A Walt Disney Production: “The Emperor’s New Groove”
Note: March 14 marked the 27th anniversary of the death of Howard Ashman, a musical theatre lyricist and librettist, as well as lyricist, producer, and writer at Disney Animation between 1986 and 1991. Howard was the first openly gay person to win the Oscar for best original song (Under the Sea from The Little Mermaid), and died from AIDS months before Beauty and the Beast was released. He helped create some of my favorite movies, and I feel lucky to have seen his work. That’s why I’m dedicating this month’s article to his memory. He wasn’t involved in any of the movies in this series, but without his contributions to Disney, some of them may never have been made. If you want to, you can donate to EFA here, or to the American Cancer Society in honor of David Ogden Stiers.
I must say, it was refreshing to see this one after Dinosaur. This is another one that my sisters and I grew up with, only this one we enjoyed a lot more. It’s one of the most universally adored movies with my age group, being constantly quoted and praised. It doesn’t have a whole lot of typical Disney hallmarks, but that’s part of what makes it so memorable. I was a toddler when it came out, so I was surprised to learn that upon its initial release, it was a financial disappointment for Disney, gaining a worldwide gross of $169.3 million on a $100 million budget. The studio had certainly had worse box office failures — even Pinocchio barely made back half its budget when it was first released in 1940 — and would have worse in the future, but coming off the heels of the Disney Renaissance, they had expected much better. Despite this, the film was well received by critics and later found success in its home media releases, leading to a direct-to-video sequel (as was par for the course at Disney in the 2000s) and a television spin-off. I won’t talk about these too much, but I will say that I had to turn off the former after about half an hour when I realized I was painfully bored with it, and while I remember the latter being much more entertaining, its drastically lower budget could be…distracting.
Background
The Emperor’s New Groove was pitched in 1994 as Kingdom of the Sun (later Kingdom in the Sun) by Roger Allers, co-director of The Lion King. The concept was far more similar to his previous film than it was to the final product, being envisioned as another epic musical with sweeping landscapes and a relatively serious tone. Owen Wilson was initially cast as the voice of Pacha, who was a teenage llama herder with a strong resemblance to Emperor Manco, leading to a Prince and the Pauper type story in which the two were to switch places. Pacha, being more compassionate and humble than Manco, would vastly improve the quality of life throughout the kingdom, as well as fall in love with Nina, the emperor’s betrothed. As in the final film, Yzma turned the emperor into a llama, ultimately forcing him to learn humility. Another major difference was that the emperor also had a love interest in a female llama herder named Mata. Yzma was also a witch rather than an alchemist, and aimed to destroy the sun in order to restore her youth. Eartha Kitt had already recorded a good amount of her dialogue, as David Spade had for Manco, and the former character had a similar design, but her lead animator, Andreas Deja (previously the lead animator for Gaston, Jafar, and Scar, among others), lost interest when her personality and motivations were changed in a total overhaul of the script (he would leave for Florida to animate another upcoming Disney film, which we’ll discuss in May). This occurred in 1998, when production had fallen behind due to elements of the story not working well together, poor responses from test audiences, and concerns due to lower box office returns from recent Disney films like Pocahontas and Hunchback. Much to the frustration of Roger Allers, it was decided that the project simply was not going to work the way it had been planned and would need to become more lighthearted in tone.
