Fantasia 2000 - Why Make Art?

Añadido: 2026-05-29

[00:00:00]In 2017, author Andy Weir was interviewed by Futurism, an online science focused magazine. Weir is best known for writing the books that the films The Martian and Project Hail Mary were based off of. And Tumblr certainly loves Scruffy Ryan Gosling and The Sentient Rock and the Hamster Polyhedron. In that interview, he was asked how he felt about social commentary in fiction. He replied, "I put no politics or social commentary into my stories at all. Anyone who thinks they see something like that is reading it in on their own. I have no point to make and I'm not trying to affect the raers's opinion on anything.

[00:00:34]With the release of the Project Hail Mary movie, this interview resurfaced and made the rounds online. On April 15th, 2026, we are set for another interview with some YouTuber and was asked to clarify his prior statement. In that interview, he made clear his objective as an author. I'm not trying to change society and I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion of anything. I firmly consider myself just an entertainer. I'm just writing stories to entertain. I'm not trying to set your opinion or change your mind on anything.

[00:01:02]When you're done with one of my books, I want you to put it back on the shelf and say, "That was cool. I enjoyed reading that." Is that Is that all art is? Is it just something to distract you for a couple hours before you go on with the rest of your day? Something to pass the time that doesn't otherwise affect your life in any way? Clearly, those Tumblrers didn't just put Project Hail Mary back on their shelf, there is a wealth of fan art and fanfiction and essays picking apart various aspects of the plot and the characters. So whether we intended it or not, he has done more than just entertain. Still, you will hear similar opinions, including in the comments of my videos, that books and movies are just entertainment and should only just be entertainment and that anything deeper than that is preaching and not worth your time. Often those same people will have Lord of the Rings art hanging on their walls or a Star Wars costume they wear to conventions or a Deathly Hollows tattoo. Clearly just entertainment they only engaged with at a surface level and never thought about ever again once they were finished.

[00:02:08]>> Sure, Jan.

[00:02:10]>> If art affects these people so much they get emblems from their favorite fiction injected into their very skin, why do they make this claim? Why assert so vehemently that art is purely entertainment? Because the opinions of that art usually is in fundamental disagreement with their own opinions and they don't want to think about that.

[00:02:33]Even the opinion that art only entertains is an opinion, a political opinion in fact. And the political opinions espoused in books and films tend to lean to the left. advocating for empathy and understanding, preaching nonviolence or environmentalism or antic-colonialism or even communism. But conservatives like watching movies, and if they only ever watched movies with a conservative bent, their options would be rather limited. So, they very publicly rant and rave about how film is purely for entertainment and has no further value, and who never look too deeply into what the filmmakers might be trying to say. They do not want voters watching a movie and applying the themes of it to their own lives. Otherwise, they might stop voting for conservatives. The reality is that all art is political, whether you like it or not. Even Weir himself has to engage with it from time to time, though perhaps accidentally. There was a passage from Project Hail Mary that got passed around Tumblr as an example of quote peak nerd internal monologue. I ask myself, how far is it from LA to New York? My gut answer, 3,000 miles. A Canadian would have used kilometers, so I'm English or American. Or I'm from Liberia. I know Liberia uses imperial units, but I don't know my own name.

[00:03:55]That's irritating. The fact that weird chose this particular example of to him meaningless trivia is very interesting to me. The units of measure that different countries use is very political. It is after all the governments of nations that choose what measurements their nation will use. And why is it those particular three nations that are still using imperial units?

[00:04:19]That system which uses pounds, miles, and gallons can trace its roots back to the Roman Empire. The word mile derives from the Latin term millipasus, a thousand paces. And the Romans were a conquering folk and spread their units along with their language. And both of those systems survived Rome's collapse, transforming to better fit the local cultures. When the Normans, who spoke a Romance language, conquered England, they brought with them their version of that Roman system of units, which evolved over the next thousand years into their current form. When Great Britain colonized the Americas, those units crossed the Atlantic with them.

