Nowadays, when a movie provides some kind of conclusion, studio marketing leans into it. “The saga will end, the story will live forever”* the trailers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker proclaimed. That same years, Avengers: Endgame had marketing materials declared “nothing can prepare you for the end.” The trailer for John Wick: Chapter 4 repurposed Terry Jacks singing phrases like “goodbye my dear” and “it’s hard to die” in “Seasons in the Sun” to reaffirm that this was John Wick’s last showdown. Hollywood loves milking things for all their worth (oh hey, did you see Steve Rogers is coming back for Avengers: Doomsday?), but studios also love wringing money out of audiences eager for a definitive conclusion.
On July 15, 2011, the last Harry Potter movie hit theaters with the tagline “it all ends”. The same day, another notable ending in cinema transpired, but it garnered way less coverage. How could it? Nobody knew at the time that Winnie the Pooh was Home on the Range redux in that it was also the swan song for 2D animated movies at Walt Disney Animation Studios. There were no posters or commercials proclaiming that Winnie the Pooh was a capper to a 74 year animated legacy. Only in hindsight is Winnie the Pooh an “ending” to an era of cinema.
In that respect, Winnie the Pooh is much like Twin Peaks: The Return. Both were not conceived and executed to be the final bows for their respective artists. David Lynch had other projects brewing beyond The Return. Walt Disney Animation Studios, at one point in time, had additional 2D animated films beyond Winnie the Pooh. However, fate intervened to make both productions inadvertent conclusions to lengthy artistic endeavors. Much like The Return does now serve as a bittersweet farewell to the genius of Lynch, Winnie the Pooh now functions as a moving last chapter for big screen American 2D animation.
For starters, Winnie the Pooh as a character is a perfect centerpiece for mainstream American 2D cinema’s final verse. The initial A.A. Milne Pooh books were populated by beautiful and instantly endearing illustrations from E.H. Shepard. His renderings of the Hundred-Acre-Wood weren’t afraid to leave pen lines inside Pooh’s body or scraggly qualities in the grass. Looking at these drawings, you could practically see Shepard hunched over a desk sketching out these characters and their world. His palpably homemade imagery was perfect for Pooh’s world. These are raggedy stuffed animals tumbling around the rickety British forest. Eschewing hand-crafted qualities in presenting Pooh and pals would be a tremendous miscalculation.
Thus, hand-drawn animation has always been the perfect home for these characters. Here, that silly o’l bear and his friends can move around and have their voices heard without sacrificing their essential bespoke qualities. 2011’s Winnie the Pooh uses slightly more refined 2D animation tools than the 60s shorts (there’s no more xeroxing, for one thing), but going the hand drawn route here continues the legacy of Pooh encapsulating the joys of hand-crafted imagery. If Pooh didn’t feel like he just stumbled out of someone’s ink pen, he wouldn’t feel like that honey-obsessed ursine.
Winnie the Pooh's importance as a 2D animation swan song, though, is more than just echoing the original Pooh illustrations. Inhabiting this medium allowed a bevy of Disney animation legends to serve as supervising animators for big screen characters one last time. Andreas Deja, for instance, who famously influenced the animation of characters like Jafar, Gaston, and Scar, was the supervising animator here for Tigger. Meanwhile, Bruce W. Smith oversaw Piglet, while the likes of Eric Goldberg, Dale Baer, Mark Henn, and other icons of their field were supervising animators on other pivotal Pooh characters. Uncredited assistant animators included Mike Gabriel, Tom and Tony Bancroft, and Chris Buck. The only one missing here is James Baxter!
Several of these figures would continue to work in Walt Disney Animation Studios films (such as Goldberg overseeing the animation of Maui's tattoos in Moana) and other animated features in the years to come. Winnie the Pooh, though, offered these artists one last chance to flex their skills in the medium where they started. 2D animation brought them into this business. Winnie the Pooh let them say good-bye to it. This was no somber farewell, though. The character animation here is delightful and represents the dynamic physicality 2D imagery affords.
Rabbit's increasingly frustrated body langauge in the "not knot" scene, for instance, could only be properly realized in such hysterical terms through hand-drawn animation. "The Backson Song," meanwhile, is told through chalkboard drawings. The simplified and believable rendering of chalkboard doodles wouldn't quite look right in CG. In 2D animation, though, this visual emulation soars. 2011 CG titles like Rio and Cars 2 kept audiences confined to one visual style for an entire runtime. Winnie the Pooh, meanwhile, let a murderer's row of talented 2D animators flex the dexterity of this medium one last time. Disney may have had no interest in more 2D films, but that didn't mean artists like Deja and Smith couldn't reaffirm this mediums immense artistic value.
