"Nooo! That's a dead bird! ... That's ANOTHER dead bird! Stop shooting things! Noooo! There's an indiscriminate hunter just shooting everything! What the eff!!! ... Are you effing kidding me? They set the dogs on her?! Watch where you're going!!!!! KICK IT! God, this is awful! ... Stop it! ... I was telling YOU to stop it. ... Oh my God, BAMBI's gonna die! ... WHAT THE HELL! DID BAMBI JUST GET SHOT?! ... Yes. ... And now there's a fire."

This week's Movie Madness will be a little different. I could have reviewed any of the forgettable movies I've seen in the last two weeks in theaters. This included Ninja Turtles and Let's Be Cops. But honestly, these movies are pretty much what they say they are, and there's nothing much more to say about them than what's been said.

So I wanted to go back in time to the beginnings of an empire.

Both adults in our household are now employed, which is no small feat considering we are both under thirty with minimum experience during a recession. But this means one very important thing (other than the ability to pay rent): We are able to afford a trip to Disney World.

Seeing as we are about 100 days out from our plane departure, we decided to watch all of the Disney movies ever created between now and December. This past weekend, we put our Labor Day celebrations to good use as we chugged through Snow White and ended with Alice in Wonderland. This weekend, we'll take up the helm with Robin Hood and His Merrie Men.

If you're anything like me, you grew up on Disney. Ariel was born around the same year I was, and so I grew up through the Golden Age of Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Pocahontas, Hercules, and Mulan. I was old enough to appreciate the revival that came with Tiana and Rapunzel and Elsa. But once upon a time, there was no Disney World. There was no major cartoon corporation that made moralistic movies for little girls to fantasize about their perfect prince.

No, there was just a man and a mouse.

Actually, there were three men and a rabbit with messed up copyrights, but that's a less rosy version of the fairy tale. And if there's one thing Disney excels at, it's cleaning up those stories until they're squeaky clean.

I had never seen a lot of these early movies. Of course we've all seen Snow White and Dumbo, but what about Saludos Amigos or The Reluctant Dragon? I would recognize a scene here and there from the Sing-Along VHS's I watched religiously in the 90's, but other than that, I met new characters and plots this weekend.

These films show an awkward time in the Disney franchise; a new series getting its feet wet and the kinks worked out in a flimsy first season. Steve Carell's Michael Scott is a little younger and little meaner, A Wayans brother is the third roommate on New Girl, Captain Kirk's XO is a woman, and Walt Disney does vignettes to mostly music instead of the big-deal princess pictures we've all grown up with.

The animation in these films is brilliant. These men (and yes, men, because Disney would only hire male animators) had a passion to be there working with Walt, and each gesture, background piece, special effect, and sound effect comes from a labor of love. There are no Elsa braids cutting through anyone's shoulders, or lopsided townsfolk with one eye hiding in the background. No, these are clear, crisp cartoons that transcend what 2D Animation's limits should be.

There is a whimsical factor that I can only imagine was magical in a time where our country bounced from a Depression right into a World War. I can only imagine the newsreels were full of the Holocaust, the wartorn buildings of London, and bloody Normandy. And back home, dads were struggling to pay the mortgage and moms were finding their way through old fashioned beliefs battling with the need to find a job at the factory and in turn, find new freedoms. So imagine living in that world that makes our current situation look puny, and then going into the theater and watching Pinocchio come to life or Bambi learn how to skate.

That said, there is a dark undertone to these old films that are consciously left out of the movies I grew up with. In The Reluctant Dragon, a zebra centauress arrives with big lips in tow. The female colorists are not allowed to be male animators. And in Fantasia, they can't erase the racism from YouTube's "banned scenes" clips.

While Song of the South holds adorable children and amazing animation, it also holds Uncle Remus and a white lady telling her white son they'll have "the laughinest time of all." It makes me worry that people really honestly thought slavery looked like an old Hagrid-esque black man strolling down a cartoon path with a little blue bird singing along to his tune. The sexism, racism, and elitism rampant in these early movies spearheaded by Disney are unapologetic and never reflected upon. It makes it hard to enjoy the Seven Dwarfs when one does an impersonation of a Chinese man.

The argument against this is that it was a different time. However, this still says something about the man himself. Walt Disney, although an imaginative genius, did not have the foresight to understand women's equality, multicultural futures, or collaboration of different minds.

Walt Disney got his inspiration from the four years he spent in Marceline, Missouri, as a child. Three hours east of Marceline is another preserved town for tourists where another groundbreaking storyteller was born and inspired. Mark Twain, who was bowing out as Disney was learning how to draw mice in cornfields, did have this foresight. I see the kindness in Twain's stories, the understanding that although everyone around him was saying racism was totally acceptable, it wasn't acceptable. Reading his writings, I see an empathy for the human race that does not ring out in these earlier films of Walt's.

So the question becomes: how much greater could Walt have been?

Perhaps we see the answer in his legacy. I hope, as we continue this sojourn through the discography of this company, we find that empathy grow. We see stronger girls and the white male protagonist take a back seat for others. I know it will happen eventually, because I was there to see it.

