The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Disney Reworks a Classic Tale
The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the second Disney film directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, the directors of the incredibly successful Beauty and the Beast. The duo was eager to make Victor Hugo’s novel more fitting for children. This included making the film’s heroes, Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Phoebus, kinder than in the novel (Phoebus, in fact, was a villain in the novel), adding three anthropomorphic stone gargoyles in the form of sidekicks, and keeping Quasimodo and Esmeralda alive at the end.
The plot of the film centers on four main characters: the Gypsy dancer, Esmeralda; Claude Frollo, a brutal judge who lusts after her; Quasimodo, Notre Dame’s kind, but deformed, bell ringer; and Phoebus, the chivalrous, if irreverent, military captain, who holds affections for her. Quasimodo’s only friends are a trio of gargoyles that inhabit the bell tower. The filmmakers argue these gargoyles could only exist in Quasimodo’s head, acting as “pieces of his identity.” This supposition falls flat, however, when the viewer takes into account how Esmeralda’s goat, Djali, briefly sees the gargoyle named Hugo come to life. Indeed, in the film’s sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2, Madallaine, Quasimodo’s love interest, can see the gargoyles.
The response to the film was by and large favorable, though critics, such as Arnaud Laster, a leading Victor Hugo scholar, accused Disney of simplifying, editing, and repressing the novel in many aspects, including the personalities of the characters. In his review, Laster wrote that the animators “don’t have enough confidence in their own emotional feeling” and that the film “falls back on cliches.”
Regardless, in its opening weekend, the film opened in second place at the box office, grossing $21 million. The film, unfortunately, experienced a decline in subsequent weeks, ultimately grossing just over $100 million domestically and about $325 million worldwide. The Hunchback of Notre Dame failed to top its predecessors, like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and Pocahontas, marking the end of the Disney renaissance launched by The Little Mermaid. The film only managed to win one Academy Award nomination, for Best Original Score by Alan Menken. A direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2, was released in 2002.
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