as musical instruments in an identical fashion, prying Goofy’s mouth open to use his teeth as a xylophone, and stretching Donald’s neck out much like another bird in the 1928 original.

At points throughout the chasing of the Willies down the city streets, we encounter scenes paying homage to the dances of 1929’s The Skeleton Dance and even the “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence from Dumbo.

This all happens before Mickey dons a band leader uniform reminiscent of The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955, which helps intro a climactic rendition of the classic march from the 1955 series.

To get the musical instruments for that number though, thankfully Mickey and his friends have crash landed into the Make Mine Music shop.

In a brief moment as the short is closing, a troublesome accident occurs, letting loose all the various Mickeys from nearly 100 years of his past and for about 17 seconds, it becomes a treasure trove for the fans of the iconic character.

Mickey appears in Various forms from:

You can catch Steamboat Silly and see all the Mickeys for yourself, now streaming on Disney+.