Like a real-life equivalent of Wall-E’s corporate monolith, Buy n Large, Disney has hoovered up various rival studios to stand now as the proud owner of Lucasfilm, Pixar and Marvel. It is tempting to wonder if there may come a day when every movie in the multiplex comes stamped with the Mouse House’s logo, each instalment tenuously linked in some outward-spiralling cinematic universe.
Nowhere is this more in evidence than in the trailer for the latest Wreck-It Ralph movie, Ralph Breaks the Internet, in which our ham-fisted hero (John C Reilly) and his gutsy pal Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman) are sent on a mission into cyberspace. This brave new internet world rather resembles the one seen recently in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One: it is more like a well-lit, scrupulously polished cybermall than the grimy digital underworlds of so many 80s, 90s and 00s movies.
Disney does not (yet) own Google, so the “Search Bar” in the trailer is powered by Knowsmore. But the studio’s corporate tentacles do allow it to throw in Star Wars’ stormtroopers, Iron Man’s gauntlet and even the balloon-hoisted house from Up as Easter eggs for the eagle-eyed. And then there are the Disney princesses.
You may remember the controversy that arose in 2013 after a “glammed-up” version of Princess’s Merida from Brave was created in advance of her official induction into the Disney Princess Collection. The character’s creator, Brenda Chapman, stepped in to criticise the “atrocious” makeover, pointing out that Merida was created to “give young girls a stronger role model, not just a pretty face that waits around for romance”.
Perhaps that’s why Merida hovers in the background in the Ralph 2 trailer, while Snow White, Rapunzel and Elsa from Frozen get all the decent lines. The idea of Ralph and Vanellope, who prefers a hoody and slacks to fancy frocks, meeting the Disney princesses was always going to be tricky, but the encounter is deftly handled. The studio even has the guile to send up its own more sexist tropes, with Rapunzel suggesting Vanellope can only prove her royal blood if “people assume all your problems are solved when a big strong man shows up”.
While referencing its own inglorious past will not undo the best part of a century’s worth of gender stereotyping, at least Disney now has the courage to own its historical sexism.
A very similar gag to the one employed by Rapunzel appears in the trailer for The Lego Movie 2. But at least the studio seems to be entering a more conscious phase when it comes to its depictions of girls and young women, and that has to be a step forward. Perhaps at some point, these films will be able to dispense with the princesses entirely. But for now, it’s probably enough that Disney is content to cheerfully self-censor by trolling its own sexist past
