One week from today, fans of the Disney animated canon catalog are going to find their wallets may be a bit lighter. As is now Disney’s wont in its home-media department, there will be a slew of older films finally being upgraded to high-definition on August 12: Tarzan, Hercules, The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad, and Fun and Fancy Free. (You can also get Bedknobs and Broomsticks; Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers; and Muppets Most Wanted on Blu-ray that day.) If you’re a Disney completist, you might end up buying all of these Blu-rays, and no one could blame you if you wanted to see an HD version of something like Ichabod & Mr. Toad, which has desperately needed improved video quality for a while.
But if you love Disney (and it’s safe to presume that, if you’re on this website reading this article, you do), you will want to buy that double feature of The Adventures of Ichabod & Mr. Toad and Fun and Fancy Free, but not for either of the main features. Although all of the catalog Blu-rays are fairly light on special features, this two-film package has the crown jewel of them all: The Reluctant Dragon. For those who aren’t familiar with that title, this 1941 film is, in essence, a tour of the Walt Disney Studios of the time from the point of view of the charmingly befuddled writer/actor Robert Benchley. The setup is that Benchley’s wife exhorts her husband to visit Walt Disney and ask him to make an animated short based on the children’s story “The Reluctant Dragon.” After about 50 minutes of avoiding an officious tour guide and sneaking into various animation departments on the Disney campus, Benchley winds up next to Disney as he watches a 20-minute short based on that very same story.
Though The Reluctant Dragon is available via Netflix Instant, its inclusion on the Ichabod & Mr. Toad/Fun and Fancy Free double-feature Blu-ray is the first time it’s been available in physical HD media. Yet why, you may wonder, does this matter? The Reluctant Dragon is, at the very least, a fascinating piece of history, created well before the legacy of Walt Disney, company and man, would be so important and iconic to Hollywood. Even if The Reluctant Dragon is not as memorable or popular as Fantasia or Pinocchio or other early-40s Disney films, its value is equal. Seeing how these films are made, how these characters are created is vitally necessary in preserving Disney’s history, especially as we approach a time when the methods are a quaint memory. (Remember hand-drawn animation? How it used to be the only way to make animated features? Ah, good times.)
These days, we do not want for behind-the-scenes featurettes of Disney and Pixar animated features, as well as pretty much every live-action movie under the sun. But there’s something extremely different between standard-issue making-of supplements of even the greatest films (live-action or animated), and something like The Reluctant Dragon. Ironically, the 1941 film doesn’t spend any time explaining how the eponymous short was created, with no behind-the-scenes elements specific to its existence. But there don’t need to be. Before Benchley watches the light, colorful, and cheerful short about a dragon who’s reluctant to fight as a small town of scared humans presumes he will, he learns how Disney animation is created on a grand scale. He sees Clarence Nash get into character as Donald Duck in the recording studio before seeing Donald himself, explaining how he gets inserted into a painted background frame by frame.
Such detail and depth is absent from the way Disney operates today. (Though, being fair, this exhortation applies to any film studio.) The Reluctant Dragon, predictably, wasn’t a very expensive project, costing just $600,000 in 1941 dollars. Its instructive value is immense, all the more so because it never feels like a dry, dull lesson in the art of making movies on a daily basis. Here is an early example of Disney’s attempt to marry entertainment to education, soon to be replicated in the True-Life Adventures of the 1940s and 1950s, and later in theme parks like Epcot. The Reluctant Dragon may be a little-seen piece of influence for the Walt Disney Company, but it’s one that should not be forgotten. There is The Pixar Story, a 90-minute documentary from Leslie Iwerks that delves into the history of Pixar. Can you imagine what it might be like to see a feature-length explication of Walt Disney Animation Studios?
While it’s true that there are brief looks at both studios available among the innumerable special features on recent Blu-rays, none are as detailed or substantive as The Reluctant Dragon. (This, in spite of the fact that, for obvious reasons, the tour of the Walt Disney Studios is ultimately positive and avoids any hint of negativity or frustration on the animators’ part.) The process of animation has changed vastly in the past 70-plus years, which only means that there’s even more necessity to walk through the average viewer how shorts and features are made. What stops a company like Disney from making another film like The Reluctant Dragon? It can’t be an issue of funding, if only because the 1941 film was made in a period when Disney was constantly hard-up for cash, instead of swimming in it like Scrooge McDuck. And from the short making-of featurettes as well as network-TV profiles of places like Pixar Animation Studios, it’s easy to see that there’s plenty of quirky elements to the physical designs of these buildings. Unlike The Reluctant Dragon, a modernized depiction of how animation comes to life at Disney wouldn’t need to be a theatrical feature either (or it could be given a platform release of some kind).
The opportunity exists, and there’s almost certainly an audience, both of the generally curious and the prospective animator. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why Disney chooses to avoid delving even slightly into a general how-to; even on the recent Frozen Blu-ray, they avoided explaining how the worldwide phenomenon was created, instead offering a cheeky music video asking how Frozen was made and answering, “We don’t know.” (Then why ask the question?) A simple presentation of how Disney makes beloved characters, how it comes up with stories, deserves a feature-length treatment. Although PBS and American Experience recently announced that development is underway on Walt Disney, a four hour film that explores the life and legacy of the man, it is time for Disney itself to break ground on such a project focused on its animation studio. The Reluctant Dragon ended up only teasing parts of Bambi and Dumbo, but there’s no reason why such a film couldn’t be centered around a past project. Among the millions of people who have spent over a billion dollars on Frozen in theaters, a fair few of them would likely flock to an entertaining explanation, from start to finish, of how this cherished product came to be.
Just as each movie that Walt Disney Feature Animation creates soon becomes a part of their history, so too would a new Reluctant Dragon. These films are Disney’s legacy, much more than their acquisition of Lucasfilm or Marvel. Preserving that legacy doesn’t just mean keeping animation cels safe for archival purposes, or releasing copies for audiences to keep for years to come. It means defining that legacy in detail, providing context for each film’s existence and creation. Suggesting that Disney should make a new kind of Reluctant Dragon isn’t to suggest a harsh take, nor is it to suggest something wholly sanitized. The Reluctant Dragon, while compelling and surprising, is far from perfect, both in its happy-go-lucky take on animation in 1941 as well as small touches like Benchley pocketing a maquette of a black centaur (long since excised) from the “Pastoral Symphony” sequence in Fantasia. But the very decision to document Disney’s history as it happened is something the company would be smart to reinvest in.
If you want to see how Disney and Pixar make some of their films, you only need to go to the local bookstore to pick up one of their “The Art Of” coffee-table books. But even more fascinating than looking at the storyboards and finished designs on the page would be something that moves like the characters inside those storyboards. The Reluctant Dragon, nowadays, may be seen as nothing more than a quaint relic by some. (It is, after all, being housed as a special feature on a Blu-ray that, itself, highlights two of the 40s-era package films.) But it’s the most worthwhile movie being released in any form by Disney on August 12. If you want to know how Disney used to make its animated features and shorts, you want to see this film. If you want to know how Disney makes those features and shorts now, you may wish for them to emulate the past and take another tour of their studios. If only they weren’t so reluctant.