#36 Mulan

Released near the tail end of the Disney Renaissance, Mulan proved to be Disney's best effort since The Lion King, marking a welcome return to form after several middling films. Retelling the Chinese folk tale of a female warrior, Mulan is at once an adventure film, a feminist parable, and a subversion of some of Disney's oldest tropes.

Dispensing with the bizarre, immersion-breaking asides and lackluster stabs at humor that plagued Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan's story is played straight, with the Hun invasion of China providing the impetus for Mulan to take her aging father's place in the army as a means of proving her value in a society that places no importance on women. Mulan herself is the antidote to decades of Disney princesses whose entire motivation was to get married to some uninteresting prince; she is not un-feminine, but finds herself unable to accept the position of the submissive daughter and eventual wife that Chinese society has allotted her. Her relationship with Li Shang is based more on mutual respect than anything else, and it is actually allowed to develop realistically - there is no hackneyed love-at-first-sight moment. Mulan's character arc, from humiliating herself in front of a matchmaker to saving her country from the Huns, is one of Disney's greatest, and the scene of the Emperor of China leading a mass of people in bowing before her is a genuinely earned payoff.

Apart from its story, one of Mulan's greatest strengths is its cast, which is a gathering of star talent in top form. Refreshingly for Hollywood, the majority of the Chinese cast are played by actual Asian actors: Ming-Na Wen as Mulan, B.D. Wong as Li Shang, George Takei as the Ancestor, and the great Pat Morita as the Emperor. Miguel Ferrer has an impressively sinister turn as Shan Yu, lending a genuine sense of danger to the savage Hun leader. Eddie Murphy's performance as Mushu comes dangerously close to Dreamworks territory at times, but his humor sticks the landing for the most part, and his genuine loyalty to Mulan makes him a better Disney sidekick than some. Even the non-speaking characters, like the Cricket and Khan the horse convey an abundance of personality and charm.

Musically, the film shines as well, with Jerry Goldsmith's bold, cinematic score lending a suitably epic feel - the standout is the synth-and-drum piece that plays as Mulan prepares to leave home for the army, which lends the proceedings a sense of high drama and importance. The songs by Matthew Wilder and David Zippel are all on point as well, all existing in the service of plot and character; there are none of the dispensable numbers that plagued some other late-period Renaissance films. "Honor To Us All" and "A Girl Worth Fighting For" lay down some welcome satire on the roles of men and women in the Chinese society the film depicts, while "I'll Make A Man Out Of You" remains one of the greatest training montage sequences in film history, Rocky be damned. And, of course, we have Mulan's character piece, "Reflection," which, over the years, has received a second life as a queer anthem.

While it may not quite reach the grand artistic achievement of The Lion King, Mulan absolutely defines itself as one of Disney's greatest films. It's a perfect marriage of character, story, music, and theme that scarcely misses a beat. The film's greatest legacy, perhaps, is the value it represents to its target audience. Mulan is no pining princess or passive love interest: she is the hero of her story, and she sets an example for every young girl that watches this film.

#35 Hercules

Greek mythology has proved fertile ground for screenwriters and filmmakers to mine for material over the years, and with good reason: many of its most iconic characters and stories have become baked into our culture over time, so that names like Odysseus, Achilles, and Hercules need no introduction. In addition, the lack of a definitive telling of these stories leaves them wide open to interpretation. One would think, then, that with all of Greek mythology to draw upon, Disney could produce something fun and exciting, something like Clash of the Titans by way of Aladdin. Instead, we got Hercules, one of Disney's more frustrating ventures, precisely because of how much wasted potential it represents.

To start with, the plot of Hercules runs very thin. We start off with Hades (voiced by James Woods, whose fast-talking, sarcastic performance is easily the best thing about the film) learning that Hercules will one day defeat his plan to free the Titans and conquer the world. This presents us with our first problem, an unoriginal motivation for the villain. Scar wanted to seize control of the Pride Lands because he was jealous of his brother; Frollo wanted to kill Esmeralda because he was confused by a combination of racism and lust; Hades just wants to rule everything because, well, he's the villain and of course he does. The plan to kill the baby Hercules goes awry, and Hercules is raised by mortal parents. Of course, he becomes a "misfit" who "isn't like other people," which the film conveys in the most unsubtle manner possible, by having the characters straight-up tell this to the audience. Eventually, Hercules discovers his identity as the son of Zeus, who tells him that to join the Gods at Mount Olympus, he must prove himself to be a "true hero."

