The end of the 2D feature sequels played a part in the closing of Disney's satellite studio in Australia. Cinderella III was the final movie made there, and director Frank Nissen gives high praise to the studio's diligence and care.

Even Cinderella III's closing credits reflect DisneyToon's gratitude in the form of an unusual acknowledgement:

"Special thanks to DisneyToon Studios Australia for their many years of producing beautiful hand-drawn animation."

Now that their hour is passing, perhaps it's time to give Disney's direct-to-video sequels their due. Quality is where you find it, and the studio's original theatrical releases have not been immune to creative and commercial failure. At their best, the sequels were created not by clock punchers, but by people who believed in and felt a commitment to their work and to classic 2D animation. "There's a lot of criticism that the sequels get," says Kammerud. "People hate them within the industry, but I'm glad for myself and the artists I work with that there's still a place to make 2D while everyone else is running away from it."

Cinderella III is an excellent film, in some ways better than the original -- richer emotionally and with characters who transcend their caricatured origins to display depth and personality. Its plot is inspired by a segment in 2002's Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (produced by the TV division) where redheaded stepsister Anastasia tries to free herself from her mother's influence. ("In our movie we kind of set up that story," Morrill acknowledges.) The new movie builds to a touching and heartfelt conclusion -- complete with a nightmare version of Cinderella's pumpkin ride that might satisfy even the most hardened skeptic of the sequels.

Morrell credits Nissen for the film's depth of feeling. "He's one of the most romantic, emotional directors I've met. The movie's sense of romance, of true love has Frank written all over it." So perhaps it's appropriate for Nissen to talk a bit about what Cinderella III means to him.

"I feel very fortunate to have really good script to start with [credited to Margaret Heidenry] -- a solid idea to build off the original movie. Disney sequels are always an interesting conundrum. In the original feature usually the most powerful emotional motifs are explored and resolved. What do you do in a sequel to give viewers a satisfying experience? That's a tough one. Also, how do you keep the spirit of the original without just slavishly making another edition of it? Those are the two things uppermost in peoples' minds in trying to do these sequels."

The sequels were often uneven because different divisions worked on the same characters. The TV division made the DTV Stitch! The Movie (above) while DisneyToons' produced Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch.

Nissen's belief in the film extended to unseen characters like the King's long-deceased wife ("We even had a name for her for a while -- Queen Gertie.") and to how the characters were animated; it's a lesson in classic animation to hear him discuss the care with which the stepmother was brought to life:

"She's the most realistic, if you will, of all the characters in terms of the anatomy of her face, how she moves, her expressions and the like. A lot of the characters, from Cinderella all the way through to the mice, have degrees of broadness that you can take liberties with -- the shape of the eyes, how wide the mouth opens, how much the cheeks distort in any given expression. You can do that to different degrees depending on how comical your character is. The stepmother was way beyond Cinderella in terms of [realism] -- we didn't want anything the least bit cartoony about her. She's all about menace, evil. The way she projects it is thru her stillness."

It's obvious Nissen isn't just talking up his own work when he describes his reaction to the film's conclusion. "The first two or three times I watched it while during editing, I just got goose bumps. When those little moments happen, that's the joy of filmmaking, why you slog thru all the..."

Nissen leaves the rest of his thought unspoken but understood. As one of the players says in that closing scene, "Everyone deserves true love" -- even the Disney sequels.

Joe Strike is a regular contributor to AWN. His animation articles also appear in the NY Daily News and the New York Press.