The Rescuers (Disney film): Difference between revisions
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A series of two films in the [[Disney Animated Canon]] (#23 and #29). Two mice, Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor) and Bernard (Bob Newhart), travel around the world to "[[Spelling Song|R - E - S - C - U - E]]" cute human children while dealing with their own [[UST|unresolved sexual tension]]. The films were based on [[The Rescuers (novel)|a series of children's books by Margery Sharp]]. Loosely, of course--the only things that the movies and the books share are the protagonists' basic traits. Pick them up at the library if you really feel curious.
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In 1990, the film was followed by ''The Rescuers Down Under'', which has the dubious honor of being Disney's first animated sequel. Set in the Australian Outback, the [[Evil Poacher]] McLeach (George C. Scott) has kidnapped a young boy named Cody (Adam Ryen) in order to snare Marahute, an endangered eagle [[Giant Flyer|large enough to ride around on]]. Naturally, Bianca and Bernard must come to the rescue, with help from Orville's brother Wilbur (John Candy) and Jake (Tristan Rogers), the mouse equivalent to [[Crocodile Dundee]]. ''Down Under'' was also a pioneer in the use of CGI. Unlike the first film, which was a huge success, ''Down Under'' actually failed at the box office, making it the ''only'' true failure of the Disney Renaissance.
What makes both the movies interesting in a [[Real Life]] sense is how each came during a time when Disney was facing changing fortunes. The first was almost a reflection of how the Disney company was facing up to the death of its founder -- the late '70s Disney movies tended to be considerably darker than their forebears, reaching a nadir with the next movie, ''[[The Fox and the Hound (film)]]''. These movies both contained utterly gut-wrenching examples of [[Parental Abandonment]]. And Madame Medusa's casual nastiness towards Penny in the first movie ("What makes you think anyone would want a homely little girl like you?") comes up against the more outlandish behavior of any Disney villain in history simply because as a verbal shiv, to a freaking ''child'', it has no equal (well, [[The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney film)|maybe one]]). On the technical side, this film was the first Disney animated film to move away from the hard scratchy outline look that was the norm for Disney animation since ''[[101 Dalmatians|One Hundred and One Dalmatians]]'' thanks to improvements of xerography processing technology to allow a softer look.
In the case of the 1990 movie, Disney was facing a future with computer animation rapidly changing the state of the art. They used the movie as a test bed of their new CAPS coloring system -- instead of hand-painting cels, you could now use a computer program to color the animation. This saved a considerable amount of time and hand-drawn animation was now easier to integrate into CGI backgrounds and effects (and also allowed for extensive use of [[Cel Shading]]). In ''Down Under'', the test run of this system had mostly decent, sometimes amazing (especially during Marahute's flight), and sometimes mixed results. They had mastered it brilliantly by the time of ''[[Beauty and the Beast]]'', the following year.
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{{tropelist}}
* [[The Ace]]: Jake in ''Down Under''.
* [[Actually Pretty Funny]]
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* [[Cool Car]] / [[Cool Tank]]: McLeach's half-track.
* [[Covers Always Lie]]: The 1989 theatrical re-release poster has Rufus in the motorboat. Not once does he set paw in Devil's Bayou. Same goes for the Rescue Aid Society members in the same poster.
* [[
* [[Cowardly Lion]]: Bernard will always insist he is a lowly janitor; he stutters and can be a nervous wreck, but Bianca knows that if you present him with a challenge where people depend on him, ''nothing'' can stop him.
* [[Cross-Dressing Voices]]: [[Frank Welker]] voices the female eagle Marahute and McLeach's lizard, Joanna. (Of course, it's less suprising that the actor is a man than it is that the actor is ''human''.)
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* [[Dude, Where's My Reward?]]
* [[Drives Like Crazy]]: Madam Medusa. [[Stock Footage|In Cruella De Vil's car]], even.
** This becomes a bit of [[Fridge Brilliance]] when you consider she was originally intended to be Cruella De Vil.
* [[Eek!
