Film Theory: The DARK Truth of Disney Magic (The Disney Theory)

oh so you thought putting 27 movies in a timeline was hard you ain't seen nothing yet today we're putting more than 60 films into one cohesive timeline creating the Disney Theory to end them all hello internets welcome to film Theory the show that always says Hey theorists so for as much as we get on them for the strange often awful decisions they make Disney has made a lot of great movies over the Hundred Years they've been around spe specifically their animation is some of the most beloved in the world there's a lot of genuine Nostalgia

for these stories and I wondered well what if they were all part of the same story what if there was one complete cohesive Disney timeline of the Disney Universe the Disney verse if you will now you may have seen this sort of idea around the internet before specifically with the Pixar theory this was a fun project originally created by John Negron and picked up by fellow theorists like the super Carin Brothers trying to fit all of the Pixar movies into one complete timeline it's a big Challenge and one that I really respect those creators for

taking on and I wanted to throw my hat into the ring with something similar the Disney Theory doing the same thing with all of Disney's Movies Matt had previously connected a handful of Disney movies with cameos and Easter eggs but I wanted to do them all from Snow White to Moana 2 and it turned out much longer than I anticipated like seriously I was thinking this would be a special 25 to 30 minute video and this turned into an epic that was over 45 minutes so yeah this is a multi-part series with part two coming

by the end of the month so okay how are we going to be doing this what are our rules like most of Disney's movies are pretty ambiguous about when and where they take place and putting them all together is going to be a bit janky but basically we're going to be looking at all of the historical settings Landscapes clothes Source material cameos and Easter eggs across all of the films to tie them together as best we can and shout outs to the awesome fan wikis and channel mology for being great resources for a lot of

the information regarding all of that jazz they were excellent starting points and just invaluable for us today regardless the most important thing for us is to make sure that the main 62 films in the Disney Cannon fit in here if you don't know the Disney Cannon are the movies made specifically by Walt Disney Animation Studios this is Disney's main Animation Studio that makes their tint pole big budget movies directly associated with the Disney brand just to be clear that doesn't incl include other Studios they've owned the likes of Pixar or Blue Sky Studios or image

movers or whatever like those are their own things and maybe we'll get to them someday for the most part it also doesn't include works from Disney tune Studios or Disney television animation those were the people behind the direct to video sequels or animated series spin-offs for the main Disney cannon that being said sometimes these sequels and spin-offs will have details that will help us definitively place the movies or support the world that we're building here in those cases will be using them but we will make sure to call that out but again the most important

thing for this theory is getting those main 62 films placed those extras are just a nice bonus if they fit in oh and just one more thing while you're watching this I want you to be thinking who would win in a fight Moana Elsa from Frozen or Rapunzel from Tangled I think there's a good case for all three of them but please leave your thoughts down in the comments below if you think it's Moana please make sure you use the word horizon in your comments for Elsa use galatia and for Rapunzel to pay they're on

screen right now if you want to make sure that you get them right including the word assigned to the princess you think would win and your comment will help us tally up the results and I'll let you know who wins in part two and hey maybe we can turn this into a theory a whole Disney princess Battle Royale honestly it sounds hilarious and I'm so down but with all of that done and dusted loyal theorists let's get right into the magic okay so right off the bat there's a Common Thread that ties all of the

movies in the Disney Cannon together and it's a sprinkling of that Disney Magic No I'm I mean literally Disney Magic the thing that distinguishes this universe apart from ours is Magic whether that be through talking animals or ghosts or just straight up Wizards so the first thing to do here is figure out where does that magic come from well the answer is simple Stars I'm talking wishing Stars shooting stars Magic from the sun which is just a big old star for whatever reason in the Disney verse stars are inherently magical and can pass that magic

along to whatever they touch and that is well everything see in the real world everything is made of star stuff elements that were first created inside of stars the same thing is happening here just with magic alongside the science as the corneus song and wish put [Music] it you're a star after the big bang and the formation of all these magic Stars the first thing we see is the ride of spring sequence from Fantasia which shows us the formation of Earth and the development of Life leading up to the age of the dinosaurs that naturally

takes to Disney's dinosaur set in the Cretaceous Period at least 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs would have existed alongside the ancestors of lemur but of course the dinosaurs couldn't last forever and just like in our universe a meteor impacts the planet and kills them off we actually see a lot of them die in that same right of spring sequence in Fantasia it's it's dark but that wasn't the end of life on the planet and in fact the star magic would basically supercharge the rest of the life on Earth in Fantasia 2000 the humpback

