Bolt: A rollicking animated adventure

Clearly, a computer-animated story about Bolt, a TV superhero dog engaged in a trek across America with a super fan hamster, Rhino and a super cynical cat, Mittens, could not be construed as even slightly autobiographical for anyone behind the film.  But in a way, for the executives, filmmakers and talent at the heart of Walt Disney Animation Studio’s upcoming release Bolt, there is something that the onscreen animals and off-screen humans share in abundance — enthusiasm.

The zeal with which directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard discuss their feature film directing debut is palpable. Williams was hand selected by John Lasseter (Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios and Principal Creative Adviser, Walt Disney Imagineering) to helm Bolt, given his talents clearly on view in Chris’ first CGI animated short, Glago’s Guest.  

Williams felt an immediate and positive connection to the project. He remembers, “I felt that there was a great potential to create really rich characters — that’s sort of our overall goal as filmmakers. We thought we could come up with a trio — a hero dog, a cynical cat and a cheerful hamster — that the audience could spend a lot of time with. And I really feel that we did that. For me personally, I’m just excited to be working at Disney under John Lasseter — you really want to make a movie for him. He’s the best boss you could possibly have in animation. He’s very engaged and involved, and feels passionately about any film that comes out of Disney or Pixar.”

That passion for animation is also evident in the impressive career path of co-director Byron Howard, a member of Disney Animation Studio’s Story Trust, a hothouse group of artists creating and developing stories for the company’s short and feature-length offerings. Howard’s keen sense of animation is put to superlative use in Bolt, where a painterly world is inhabited by fully-realized CG characters who feel right at home. Byron explains the rule for this successful combination: “Something that John really stresses is believability — the world you create doesn’t have to be realistic, but it has to be believable, and everything in that world has to obey its own logic. You can see within the animation of Bolt some actual dog mannerisms that have been captured — the more that Bolt gets away from his TV show in Los Angeles, the more he starts to act like a real dog.  So the animation incorporates more dog physicality.  We watched video, we researched some of the dogs of classic Disney films, we brought in dogs to the offices and sketched them. And you can really see it in the character. That’s really gratifying to all of us.”

Bolt believes that he is a lucky canine with superpowers, which he actually doesn’t, but in the end, he finds that his belief and his acting on that notion is enough. In a way, just as the Disney artists do, Bolt becomes the dog, the hero, he always wanted to be by the action he takes.

Bolt is now showing in theaters.