It drew constant attention to not only its own cartoonishness but to its status as a DVD movie. For all the seriousness with which Disney treated this particular franchise - think of how Lion King’s release lined up so perfectly with yuppiedom’s “ world music” boom think of the Julie Taymor play and its grasps at cultural “authenticity” - The Lion King 1 ½ refracted those images into something wholly silly. It uses the same high-postmodernist approach as Tom Stoppard’s play, taking advantage of its audience’s familiarity with the source text in order to parodize and build on it - only in this case, the audience was unsupervised children and the great text of dramaturgical canon was Disney IP. If Lion King was positioned as Disney’s Hamlet, 1 ½ is its Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Not quite a spinoff and not quite a prequel, 1 ½ is technically a midquel, taking place during the events of the first film, presented from Timon (Nathan Lane) and Pumbaa’s (Ernie Sabella) point of view. It’s the animated home video that questioned what it meant to be a home-video sequel. Because five years after that, and ten years after The Lion King hit theaters and The Return of Jafar hit stores, Disney made a straight-to-video sequel so irreverent, so formally playful, so queer, and so full of fart and booger jokes. and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, beautiful scenery, a sense of grandeur.īut that’s not Disney’s most impressive straight-to-video sequel. One high point - sandwiched between Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World and Hercules: Zero to Hero - was Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, a worthy follower that matched the ’94 original’s Shakespearean self-import with its own Romeo & Juliet generational-conflict story and capitalized on a formula that worked: songs by Lebo M. For the next 15 years, the studio churned them out for every property it could, as improbable as their premises sounded: Bambi II explored Bambi’s troubled relationship to his absent father a Mulan sequel gave us an Eddie Murphy–less follow-up all about her wedding plans. (More cheaply made than Disney’s other releases, it had to get Dan Castellaneta to sub in for Robin Williams.) Yet it grossed $100 million domestic on a $3.5 million budget, and so Disney embraced the straight-to-video sequel. It was Disney’s first-ever direct-to-video animated sequel, and it looked and sounded like it. Execs were unenthusiastic about the concept. Disney shrouded these films in an air of prestige and rarity, nesting them under its “Classics Collection” or “Masterpiece Collection,” and releasing them from the “Disney Vault” for a limited time only.īut The Return of Jafar was neither prestigious nor rare, and wasn’t given the “Classics” imprimatur. Its ’92 rerelease of 101 Dalmatians and initial home release of Beauty and the Beast were two of the best-selling VHSs of all time (they would soon be surpassed by Aladdin).
Home video had become a reliable moneymaker for Disney.
In lieu of kicking it off with a few episodes bridging the events of the movie and those of the spinoff, its directors pitched an idea: string the first episodes together into a “movie” and release it on VHS before the series premiere. In 1994, Disney premiered a cartoon spinoff series of its two-year-old hit, Aladdin, understanding the Pandora’s box ( cave of wonders?) the show would open.
The team behind the straight-to-DVD movie banged on the wall between Disney feature animation and Disneytoon Studios until a perfect sequel fell out.