CometColt Reviews: Fantasia

Ah yes, here we go! Fantasia, one of my favorite movies of all time, not just from Disney. Released in 1940, Fantasia is quite possibly the greatest thing Disney ever created.

While Fantasia was originally conceived to bring more attention to Mickey Mouse (which I’ll tell you about later), it expanded into a love letter to art itself combining Disney animation with classical music. It was a phenomenal experience the world had never seen before, and based on its struggles at the box office due to World War II and the mixed reception of Fantasia 2000, we’ll probably never get anything like this again. That’s a shame since Disney had plans to release annual follow-ups to Fantasia.

Since Fantasia doesn’t have a singular narrative, I’m going to look at each individual segment on their own.

The first musical number is Johann Sebastian Bach’s Tocata Fugue in D Minor, which is purely abstract with no story of any kind. I love the flowing elegant movement and the beautiful colors.

The second musical number is Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite portraying the changing of the seasons. Again, I can get lost in the fluid animation and these soft but vibrant watercolors. It looks so ethereal and dream-like. And even though it features fairies and dancing mushrooms, flowers, and fish, they’re not quite so cutesy like in Snow White or Bambi or something. I also like how the fairies of each season has a subtle difference to them.

The third musical number is the most famous one: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, based on the symphonic poem by Paul Dukas. Fantasia was actually made entirely around this short. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was originally intended to be a stand-alone Mickey Mouse short film. But as the budget for it grew, Disney decided to make a series of shorts based on classical music and make Fantasia.

And it’s easy to see why The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is so iconic. The animation, the colors, the lighting, the shadows. It’s so much grander than other Mickey Mouse shorts. I love how the colors change to fit different moods, particular when the lighting turns red as Mickey destroys the broom.

I should also mention that the animators secretly modeled the wizard after Walt Disney. In particular, the scene where the wizard raises an eyebrow while glaring at Mickey was directly based on how Walt would look whenever he disapproved of something. The animators even called the wizard “Yen Sid”, which of course is “Disney” spelled backwards and would become the official name of the wizard decades later in the Kingdom Hearts series.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is wrapped up with a cute little scene where Mickey Mouse and Leopold congratulate each other. This was back when Walt Disney himself used to provide the voice of Mickey Mouse.

The fourth musical number is Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, which portrays the formation of Earth and the origins of life. What’s intriguing to me is that at a time when much of America was very conservative, Disney made a short portraying a more or less scientifically accurate portrayal of the birth of our planet as well as the theory of evolution (which was challenged in the Scopes Monkey Trial about 20 years earlier). This was actually pretty bold on Disney’s part if you ask me.

As always, it’s amazing to look at. It starts with a fade-in on the Milky Way galaxy as we slowly zoom in on the planet Earth, which was once covered in magma and active volcanoes billions of years ago when it was still a very young planet. Eventually, we see a surge of magma engulf the land and into the ocean. But then the volcanoes get flooded underwater.

We then see single-cell microorganisms begin to form. Over hundreds of millions of years, we see life in the oceans diversify before we see a fish approach dry land. Soon, we skip ahead hundreds of millions of years more to find dinosaurs and primordial jungles. I like the way the Pteranodons are colored. The dinosaurs are portrayed pretty naturalistically (at least by 1940s standards). And I like the fight between the Tyrannosaurus and the Stegosaurus.

That said, the dinosaurs are very outdated here, starting with the stances. You can see herbivorous dinosaurs crawling on their bellies with their legs sprawled out and tails dragging behind them, which is part of the inaccurate belief at the time that dinosaurs were essentially overgrown lizards. Predatory dinosaurs are standing upright like Godzilla, even though we have since learned that dinosaurs would have looked, stood, and moved very much like birds (in fact, birds are literally the last surviving dinosaurs). It would take more than 50 years with the release of Jurassic Park for dinosaurs to look and move in the much more realistic and accurate manner we see in paleo-media today. And on top of that, we see a mishmash of Jurassic dinosaurs and Cretaceous dinosaurs all living at the same time and the same place.