[00:04:56]But soon after the United States declared its independence, France adopted a new system based around the number 10, the metric system. Given that most of the world counts in base 10, a decimalized measurement system is much easier to calculate in and pretty quickly was adopted by the rest of the world except for the United States, though not for lack of trying. The official policy of the US by act of Congress is that we should be using the metric system. But in practice, we continue to use the imperial system largely because corporations have lobbied against full metric implementation because that would cost them money. And corporations hate things that cost them money. These corporations bribe politicians who keep metrication from being mandatory. Thus, this supposed throwaway joke is in reality quite political. As for Liberia, it uses the imperial system because it started out as a United States colony. That's right. The US joined the scramble for Africa because they wanted somewhere to send their freed slaves. At the time, a lot of abolitionists, including Abraham Lincoln, believed the most humane thing to do was send black freedman back to Africa, back to a continent they had never seen, speaking languages they did not know. Of course, there was a bit of white supremacism in there as well, wanted to keep the United States as homogeneous as possible. But when those freed African examericans landed in Africa, they weren't met with empty jungle. But the people who still lived there, those indigenous, now Liberians were treated as secondclass citizens by the black colonizers who called themselves Americans.

[00:06:46]Essentially repeating in miniature what England had done in the centuries before in the Americas. Then those new colonizers brought with them the English language and the English system of measurement which they imposed upon the natives who outnumbered them. Now all of this would be evidence enough to refute Weir's thesis of being apolitical. But it reaches the level of pure irony when you learn that in 2018, 3 years before Project Hail Mary was published, Liberia adopted the metric system. So not only was Andy wrong, he was also wrong. and may God have mercy on your soul.

[00:07:22]>> Perhaps the main reason why Andy Weir's interviews have stuck in my cross so much is because they reminded me of a quote attributed to Michael Eisner from an internal memo from back when he was still president of Paramount. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make a statement. But to make money, it is often important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant statement. We must always make entertaining movies. And if we make entertaining movies at times, we will reliably make history, art, a statement, or all three. As Lindseay Ellis once said, "This might be the most 1980s thing ever written. Yet to me, it is strangely more encouraging than Andy Weir's opinion. Eisner is a businessman, and this quote of his is astoundingly cynical and opportunistic. He is focused entirely on what will make him and his shareholders the most money. But he acknowledges that making actual good art is a pretty reliable way to make money.

[00:08:21]So while his heart is very much not in the right place, the outcome is still good art. The point of a system is what it does. He at least recognized that what makes a movie entertaining is usually the statements that it makes. A film that has been surgically constructed in a hermetically sealed laboratory, completely divorced from any realworld opinion so as to appeal to every possible demographic, would be the most boring piece of DRE ever made.

[00:08:50]>> This is a revolution, damn it. We're going to have to offend somebody.

[00:08:54]>> The films of the Disney Renaissance are so well remembered because they all had something to say. Even Pocahontas was trying to get people to rethink the history of the United States, even if the way it did so was bad. But all things must eventually end. And as the new millennium approached, the Disney studio realized that audiences were getting a little tired of the princess musical formula. And honestly, so was the studio themselves. So they started to try new things, new stories, new genres, new art styles, even new media.

[00:09:22]And that's why this new epoch of the studio's output is called the experimental era. And perhaps the biggest experiment of all was Fantasia 2000. Its predecessor was one of Walt's original experiments. easily his riskiest, which in the short term unfortunately did not end up paying off.

[00:09:39]However, as the decades progressed, the public esteem for the original Fantasia only rose. By the time it was released on VHS, it was widely regarded as a masterpiece, not just of animation, but film as a whole. Walt had originally envisioned Fantasia as a perennial piece, changing with the years, adding new segments to replace old ones, essentially becoming a cultural institution. While its initial box office failure nixed that particular scheme, animators and storyboard artists would periodically come up with their own ideas for possible new segments. But it wasn't until the 1990s that an actual attempt to make another Fantasia film was taken seriously. This time shephered by Walt's nephew, Roy E. Disney. Now, why was Roy so keen to make this film?

[00:10:22]After all, he was the one who suggested to Michael Eisner that they do it, much to the annoyance of Jeffrey Katzenberg, who didn't think a second Fantasia would go anywhere. Let's put a pin in that.