Allers left the project, which was now in the hands of his co-director Mark Dindal. Owen Wilson was dropped, as was Harvey Fierstein, who had been cast as Yzma’s henchman, a sentient rock named Hucua (similar in design to Kuzco’s palace in the final film). The characters of Nina and Mata were cut, Manco (which had an unfortunate similarity to a vulgar slang term in Japan) became Kuzco, and Pacha (now voiced by John Goodman) was aged up and given a wife and children. Hucua was replaced with Kronk, and the overall plot was changed to a buddy road trip comedy, keeping the idea from the original project of a commoner teaching a monarch to be kinder and rethink his priorities in life. Six out of eight songs written by Sting and David Hartley were deleted, leaving only “Perfect World” and “My Funny Friend and Me.” This infuriated Sting, but he was satisfied when three of the cut songs were added as bonus tracks on the film’s soundtrack. The first was “Snuff Out the Light,” Yzma’s villain song, which had already been recorded and produced in full, as well as partially animated. In my opinion, this was a sad loss for the film, and I recommend taking a look at it. The second was “Someday She’ll Love Me,” a love song between Pacha and Nina, recorded for the album by Sting and Shawn Colvin. This one is pretty strong, too, serving as inner monologues for Pacha, who is conflicted about concealing his identity, and Nina, who believes him to be the reformed emperor. Finally, there was “Walk the Llama Llama,” recorded by Rascal Flatts, which was a more comedic dance number in the vain of “Hakuna Matata,” explaining how llamas were crucial to Incan society. It would hardly have been Oscar-worthy, but it’s cute and uptempo, making for a nice listen. It’s evident that a lot of hard work went into these songs, as well as the original story, but the massive changes were ultimately for the best.
Positives
I’ll start with the obvious: this movie is hilarious. But I’m not here to look strictly at what the filmmakers did, but how they did it. So why is it hilarious? The primary reason is probably Mark Dindal. He was initially brought on to the project to bring some comic relief to Kingdom of the Sun, so when Roger Allers left, he put comedy at the forefront of the script. Of course, intending something to be funny doesn’t automatically make it so, but the writers and animators succeeded in this task by tightening the pacing of the film, utilizing quick and expressive character animation with a strong voice cast, and having a good grasp on anachronism. Unlike the TV spin-off, no one’s using computers or VCRs, but the grand landscapes and sets of Emperor’s New Groove are smartly juxtaposed by inhabitants who are never taken too seriously by the writers or each other, and whose dialogue is modern enough to the point that it’s funny to hear it in this setting, but not too much that it becomes pandering.
The characters are all well-rounded and likable (when they’re supposed to be), but nothing in the story is more complex than it needs to be. You feel for Pacha when he finds out Kuzco is going to destroy his village, but it’s not dwelled on too much aside from him bargaining with Kuzco to help him only if the planned development is built somewhere else. Really the only truly sad part of the film is the “All is Lost” moment when Kuzco, still in llama form, is left alone in the rainforest and has to face everything he’s done wrong. Even this scene is fairly short, just long enough for him to learn his lesson and reunite with Pacha the next day. Their friendship isn’t really one for the ages in my opinion, but they work well off each other, which can really be said for all of the principal characters. Even the villains aren’t too menacing; Yzma is evil for sure, but her being stuck with a hysterically incompetent and ultimately good-hearted henchman in a “Pinky and the Brain” style arrangement keeps her from ever being too scary. She also doesn’t seem that bad by comparison at the start of the film, since our main protagonist is also pretty detestable. When a movie fails at the “likable jerk” protagonist, it’s because the character gets away with everything, which Kuzco does to some extent within his palace. It works here because, throughout most of the film, Kuzco is being constantly challenged on his behavior and eventually forced to question if he’s had the right motivations up to this point. Setting a bratty teenager up against a middle-aged parent (whose kids are also infuriatingly funny, but I don’t want this article to get too long) was a clever setup, and really just what Kuzco needed.
Animation was the perfect medium for this kind of story, not just because of the transformation storyline, but because a lot of jokes are punctuated with quick visual details that couldn’t be achieved in live-action. The bit where Yzma has to brief Kronk on their next move while jumping rope with Pacha’s kids is already funny enough, but it’s made even better when she does a back handspring to get back to the table where Chicha is hosting her before she’s missed. As much as I love Eartha Kitt, I doubt she could have done that at her age in a long dress.With production on this movie having occurred in the late 1990s, there was some CGI used for certain effects and environments, but unlike the crowds in Hunchback or the Hydra in Hercules, it meshes much better with the hand-drawn animation. The animators also took advantage of the tools available using plenty of slapstick and absurd visuals with stylized character designs, in addition to grand landscape shots, some creative angles, and backgrounds that range from interesting to gorgeous. I suspect this is some “camera work” left over from Kingdom of the Sun, but it’s useful for this story too, and at times adds to the humor.
