Plot Details: This opinion reveals no details about the movie's plot.
Ding!
Fantasia, Fantasia 2000 and The Fantasia Legacy. We have a three way rumble for you folks out there tonight. It's going to be a really exciting night tonight at the DVD DukeOut. Stay tuned after these important messages from our sponsors...
In the first corner, at a ripe old age of 61, we have Fantasia, the much-loved classic from the halcyon years of innocence and art. It holds some pretty distinguished records, ladies and gents. It's the first film in stereo sound, the second full length movie from Disney, and made Disney a reputation outside of just cartoons.
In the near corner, we have a baby. He's only one year old folks, but was nine in the making. Sired by the nephew of Uncle Walt himself, here's Fantasia 2000! He's got some firsts going for him too: namely, first feature movie in IMAX. Alright, he's also the first to star Donald Duck, but I figured you didn't care about that.
In the far corner, we have the dark horse. The Fantasia Legacy it calls itself. It's a making of and history of disc, and it claims to know all the dirty little secrets of the other two contenders.
Let's watch a few commercials and come back for the starting bell.
Ding! Ding!
They're charging at each other, and suddenly, Ol' F and F2K are double-teaming Legacy. He's just not holding up under pressure, not at all...
The Fantasia Legacy disc is amazingly complete in its incompleteness. Like a walk through the animation studios in the midst of a project, you can page through some development sketches there, look at a flipbook here, or even see some of the storyboards set to music.
Unless you are true Disney fan, or a movie-making buff, after a while, one presentation starts blurring into all the others. It's great to see how they captured the images for the volcanoes in the Rites of Spring sequence (they dumped ink into upside down molded volcanoes). However, it's not something that holds the average veiwer's interest.
Heck, I'm into movies and love knowing how they do this or that, and even I was starting to feel antsy through the slideshows.
Grrr... Grrr
Now the fight's down to the two favorites: Ol' F and the rookie, F2K. Which will it be? Will old age and treachery truly overcome youth and speed? Stay tuned ...
I find it difficult to watch either Fantasia or Fantasia 2000 without comparing one to the other. They both share one segment in common, Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. They both open with the bombastic tones of known classical refrains. They both close with themes of hope in spite of inexorable encroaching evil and destruction.
Even the special features seem par for par. Each DVD has not one, but two audio commentary tracks, and each has a "talking head" sequence about the making of. Even on the mastering side, they're evenly matched. THX. DTS. Dolby Digital. Accurate aspect ratio to the theatrical releases.
Yep, folks... this looks like they can last all night like this. Some of the audience is booing. Here comes a ref...
Winner by Judgment
...And the ref's gonna make the call! I've never seen this at a DukeOut before. Why, I can remember when they'd fight to a standstill and then glare at one another. Wait.... the ref's going make his ruling.
Just for me, I like Fantasia 2000 far better than the original. It could be that the original has been worn smooth in my mind, and I longed for something else besides the old Dance of the Hours et. al. It could be that I loved the visuals of F2K. It could be that I loved the animation, a quantum leap in quality from when I first viewed the original.
I'm not saying that Fantasia 2000 is perfect. My one complaint:
Lose the comedy. At only an hour and a quarter, the film is already quite short. For the creators to devote 15 minutes or so to standup routines makes the film that much more cramped and rushed. The delivery is competent, the jokes are funny. The time could have been better spent in more animation.
But Seriously...
This was a close call. The original Fantasia is dear to my heart as one of the events defining Disney into what it is today. Those segments were not ever merely cartoons, but have transcended past their intended state of art into the glided class of holy canon in animation.
In time, I hope Fantasia 2000 will attain that status too. Some of its pieces are light and humorous, almost self-mocking. Others are somber and ponderous. One, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, is both. The music is ornate and baroque, yet the visuals are lively and light. The animation is exquisite, almost to the point of being too detailed to discern on a television. Indeed, I feel it inevitable that Fantasia 2000 be canon.
Until then, I choose it over its progenitor because it is newer, fresher, and done with technologies unavailable to those daring pioneers from 60 yeas back. I choose it not to discount their work, but because I feel this would be their work, were they here, now, and challenged by Disney to make something yet unrealized.
The Sequel Was Better Than the Original: The Write-Off
Spawned from the dementedly creative mind of mrsocko316, using http://eaforums.com/ as a transmission vector, this write-off has claimed the following victims:
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