New Mickey Mouse

[Neal]

Darned internet ... too static ... makes emotions unreadable ... I thought it was a smug wink ...

[estefan]

Hi, don't know if this is the right forum to put this, but I remember reading about this feature-length animated film years ago where Mickey goes missing, so Minnie enlists the help of Basil (from The Great Mouse Detective) to find him. Then, there would appear multiple cameos by various Disney stars.

I believe this project was canceled, but I can barely find any info on it on the Internet.

[PatrickvD]

I doubt this ever sees the light of day. Back then it was meant as Disney's 50th film.

Rapunzel is now #50 on their slate. So there's no reason to make this. And it actually sounds kinda .. uninteresting

[OriginalGagBonkers]

Didnt we have like a topic for this somewhere? I couldve sworn there was one....

[Daniel]

Yeeeeees.

[James]

Mickey's new voice? Or previously recorded?

[GeorgeC]

Could be Allwine (sp?).

I really don't know.

He did the voice for a quarter-century. It's very possible they made tons of recordings that never got used before or were repurposed for different events and reasons. Disney, for all we know, could have a bank of him saying different things and pronunciations that they could string together to make new phrases. I doubt it'd work well, though -- the big problem with that is acting and no amount of modern engineering well make a "dead voice" sound as good as one guided by a living person.

If anything's annoyed me about Mickey over the years -- besides the number of horrendously awful, watered-down kids' TV series the current Disney lot seem to feel content to stick him in -- it's that his voice has gotten higher and shriller over the years.

I defy anybody who actually owns the Disney Treasures' tins or previous VHS and laserdisc collections of Mickey shorts to tell me the character had that type of voice before the late 1990s!

I've got excellent hearing.

Disney never voiced Mickey like that. The second and third Mickey voices didn't, either. The late Wayne Allwine didn't until later in life.

I don't know why people think shrill voices sound nice. They're just annoying.

That's certainly NOT the way I voice Mickey.

(Yes, I do fair versions of both Mickey and Goofy to amuse myself and also for audio projects in my spare time...)

[Dacey]

Mickey does have a new voice now. I forget the name, but he does the work on "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" these days.

He sounds pretty good. Not quite as good as Wayne yet, but I'm sure he'll get there someday.

[VoiceChaser]

That's definitely Mickey's new voice, Bret Iwan.

You can hear more of him on Disney's Have a Laugh page... scroll all the way to the bottom and choose the "Short Version" of some of those animated shorts (like Lonesome Ghosts or Mickey and the Seal, for instance).

[Ben]

Ahh, those horrible shorts! Why oh why has Disney seen fit to cut down shorts and re-soundtrack them!

I will say, though, that Bert is actually a little closer to Walt than Wayne was. George...there have only been four Mickeys...Walt, Jimmy MacDonald and Wayne Allwine. Bert's only the fourth person to play the Mouse.

[James]

I just watched the online webcast of the premiere of World of Color at DCA. (Extremely cool BTW!) A costumed Mickey Mouse character opened the show and introduced Bob Iger. It looks like besides a new show they have a new Mickey Mouse costume. Mickey was blinking and his mouth was moving when he "talked" over the PA speakers! It was a little unnerving!

[EricJ]

They've already used "talking" characters for the stage shows, and are already in the experimenting stage with them for some upscale park meets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5wC-dBx7-Y

[Ben]

That...is pretty fantastic.

[GeorgeC]

My ideal Mickey Mouse would be a return to the design used for "The Brave Little Tailor" and "Through The Looking Glass" but with the contemporary sensibilities of "Runaway Brain" which is probably the best Mickey Mouse animation produced during my lifetime...

I did notice something funny when I recently watched "Runaway Brain."

Apparently, a very pale color was used for Mickey's face... (Likewise for Minnie in the short.) It was only a shade or two darker than his gloves! It was far, far paler than the traditional pink or tan tones used since "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." Kind of a neat throwback that I hadn't noticed before.

Of course, it could have also been an artifact (artificially subdued coloring because of the 'mixdown' for home video) of the print of "Runaway Brain" I was looking at. It was part of an exclusive Japanese laserdisc called, "Mickey's Greatest Hits."

[Ben]

Yep...actually George, that LD was known to have quite subdued and washed out colors on RB (and is cropped from widescreen to boot).

The best home video print is on the Disney Treasures set, it unfortunately never came out in widescreen on the A Goofy Movie LD like it was supposed to.