* [[Evil Poacher]]: McLeach.
* [[Evil Redhead]]: Madame Medusa.
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* [[Evil Is Hammy]]: Geraldine Page as Medusa and George C. Scott as McLeach.
* [[Excessive Evil Eyeshadow]]: Madame Medusa.
* [[Expy]]: One early draft of the film cast [[101 Dalmatians|Cruella de Vil]] as the villain. Consequently, Madame Medusa bears more than a passing resemblance to her in both appearance and mannerisms, and she even drives the same car... just ''as'' insanely as Cruella did too.
** It's said that Penny was going to be in ''[[Oliver and Company]]'' {{spoiler|to show how she turned out after getting adopted}}, but they decided against it and renamed her Jenny.
** Interestingly; you can notice that Ursula in ''[[The Little Mermaid]]'' has some scenes with similar animation to Medusa.
* [[The Faceless]]: Cody's mom's face was never shown in the movie.
* [[Fed to the Beast]]: Mcleach tries to feed Cody to crocodiles in the climax of "The Rescuers Down Under"
* [[Five-Man Band]]:
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* [[Ignoring by Singing]]: In ''The Rescuers Down Under'', Frank the frill-necked lizard covers his ears and sings "Waltzing Matilda" when Krebbs the koala starts describing what the poacher is going to do to them.
* [[Inevitable Waterfall]]: {{spoiler|The site of the aforementioned [[Disney Villain Death]] in ''Down Under''.}}
* [[Interspecies Friendship]]: Involves mice talking to and befriending humans. The first even has a cat talking to and befriending both humans AND mice. The sequel also has Cody feeling very attached to Marahoute the eagle, though they can't communicate with each other.
* [[Ink Suit Actor]]: Wilbur bears quite a resemblance to John Candy in terms of facial features.
** Also, George C. Scott seems like the performance model of McLeach.
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* [[Mob War]]: The Rescuers
* [[Mouse World]]
* [[My Car Hates Me|My Swampmobile Hates Me]]: Medusa is not a very patient woman and she gets a brief dose of karma for this whenever her Swampmobile fails to start immediately, as shown during the scene when Penny escapes the boat. It's also played for drama when Penny tries to work it herself, but thanks to the critters, they are able to fix a sparkplug and get it working. This just goes to show that Medusa is not the greatest problem solver in the world.
* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: The villainess of ''The Rescuers'' is named Madame Medusa and her pet crocs are Brutus and Nero.
* [[Nice Hat]]: McLeach and Bianca.
* [[Nice Mice]]: Bernard and Bianca.
* [[Not Even Bothering with the Accent]]: Adam Ryen as Cody and George C. Scott as McLeach. Most of the animals in ''Down Under'' as well; only Jake, Krebs the Koala and a handful of kangaroos have noticeable [[Australian Accent|Australian Accents]].
* [[Panty Shot]]: Penny. Medusa's crocodile holds her upside down by them, then later she shows Bernard and Bianca the tooth-holes in them.
** Medusa has two: once when she's on the chair screaming about the mice and once when the fireworks are used as a diversion when Penny's starting up the swamp-mobile.
* [[Parasol Parachute]]: Bernard and Bianca in the first film, after Orville gets shot at with fireworks and spirals out of control
* [[Parental Abandonment]]:
* [[Parrot Expowhat]]:
{{quote|'''Mouse Doctor''': Bring me the [[Chainsaw Good|Epidermal Tissue Disruptor!]]
'''[[John Candy|Wilbur]]''': [[Oh Crap|The epidermal]] ''[[Big "What?"|what?!]]'' }}
* [[Pretty in Mink]]: Bianca in ''Rescuers'' as well as Medusa.
* [[Rebellious Prisoner]]:
** [[Plucky Girl]] Penny in ''[[The Rescuers (Disney film)|The Rescuers]]''. She talks back to Snoops, the mook put in charge of watching her when [[Big Bad]] Medusa is in New York, and tries to run away regularly. She also shows no fear of the alligators Brutus and Nero that are sent to fetch her. While she does cry in the privacy of her "bedroom", she keeps maintaining hope that someone will come help her. When Bernard and Bianca appear and says they got her [[Message in a Bottle]], she gains her spirit and helps brainstorm a plan of escape.
