JBroadway said: "A lot of those older Disney movies feelvery different in their structure from how films (and most commercial musicals) are made today, and I think that's partly why they aren't go-to source materials for adaptations. The only pre-Renaissance Disney film to become a Broadway hit was Mary Poppins, which was obviously live action - and even then they had to largely re-structure it. I think artistic sensibilities have changed a lot since then, and while we can still look back fondly on those Disney classics, and respect them for the brilliant technical achievements they were,I would argue that most of them don't necessarily hold up from a storytelling perspective.
Structurally, the Disney Renaissance films felt more streamlined, more well-paced, and more 3-dimensional, which I think is part of the reason they adapt well to a commercial musical theatre setting. And of course, Ashman and Menken came from a musical theatre background, and they employed those sensibilities when writing the scores (and when other people took over writing the songs, they seemed to be following in Ashman and Menken's footsteps). In many ways, the musical scoresare the emotionalcores to these films. As opposed to the older films, where the animation was more of the central draw. And so obviously, the ties to the musical theatre form help the newer films translate more intuitively.
A large part of the success of the stage adaptions is that the songscarried sentimental value for the audience, while also carrying the emotional weight of the story.I'm just not sure the older films can quite say the same about their songs. Sure, we can name a lot of lovely, iconic songs from the older Disney films. But with few exceptions, those songs tend to be pretty pretty thin and generic from a lyrics/storytelling standpoint - which isn't to say we shouldn't love them, just that they were written for a different purpose, in a different time. And while some may disagree with me, I would also argue that the songs from the older films just aren't as iconic as the Renaissance songs (again, with some exceptions). I'd say songs like "A Whole New World" and"Circle of Life" are part of the cultural zeitgeist more than "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" and "Once Upona Dream."
Mary Poppins is a perfect counter-example to this, because the songs are incredibly iconic, and the do carry a lot of the storytelling weight. Which is why, I think, it's the only pre-renaissance Disney film to be successfully adapted to a large-scale commercial musical setting."
ALL THIS RIGHT HERE. The Golden Age classics are more "movies with songs" (great songs obviously), but not necessarily full blown musicals where the songs are part of the actual telling of the story. The classics are beloved for very good reason, but stage material they are not, for another set of reasons. We already have iconic musicals of Peter Pan and Cinderella so Disney doing their own would be too much. Disney doing their own Snow White...ummm, no one wants to see the problematic stories of sleeping princesses on stage. Again the movies are great on their own, and were mostly just retelling the famous fairy tale, but can you really see Disney's S.W. and/or S.B. on a stage even in a retooling to make these girls have their own agency? Just by being sleeping princesses makes it problematic for today.
Menken himself has said he can't see how Pocahontas would transfer although he didn't say why. Apart from translating the film to stage story wise, which for some reason, I don't think would work (it would be too much like the old 90's shows at the Parks perhaps?), putting an already unhistoric film on the stage I think would be borderline offensive. I love the movie on it's own, but that's it. Yes I know we have plenty of these kinds of musicals already, Newsies being one, but somehow that works of it's own accord...I still don't know why.