[00:10:32]Roy himself is neither an artist nor a musician, even admitting in an interview that he can't draw. Despite that, he was animation's greatest champion, making sure that the Disney studio continued to produce animated films even during the hostile takeover, which he himself had invited. And part of that, for some reason, included making a new Fantasia.

[00:10:53]While it's notion of Fantasia as a continuing work in progress always stuck with me, I kept thinking, one of these days, we ought to do that. As far as I can tell, the only reasoning Roy E has ever given is that, well, Walt wanted to do that, but never was able to during his lifetime, so I should do it. Purely a desire to continue a family legacy to honor a dead uncle. Roy wanted to make art because Walt wanted to make art. I wonder if Roy ever wondered why Walt wanted to make art. I'm sure I won't revisit that question near the end of this video. At any rate, if you're going to do a Fantasia, the first thing you need is a conductor/arranger. Someone who knows the music and can wrangle your orchestra. Originally, Michael Eisner tried to get Leonard Bernstein, which would have been amazing, but unfortunately, he died in 1990. God, imagine a Fantasia conducted by Bernstein. I want to live in that timeline.

[00:11:48]>> I'd be so happy.

[00:11:50]>> Oh well, they had to settle for the next best thing, which turned out to be James Levine, then the conductor for the Met.

[00:11:55]>> So Tom Schumacher and myself went back to New York and went to the Met at noon between two rehearsals of whatever he was doing at the time.

[00:12:03]>> Just shows how much Roy cares about music that he didn't even bother to remember what opera Levine was conducting. Anyway, they told him their idea and Levine was on board, even if that meant having to rearrange or even trim down famous pieces of classical music. Initially, the film was to be titled Fantasia Continued. But as work progressed and the release date kept getting pushed back, they settled on Fantasia 2000 to celebrate the turning of the millennium. As with the original, the idea was to string together several shorts set to well-known music with some narration in between to act as both guide and pallet cleanser. Rather than the original singular narrator in Dems Taylor, Roy and company instead got a bunch of celebrities to make cameos, some of which are more appropriate than others. These live action bits were directed by Don Han, who had produced a couple of the Renaissance films.

[00:12:49]Building on the indigo void of the first Fantasia here, the orchestra is now an outer space surrounded by stars and coils of interstellar gas, which honestly feels quite appropriate. One of the better decisions made for this movie. Since Fantasia number one gave the world stereo sound, Roy and Thomas Schumacher wanted to have their own gimmick. So, they decided to have Fantasia 2000 be the first animated film on IMAX. Why?

[00:13:14]>> The screen is big. I remember there being a whole bunch of ads at the time about it being in IMAX, but I don't think I ever got to see it in that format. Oh well, let's take a look at what they thought needed such a big screen, shall we?

[00:13:27]>> You know me, I'm a sucker for the sound of an orchestra warming up.

[00:13:33]After a brief recap of Deems's opening spiel from the original, Levine leads the orchestra immediately into perhaps the single most famous piece of music in Western culture, the first movement of Beethoven's fifth.

[00:13:47]The visuals directed by Pishot Hunt are a mixture of traditional and CGI animation and are deliberately evoking the Takata and fugue. Some shots are just straight up duplicates. The difference is this segment is not purely abstract. There has to be some emotional chain in it that emotionally carries you along in some way or another. We have these colorful paper butterflies that get attacked by evil black paper birds which are driven back by a rainbow. And it's less than 3 minutes long.

[00:14:19]Now granted, older symphonies tend to repeat sections, and I can understand not wanting to repeat the exact same music over again, but even nixing that, this adaptation cuts a further 2 minutes of music out of the movement. And then this is but the first movement of a four movement pole. And those other three movements have gorgeous passages of their own. I would have loved to see the entire symphony given this treatment, but instead we are limited to this brief three minutes. What James Levine called the right three minutes. It's like that joke from the Simpsons where the whole town gets dressed up to listen to Beethoven's fifth and then they all leave after the opening bars because that's the only part they care about.

[00:14:56]Except this isn't a joke. This is what Disney actually did.

