Mickey Mouse gets a makeover
Filed under: Company News, Technology, Media
The Walt Disney Company (DIS) recently announced that it will be doing the unthinkable. It's tinkering with Mickey.The most obvious step in the iconic mouse's makeover will be an upcoming video game. Titled "Epic Mickey," it presents a vision of Mickey that can be naughty or nice, cunning or playful. Rather than the stiff corporate logo of yesteryear, Epic Mickey will offer a character who is more multifaceted, flexible, and fun. Along with the game, Disney is also re-imagining everything about the character. The studio plans to tweak his clothing, personality, and home, presenting a fresh face to the Disney Channel, Disney World, and the internet.
It's about time. While one of the world's most recognizable corporate logos, Mickey has long since receded into irrelevance as a cartoon character. In 2006, Saturday Night Live highlighted this with a satiric riff on the famed "Disney Vault," in which Mickey shepherds a little boy and girl through the studio's legendary repository. After the kids find Walt Disney's cryogenically-frozen head and various disturbing old movies, Mickey tells them, "You take the good with the bad. He created me! Think of all the laughs I've given you!" To which one of the children replies with disbelief, "You're supposed to be funny?"
Ouch.
The little girl's confusion is completely understandable. After all, it's been a long time since Mickey was funny. For many of today's filmgoers, Disney's playful anarchy has been channeled into a variety of animated sidekicks like Beauty and the Beast's Lumiere, Aladdin's Genie or Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear. Mickey, on the other hand, is sort of a distant, stiff Emcee, smiling serenely at the opening of some movies or in promotional pictures of Disney World.
The Early Years
It wasn't always this way: In the beginning, Mickey was playful and kindhearted, but also something of a troublemaker. In his 1928 premiere performance in Steamboat Willie, he sasses his boss, swings a cat by its tail, chokes a goose, plays with the nipples on a sow and engages in a variety of other behavior that would earn him the ire of PETA and a fatwa from the national Parent Teacher Association.
In the ensuing years, Mickey engaged in gun fights, hallucinated after consuming bug spray, partied until the police came, and indulged a wide variety of other antisocial activities. Although his behavior in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of 1940's Fantasia is comparatively mild, he still displays disobedience, laziness, and an almost frightening hunger for power. Tasked with hauling water to a basin, the mouse enchants a broom to do his job while he naps. As he dreams of wielding godlike power, the broom mechanically continues at its work, flooding the basin. Mickey tries to stop it, ultimately chopping it into bits and unwittingly creating hundreds of brooms. In addition to presenting a somewhat terrifying image of a growing disaster, the short shows its star in a very unattractive light.
The Rise of New Disney Stars
Over the years, Mickey's growing cast of co-stars took over the negative traits that make characters fun and approachable. Donald Duck became the face of crankiness, Goofy became the designated bumbler, Pluto cornered the market on uncontrollable enthusiasm, and all of the above became lazy. In the process, Mickey became a sort of harried caretaker, transforming from a childish scamp into a somewhat scolding adult.
With more interesting characters, it was little wonder that Mickey became the dull, stiff face of a corporate empire. Ironically, the Mickey watch became one of his most recognizable pieces of marketing: After all, for him, time had long since stopped.
While this transformation is overdue, it is also fraught with danger: Although Disney's decision to bring back the flawed, playful Mickey fits into the character's origins, it flies in the face of the last fifty years. More than two generations have grown up with a Mickey that is flat and boring. Will they accept a corporate spokesman who has discovered a second youth?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
11-05-2009 @ 4:20PM
MyKisa said...
....maybe a mustache or a tattoo....horns? I know, maybe a pink scarf or a turbin
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 5:48PM
burthooton@aol.com said...
Maybe he can be disrespectful to women, and not speak english very well, wear a flat rimmed baseball cap backwards, spit, have an attitude that he is better than everyone else, wear earings, wear his pants downlow so his underwear sticks out.....then America will really love him again.
11-05-2009 @ 4:23PM
Terry said...
Being a long time supporter of everything Disney and a traditionalist, I'm taken aback by your description of Mickey as being flat and boring. With the loss of Walt in the mid-sixties, Mickey has become the father figure for all things good that Disney has represented to children world-wide. He's timeless whereas us humans have a limited time span available to us. Mickey has represented Walt admirably these last 50 odd years and it would be a mistake to change or think otherwise.
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 9:37PM
Ray said...
I agree with you. Join my boycott of Disney for the thinning down of Mickey. The plump Mickey is the real thing, but you can't get it anymore. NO SKINNY MICKEYS!
11-05-2009 @ 4:39PM
voxnotrox said...
This is the last straw. If you people who have stolen Walt's name change Mickey into something with R-rated behavior, or even make him less buoyant than he has been since 1928, you'll have one less fan. I watched the first "Mickey Mouse Club" episode on TV in 1955, have been taking my family (and now 8 grandchildren) to Disney parks all their lives, and I have 419 images of The Mouse in my office. Evolve him, sure. It's probably time. But don't go making wholesale changes. Mickey is who he is. If you have to do this, invent another character. Leave Mickey alone.
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11-06-2009 @ 12:57PM
John said...
Since you probably didn't see this before...
To the lady (I think it's safe to assume you're a woman) who has 419 images of 'The Mouse' in her office...you scare me.
11-05-2009 @ 9:13PM
cassideee2 said...
Dear John...
You stupid ass... my father LOVES Mickey, and by extension so do the rest of us, my mother, and my brother, and of course, ME. My father's 74 years old, and has Steamboat Willie on his boat, he's got collectible Mickeys all over the house... on the mailbox, lamps, figurines, stuffed Mickeys, name it... he's got it. And you think someone's weird if they just LOVE Mickey? Hell, my father owns tons of Disney stocks, that's one of the reasons why HE loves Mickey! That mouse has made him an awful lot of money! So back off!! Rock on, voxnotrox!
11-18-2009 @ 2:55PM
Digital Observer said...
Perhaps people forget how mean people was when Walt created him. Take a look at Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy. You will see Mickey happily abusing animals and forcing himself on Minnie.
He's obviously been sanitized as of recent decades, but just like Bugs Bunny characters, they were never meant to be cute and clean.
11-05-2009 @ 4:43PM
Rock said...
There is an old saying that I believe fits in with this story perfectly. That saying? , DON'T FIX SOMETHING THATS
NOT BROKE! Let me hear you Disney fans make your voices heard.
Hey There, Hi There, Ho There, Rock...........OUT!
Mickey is "The Mouse" Please, No change to the Big Cheese, Peace
Reply
11-06-2009 @ 12:54PM
John said...
To the lady (I think it's safe to assume you're a woman) who has 419 images of 'The Mouse' in her office...you scare me.
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 5:01PM
Rock said...
Oh!, one other point I'd like to make Mr. Watson ( I presume)
since when is Saturday Night Live the standard of all things? They have not been "funny" since the late 80's!
Nothing but a bunch of crappy political skits and low down shots at people. NBC = Never Brilliant Comedy,
Remember Chevy and Gilda and Dan A.? Jane,Lorainne, Garrett,
Billy and Belushi?
NOW THAT WAS FUNNY!
Seth Myers? PPPPPLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEAEEEEESSSe!
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 5:05PM
Bruce Watson said...
Rock-
When it comes to the falling quality of Saturday Night Live, you're preaching to the choir. However, the Disney Vault segment was hilarious. Just because Andy Samberg is a hack is no reason to ignore one of the few times when the show really hit its mark!
11-05-2009 @ 5:14PM
Joann said...
As a longtime Disney fan. I would like to see some of the characteristics of the old Mickey come back. My kids absolutely love the old Mickey cartoons, many are still played at the Disney hotels in their restaurants and the Disney Cruise ship. I have no problem with retro Mickey. I just don't want a politically correct, "perfect" character. Kids don't learn anything from perfect things. I agree with many of the above comments, definitely no R behavior or nasty personality traits, please.
Reply
11-16-2009 @ 8:31AM
dianeplantation said...
Why are the self proclaimed creative types intent upon ruining a good thing. Classic movie, remake it poorly. Classic novel, write a sequel even though the original writer is dead. Where is the creativity? In the case of MIckey Mouse, make another character! It is no wonder people and children under the age of 30 are cynical, and have very little appreciation of classic movies or characters. Is nothing at all sacred?
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 5:26PM
Gabriel said...
They're laying the groundwork for making some of the characters gay.
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 7:26PM
David S. said...
How do you know some of them aren't? I have heard rumors about Goofy and Donald Duck....and isn't Mickey's voice just a bit high-pitched? I'm just sayin......
11-06-2009 @ 3:13AM
pnut166 said...
you mean they`re not already ???
11-05-2009 @ 5:36PM
Mr Bill said...
Might as well take Andy Griffith and F--- him up too ... You sorry bastards just can't leave a good thing alone. A timeless tradition and you have to screw it up ! Hope you rot in hell !
Reply
11-05-2009 @ 5:48PM
Jay said...
Another geezer in mid-life crisis mode...and I'm not talking about Mickey. As a shareholder and new parent I became reassured of what Disney stood for and was planning to do in the years to come. Seeing programing geared towards kids such as "Mickey's Clubhouse" was refreshing for a brand that I don't remember really growing up or carrying about for the past 30 years. I guess a grown up Mickey "doing bad things" would be a refreshing touch. But I surely hope that Disney keeps a tight leash on it, becuase if it dominates its image and what I expect from Disney. Its a straight majority sell of shares and change of the channel for us.
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11-11-2009 @ 12:50PM
AverageGuy said...
Please leave Mickey alone as others have rightly noted. And just because the greedy control board at Marvel sold out and let themselves be bought by Disney don't let me see any Disney character show up in a Spiderman outfit again! (Stan Lee I can't believe you would let that happen! Nuff Said!)
When USAyesterday showed those Mouse ears in Spidey red I started to puke. Leave well enough alone. Even in the secular world there should be some things treated with respect and not tampered with.
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