whale sequence opens up with a star shining down on the ocean and then the Northern Lights this is a phenomenon caused by the Earth's magnetosphere interacting with the Sun's light the sun itself is just a star so that makes the Northern Lights magic in this universe and believe me we'll get to that in a second regardless this sets the stage for magic to spread across the skies allowing those whales to take flight we're dating the sequence back to 120,000 years ago after humpback oils migrated to the Pine Tree populated Northern Hemisphere but before the most

recent Ice Age fully set in and and along with these flying humpback whales all of the magic also allows for the emergence of various creatures that are only Legends in our world Giants and Dragons nymphs and fairies mermaids and all manner of mythological beasts and supersized species additionally it left many animals capable of understanding human speech and gifted some with the ability to speak though that doesn't really become relevant until much much later this brings us to the dawn of human civilization with the rise of Atlantis around 13,000 BC as scene in Atlantis the Lost

Empire just to put that into perspective that would have been during the last ice age the technology of Atlantis was driven by magic crystals above the city which were conspicuously compared to Stars Then bright light like a star floating of the city further proof that magic comes from stars in this world however as the atlantian Empire thrived other less Advanced human civilizations were also popping up across the world each with their own relationship with this star magic for in instance we have Brother Bear set in what is now Alaska around 9,500 BC we can place

it there since it takes place in that sweet spot between the last ice age wrapping up but before the extinction of the Colombian mammoth in the film we once again see traces of magic from the stars in the Northern Lights told you we'd be getting back to that one and in Brother Bear we see this magic has the power to interact with both human and animal spirits literally transforming Kenai into a bear across the planet humans start recognizing the power of magic and sought to bottle it up and harness it for themselves sometimes they did

this in literal bottles this gave rise to races of magical beings like the Genies concentrated personifications of that wishing magic unfortunately we know from The Aladdin animated series that Genies were later hunted to near Extinction perhaps due to some backlash against magic considering the devastation that could occur if it fell into the wrong hands only a few survivors like Aladdin's Genie were spared and hidden away in places like the Cave of Wonders we can actually clock Genie's imprisonment starting in 8600 BC since 10,000 years will give you such a crick in the neck and we

know that Aladdin takes place in 1400 ad when we'll get there I promise and here is where we get to the most pivotal point in the early Disney verse the year 7000 BC and the fall of Atlantis as seen in that movie's prologue using their magically fueled technology Atlantis accidentally nuked to the whole planet and created a giant tidal wave whoopsie this led to the sinking of Atlantis and a great flood that hit the entire planet as referenced by Milo and ke later in the movie such knowledge has been lost to us since the time

of the May mock all the great flood this is also where the Noah's Arc sequence from Fantasia 2000 would fit in where we see Noah save the animals and F them to the only sliver of land that's not completely submerged so that's good news for Noah and his animals but what about the rest of humanity kind of hard to come back from the whole world getting flooded isn't it well thankfully there were parts of civilization like avalonia from strange world world that were able to survive on the backs of giant turtles yeah really these were

likely created by the magic that brought back Life After The Dinosaurs and we see in strange world that they're using the flooded planet as their own personal swimming pool and believe it or not but this isn't even the only example of this we see in the Disney cannon in the direct video sequel Aladdin and the King of Thieves the gang discover the remnants of an ancient civilization built on the back of a giant turtle sound familiar that's just further proof that humans were forced to resettle on the backs of the these giant turtles until the

continents reemerged oh and just as a little bonus here we actually have a direct connection between Atlantis and Strange World we see an atlantan book written in its distinctive language at the end of strange World suggesting that the fall of Atlantis was studied by the surviving humans however eventually avalonia would have been flooded again as the giant turtles died or just decided to go back underwater they got a little divine intervention from some very powerful individuals thus beginning Disney's age of the god yeah at this point higher Powers swoop in to reshape the world and

fix the mess left behind by Atlantis the first to step up is tafiti who raised the land from the ocean and unflooded the planet in the beginning there was only ocean until the mother Island emerged but tafiti was only one such powerful being there were others including the Titans and other giant monsters like tomatoa who brought chaos to the world earthquakes and volcanoes that never slept enter other Pantheon like the Greek gods who imprisoned the Titans and monsters beneath the Seas to help Humanity Thrive these prisons became small worlds onto themselves like lotai and Moana

and Wonderland in allice and Wonderland even some powerful mortal Sorcerers were imprisoned in similar worlds or trapped in items like cauldrons even the gods since no prison could hold he was thrown alive into a cruci of M dang man Zeus don't mess around regardless only creatures that could feasibly coexist with were allowed to hang around dragons and mermaids were left off the hook as were certain demigods like Maui who set Humanity up for success by taming nature speaking of demigods this actually leads us to the story of Hercules set in 1,000 BC we know this

