How could one little DVD cause so much ruckus? © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Not long ago movie audiences were treated to not one, but two blockbuster films in the same year that featured large chunks of space rock threatening to obliterate all life on Earth. While neither film made a deep impact on theatergoers (possibly signaling Armageddon for the genre), the directors could have made much better films had they used the following material: A direct-to-video sequel to a 1955 Walt Disney film is released in 2001. It is sent hurtling toward legions of animation fans, students, professionals and critics, and the resultant collision threatens to shatter the last bastions of purist traditionalism -- if not the very sanctity of animation itself. We watch as this awesome phenomenon enters the cultural atmosphere, breaking up into millions of pieces that strike every Wal-Mart in America with unerring accuracy as fans scream their outrage or descend into a benumbed state of shock. Tsunamis of unimaginable force inundate the animation community, and readings on the Richter scale become meaningless in the face of such abject devastation. But wait! Deep in the recesses of this deadly video, animation survivors have found evidence that another OAV sequel, this time to a 1950 Disney film, is streaking into their world's fragile orbit...

Betrayed!
For some reason (or perhaps many of them), Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure has many hardcore animation fans shaking with anger, disgust...and yes, a sense of betrayal. 'How could Disney do such a thing?' they sputter. I should know; I was among them back in January of 1999 when I poured forth my vituperation in a column for the late Animation Nerd's Paradise Website. Let's see, now...oh, yes: "Nothing could equal the shock of this wanton sacrilege...Abomination!" I then went on to create farcical titles for future Disney sequels to their animated classics, but this is no longer a joke; as we now know, Cinderella II: Dreams Come True actually exists and will be on shelves next year. In fact, The Mouse has announced plans to produce OAV sequels to every Disney classic that ever graced a silver screen. Oh, the kiddies won't mind; a cartoon is a cartoon. No, the apoplectic screams one hears are issuing from the older fans, who seem to see their loving memories sullied in the name of mega-corporate greed.

Animation journalist Michelle-Klein Hass, for example, let Disney have it in a recent piece for TOON Magazine, averring that "Eisner's Disney Hits a New Low." Ms. Klein-Hass decries the cheapening of the medium in general, including Warners commercially successful but much-despised Space Jam, the spate of live-action features based on cartoons, and now the sequelization of the "most treasured of the Disney features." This is equivalent to a "slap in the face" and "one more sucker punch" to animation's devoted fandom, all done "strictly for the almighty dollar." With a final plea to Michael Eisner to "stop the madness," Ms. Klein-Hass sums up most, if not all, of the reactions typical of animation aficionados everywhere. Yet beneath her anger is a genuine sense of hurt, shock and sadness; the special, unforgettable films of her -- and our -- childhood have been reduced to set-up pieces for modern, quickly made commodities that are pre-sold by the power of the Disney logo. It is as if some malevolent Medusa gazed back in time and turned the original classics into soulless reels of stone by linking them to these modernized sequels, leaving us forever unable to look upon them without feelings of grief and revulsion.