Remember when things were normal? Think back to the time when everything just seemed to make sense, there were no “alternative facts,” words like “Bigly” didn’t exist and the biggest argument I had ever had was over whether pineapples grew on trees, or, as they do, on stalks (looking at you Anna Gramlich.) But nowadays there seems to be less consensus on just about anything and I’m getting sick and tired of people griping over Christmas coffee cups and absolute other nonsense. However, I have my own gripe to talk about and I hate to be “that guy” but I’m just going to go ahead a say it: I hate the new Mickey Mouse incarnation.
Seriously, what is this guys M-O? When Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks cooked up the little fella he was equal parts Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. You’d get the mischievous Chaplin Mickey endlessly tormenting quasi-evil Captain Pete by breaking all the laws of physics and nature. Then Fairbanks Mickey, swinging in, sword in-hand, to save Minnie from any number of perils to wrap up a delightful short.
But what in the name of Pluto’s black tail is Disney thinking with this new guy? Instead of the Chaplin/Fairbanks hybrid Mickey that I, my parents, and my grandparents grew up with, we have this new crudely drawn runt that seems equal part Johnny Knoxville and Justin Bieber. So I just have to say, what gives? Why do we need new crass Mickey. His voice is obnoxious and his episodes are crude and entirely without substance.
Where’s the Mickey hijinks and character I could relate to? I’m well aware there is an entirely new generation with new tastes and styles, but I will now join the endless chorus of older people with the opinion that younger people have horrible taste. Because they do. When Walt Disney started producing Mickey shorts he was a notorious dictator to his animators, everything, every frame, every movement and every ink-stroke had to be completely perfect.
Walt had a closet in his first California studio in which he’d drag his animators to watch each frame of an animated short, a routine they would all come to absolutely dread. Walt was not a mere perfectionist, he was a visionary. Each new Mickey had to do something new, something that hadn’t been done before. He broke new ground and Mickey blazed countless new trails in animation technology and entertainment altogether. So when I see these new Mickey cartoons come on, I’m aghast at how simple and rudimentary they all are. Where’s the innovation, the art, the feelings that Mickey used to give us? Who’s this new guy with crooked teeth and snot dripping from his nose?
Disney recently acquired another massive company, doing what Disney always does, cornering the market and making magic out of it. So what’s the incentive of making a Mickey that is this lame and forgettable? Call me snobbish, call me old fashioned, call me whatever you will, but don’t for a second tell me I have to accept this imposter. (Dons a Che Guevara beret) Viva la Mouse!
New Mickey Mouse might have old Walt Disney spinning in his grave
NEW NATHANIEL WOODWARD