thanks to a date we can see on a credit card in the movie huh guess all that wish magic also got capitalism a jump start in this timeline this film also shows us that gods are still running the show since we see the Greek pantheon and Hercules almost Ascend to become one of them oh and just before we move on Hercules also lets us Place The Lion King in all of its ancestor star magic roughly at the same time see one of the famous labors of Hercules and Greek myth to prove that he was a

hero was killing the nean Lion a beast that was terrorizing the town of namia well in the Disney movie we see Hercules wearing a lion Pelt that is identical to scar so somehow scar survived being attacked by the hyenas and The Lion King made his way up to Greece and was eventually defeated by Hercules and just to get it out of the way yes the Timone and Pumba series features those two in the mod modern day but those aren't the same Timone and Pumba from the movie Universe Timone in the films has five stripes on

his back but only three in the show so it's non-canon or some weird alternate universe but enough about that let's get back to the Disney Gods something happened that drove the gods away or made them take a hands-off approach moving forward and that thing was the drun from Rya and the last dragon in the year 800 BC dark entities known as the drun spread across the world with the power to turn any creature into stone and though you might not be able to kill a God you can trap them forever on a rock so how

can we put this at 800 BC well we know that the drun rose to power 500 years before the main events of Rya well that all began 500 years ago and given the presence of iron weapons and crossbows in the main story we can estimate that Rya is set around 300 BC so 500 years before that would make this 800 BC regardless after the gods left magical beings called dragons defeated the drun in the fictional Southeast Asian subcontinent of kandra though they were themselves trapped in stone 500 years later the drun were released once again

during the main events of Rya before being defeated once and for all with the Drone finally gone for good Humanity once again thrives though Polynesia suffers after the demigod Maui steals the heart of teiti and triggers a slowly encroaching wave of Darkness that drains life from the islands across the Pacific don't worry we'll get back to that story shortly but first we have to take a brief pit stop in Europe here we have the Black Cauldron yeah I bet you forgot about this one honestly I thought that this one was going to be a challenge

since it takes place in a fantasy world known as pridan until I dug into it and discovered that pryan is just another name for the country of Wales in Great Britain thus setting it firmly on Earth anyway this film has to take place around the 500s ad since the helmet that Taran imagines himself wearing resembles a spangen Helm a real type of helmet popular during this Century likewise this leads us directly into the Sword in the Stone set just a slight Jaun away in 500's England here King Arthur Rises to power to become a legendary

hero under the tutelage of the Mage Merlin this is the date range typically given for Arthur and Legend which more or less lines up with what we see in the film we're also going to set the famous Sorcerer's Apprentice story from Fantasia here which sees the sorcerer Yin Sid and his Apprentice a strange humanoid Mouse creature named Mickey these Animal Human hybrids will become much more common later on in the timeline and are likely the result of star magic really fast-tracking evolution of other species anyway we're placing this here because of the similarity between yensid

and Merlin's attire and the similar use of magic that's not to say they're the same character but they are clearly peers and now back to the Pacific to round out the first Millennium we have Moana and Moana 2 these are set in Polynesia during the 900s and we can chalk this date up to some real world history see moana's story unfolds during a period called the long pause this was a time when the exploration of the ocean by the Polynesian peoples stalled for over a thousand years and ended in the 10th Century well in the

Disney verse this came to an end thanks to moana's Adventure to tafiti which reignites the desire to explore in her people what's up guys futur Lee here I just saw Moana too and wanted to talk about how it impacts the timeline mostly it doesn't there was a joke in this movie where Maui said that the gods may have butt dialed Moana and no one knew what he was talking about but that it would make sense in about 2,000 years at first that concerned me because hey that doesn't line up with present day especially if this

is said in like 900 ad but there are multiple other instances where it does line up with that timeline of about 900 ad the last T tie before Moana is said to have been about a thousand years ago which lines up with the great Paws and likewise Matangi the bat lady was trapped in that giant clam for a thousand years again all of that lines up with a great pause so we're going to say that Dwayne Johnson just ad lied that line and we're going to leave it at that this then gets us to the

start of a new millennium and before we go further here I have to make a note not every Kingdom depicted in the Disney Universe has a great real world analog like some of them might have been one of the thousands of small Petty kingdoms that popped up around Europe in the Middle Ages before merging or getting eaten up by a larger Kingdom or Nation but in the Disney verse it seems like plenty of these lands continue to dot the map as independent states for a prolonged period at least up until the 20th century for example

