The Making of Brother Bear

The Making of Brother Bear

Directed by: Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker

Brother Bear tells the story of Kenai who is taught an important of lesson of what it means to walk a mile in another’s shoes when he is turned into bear. He must find a way to turn back into a human but also make up for the mistakes of his past.

Cast 

Kenai is voiced by Joaquin Phoenix.

When Kenai accidentally mistakes Bucky as Binky and mistakes the pine nut for a pine cone and is corrected by Koda, was improvised by Joaquin and Jeremy Suarez the voice actor for Koda. They recorded the majority of their lines separately, as did the rest of the cast, however they had two sessions recording together.  

Jeremy Suarez previously voiced Ethan in Treasure Planet.

Denahi is voiced by Jason Raize and the older version of Denahi is voiced by Harold Gould.

This isn’t Jason’s only involvement in Disney. He played Simba in the Broadway version of The Lion King. Sadly his role in Brother Bear would be his last as he took his own life 3 months after the release of Brother Bear.

Rutt, one of the moose’s is voiced by Rick Moranis and Tuke, the other moose is voiced by Dave Thomas. There is a rumour that  in the German version they are named after the two male members of Abba – Benny and Bjorn. If you know if this is true please let me know in the comments bellow.

The dopey and fun loving personality’s of Rutt and Tuke are based off the Mackenzie Brothers from Strange Brew. The Mackenzie brothers were acted by Rick and Dave, the same people who voiced Rutt and Tuke.  

Rutt and Tuke were such interesting characters that Disney did consider creating a spin off TV series focusing on Rutt and Tuke but it was eventually scrapped.

Sitka, the eldest brother is voiced by D.B Sweeney. If you couldn’t tell when watching the film, the eagle which continually crops up during the film is meant to represent Sitka watching over his brothers.  

Tanana, the shaman, is voiced by Joan Copeland.

Tug, the old bear is voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan.  This is the second Bear he plays, he plays a character called Bear in Armageddon which up until recently, there was a ride at Disneyland Paris’s Walt Disney Studios focused on the film Armageddon.

The Rams were voiced by Paul Christie and Danny Mastrogiorgio.

The old lady bear who keeps telling everyone her husband is dead is voiced by Estelle Harris who also voiced Mrs. Potato Head in a Toy Story 2.

The male and female loved up bears are voiced by Greg Proops and Pauley Perrette. 

The foreign bear is voiced by Darko Cesar. 

Development

After the success of The Lion King in 1994 Michael Eisner, the then CEO of Disney, asked for more animal focused films and so Brother Bear, a Disney original was born. In 1997 Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker teamed up and started storyboarding a film about a blind bear being helped by his three daughters. Then Chuck Williams was brought in and he created a story about a father and son, that was Denahi and Kenai, but then the story transformed into a brother story. In 2000 they planned that Kenai was going to have an older brother names Grizz who would guide Kenai through the film and would eventually turn into his younger brother but this idea didn’t work out and instead Grizz was turned into Koda. Eventually through trial and error and bringing Thomas Schumacher and Tab Murphy onto the project the story turned into the film we see today.

The look of the film, the backgrounds and the colours, were inspired by the art of Albert Bierstadt. The CEO of Disney at the time, Michael Eisner, had an art collection of the artists and he allowed the animators to borrow the pictures to study.  

The animators decide to do something quite dramatic with the style of the film. When Kenai is human the films screen is a lot smaller and less colourful. However when he transforms into a bear the screen gets bigger and Kenai’s world because more colourful and luscious showing how things are better when he’s a bear.

The animators went on a research trip to Alaska. They visited The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, Kodiak Island, Denali National Park, the Kenai Fjord National Park, Exit and Holgate Glacier, Yellowstone National Park, the Sequoia National Park and the Grand Teton National Park. Hopefully you will notice from this list of the places they visited they took some of the names of the places for the names of some of the characters.  

Brother Bear was the third and final film to be animated at Disney’s MGM park in Orlando Florida. The other films animated there were Lilo and Stitch and Mulan. The reason the animation department shut in March 2004 was because Disney wanted to focus more on CGI films.

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The animators on Brother Bear decided to make a special trailer to be shown before people would watch Finding Nemo at the cinema. It featured the two Moose’s telling the audience to go and see one film this year: Brother Bear.  You can actually spot a clown fish, which is what Nemo is, in Brother Bear as an easter egg.  If you pause the film at the second when the Mammoth walks into the fabric lifting up fish when Sitka and Denahi are fishing you will see a clown fish.   

Easter Eggs

The mountain on which Kenai transforms into a bear is in the shape of a bear.

In the outtakes on the DVD there is a scene where Denali is sneaking through the bushes trying to find the bear to avenge his brother and he sneaks up on Stitch from Lilo and Stitch.  

Music 

Phil Collins did a lot of music for the film, after his success doing the music on Tarzan. Phil goes one step further than other artists and sings his songs in other languages. For example he sings a German, Italian, Spanish and French version for the songs “On my way”, “No way out” and “Welcome”. 

He also sang a French version of “Look through my eyes” and a Japanese version of “No Way Out”. 

“Eat, swim, fish and play, is all we do every day” were lyrics to a song that was going to be titled “Fishing Song” that Phil Collins wrote for the salmon run scene but Disney didn’t like the style so “Welcome” was created.

Phil was a little disappointed however that in the English version he couldn’t sing all the songs that he wrote for the film, he had to share the limelight with Tina Turner who had signed onto the film after stopping touring and releasing albums. Tina performed at the premier of Brother Bear, singing “Great Spirits”, Phil performed “No Way Out”.  

Brother Bear 2

If you enjoyed the film and want more there is a Brother Bear 2 which was released straight to DVD on 24th October 2006 and it stars Patrick Dempsey as Kenai who is more famous for his role as Dr. Derek Shepherd on Grey’s Anatomy and Giselle’s love interest in Enchanted. ty71