Once Upon a Studio

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This article is dedicated to The Once Upon a Studio version of Burny Mattinson (1935-2023), and Burny Mattinson (1935-2023).
Once Upon a Studio
A Disney event, 100 years in the making.
Genre: Adventure
Fantasy
Comedy
Live-action
Coming-of-Age
Family
Directed by: Dan Abraham
Trent Correy
Produced by: Yvett Merino
Bradford Simonsen
Written by: Dan Abraham
Trent Correy
Starring: Chris Diamantopoulos
Kaitlyn Robrock
Cinematography: John Hasbrook (layout)
Daniel Rice (lighting)
Distributed by: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Disney+
Release date: June 11, 2023 (Annecy)
October 15, 2023 (ABC)
Runtime: 8 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English


"Gotta go, but thanks. On with the show."

Mickey Mouse


Once Upon a Studio is a live-action/traditional/CG hybrid 2023 film produced by the Walt Disney Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures to celebrate the centennial anniversary of the studio, directed and written by Dan Abraham and Trent Correy starring Chris Diamantopoulos and Kaitlyn Robrock as Mickey and Minnie, along with the return of many actors.

Plot

In Once Upon a Studio, an all-star ensemble of beloved characters from Walt Disney Animation Studios assembles to take a group photo in honor of The Walt Disney Company's 100th anniversary—making for a joyful, entertaining, and emotional reunion. Featuring 543 characters from more than 85 feature-length and short films, Once Upon a Studio welcomes heroes and villains, princes and princesses, sidekicks and sorcerers—in all-new hand-drawn and CG animation—to celebrate 10 decades of storytelling, artistry, and technological achievements.

Why It's a Celebration

  1. Not only it's a good way to celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary, but also to give a love letter to Disney fans everywhere.
  2. Almost every character from Disney Animated Studios makes an appearance. Not just Mickey and Minnie, but over 543 characters from the studio's works. Heck, Even Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt's project before Mickey!
  3. Splendid and spot-on voice acting, mostly from Chris Diamantopoulos as Mickey Mouse.
    1. Speaking of acting, they also managed to get actors who retired their characters back as well, including Jeremy Irons as Scar.
  4. The use of archived audio for certain characters (such as the Genie, Peter Pan and Thumper) is very well executed here.
  5. Beautiful 2D and CGI animation that blends beautifully with the live-action of the Walt Disney Animation Studios and helps the short feel both real and whimsical at the same time, making this Disney's most experimental project since Paperman and it shows with how amazing it looks overall.
  6. Iconic dialogue, that adds to the nostalgia factor to the short and serves as a massive love letter to past Disney films and their entire legacy of revolutionary content that helped the animation scene to stay relevant and become popular today, making the short just as timeless as their films.
  7. Some funny scenes that are worth the laugh like Flounder coming out and landing on Moana, the elevator scene, and Goofy falling down and smashing the camera.
  8. The scene where Mickey sees a portrait picture of Walt Disney with Feed the Birds playing in the background, was very heartwarming to watch and to understand the legacy the man that started it all built upon 100 years ago.
  9. Almost every character there sang the famous song When You Wish Upon a Star which was just beautiful.
  10. It was overall a great way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Disney Animation as well as its technical achievements, even better than Wish (though Asha appears in this short).

Bad Qualities

  1. Missed Opportunities: Several characters were significantly missing from the video -- mostly for works that aren't in the Disney Animated Canon -- such as the characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas, the characters from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, videogames like Kingdom Hearts characters, even from sequels animated like Aladdin Sequels, The Little Mermaid Sequel and Prequel, Mulan II, Pocahontas II, Bambi II, Return to Neverland, TV shows (including distirbuted) like Gravity Falls, The Ghost and Molly McGee, Amphibia, Kiff, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, The Owl House, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Pepper Ann, The Proud Family, Kim Possible, Pucca, Yin Yang Yo!, American Dragon: Jake Long, Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil, Phineas and Ferb, Recess (yes, we get it's for the feature films only from the last two series, but they are still part of the Disney Animation Industry too), and Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilms, Studio Ghibbli, Muppets and 20th Century Studios characters (though they are from separates companys, and they are still part of the Disney Animation Industry) and the most missed opportunity, Laugh-O-Grams including Alice Comedies characters including the REAL first character of Disney, Julius the Cat.
    • It's worth nothing that WDAS had no involvement in Roger Rabbit and he wasn't animated by Disney but by a Richard Williams' splinter unit in England.
    • Despite having several Lion King characters, Mufasa is nowhere to be seen nor is he mentioned, which may come across as jarring to some people. Especially since Scar appeared, but can be seen as mirroring the 2019 remake, which had James Earl Jones reprising his role as Mufasa while everyone else was recast, but in Once Upon a Studio, Scar appears and Mufasa does not.
  2. Chicken Little's cameo irked some viewers. While he may be a likable protagonist, the titular movie is one of Disney's weakest films. However that didn't stop characters from other weak or decisive Disney films like Pocahontas did appear too as well.
  3. While Huey, Dewey and Louie, and Chip and Dale did get animated at WDAS, they strangely enough, use their designs/color palettes from the 1987 DuckTales series and Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers instead, which were both done by Disney Television Animation as opposed to WDAS.

Videos

The full film:


The Reviews:

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