according to Disney wish is set in the 1200s off the southern coast of Spain if I were to guess it takes place on a beiza or a similar island in the Mediterranean allowing for travelers from all over Europe and Africa to find their way there that would also make it a prime candidate to spread parts of its culture across the region and why we see so many early versions of classic fairy tale stuff like fairy godmothers and Magic mirrors and wish before they pop up in other European stories like for instance Sleeping Beauty thankfully this

one is easy it takes place within the borders of what is now France in the 1300s now father you're living in the past this is the 14th century got to love when they make it easy and also shout outs to Maleficent who is one of the many dark Wizards who seems to be taking advantage of the darker side of the star Magic from here things start to get busy particularly the 1400s were huge for our Disney timeline first up we have The Emperor's New Groove set in Peru during the era of the Incan Empire so

we're going to plop this one in the early 1400s we also get another example of magic in this world transforming a human into an animal which is just very much a recurring theme in the Disney verse next up we have one of my personal faves Mulan set in China and we can actually determine the exact year this takes place in see despite the legend dating back all the way to the 400s ad here in the real world the Disney verse Mulan takes place much later since we see both the Great Wall of China and the

Imperial Palace the ladder of which wasn't completed until around 1420 ad then in Mulan 2 we see a calendar that dates the film to the year of the fire Ox that only occurs once every 60 years in the first year of the fire Ox after the completion of the Imperial Palace was in 1457 also worth noting that the fa family Guardians like Mushu were dragons trapped in stone very similar to the dragons we saw in Rya perhaps the drun had an impact here in China as well regardless we can actually use the Imperial Palace to

place Aladdin around the same time since he and Jasmine finished their whole new world date by watching fireworks over the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City now before you say anything I know there's a popular Theory out there that suggests that Aladdin takes place in the far future since Genie makes a ton of modern pop culture references despite being locked up in the lamp for 10,000 years but this isn't the case and those timey Yi references can actually be explained thanks to the Aladdin animated series see in one episode Aladdin and his friends travel back

in time to the founding of agraba here the mystical sands of time are spilled onto the site where the city would be founded and Genie ends up bottling up some of the time travel magic for himself to use whenever he wants this might be a bit weird and retroactive but this is likely how his past self knew about all of those modern references time travel is just super confusing man those sands of time might also explain how crossover episodes like the one we see between Aladdin and Hercules can happen despite those two movies being separated

by thousands of years just wild stuff besides Genie isn't even the first to do this all the way back in The Sword and the stone Merlin used to take vacations in the 21st century on a regular basis and finally rounding out the 1400s we can hop back over to France where we see the events of the Hunchback of notredam if this is anything like the Victor Hugo novel it's based on that means it's set in the year 1482 and it also shows us another example of star magic bringing things to life like with the Gargoyles

Oh and before you call out that Beauty and the Beast should fall here because we see a woman who looks like B cameo in this movie it can't there are other factors in Beauty and the Beast that place it later on but both of these movies are set in France perhaps this is an ancestor of bells who just happens to look a lot like her and now probably 10 plus minutes into our timeline here we finally get to the very first Disney animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves using where the original fairy tale

originated as well as the aesthetic look of the era and the use of Minecart technology we can place this firmly in what is now Germany in the 1500s then there's Pocahontas set in Virginia during 1607 that's literally spelled out for us in the first few lyrics of the film again love when they make it easy and somewhat consistent with real world history even if the rest of the film isn't at all though again this movie does show us the long-term impacts of the star Magic on the nature of the Disney verse with elemental forces like

a wind and trees literally being alive in this world anyway this leads up into Beauty in the Beast which is set in France during the mid to late 1700s we know this thanks to the aesthetic a look of the era and cogsworth referencing roko architecture which prominently emerged in the 1730s we actually covered when and where this takes place in an old episode of food Theory so go check that out just a few decades later we have the Legend of Sleepy Hollow segment from The Adventures of kabad and Mr Toad this is Disney's version of

the headless horsemen story it's based on another real world book by Washington Irving set in 1790 nothing contradicts that in the movie so that's where we're going to put it similarly we can put the legend of Johnny apple seed from Melody time in the early 1800s that that movie's hero was based on a real person from around that same time jumping back to Europe and something much more made up we have Tangled in all of its various spin-off series and shorts this whole little mini franchise was kicked off by a bit of that star magic