Even the quieter Winnie the Pooh aesthetic was perfect for relishing the joys of hand-drawn animation one more time. In 2011, hyperactive and noisy animated fare were dominating multiplexes. Cars 2 traded out for "slow down, enjoy life's journey" for machine gun fire and torturing automobiles on-screen. Gnomeo & Juliet was full of ass jokes and loud dance parties. The realistically animated abominations anchoring The Smurfs couldn't go two minutes without shrieking or dropping some Smurf variant on a risqué colloquialism ("Smurf Happens"). In contrast, Winnie the Pooh was gentle 67-minute film focused on wordplay, silly misunderstandings, and bouncing tigers.
With the script not jostling audiences around from one uber-loud set piece to another, there were plenty of opportunities for viewers of all ages to treasure the intricacies in the animation. Look at those gorgeous backgrounds! Check out that amusing facial expression on Owl! Look closely and notice that one letter (amongst a bevy of letters that have fallen the Hundred Acre Wood floor) curving into the Backson pit! Winnie the Pooh's unhurried sensibilities made the artistry of the various animators even easier to appreciate. When visiting Pooh and pals, chaos and hyperactivity are poor companions. Instead, watching these characters should be akin to taking a stroll. All the delightful flourishes in Winnie the Pooh's hand drawn animation made that aesthetic even more welcome.
This pacing and animation services a story that doesn't necessarily feel like a farewell to either the Pooh characters or even an era of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Retroactively, Winnie the Pooh now functions as a bittersweet capper to Disney doing 2D animated cinema. Like Twin Peaks: The Return, though, Pooh wasn't meant to be a pop culture good-bye. At the time of its production, Winnie the Pooh was conceived and executed as a potential transition between The Princess and the Frog and whatever big 2D animated film the Mouse House did next. In fact, Winnie the Pooh director Stephen J. Anderson recalled to The Look Back Machine podcast that this feature was supposed to kickstart a new era of more high-profile all ages Pooh media.
These realities mean Winnie the Pooh is all about living in the moment. It's a celebration of what makes the Pooh characters special, witty writing, and hand-drawn animated joys rather than a mournful procession. If there was no greater historical context to filter this motion picture through, its charming animation and endearing ambiance would still be laudable. Devoid of distractions related to being the "perfect" swan song for Disney 2D animation, ironically, means Winnie the Pooh excels in this function. An ideal manifestation of this exercise should be something entertaining, not art constantly reminding you the end is near.
Of course, Disney was never the sole source of animated storytelling, hand-drawn or otherwise. Never forget, The Adventures of Prince Achmed beat Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to the feature length animated movie punch by 11 years back in 1926. Winnie the Pooh was the end of Walt Disney Animation Studios doing hand-drawn animated movies, but that didn't mean all artists gave up on this medium. Since July 2011, international animated titles like The Boy and the Heron, the various works from Cartoon Saloon (like Wolfwalkers), Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, Boy and the World, Liz and the Blue Bird, and so many other features have kept this medium alive. In North America, filmmakers like Don Hertzfeldt have also embraced the tactile artistry established by works like Gertie the Dinosaur.
Still, Winnie the Pooh bombing (why did Disney release it against the final Harry Potter film?) was a turning point for big screen 2D animation, at least in America. Any hopes that the new Walt Disney Animation Studios regime (established in 2006) would permanently bring back 2D animated storytelling to this label were gone. While CG animated bombs like Strange World or Smurfs haven't inspired studios to abandon fully digital storytelling, 2D box office non-starters like Winnie the Pooh are apparently referendums on an entire storytelling medium. Hand-drawn animated cinema was finally down for the count in this realm of motion pictures.
Yet, 2D's joys live on, like an especially potent story you heard as a child still rattling around in your brain as an adult. Modern CG features like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and the Spider-Verse have taken tremendous cues and inspiration from hand-drawn artistry. In other words, mid-2020s CG animation has more in common with Winnie the Pooh and its 2D brethren than, say, Rio or Hop.
Just as importantly, the hand-crafted imagery pioneered by artists like Eric Goldberg, Bruce W. Smith, and Andreas Deju (among many others) endures. Across the interwebs, reaction images utilizing Rabbit's various disgruntled facial expressions from Winnie the Pooh are incredibly common. Anyone who stumbles upon Winnie the Pooh today can appreciate the character animation in that scene as well as the other visual triumphs this movie provides. Disney's abandoned this medium, but viewers can still appreciate 2D animation's glories anytime they watch this particular 2011 film.
In the final moments of 1977's The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, as Christopher Robin and Pooh walk off into the sunset, Sebastian Cabot's narrator takes on a wistful tone. "Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way," Cabot's voice intones, "In that enchanted place on top of the forest, a little bear will always be waiting." 15 years ago, Winnie the Pooh "ended" an era of 2D animation, but not the entire medium. Just like Pooh always being there whenever Christopher Robin needs him, hand-drawn animation's not going anywhere. Movies like Winnie the Pooh "will always be waiting" to dazzle and inspire moviegoers.
*= Apparently “somehow, Palpatine has returned” memes will outlast both the saga and story.
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