Negatives
The biggest issue with the film is the voice cast. Not that any of the actors are bad or don’t fit the characters; they all give wonderful performances, but this is a primarily white cast voicing South American characters. The only exception is Eartha Kitt, and while she was a person of color, she wasn’t Latina. This has been a subject of debate in the animation industry for quite some time, and social media has allowed for more accessible conversations about it. The problem isn’t as glaring as it would be in a live-action movie, but racially accurate casting has proven to be not only possible, but successful in recent animated films like Coco and Moana, while films that don’t utilize it are receiving more criticism. True that Emperor’s New Groove isn’t trying for historical or cultural accuracy in many respects, but the tone of the film doesn’t make it an exception to this, and even when it was in development as a more serious story, no Latinx actors were being considered for principal roles.
Another hitch in Disney’s representation of the Incas was the original ending of the film. Initially, Kuzco would agree not to tear down Pacha’s village as in the final film, but his alternative was to bulldoze a local rainforest and build “Kuzcotopia” there, inviting Pacha and his family to visit. While certainly a happy ending for the main protagonists, an environment in which the characters had spent a decent amount of time and that clearly had abundant wildlife was destroyed for a theme park. Especially coming from a large corporation like Disney, none of that should sit well with anyone. Sure, Kuzco would still have learned his lesson about the importance of friendship, but to paraphrase Sting, “If you’ve learned to be humble, you don’t need a theme park.” Yes, they changed the ending to one where Kuzco builds a small hut on the hill next to Pacha’s and takes a sloping waterfall over a manufactured waterslide (do not attempt). But the uncomfortable implications of destroying an indigenous people’s land for the purposes of reveling in excess and vanity are such that I can’t fathom how the writers thought this would be a good conclusion until Sting told them otherwise.
John Debney’s score throughout most of the film is underwhelming. I liked his work in movies like Elf and the live-action remake of The Jungle Book, but the only motif of his that stands out on this soundtrack is the one playing over the chase sequence in the third act. The rest I could swear was from Stuart Little. Sting’s end credit song “My Funny Friend and Me,” while not bad, doesn’t quite fit the movie’s tone. From what I understand, it was written for Kingdom of the Sun as a finale sung between Pacha and Manco, and it still fits Emperor’s New Groove lyrically, but it’s too slow to feel like a proper close to the movie. But the song is only in the credits, and “Perfect World” and its reprise worked well to bookend the film itself.
Any other problems are fairly minor. Kuzco is supposed to be turning eighteen the day after his transformation, but he’s never really read like a teenager to me (in the movie, at least — the show put him in high school, so I put it together then), and it being around his birthday is only mentioned briefly a couple of times. But then it does give a reason for him to want to build his summer home, thus setting up the conflict between him and Pacha, so it’s not any kind of glaring plot hole.
Final Thoughts
Kingdom of the Sun was an attempt from Disney to make lightning strike twice, but Lion King just wasn’t something that could be recaptured (we’ll see how it goes in 2019). Roger Allers had some interesting ideas for the movie, but if it wasn’t going to work, letting it go was the right decision. Had the studio gone ahead with the script as it was, the final product wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable. What the movie needed was an identity all its own, not just an amalgamation of tropes that had worked for them in the past. All the strongest elements of Kingdom of the Sun are in here, and maybe Allers could have saved it if he’d had another year or so, but Mark Dindal ended up making a great film out of a troubled production. The Emperor’s New Groove is as funny now as it was in 2000, and I’ve gained even more of an appreciation for it from looking at it as an adult. Learning what I have about film in the last couple of years has given a lot of movies the same effect; had I seen Wes Craven’s New Nightmare in high school, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it as much as I did when I watched it for the first time last year, and I definitely wasn’t as infuriated with the bland cinematography in the 2005 version of The Producers back then. As far as Emperor’s New Groove is concerned, it’s not quite an awe-inspiring Disney masterpiece, but it’s great entertainment with nice visuals and performances, and its post-theatrical success has proven that that’s all it really needed to be.
Originally published at miseensense.wordpress.com on April 16, 2018.
