I’ve always been astounded by that movie, the fact that a Western corpo media company had a chance, in the 90s, to portray communism as inarguably the villain, in a children’s film, which tend to be subject to far less scrutiny than adult media, and they didn’t do it.
But, then, they’d have had to give Lenin a badass villain song. Which would absolutely have been the Let It Go of its day. And obviously no one wanted that.
The 90s resulted in people in the west being way less harsh on communism in fiction, because as far as the west was concerned, communism had “failed.” You can’t make an intimidating and scary villain who also has an “incompetent” and “failed” ideology behind them. This is why the only communist villains from that time are in stuff like the Red Alert series, silly, campy villains trying to undo and rewrite history, relics of bygone era.
I’ve always been astounded by that movie, the fact that a Western corpo media company had a chance, in the 90s, to portray communism as inarguably the villain, in a children’s film, which tend to be subject to far less scrutiny than adult media, and they didn’t do it.
But, then, they’d have had to give Lenin a badass villain song. Which would absolutely have been the Let It Go of its day. And obviously no one wanted that.
The 90s resulted in people in the west being way less harsh on communism in fiction, because as far as the west was concerned, communism had “failed.” You can’t make an intimidating and scary villain who also has an “incompetent” and “failed” ideology behind them. This is why the only communist villains from that time are in stuff like the Red Alert series, silly, campy villains trying to undo and rewrite history, relics of bygone era.
That explains a lot, actually.
This is what they do in the musical adaptation
https://youtu.be/XEQJkx-fl_4
That is… Very good for what it is, in context. More nuance than I’d expect.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: