A Bugs Life is the
Disney Movie of the Month, I’m following up that initial post by considering
why are Dot and Atta not Disney Princesses.
To be clear by Disney Princesses I mean characters in the
marketing Disney Princess franchise (there’s currently 11 official Disney
Princesses) and not just characters who happen to be princesses in movies
released by Disney. Dot and Atta are essential to the plot of A Bugs Life and both of them are
princesses of the ant colony, with Atta becoming a queen at the end of the
movie. Like most of the other Disney Princesses they both have to overcome obstacles - both internal and external - in order to save their realm.
Perhaps the first reason that they’re Disney Princesses is
that A Bugs Life is a Pixar movie.
Except Merida from Pixar’s Brave is
one of the 11 Princesses. Another reason could be that A Bugs Life is more about Flik than Dot and Atta. But Aladdin is obviously mainly about
Aladdin and yet Jasmine is in the Disney Princess franchise. An obvious
reason would be that they’re ants not humans. This one is harder to argue
against, but Ariel from The Little Mermaid
isn’t a human, she’s a mermaid and is often depicted as being a mermaid in
products. (And funnily enough Jodi Benson – the voice of Ariel – also voiced Atta for a video game)
As far as I’ve been able to tell in the early days of the
franchise there wasn’t even an official set line-up of characters. Depending on
the product line was Disney would add or take away characters somewhat
randomly. It was only with the release of Enchanted
that it seems like an official line-up was settled on. As far as I’ve been able
to find out Giselle from Enchanted
was intended to be marketed as a Disney Princess but (probably due to the
royalties involved in using Amy Adams’ likeness) Disney decided against long
term marketing and merchandising for Enchanted.
In response to this Disney seemed to have decided on a fixed line-up for the
Disney Princess franchise.
I personally would like to see other characters like Dot and
Atta added to the line-up. It’s about time that characters like Snow White and
Cinderella started to take a back seat and characters like Dot and Atta could
be good candidates to take over their spaces. If Disney did have more variety
in the Princess franchise it could make merchandise collections more
interesting. For example they could use Mulan and Merida for an action
adventure themed collection but then maybe have Dot and Atta joining someone
like Rapunzel in a garden themed collection.
Sure Dot and Atta are perhaps not the most obvious
characters to add to the Disney Princess franchise but it would be good to see
more of a variety in the franchise and I’d just to see A Bugs Life getting more representation from Disney.
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