Fantasia 2000 at 25: A Larger-Than-Life Experience

When Fantasia was released in 1940, it was truly one of a kind, even leaving aside any discussions of its quality. A two-hour animated feature film comprised of eight short films with no dialogue, set to different pieces of classical music, all hosted by an opera commentator is, whether you love it or not, the kind of thing studios just do not make. And naturally, when Fantasia’s initial release was over, it had done poorly at the box office. But Disney loves nothing more than its own legacy, so over time, Fantasia (which is as brilliant as it is daring and uncompromising) became successful enough to make Mickey Mouse in his Sorcerer’s Apprentice getup one of the most iconic figures of the studio’s century-long history. Fantasia was successful enough in its many re-releases and via home media that Walt Disney’s nephew Roy was able to push through a follow-up film, Fantasia 2000. Although Fantasia 2000 is less memorable than its predecessor, there was one way in which the film echoed its forebear. Just as Fantasia essentially spearheaded the use of stereo sound in movie theaters decades before theater owners were ready, Fantasia 2000 was presented in IMAX, before doing so was commonplace.

Walt Disney badly wanted the original Fantasia to be an event film, at a time long before multiplexes were the norm in major American cities. One of the ways in which he achieved this effect for Fantasia was via Fantasound, which was a particular method of recording the orchestra that would create a similar feeling for audiences who attended the film. But the peculiarities of this method of recording weren’t easy to adopt in movie houses of the era. When the film premiered in November of 1940, it did so via a 13-theater roadshow across the country, and 12 of those venues weren’t even movie theaters, just reconverted playhouses. The amount of money involved in setting these theaters up the right way meant that Disney would only recoup its handsome investment decades later due to frequent re-releases (not even until after the man himself passed away in 1966).

When Disney executives in the 1990s decided to send Fantasia 2000 to IMAX, the large-screen format was best known for showing documentaries about nature and outer space. But both Roy Disney and executive Dick Cook grasped that showing Fantasia 2000 in IMAX would bestow upon it that same event status. (And fortunately, unlike with Fantasound, they didn’t have to spend any additional money to retrofit theaters, since there were 75 IMAX theaters that could easily play the film every day.) If anything, it’s all to the better that Fantasia 2000 was given this sense of epic scope and scale. Fantasia is almost proudly unwilling to appeal to kids; outside of the iconic “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment, there’s not a ton that immediately seems meant to cater to children, as even the extended “Rite of Spring” sequence with the era of the dinosaurs is deliberately cold and unfeeling. Its sequel was different, and meant to appeal to all audiences.

The compare-and-contrast is easy enough. Fantasia has just one segment featuring a pre-existing Disney character; Fantasia 2000 re-releases “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” along with a new segment riffing on the Noah’s Ark story with Donald and Daisy Duck. Fantasia has no famous faces, just Deems Taylor as the aforementioned emcee. Fantasia 2000 has celebrity guests like Steve Martin, Bette Midler, the late Quincy Jones, and Penn and Teller. Fantasia is 126 minutes long (making it one of the longest American-made animated films); Fantasia 2000 runs merely 75. But what the two films do share is a clear sense that these are unique, distinctive events. It’s been 25 years since Fantasia 2000 premiered at Carnegie Hall, before rolling out at IMAX theaters across the country on New Year’s Day 2000, and Disney has yet to top its singular quality. You can watch these films on Disney+, but you can’t experience them correctly that way.

A quarter-century later, it’s worth noting what Fantasia 2000 did for IMAX as a whole. Unlike its predecessor, Fantasia 2000 did pretty well for itself, making nearly $65 million just on IMAX screens over a four-month period, before opening at regular theaters later in 2000. What audiences learned was the possibility of being dwarfed by the screen for the right film. Now, it’s become extremely common for mainstream movies to be shown in IMAX (including many films that weren’t filmed with IMAX cameras), from the upcoming Mufasa: The Lion King to a number of the Harry Potter films to just about everything directed by Christopher Nolan. IMAX was a viable format before Fantasia 2000 came along, but audiences didn’t quite pick up on how effective the large-screen style would be for fictional stories until this fusion of music and animation.

“Fantasia 2000” is streaming on Disney+.

Josh Spiegel is a freelance film and TV writer and critic, who you may also remember from his truly ridiculous March Madness-style Disney brackets on social media. His work has appeared at Slashfilm, Vulture, Slate, Polygon, The Hollywood Reporter, The Washington Post, and more.

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