[00:15:01]>> Sounds better on my cell phone.

[00:15:04]>> The original Fantasia included the entirety of Beethoven's sixth symphony with a few repeats removed, but still clocking in at over 20 minutes of animation. The Takata and Fugue, which this segment is such a blatant homage to, was just under 10 minutes. This segment flies by so fast that when it ends, you're left thinking, "Wait, where's the rest of it?"

[00:15:24]>> Lisa, I want some more. Oh, well, here's Steve Martin making some quick jokes before the next piece.

[00:15:31]>> All right, boys. Oh. Oh, sorry. Could I have another stick thingy, please?

[00:15:35]>> Riki's Pines of Rome was headed by Hendel Buto, who was hired after his work on The Rescuers Down Under, and it is perhaps the best remembered part of this movie with its CGI flying whales.

[00:15:45]It is the second longest segment of the film, but even here, cuts were made to the music. Significant portions of the third and fourth movements were trimmed out, and the second movement was removed entirely. Now, some of this I understand, like the recording of a literal bird that's supposed to be at the end of the third movement, night andale chirps would kind of clash with the animator's vision, but in all, only half of Ruspiggi's original work is brought to the screen. That said, the effect is spectacular. The sight of the humpaxs rising out of the Arctic water while the brass section titters is one of the most arresting images in the entire cannon.

[00:16:25]And I love how this segment sits kind of neatly between narrative and abstract.

[00:16:30]We have defined characters in the whales with the baby getting briefly separated from its parents, but there isn't really a cohesive story beyond a whale rapture.

[00:16:38]The piece operates on a dream logic with the behemoths cresting through layers of clouds which in turn become icebergs and once again the surface of the water. 10 out of 10 would watch again. Next up is Rap City in Blue by George Gershwin, helmed by Eric Goldberg, along with his wife Susan, who served as art director.

[00:16:54]The two based the style off of the caricatures of Al Hersshfeld with his blessing >> and stay away from taxiderermy and try to anatomically reproduce the human figure because in that way lies madness, I think.

[00:17:07]>> Tell that to Glenn Keane. As with every segment in this film, cuts were made to the music, but here it's much less noticeable. There's actually a quote from Leonard Bernstein. Rapsidian blue is not a real composition in the sense that whatever happens in it must seem inevitable or even pretty inevitable.

[00:17:22]You can cut out parts of it without affecting the whole in any way except to make it shorter. You can remove any of these stuck together sections and the piece still goes on as bravely as before. You can even interchange these sections with one another and no harm done. You can make cuts within a section or add new cadenzas or played with any combination of instruments or on the piano alone. It can be a 5-minute piece or a 6-minute piece or a 12minute piece.

[00:17:44]In fact, all these things are being done to it every day. It's still the Rapsidian Blue.

[00:17:55]Eric Goldberg had been wanting to make a piece of animation to go along with the Rapin Blue for years, and in fact, it was in development as its own project before Roy decided to bundle it into Fantasia 2000. It's very clear that this segment was a labor of love that the Goldbergs knew exactly what they wanted to do with Gershwin's iconic music. They masterfully weave together four different stories dancing past each other in New York City. A girl just wanting her parents to pay attention to her. A young man dreaming of playing jazz and making it big. A middle-aged schlub just wanting a job to pay for his daily coffee. And a henpecked husband who wants to be free of his doineering bitchw wife. Unlike Milt Call funneling all his pentup bitterness into Madame Medusa as a caricature of his ball and chain, the Goldbergs have been happily married for decades. So, this does not seem to be pulling from real life experience. I guess Eric just really liked that particular story trope.

[00:18:47]Though, it's very funny to me that like with Snoops, husband here is visually based off of journalist John Khane. Wild how coincidences happen sometimes.

[00:19:01]The only flaw I can find in this inspired pairing of animation and music is not really any fault of its own, but of context. Neither the original nor 2000 feature any music by black composers. When Disney decided to include a piece of jazz music, this would have been a perfect opportunity to rectify that lack of representation. And instead they went with the one white jazz composer everyone knows. You could have featured Duke Ellington or Fats Waller who in addition to popular songs also wrote instrumental pieces that would have been perfectly at home in Fantasia. You could have featured James P. Johnson, the guy who wrote the [ __ ] Charleston. In response to Gershwin's popularity, he composed his own rap city, Yamocra, which he felt was more authentic to the black experience and its slaps.

