Look, there is some missing IP at Disney parks that I understand why it remains hidden. There should never be a Black Cauldron ride, a t-shirt with the Hunchback of Notre Dame on it, or a stuffed animal of any of the Meet the Robinsons characters. But why is there no sign of any of the Emperor's New Groove folks. This is a film that is just rife for theme parks such as a Yzma's laboratory ride, a Kronk pull cord doll that says phrases like "riiiiight" and "did we wrestle in high school", llama stuffed animals, and serving any of the cuisine that was offered at the Mudka's Meat Hut. And yet there are no signs of this film anywhere.
It is not as though the film wasn't popular when it came out. It was a modest hit although it was the lowest earning Disney animated film of the 1990s by far. But of those 1990s Disney animated films, it is the best of the lot besides Aladdin, and the most entertaining.
I'm going to get the film criticism aspect of this review out of the way quickly so that I can talk about the interesting backstory of this movie. Emperor's New Groove has one of the best voice casts with David Spade as the selfish emperor Kuzco, John Goodman (the man who can turn in no bad performance) as Pacha the humble villager, his wife Wendie Malick, Eartha Kitt who plays the cheeky Yzma, and the best of the bunch, Patrick Warburton whose Kronk steals the show. I would put this voice cast agains any other Disney movie, each person embodying the character as though it is an animated them.
The movie is extremely funny as well. A very simple story of a selfish emperor who gets his comeuppance when he is turned into a llama, going on a journey with a villager who helps him get his true form back, is elevated by clever dialogue that only a sarcastic Spade could deliver. There are unexpected situations such as when Kronk somehow ends up becoming a short order cook or when Pacha's family is able to handle the bad guys with little problem. And Yzma the villain, who is neither evil nor scary (although she likes to think she is), providing almost as much humor as the other characters, and her banter with Kronk.
Now that you know how good a film it is and that you should definitely check it out on Disney Plus, something you may not know is the story of how it came to be. Originally the film was called Kingdom of the Sun and was a take on the prince and the pauper story set in the Incan empire where Spade was going to trade places with a character played by Owen Wilson. It was envisioned as a traditional Disney musical such as The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast. Since the company had had such success with rock star Elton John writing music for The Lion King, they enlisted Sting to write songs for the film. He agreed, writing eight songs that linked directly to the film and its characters.
It became apparent from some early screenings that the film was too ambitious, and the crew decided that they needed to simplify things. It split the creative team in two and asked them to pitch their best version of the movie. One team pitched a scaled down version of the original story. The other team scaled it down to a road comedy. This required changing the story, dropping half of the cast as well as the director and supervising animators, and bringing in new characters including the scene stealing Kronk. It also required a phone call to Sting telling him they would not be able to use his songs after all because they were too tied to the old story. They wanted only a song at the beginning and a song for the credits. They did put a couple of his unused songs on the soundtrack of the film if you ever want to listen.
As a companion piece to Emperor's New Groove, part of Sting's agreeing to do the music for the original film meant that his wife was allowed to film a documentary of the process. It is called The Sweatbox and it is available in a crude version at https://archive.org/details/SweatboxDocumentaryUneditedVersion. It provides a fascinating glimpse into the whole process.
A revision of a Disney animated film is nothing new. Pinocchio went through an extensive overhaul, Tangled got rid of its entire voice cast and re-recorded its film, Frozen originally had Elsa as the antagonist of the film before someone wisely said, "let's make the film about the love between the sisters and not the love between the couples". On the podcast Scriptnotes the screenwriter of Moana talks about the massive changes that happen in the creative process of making a Disney animated film. You can either listen to that episode or read the transcript here https://johnaugust.com/2024/scriptnotes-episode-636-whispering-loudly-transcript.
It is fascinating to see the collaborative process of filmmaking and how making these things is not as easy as we might think it is, even in a medium where they can literally erase everything they are doing and redraw it from scratch.
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