giving healing powers to a flower a single drop of sunlight fell from the heavens and from this small drop of sun grew a magic Golden Flower regardless this is set in the fictional France adjacent Kingdom of Corona in the late 1830s or early 1840s how do we know that well the animators researched fashion from that time frame while making the film plus we know that Rapunzel and Eugene attend Elsa's coronation at the end of Frozen and we know when that film takes place speaking of which we know that Frozen and all of its nature ice

magic is set in the small Scandinavian kingdom of Arendelle in what is now modern-day Norway exactly in the year 1843 that dat we have thanks to a map dat at 1840 that Anna and Elsa's parents had on their ship when it sank and given that there's a three-year time gap between that tragedy and the events of Frozen it's just basic math similarly Frozen 2 is set 3 years after the first film Landing it in 1846 jumping forward a couple of decades we have Alice in Wonderland which sees Alice exploring one of these strange prison worlds

originally created by the Disney Gods at the start of the whole timeline a lot of weird stuff has been allowed to evolve here on its own thus the chesher cats Card Kingdom etc etc like Sleepy Hollow aliceon Wonderland is based on a real book by Lis Carroll which took place in the 1860s unfortunately not every movie is going to have a dated map or be based on a real book for example there's the Petco spill segment from Melody time based on the American Cowboy folk hero today this one Beyond just old west times we had

to take a look at the clothes specifically how one character is shown wearing a bustle uh this was a part of a dressman to push up the rear of the skirt and became a prominent part of American and British fashion in the 1870s that lines up with the real world Legend of pekos bill so that's where we're going to be planting this one similarly bustles also show up in Cinder which places that movie in the 1870s and the landscape of the Kingdom shown in the film resembles the real world region of oxitan in southern France

which tracks for the location also worth noting that this movie has yet another appearance of a wish granting magical being like the genie and the Fairy Godmother and small sentient talking craters like the mice further showing the impact star magic has had on the Disney verse and just how different it is from our world but another important thing that Cinderella does for us it lets us place exactly where the little mermaid goes on our timeline here let me explain we know that the movie takes place on Prince Eric's Island Kingdom set in the Mediterranean likely

near the real world island of Corsica this would explain the various characters and visual influences from nearby European cultures like Britain Italy and France nice young ladies just don't swim around rescuing people in the middle of the ocean oh you're going to love it Chef's been fixing his specialty stuffed crab love but the thing that really cements this time in place place and why it's connected to Cinderella well the king and the Grand Duke from Cinderella are shown attending Eric's wedding to Ursula which was put together in less than a day so Eric's Kingdom would

have to be close enough to Southern France for them to make it to the ceremony on time Corsica was even connected to France by Telegraph by the year 1870 allowing for quick messages to make it to the characters of Cinderella Plus in Cinderella 2 dreams come true the king and the Grand Duke rush off explaining we have important matters of state to attend to important matters of State hm perhaps like a royal wedding they even pack up a ton of just random valuables likely wedding gifts they had to get on a quick turnaround and they

return just 2 Days Later All of It just fits and just to dot our eyes and cross our teas the direct a video sequel The Little Mermaid 2 returned to the Sea references the opera singer enrio Kusa when I was a teenager I had this High squeaky voice and then one day I sound like guso kuso's career began in the 1890s so the first film being said in the 1870s would allow for Eric and Ariel to marry enjoy life a bit and then have a pre-teen Daughter by the 1890s now that took a bit of

maneuvering to figure out but something that's much easier for us Home on the Range which was set in the American Old West in 1889 the movie straight up lays this out for us thanks to a date listed on a deed I love it when they make it just stupid easy for us even if it's a stupid cow movie another easy one for us that is remarkably less stupid and cow adjacent is the Jungle Book said in India during the 1890s we know this since that's the year that Rudyard Kipling's original book was published and it's

backed up by a line in the movie It's the decade following Colonel hotti Service as a war elephant which he references in this line Back in 88 it was uh what was it so believe it or not but placing most of these movies was actually easy compared to what we see in the rest of the films like for real how on Earth do you figure out where Robin Hood Chicken Little and zootopia go how do you possibly go from what's in Lilo and Stitch to what we see in Treasure Planet and Disney the company straight

up exists in Wreck-It Ralph how does that work well loyal theorists we figured all of that out and more and if you want to find out how you'll need to subscribe for part two when it comes out later this month don't forget to leave a comment with the code word for the princess you think would win in a fight but for now remember that it's all just a theory a film Theory and cut up next on film Theory and it's here where we come to another pivotal moment in the Disney verse just from the sheer

amount of important elements that all happened in one place Pinocchio which takes place in Italy