[00:19:52]But to me, the biggest emission is Scott Joplain, composer of the Maple Leaf Rag, The Entertainer, and so many other iconic pieces. I will in fact be digging more deeply into Joplain in a later video, so keep an eye out for that. I also have issue with whoever condescendingly wrote this line, >> George Gershwin, who took jazz off the streets, dressed her up, and took it to the concert hall.

[00:20:16]>> What that line is clumsily trying to get across is that Gershwin married the sounds of black jazz to the practice of the white western orchestra. But the man saying it is Quincy Jones, himself, a music producer and composer. In addition to producing some of Michael Jackson's biggest hits, including Thriller, he wrote the scores to many movies, including the original The Color Purple, The Italian Job, and In the Heat of the Night. He was nominated for seven Oscars and won an Emmy for writing the music for the miniseries Roots. Disney were able to get a black composer to talk up the music written by a white composer and played by the white pianist sitting next to him. but couldn't be bothered to actually feature any music by such a black composer. Again, to be clear, this is not a knock against the rapsidian blues segment itself. It is brilliant.

[00:21:10]It is a lament for what we could have had in addition. Following this is the most recently written piece in the program, Shastikovich's piano conerto number two, the first movement, paired with the Hans Christian Anderson tale, The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Now, some people get pissy that Disney changed it to a happy ending. I'm fine with that.

[00:21:29]Hans really needed some therapy or maybe just a [ __ ] And honestly, this first movement pairs surprisingly perfectly with that story. I don't even know what could have been done with the second movement. Maybe tell another one of his fairy tales. Anyway, this piece was my introduction to Shastikovich as a child, and he has since become one of my favorite composers.

[00:21:49]The visuals came from concept art by Bianca Maji, the first woman to be a storyboard artist for Disney. Her artwork had been sitting in an archive until Roy and director James Algar started rooting around for story concepts. All of the characters were rendered digitally. And in fact, all that animation was done before the release of Toy Story. The more I learned about the making of this movie, the more it seems like a not quite properly funded side project done during the animator's spare time, which is why it took so long to make. This might be my favorite segment, and it's probably the only one that I don't wish was longer.

[00:22:23]It lasts exactly as long as it needs to.

[00:22:26]Speaking of wishing it were longer, Sass's Carnival of the Animals, but just the finale. This segment is less than 2 minutes long. I'm probably going to spend more time talking about it than the actual run time it takes up. Like every other comic Disney animal in the '9s, this can be blamed on Joe Grant, who had the idea of what if the ostriches from Dance of the Hours had a yo-yo? And honestly, to Joe's credit, that idea is pretty much in line with the original music. The Carnival of the Animals, true to its name, is essentially a collection of musical jokes replicating kangaroos hopping or hens clucking or one movement where the clarinet plays the same two notes over and over again to mimic a cuckoo.

[00:23:12]The turtles movement is just the can can played very slowly.

[00:23:21]This should have been a match made in heaven. Different little animal skits for all the little movements. Honestly, it didn't even have to be all. Just five or six would have been enough. But apparently, Eric Goldberg only had juice enough in him for the finale. The ostriches became flamingos and we have this charming little number that you will totally miss if you decide to check your email on your phone while it's happening. To be blunt, my favorite part of this segment is James Earl Jones introducing it.

[00:23:47]Who wrote this?

[00:23:48]>> We then get Pen and Teller introducing something we've already seen. Yep, it's just The Sorcerer's Apprentice again.

[00:23:55]They didn't even re-record the music.

[00:23:57]It's the same track from 1940. Yes, I understand that this is what Walt initially wanted with Fantasia being eternally in theaters and segments rotating in and out. But that's not what happened. Fantasia is not a cultural institution. It's not a ride at Disneyland. It's not playing on Broadway for you to ask, "Oh, who's playing the Phantom tonight?" It is a movie that I can watch at home whenever the [ __ ] I want. This entire film was funded by the profits from the original's home video release. So, this is something Roy was fully aware of. If I want to watch The Sorcerers Apprentice, which is amazing, don't get me wrong, I will watch Fantasia, the first one. If I'm watching something called Fantasia 2000, I want to see new [ __ ] You know, Disney Villainist, as I was writing this script, Robinsburgger, the publisher, announced a new set called Darkness Brewing. They're billing it as an introductory box that someone who's never played the game before might be compelled to purchase. And for that reason, it includes one new villain and three villains that you can find in other boxes. Not even the same box, different boxes. It's a milange. Now, that might make a fine product for someone who's never played before and will only play that box a couple times.

[00:25:06]But if that person wants to play more of the game, eventually they're going to be faced with the prospect of buying an expansion that contains villains they already own, and they will need to weigh the cost benefit of spending all that money just to get the one or two villains in that box that aren't already in their collection. And never mind that this is an all-around horrible proposition for an existing player who is not going to want to drop 30 bucks to get three villains they already own just for the chance to try out the Sanderson sisters from Hocus Pocus. That's what putting the Sorcerers Apprentice into Fantasia 2000 feels like to me. It's almost buil as an intro movie to the idea of Fantasia with a little teaser of something from the original, a gateway drug if you will. But eventually that person's going to sit down and watch the original Fantasia and they're going to get to Mickey and the Brooms and it's going to be very familiar to them. It'll be good to see it in its original context, but it won't be something new.

[00:26:00]And that's the other problem. The Sources Apprentice is no longer in its appropriate context in 2000. It's the wrong aspect ratio. It's not just a different orchestra, but an entirely different method of recording the music.

[00:26:11]While the sleek computerenerated colors of the rest of the segments mesh very well with each other, Mickey here is in oil paint on celluloid. That's not bad.

[00:26:20]It's just different. And that difference is jarring. And thirdly, Yen Sid diddling a hallucinated butterfly means that there is not a new piece of animation here for me to watch. Some other piece of classic music could have been highlighted. Oh, and postcript, The Sorcerer's Apprentice was the shortest segment in the original Fantasia. In 2000, it's the third longest.

[00:26:43]Immediately following the nostalgia trip is perhaps the very reason why it was included. Donald Duck starring in Pomp and Circumstance. As Levine exposits while Mickey hunts down his co-star, Edward Elgar's suite of marches is best known, and honestly before this film, only known for being played at graduations. And for boomers like Doug Walker, who attended a graduation before watching this movie, this is the context they will be bringing with them into this segment. I did not have that context. Donald as the coordinator for Noah's Arc was the first time I heard this music.

[00:27:20]So, whenever I attend a graduation, I think of Donald having an existential crisis seeing realistic ducks.

[00:27:25]Apparently, it's played at graduations because it was played at the Yale commencement of 1905 where Elgar was being awarded an honorary doctorate and it stuck. Although, hilariously, it doesn't get played at Yale anymore because once everyone else was doing it in 1950, that prestigious Ivy League institution decided it had become too common and started using other pieces.

[00:27:48]Well, as with every segment in this movie, this piece has been heavily trimmed down, ARRANGED BY PDQ BACH. OH, WELL, I'm glad Elgar is not around to tell us whether he's happy or not. For those of you who don't know, Peter Shaquille, better known by his pen name, mostly writes satirical pieces and musical jokes. My favorite of his is the Abbasunatada, where the joke is the accompanying pianist, is late, so the bassoonist has to play both parts, and by the end, the bassoonist is just [ __ ] slamming their ass down on the keys.

[00:28:22]Anyway, he did a fantastic job rearranging the first four marches into a cohesive soundtrack for Donald's Antics. It's a fun segment.

[00:28:35]What is less fantastic is the original idea Michael Eisner had for this piece, a procession of Disney princesses presenting their babies. You can watch a storyboard mockup here on YouTube. It is insane. Filled to the brim with cameos all bowing and scraping to the brand's fictional royalty. It might be the single most masturbatory thing to have ever been produced by this company, including Wish and Once Upon a Studio. I thank happen stance every single day and night that this idea was nixed in favor of Donald playing Sunday school.

[00:29:11]Apparently, the main reason why this version died was because someone realized it was implying that Disney princesses had sex. Well, we're already at the last segment, the Firebird Suite by Igor Stravinsky. One final time, a piece that normally runs more than 20 minutes has been trimmed down to nine.

[00:29:29]That said, the animation supervised by the Breitzy Twins is gorgeous. The idea of basing it on the eruption of Mount St. Helens was Royy's, and Paul and Gayan bring it to life beautifully.

[00:29:43]To date, the titular Firebird is the only character from this film to make it into Lorcana. A testament to its impact, I suppose. The segment as a whole feels like an homage to Bambi, using a similar color palette and setting. A deer being the sprite's assistant certainly helps with the comparison, as does the wildfire caused by the eruption. It's a thrilling piece with a theme of death and renewal being a timeless one, and Stravinsk's music, even abridged, remains iconic.

[00:30:13]But now the credits are rolling. It's already over. Clocking in at only 74 minutes, Fantasia 2000 is one of the shortest entries in the entire cannon.

[00:30:23]The original Fantasia ran for almost twice that at over 2 hours. Even the wide release theatrical version of it where they cut the Takata and all of the Deans Taylor intros is longer. It's shorter than the theatrical cut of Make Mine Music by 30 seconds. I genuinely enjoy every single segment from this film. And yet, when it ends, I'm always left with a bit of disappointment. Is this it? You had 60 years to make this film. 60 years. If we're only counting active production time, that's still 8 years. That's more time than was spent on Sleeping Beauty. The original was made in half that time. I mean, if we don't count the sorcerers apprentice, Disney did it in 2 years. Two years. 2 years to make the 20 minutes of right of spring, the 20 minutes of the pastoral symphony, the nutcracker sweet, the takata infugue, the dance of the hours, the night on bold mountain, the teenytiny multiplane camera work for the a Maria that they finished the literal day of the film's premiere. Ignoring Mickey and all the new interstitials, the original animation featured in Fantasia 2000 clocks in at less than an hour. What was Roy doing for 8 years?

[00:31:31]Was this film made in a closet with a budget of $3? Then why was it build as this grand followup to one of the greatest films ever made? Where's the beef? It's like going to a restaurant and only receiving an appetizer. That appetizer might be delicious, but you need more than just mozzarella sticks to satisfy your appetite. At least Fantasia 2000 replicated the original's box office disappointment, making this film the first in the cannon to bomb since The Rescuers Down Under.

[00:32:02]So, why was it made? Why was this art made? Why was Roy so eager to make such an inferior follow-up to such a now beloved film? There was a Tumblr post I saw but now cannot find lamenting art that praises its own medium. One big reason why people hated the Game of Thrones show ending so much is because the showrunners decided to jerk themselves off about how important storytelling was. In order for a medium of art to be taken seriously, it has to do something other than masturbate. The Artist was a silent film about how no one makes silent films anymore. Just like how Mel Brooks made a silent film about how no one makes silent films anymore. You know, you can just make a silent film, right, about literally any topic. This is like making a musical about making musicals. This play is got the clothes on page four.

[00:32:50]>> Okay, maybe that one worked. Bad example. The point I'm trying to make is if all a medium is used to do is make meta commentary on itself as a medium, then it is no longer a relevant medium for art, some meta commentary is fine, but it can't be only meta commentary.

[00:33:07]Fantasia 2000 is a Fantasia that exists to promote the idea of Fantasia. The interstitial cameos all gush about how great the first one was and how what they're doing now is so important, carrying on such a significant legacy.

[00:33:21]If it were really that important, you wouldn't have to keep saying how important it is. Which brings us back to the original question. Why make art?

[00:33:31]>> The great painter has something to say.

[00:33:34]He does not paint men, landscapes, or furniture, but an idea.

[00:33:39]>> Walt, unlike his nephew, was an artist.