Also, as the host of the movie notes, people in 1940 didn’t know what caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. Scientists proposed different theories from droughts to volcanic eruptions. But it wasn’t until 40 years later in 1980 that scientists started discovering overwhelming evidence for what really happened to the dinosaurs: a giant asteroid struck what is now Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago and triggered a series of cataclysmic events, including forest fires, tidal waves, and nuclear winter. We know this not only from the 110-mile wide crater the asteroid left behind, most of which is submerged beneath the ocean, but also from a layer of iridium (a metal that’s rare on Earth but common in asteroids) spread all over the world. Dinosaur fossils are found beneath this layer, but not above it.

Even so, The Rite of Spring as portrayed by Fantasia is an interesting time capsule of how people in the past saw dinosaurs and a reminder that science, as well as life on Earth, is constantly evolving.

We get a short intermission afterwards, followed by more abstract animation portraying visual representations of what different instruments sound like.

Next, we get Beethoven’s symphony The Pastoral, portraying Greek gods and mythical creatures. It starts off a bit cutesy with the satyrs and unicorns, but it quickly picks up once we get to the pegasi. They already look very graceful and fluid as they soar and gallop through the air. But as they land in the water, they look very swan-like. This is probably my favorite scene from the Pastoral sequence.

It gets cutesy again when the centaurs and cherubs arrive, along with the drunk guy and his donkey. I should probably also mention the African centauresses who are half black girl, half zebra. They’re not around long, but yeah, that probably wouldn’t fly today.

Then Zeus appears and starts hurling lightning bolts. This is actually true to form for Greek mythology, as the gods were known to mess with mortals for their own amusement. Eventually, Zeus grows tired of this and goes to sleep on a cloud.

We see other Greek gods and goddesses like Helios, Morpheus, and Artemis. While I did like this sequence overall, I liked the other symphonies better like the Tocata Fugue, the Nutcracker Suite, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and the Rite of Spring.

Next, we get the Dance of the Hours (from the opera La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli), with dancing animals representing the different times of day. For the most part, it’s just cartoon animals dancing and looking cute. It doesn’t pick up until the last act when the crocodiles come in. That’s when a lot of the funny slapstick and creative imagery comes in. It’s not bad in any way overall, but it is personally my least favorite of the shorts. I really don’t have much to say about it.

Finally, we have a combination of Modest Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain and Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria, representing the eternal struggle between good and evil. There’s a lot of stark imagery here with dark blues and greens as well as the foreboding mountain. The demon Chernabog has a very imposing and intimidating design with dynamic poses. He can literally reach into shadows and cover the land in darkness as he summons the souls of the dead from the gallows, a graveyard, and other places where you would expect to find dead bodies. The dead souls are drawn very sketchy. The Ave Maria section on the other hand is very calm and peaceful with soft colors and an ethereal atmosphere. A bridge and a forest subtly invoke Christian imagery without being overt about it. While I’m not a religious man, I will admit the atmosphere and singing makes me tear up a little.

When animation enthusiasts (like me) say that animation is an art form and not just some cheap babysitter to keep little kids quiet for a while, THIS is what we’re talking about. Disney was once a pioneer for pushing back against the stigma that animation is just kid’s stuff. It’s true that while Disney brands itself as a purveyor of family entertainment, they typically lean more towards kids. But Fantasia is unique in that it’s Disney’s first (and only) animated movie made more for adults. That’s not to say kids can’t watch Fantasia; it’s not like there’s anything really inappropriate for kids here. But I guarantee you that adults would get more out of the film’s artistry than kids would. Fantasia showcases what a beautiful and powerful form of expression animation can be in terms of artistry, storytelling, and conveying emotion.

Beautiful, elegant, powerful, and timeless, Fantasia is a magical marriage of animation and classical music. It feels almost like visiting a cross between a concert hall and an art museum. This is why Disney has been regarded as the classical music of animation.

And I can’t tell you how many times I thought up images and stories in my head while listening to music. I think a lot of us do it to be honest.

There are certainly a few aspects that are dated, like the outdated dinosaur designs from The Rite of Spring and the racial portrayals of the centaurs from The Pastoral. But everything else about it is phenomenal. The beginning sequence with Tocata Fugue, the Nutcracker Suite, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the Night on Bald Mountain.

Fantasia is a masterpiece portraying art in its purest form, a feast for the senses unlike any other. I’m glad we live in a world where Fantasia exists to enrich our imaginations, our emotions, and our souls.

I give Fantasia a 9.5 out of 10.

Next time, I’ll be looking at Dumbo. See you there!

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