When You Wish Upon a Star, Prepare to Lawyer Up

No one stays innocent for real; everyone finds out (SPOILERS) Santa Claus isn't real. But no one should feel the shame that I feel now: I have realized the first movie I ever saw in theaters was both a rip-off and a cover up.

What's the movie? Ugh, it's a good one too.

Yes, I ruined Aladdin for myself.

I watched this.

"The Thief and the Cobbler: The Recobbled Cut"- the great unfinished masterpiece by Richard Williams. This movie ought to have been the greatest animated feature of all time. But it was in production from 1964-1992, and it never got made.

This is Richard Williams, and his life story is the story of the production of "The Thief and the Cobbler". Williams was an animator who saw the potential for animation, but it wasn't what anyone was doing. Because seriously, every animated film for years was a Disney. Even if it wasn't strictly made by Walt Disney Studios Inc., almost every animated movie from the 30s to the 90s had songs and talking animals.

Williams dared to challenge these norms. So he worked animating commercials to fund the movie he always wanted to make. It was going to be high concept, based on Arabian Folklore and using visual cues from Arabian Art. The film was to look like if somebody animated a Persian painting.


It Thief and the Cobbler themselves were silent; it's not even a distraction, because Williams' animation itself tells the story. He was basically making an animated movie starring Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp in both lead roles, but with a budget as big as he can draw. Animation ought to be like this, only limited to the animator's imagination. Take this, for example- one of the greatest chase scenes in all of cinema:


Of course, he didn't have Disney money. So this is why it took him years and years and years.

By the 80s, every great animator had worked on this movie in some capacity with Williams, and the film was becoming a Hollywood Urban Legend. So Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas needed an animator, and they wanted to see how much of Thief and the Cobbler was done.
Williams had one like 10 minutes of footage. Fortunately, it was this:




Seeing as that scene had more frames per second that any other hand drawn animation ever (Disney needs computers to make frames look that smooth), Stephen and George hired him on the spot to do this:




Who Framed Roger Rabbit is the greatest animated film ever made (and actually completed), not just because it was an absolute labor of love for the golden age of animation, not just because it brought on the animation renaissance, which gave us Little Mermaid, Lion King, Anamaniacs, Tiny Toons, and Batman the Animated Series, but totally because its the only movie ever where Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse are friends.




So now that Williams is on good terms with Warner Brothers, he can finally finish Thief and the Cobbler.

Except he doesn't; he doesn't meet his deadline, and the rights leave Williams' control and enter the Completion Bond Company, aka, shut up and let's finish this movie.

So now it's the early 90s. And every animator in Hollywood has worked on Cobbler. And now Disney is churning out animated musicals again. So they have an idea for a new movie, in a fictional golden Arabian city where a good hearted thief woos a generous Princess and fights an evil grand vizier who has control of an absent minded ruler. They called it, "Aladdin". It's almost the same plot to Thief and the Cobbler.

And this comes out before Cobbler can come out, and kills Cobbler's chance of ever being a success, because, Disney money.

So Miramax finally "cobbles" together the footage of Thief and the Cobbler, but because Disney owns the 90s, Miramax decides that that 1) the main characters have to talk (because their mouths don't move, its all voice over by Matthew Broderick and Jonathan Winters- and really fucking annoying) and 2) we need this to be a musical now because this has to be like a Disney movie. Yes, the impetus to this movie was that animation didn't have to be like Disney, but anyway...




So they write the shittest songs ever. But also, DISNEY OWNS MIRAMAX! THIS WAS DISNEY'S EVIL PLAN. They turned a masterpiece into a hack job so their hack job looks like a masterpiece.

More proof:
Zig Zag, the evil grand Vizier-

vs
Jafar, the evil grand Vizier-

But that's a Middle Eastern folklore staple! And, Jaffar's not blue, thats...

oh ok, so they ripped off Zig Zag TWICE.

But this is Disney- after Walt died they ripped off everyone, even themselves.





Don't even get me started on "Kimba the White Lion" from Japan.
I'd say more about it, but I don't want to ruin your childhood further.

And why didn't Kimba's creators sue Simba's company? Because Disney has the greatest lawyers that a billion dollar corporation can buy. You can't beat them in court.
So what's the moral of the story?

When you wish upon a star,
 makes no difference who you are,
unless you're an indie animator who's spending his whole life into telling one story that will shake up the norms of his field and do something, you know, really different, and not like the soulless conglomerate who says everything should be their way,
your dreams come true.