[00:33:42]For all his ill treatment of his employees and his inability at times to empathize with others, he was at his core an artist. Making films was his job. That's how he made money. And he was pretty good at making money. But he didn't make art just to make money. He made art because he wanted to make art.

[00:33:59]He made art because he had something to say. He wasn't just an entertainer. Now, your something to say doesn't have to be something deep or philosophical. It can be something as simple as asking, "What if whales could fly?" But it has to be something you want to say. And I don't think Roy E. Disney ever really understood that. I think the animators he gathered together to make their individual segments understood that.

[00:34:22]Again, I enjoy each and every one of them. But at the end of the day, for this kind of project, that's just not enough. Your passion can't just be continuing someone else's passion. It has to be yours. Anything new.

[00:34:44]>> The original Fantasia was trying to do something new. Walt and his animators wanted to make something the world had never seen before. And working with Stokovsky, they showcased new music. The right of spring was just over 20 years old at the time. By contrast, Fantasia 2000 looks back. It is concerned with the old. The only piece of music it features that was written after its predecessor's premiere was Shastikovich's piano conerto from 1957.

[00:35:11]It was more than 40 years old when that film premiered. But as I pointed out in my video of the original Fantasia, there have still been classical composers in the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st. But apart from film composers, most people have never heard of them. Part of that is the increasing unwillingness of modern orchestras to showcase new composers. Part of it is the increasing cultural irrelevance of those orchestras, but perhaps the main reason is that they haven't had a Fantasia to feature them. Stravinsky is remembered today because Walt's artists drew dinosaurs to his music. If Disney ever gets it into their heads to make a third Fantasia, they will need to feature newer composers, 21st century composers, or at the very least a composer who isn't white or isn't a man.

[00:35:57]Otherwise, such a project will be doomed to the same failure as its predecessors.

[00:36:02]>> Where would we be today if that picture had been as successful as Walt had hoped it would be?

[00:36:07]>> I started this journey through the Disney cannon just over 2 years ago. I didn't do so with the intent of making money, though I'm now trying to make at least part of my living from doing so. I did it because I have so many thoughts about these films and I feel compelled to share them. That might be arrogance, but I'd like to think of it as passion.

[00:36:25]And along the way, I've shared my thoughts not just on these movies, but on philosophical questions, matters of science and history. I've been able to educate thousands of viewers, not just on the history of animation, but a wide variety of other subjects. And going by the majority of the comments I get, it seems I have an audience. There are people who are interested in what I have to say. Is a video essay art? I'll let you all be the judge of that. But in the meantime, before I indulge in too much meta commentary, I'm going to keep following my passion, and I hope you'll join me. As ever, I am artistically grateful to my Patreon patrons, including but not limited to Jinx KB, Savannah, Mighty Zebra, Tony Hast, Bewilder, Eye, Jeko, Sugar Cubed, Glider, Lord Christine, Andrew T, Agent Shifter, Husky Trent, Lemon Lamb, Laura, Aspedites, That Gay Duck, Sugar Snap, Kaye, Pandora, the Omnipresent, Gild, a Gilded Dragon, The Art Gremlin, Acorn Hunter, Roxan, Gilling, Jacob Sheller, Slayer by Proxy, Cat, Brandon, Ferrar, Lindsy B, Wolf, Msubi, Dizzy, Des, M.Rock, Rock CC Runner TJ JC Alexandre Sam MF Ramirez Heffy Boy Luke Prindavville Fredo Alvarez Haunter Lord Dre Gabrielad Banana for scale Durkaderk Renpo Tammy Poetris Zendicari Spark Mage the Sputter Pixie Sticks Nyx Beck Yorgi Meanie Lin Ghost Dylan Many Burning Box It's a Smitten Duo Sparky Wolf Parky Sharky Henry Hyde Tally Marmalade Bianca Champagne and Alice Cordova Potter. This content is sponsored by viewers like you. It's only five bucks a month or 10 if you want me to say your name at the end here. I've also announced some patron stretch goals at which I will make some fun music videos. I also have a Discord server. Feel free to head on over and get chatting with other members of this growing community if that's your jam. Either way, join me next time as we ponder extinction and survival with Disney's first CGI feature, Dinosaur.