Disney princesses let hair down
Why scene is key in ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet.’
Sarah Silverman takes her job as a Disney princess pretty seriously.
“You know, I try not to be a (jerk),” jokes the actress, who reprises her “Wreck-It Ralph” role in the animated sequel “Ralph Breaks the Internet” (in theaters Wednesday).
Vanellope von Schweetz travels from the arcade to the World Wide Web with best friend Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) seeking a replacement part for her “Sugar Rush” game, a colorful candy-coated land where she was revealed to be a princess at the end of the 2012’s original “Wreck-It Ralph.” This time, she runs into a bevy of other cartoon royalty, from Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) of “Frozen” to Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) and Moana (Auli’i Cravalho).
But a fun little “What if ?” meetup in cyberspace concocted by writer/directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston turned into much more. Vanellope teaches her gown-wearing, costumeclad counterparts to let loose a little with hoodies and sweats in the process of figuring out her own path toward selfdiscovery, while the filmmakers also learned a lesson in racial representation.
“To have this little spunky kid with an attainable waist in comfortable clothes be a Disney princess is progress, for sure,” Silverman says of her Vanellope. “No matter how great and iconic all the princesses were and are, you see how Disney has kind of grown and changed and become more inclusive and reflects more our world. It’s why they’re not a relic or dated, because they’re always evolving.”
Once filmmakers understood the princess scene should be the catalyst for Vanellope figuring out her true destiny and dream – helped with a tune by Oscar-winning Disney songwriter Alan Menken – “that’s when, to me, it became much deeper,” Moore says. “It wasn’t just a funny scene about Vanellope taking the air out of some of the princesses and seeing that they have their little flaws. They became instrumental in Vanellope realizing that she is a princess, too, and that her dreams matter as well.”
Snippets of Vanellope being introduced to classic icons such as Snow White and Cinderella were a hit on social media when the trailer premiered last summer, though fans complained that Princess Tiana, the heroine of “The Princess and the Frog,” had her skin lightened and nose slimmed for “Ralph.”
Johnston says he and Rich Moore “were instantly engaged” with making corrections to the final film. “We looked at it and were like, ‘Yeah, this needs to be better. We can do better.’ ” They brought in one of Tiana’s original animators and enlisted the help of actress Anika Noni Rose, who voices the studio’s first black princess, as well as ad- vocacy group Color of Change to make sure they did the character justice.
The decision to restore Tiana to “an unapologetically black princess with full lips, dark skin and dark hair” was “a victory for Color of Change members, black children and their parents, and black audiences who want to see the variety of shades, shapes and sizes of black characters accurately represented in the arts,” Brandi Collins-Dexter, senior campaign director at Color of Change, told USA TODAY in September.
“I love that they took that on,” Silverman says. “You’ve got to hear everyone’s voice and especially culturally that was a really important moment. All these moments of change and growth, not just in (Disney’s) stories but behind the scenes in their own industry, are positive as long as they learn and listen and take in new information and let them- selves be changed by that.”
Reilly acknowledges that when “Ralph Breaks the Internet” was starting to be put together, culture wasn’t emphasizing women’s voices the way it is now. Yet when Vanellope hangs with the princesses, there’s some great “female-empowerment stuff ” in a movie that on the surface is seemingly a male story.
“We’re giving girls this version of themselves in a Disney movie, a company that, for better or worse, has created a lot of these stereotypes over the years through the princess thing,” Reilly says. “It’s a moment of reckoning for Disney and it’s a moment of reckoning for the world, and I’m just so excited for girls to see the movie. Sarah herself is a really empowered woman, and the fact that she gets to sort of speak her truth in a cartoon from Disney is pretty amazing.”