Early in its production, the Disney animated film that became known as Tangled was shaping up to be a much different movie than what is currently in theaters. In the early version being developed by director Glen Keane, two teenagers are transported from modern-day San Fransisco into the Rapunzel fairy tale and discover that they have to act the parts of the captive, long-haired princess and her rescuer prince. B ut in 2008, Disney’s incoming chief creative officer John Lassiter ordered a change of story direction and had the title changed from Rapunzel Unbraided to the one the film now carries. Keane stepped down as director and Byron Howard and Nathan Greno, director and storyboard director of Disney’s Bolt, took over.
While you can’t argue with the success of the finished product, it is interesting to speculate how the film may have looked if it went on its original course. The short pre-viz reel below, doesn’t give me much hope that it would have been all that great, honestly. (And yes, a previz, or pre-visualization, reel is supposed to look this rough.) The story sounds a bit like a reversed version of Enchanted, but I think that Keane was on to something with the animation, as we can see from the opening passage through the forest, from the 0:25 to the 1:00 mark. It looks like they’re combining the look of traditional, hand-painted animation backgrounds with the ability to rotate them through three-dimensions as one would a computer generated model. Hopefully, someone from Disney will look into using that style again, because it is stunning.
Via Cartoon Brew.