** Likewise, Cody in ''[[The Rescuers Down Under]]'' may be lacking in a few survival skills, due to outright accusing a man with a gun of being a poacher after falling into his traps instead of pretending to thank him and then running off to find the Australian rangers, but he is tough. He refuses to give up the location of Marahute or her eggs, even when threatened with a knife, and tries to rally the other captive animals in Macleach's compound that they need to escape.
* [[Reckless Gun Usage]]: For a poacher, McLeach does not handle his rifle properly, the first instance of this being when he uses it (already loaded and cocked, mind you) to pull Cody out of a trap.
* [[Red Eyes, Take Warning]]: McLeach figuring out how to [[Ransom|get Cody to hand over the eagle]].
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** ''The Rescuers'': ..."The Rescuers" and "Miss Bianca" by Margery Sharp.
** ''Down Under'': ...characters created by Margery Sharp.
* [[Surrounded by Idiots]]: Snoops is not as menacing as Medusa, nor is he as intelligent as her, but he seems to be more calm and mature than she is. Not that it doesn't stop her from calling him one a few times.
* [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]]: Wilbur. Justified in that Jim Jordan, who voiced the previous albatross Orville, died of natural causes.
* [[Talking Animal]]: It's left uncertain whether anyone other than Cody and Penny can actually understand the animals in the series.
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** Thirteen years passed between the theatrical debuts of the two movies, and ''Down Under'' ended up being the least successful movie of the Disney Renaissance.
* [[Together Umbrella]]: Miss Bianca and Bernard in ''The Rescuers''.
* [[Took a Level
* [[Trouble Follows You Home]]
* [[Underside Ride]]: In ''Down Under'', Bernard, Miss Bianca and Jake get under McLeach's truck to follow him when he goes after Cody.
* [[Urban Legend of Zelda]]: Rumors have popped up that the first movie is going to be re-released as part of the [[Special Edition|Platinum Edition]] line-up in 2013; so far, however, this has only been confirmed for Europe. Then again, that's still a couple of years away, so Disney might announce a Western release by then.
* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: "there goes my diamond!"
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** Yet another draft would have been rescuing a depressed poet from a prison.
** Early drafts of the movie also wanted to use Cruella de Vil as the original [[Big Bad]], but they decided not to as they deemed it would be confusing to use a familiar villain in an entirely different movie.
** Originally, ''[[Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (animation)|Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers]]'' was supposed to be a Rescuers TV series. Consider the [[Expies]]:
** Had Penny not been replaced with Jenny, ''[[Oliver and Company]]'' would have instead been Disney's first sequel/spin-off in the canon, preceding ''Down Under'' by two years.
* [[What Happened to the Mouse?|What Happened To The Australian Fauna?]]: In ''Down Under'', what happens to the rest of the animals caged up in McLeach's hideout? We never see them again after the second escape attempt, when Cody is taken away. Possibly intended and [[Lampshading|lampshaded]]: No-one returned for Wilbur or Marahute's eggs, either.
* [[Who Watches the Watchmen?]]: Penny has been doing way too many pranks that have got people ticked! So they decided to tell the world about her, and now the government... along with their appeal... is on a quest to figure out the true potential of Penny!
* [[Working on the Chain Gang]]: The Rescuers
* [[Would Hit a Girl]]: Subverted
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{{reflist}}
{{Disney Animated Canon}}
[[Category:Animated Films]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]
▲[[Category:Films of the 1970s]]
[[Category:The Rescuers]]
[[Category:Disney]]
[[Category:Films Based on Novels]]
[[Category:Western Animation of the 1970s]]
[[Category:Western Animation of the 1990s]]
[[Category:Multiple Works Need Separate Pages]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rescuers (Disney film), The}}
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