34
votes
Trailer for Mickey Mouse slasher film drops on same day ‘Steamboat Willie’ character enters public domain
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- Authors
- Kimberly Nordyke
- Published
- Jan 2 2024
- Word count
- 386 words
It’s a tired schtick at this point, last years Winnie the Pooh’s Blood and Honey and now this. It’s just like… I don’t know man. Do they just have this shit saved on a laptop somewhere waiting for the new year.
I don’t actually know what a “good” artistic project would be by using these characters. Now that both Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse (at least versions of them) are in the public domain, an animator could make a hand drawn short film with them. Make it like cutesy and heart-warming, a simple story with both of them where they learn about sharing or whatever.
Thats much harder than just making a lame slasher though.
Yes, but it also pushes the copyright. This trailer alone seems to be directly positioned to test Disney. And Rovio maybe. Intentionally using clips, the silhouette of the mouse, and using the name Mickey, it's putting a stake in the ground to see if Disney tries to challenge anything. While I hope that someone creates a film like you suggested, if Disney didn't challenge this film in court, then someone could create a nice film without risk. If Disney goes after them, then we'll also know something.
Well that’s a good point
Yes.
These characters have been milked to death by their corporate overlords for the roughly thirteen billion years of their copyright term. I'm sure there is interesting art to be made with them, but it's going to be along the lines of thoughtful deconstruction, not straight-faced continuation or edgy contrarianism.
In fact, Mickey Mouse is not a compelling character anyway, it's essentially a trademark for Disney. The character itself has no real personality or anything. He has a girlfriend and dog and that's about all we know about him. Has there been a good Mickey Mouse cartoons since 1950? Maybe there was a good Christmas one 20 or 30 years ago, not sure.
Pooh is a little more interesting maybe, he has a definite personality and there could be some exploration of his relationship with Christopher Robin. But they already made a live action of that a few years ago.
Pretty much the only thing interesting about using Mickey Mouse in any art is to mildly protest how Disney messed up copyright laws.
There's a recent series my kid watches that has a faux-old-timey art style to it (like Cuphead) that's pretty entertaining. Here's one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k1axb8PPqQ
If you haven't seen the halloween special done in this style, check it out. It's surprisingly dark, funny, and full of little easter eggs from the old Disney halloween shorts. I've had to watch it dozens upon dozens of times for my kids and I still somehow enjoy it.
The newer shorts are really good as well. I just wish it were easier to queue a bunch of them up on Disney+ without having to watch the credits every 5 minutes. Like give us a big hour-long compilation with all the credits at the end or something.
Is that the one with the adults telling the stories to Huey, Dewey, and Louie? If so, absolutely, it's great.
In German speaking states, there has been an extremly long running series of comics published by Disney called "Funny Pocket Books" (Lustige Taschenbücher), in there, the famous disney characters do have a lot of character. Mickey for example is a detective.
I still have them sitting in a shelf, well over 100 of them. I managed to convince my parents to get a subscription and received them monthly for years. They are great.
They're honestly not bad, but Mickey himself is still a fairly milquetoast character even in those detective stories. Usually the villains are the interesting characters.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was Disney by proxy giving public domain a bad name, like when Facebook was found to be behind the tiktok trend of destroying bathrooms.
I've not heard about this, I can't find anything on Google either. Do you have an article? That sounds insane
Has anyone here been following this public domain story who can explain why the Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse is fair game, but other later versions aren’t? The character in this slasher flick doesn’t particularly look like any of them, tbh. If Disney were to sue, could they claim that it is an infringement on some later (still protected) version, and would they have a case?
Steamboat Willie was 100 years ago. Updated versions were not. That's all there is to it.
As far as I understand it (neither a lawyer nor from the US), Disney would have two options: