TANGLED

2010

Tangled is Disney animated features' 50th film. Loosely based on the Brothers Grimm tale of Rapunzel, the film marked the return of a couple of great Disney veterans like Glen Keane and Alan Menken. In fact Keane was the original director of the film and was in charge of its development since 2002 (this movie took a heck of a long time to be made and went through a lot of changes).
Originally called Rapunzel Unbraided, the film was going to be a more Shrek-esque version of the tale, but Keane wasn't happy with the story (thank God!) and the plot was scrapped and reworked.

In 2008 Keane had to step down as director and was replaced by Byron Howard and Nathan Greno who had recently done an incredible job bringing Disney back to life with Bolt in 2008.


And even if Keane could stay as the film's director, the biggest proof of his involvement in the project, I guess, is the design of Rapunzel, which seems so similar to Ariel's design. Something really cool to think of is that Ariel represented Disney's renaissance in 1989, while Rapunzel kinda did the same in 2010 when the studio was just recovering from a series of terrible movies.

Tangled also represented the start of an amazing career for Scott Watanabe and Victoria Ying, a couple of amazing Development artists. They were both trainees at Disney during the production of the film but, along with Claire Keane (responsible for the amazing art in Rapunzel's room) created some amazing moment paintings to explore what Rapunzel's world would feel like.

As I said, Alan Menken was also back at Disney to write the music for Tangled. After working on Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and many others, it was only good news that he was asked to write the original songs for this one.
And as usual, he did an amazing job at making the story even stronger with his great songs. This time they seem much more funny than usual, but as he did since 1989, he showed us that he's capable of writing great romantic songs.

Rapunzel really was an amazing way to start the decade for Disney (even more if you compare it with the previous decade's opener: Dinosaur). Its everything we want to see in a Disney film, relatable characters, amazing design, great songs and an overall incredible story.