Disney’s gone off the deep end with their woke messaging and needs to focus on the building blocks of story, so says the director of several Mouse House classics.
John Musker — who directed the animated versions of “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin” and “Moana” — called out the content giant during an interview with El País … basically saying Disney’s gone overboard on getting their message across.
JM says, “I think they need to do a course correction a bit in terms of putting the message secondary, behind entertainment and compelling story and engaging characters.”
To be fair, Musker doesn’t call out making the movies woke by name … but, read between the lines and you can see he thinks his former employer got their priorities backward.
He even calls out the most recent adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” … telling EP he thinks the remake lost a little something when they played down the father-daughter dynamic — while blasting the CGI Sebastian the Crab.
John directed “The Princess and the Frog” BTW … and, he makes it clear he’s not saying diversity isn’t important in animation — just that creators shouldn’t sacrifice a quality script to check a few boxes.
As for the new Moana live-action film coming out … Musker says he’s got nothing to do with the flick — but, he hopes it turns out well.
Bottom line … Disney’s messages aren’t hitting for some people — including former collaborators!