It's here that the real problem of the plot develops, which is that "becoming a true hero" or "proving oneself" is simply not a compelling basis for a plot, chiefly because it lacks a definitive goal or endpoint. Hercules then spends a good deal of time training with the Satyr Philoctetes (voiced by Danny DeVito, who, it should be noted, should never be allowed to sing on film again), then goes to Thebes to find a chance "to prove himself," before defeating a Hydra that, if nothing else, is an impressive piece of animation. By this point, we are nearly halfway through the film, and the audience has only just now witnessed Hercules, the legendary hero of Greek myth, actually do something heroic. Immediately afterward, the audience is treated to a montage of Hercules' adventures and heroic deeds, by the end of which he is a celebrity and an established hero. This is perhaps the film's biggest sin, that all of the adventuring that would actually allow the audience to see Hercules develop into a hero happens essentially offscreen, in an egregious violation of "show, don't tell."

And speaking of "show, don't tell," we have Hercules' relationship with Megara, surely the most chemistry-deficient pairing in all of Disney. While Meg has a potentially compelling background, as a woman who sold herself to Hades in exchange for her lover, her characterization falls flat and Susan Egan's performance comes off as grating. It doesn't help that Hercules himself isn't that likable of a character either, being given a cliched misfit characterization at first, then frequently coming off as whining. Apparently, the film also hopes the audience won't notice that Hercules and Megara are only officially together for less than 24 hours before the climax picks up and they're willing to lay down their lives for each other. Even for the studio that frequently gives us teenagers falling in undying love at first sight, this is pushing plausibility a bit too far.

The truly frustrating thing about Hercules, though, is that it definitely could have and should have been a better movie than it is. With all of Greek mythology to pull from, why produce such a bland story? Why not tell the story of Hercules' Twelve Labors, or the voyage of the Argo, which Hercules was a part of? Or, if you want to tell an original story, why not pair Hercules with Pandora, a well-known mythical figure with a compelling backstory? If nothing else, Hercules was certainly evidence that the Disney Renaissance was on the downswing by 1997 - though the streak would not be broken just yet.

#34 The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Of all the places Disney has mined for source material, Victor Hugo's grim Gothic tragedy is surely one of the more unexpected choices. In adapting Hugo's novel into a musical about prejudice, social outcasts, and religious zealotry, Disney created what is doubtless their most adult film. It's a bit surprising The Hunchback of Notre Dame managed to scrape by with a PG rating - and, had Disney allowed it to go to a PG-13, it could have been one of Disney's greatest films.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is anchored by the relationship between its protagonist, Quasimodo, and its antagonist, Frollo. Quasimodo is designed to be genuinely ugly without being visually repulsive, still allowing the audience to sympathize with him, and Tom Hulce's performance conveys his naivete and innocence perfectly - he is a gentle being, raised in isolation, desiring to experience life outside Notre Dame, but convinced by Frollo that the world is too cruel to accept him. Frollo, meanwhile, is truly one of the great villains of Disney's pantheon, for much the same reason that Gaston is such an effective villain: he is a villain that exists in reality, whose evil we can know from our own experience. Frollo is a religious zealot, too deeply convinced of his own sanctity to ever admit fault, obsessed with destroying the Gypsies he holds responsible for the immorality of the world around him. Most dangerous is his obsession with the Gypsy woman Esmeralda, who he blames for corrupting him by inciting his lust, to the point where he will willingly kill innocents and burn Paris to remove her temptation from his life. Tony Jay's sublime baritone grants Frollo his sinister presence and menace, nowhere more effectively than in the song "Hellfire," which ranks with Pinocchio's Coachman and Fantasia's "Night on Bald Mountain" as the darkest sequence in Disney's canon. Filled with imagery of damnation and sexual lust, "Hellfire" steps into unprecedented territory for a Disney film.

On the subject of music, The Hunchback of Notre Dame captures the grandeur and drama of a true theatrical musical more than any other film of the Disney Renaissance. Rather than being concerned with providing earworms or fun sequences, the songs largely serve as a means of character development. "Out There" establishes Frollo and Quasimodo's relationship and illustrates Quasimodo's yearning to experience life outside Notre Dame; "God Help the Outcast" draws the contrast between the desires of the ordinary people of Paris and the persecuted gypsies. Composer Alan Menken also delivers some of his most underrated work, with towering strings, horns, and choirs giving the score a grand Gothic feel, anchored by the "Hellfire" leitmotif.

For such a boldly mature film, it may come as unsurprising that the weakest aspects of Hunchback come when it tries too hard to be typically "Disney." Specifically, one can look at the three gargoyles, Victor, Hugo, and Laverne, whose presence severely taints the film. The three are painfully one-note, their personalities amounting to "old woman," "fop," and "Jason Alexander," and their musical number, "A Guy Like You," is quite frankly wretched, attempting to inject the anachronistic humor of Robin Williams' Genie into the film. But this is not Aladdin, the three are not Robin Williams, and the gargoyles' antics are totally at odds with the tone of the film. 

While the presence of the gargoyles certainly drags the film down, the superior qualities of The Hunchback of Notre Dame are readily apparent. Had Disney been more willing to dispense with fluff and fully embrace the film's identity as a dark, mature story, it could have been one of the pinnacles of Disney's canon. As it is, while certainly a film of quality, it stops just short of true greatness.