The beginning of every tale is always full of mistakes. Let's hope the future continues to correct them.

I was slated to review America today. I advertised that I would be doing as much. Last week when I went to see The Signal, there was a commercial for America, that showed the history of America rewinding and then disappearing as George Washington was shot and killed by a sniper during the Revolutionary War. Then the narrator asked, "What if America never existed?" And we see the monuments disappear one by one.

I wrote an entire book about American history, speculating what would happen if there was no more America, and how Americans would rebuild their country, etc. I also write historical fiction, and I am currently finishing up the first book in a trilogy about an alternative universe set in 1888 America (it's steampunk!). To say that I love alternative history America, and American history in general, is an understatement.

So to say I was excited to see America was an understatement. I was totally stoked. I talked with my writing partner about how this could finally push AU literature to the forefront, how I was so happy there was a big-budget movie focusing on history, and ... and ... and ...

I must have sounded like an idiot.

The promised movie was abandoned five minutes into the film. This was not a film about alternative history, speculative fiction, or anything really that was advertised on the poster or the trailer.

I debated how to go about reviewing America. And I decided to focus on the contract that a film makes with its audience.

We talked about this contract a little last week with The Signal, and this breach is just another clause of the complicated relationship between author and reader. We as writers do not write a book about giraffes' digestive systems and then slap robots on the cover to get more people to read our book about giraffes' digestive systems. That's not how marketing is supposed to work. You are supposed to advertise your work to gain attention from those who would be interested in reading your work, and then perhaps bring some interested general audience members to the table. People who like action movies go to action movies; they don't want the trailer to make Chocolat look like a James Bond film. They're not going to enjoy themselves, and they aren't going to rope more people into coming to see it. It's being honest; that's the contract.

So I did not receive the film that was advertised. And that saddened me.

So I decided to also not give you what I promised. I will not be reviewing America today, but instead Disney's The Pirate Fairy. Those who would have enjoyed the America review will get no such thing and probably have little interest in The Pirate Fairy. And those who would have really loved The Pirate Fairy will be confused and turned off by my original premise, because America is not a Disney movie, it's not rated PG, and it's not for children. Two films with two genres and two different objectives will now be mashed into one review, and no one will be happy.

The Pirate Fairy  is the latest installment of the Tinkerbell fairy movies that I have long avoided due to thinking that these films were trite and not in sync with the Neverland canon. However, it does follow the canon and has created its own canon.

Zarina is a pixie dust fairy who works to sack up the dust for the other fairies. Fairy Gary, a kind-hearted boss who loves Zarina but just absolutely cannot deal with her doing stupid stuff, like wanting to mess around with dangerous pixie dust to experiment. Obviously Zarina takes a leaf out of Tinkerbell's rebellious book and goes ahead and does the experiment anyway, causing the destruction of the pixie dust tree and a huge problem for her entire ... people? Tribe? Town? Pixie fairy girls and boys.

Zarina then leaves. The movie cuts to a year later, when a celebration of the seasons is taking place in the big arena. Zarina returns with a dastardly plan, and the fairies have to go after her to bring her home and save their community.

This movie was awesome. I'm a huge Disney nerd, and I love to learn how to structure my stories from watching Pixar and the full-length animated features. This isn't because I'm a crazy person, it's because that's how they teach you in playwriting school how to do it! Or maybe my professor was a crazy person ... Regardless. Pixar and Disney movies have to shove a fulfilling, sensible story into 90 minutes and simplify it to PG standards. The Pirate Fairy, while not holding any deep themes of betrayal or racial equality, it does in fact touch on those Disneyrific ideas of unconditional love, home, family, and friendship.

One thing I appreciated about this movie is that it draws from earlier movies, including Tinkerbell's sister and a character arch for all of the girls. SPOILER We also see the emergence of the one and only Captain Hook, as his character is actually very much fleshed out. He is ruthless, conniving, elitist, and terrified of crocodiles. However, we see a gentler side to him, where maybe, even for just a moment, he is envious and open to the magic that the other Neverlanders can share with him. I enjoyed his character and his interactions with the crew and Zarina.

ANOTHER SPOILER. One thing I did not understand, however, was the complete absolving of Zarina's crimes. Zarina messed up. Zarina needed to learn a lesson. And maybe she did? But Tink and the gang sort of gloss over the truth when it comes to telling the other fairies what Zarina did, and Zarina is welcomed back into the township under a false understanding. I didn't like that, and usually Disney is better at their denouements.

This movie was very girl power. I appreciated that. All the main characters were female, they were not weak ... not a one of them ... and not all of them were dressed in skimpy outfits. Tink has grown to mean more than the jealous little harpy flitting around Peter's head, and I appreciate that. She's an inventor, she's got ingenuity, and she's a leader. However, I do feel like there was a larger problem when it came to POC. One of the fairy gals is Asian, and I thought that was cool. However, one of the pirates is a walking stereotype with a Fu Man Chu moustache and a thick accent. One of the fairy gals is black, but not too black. A fair-skinned fairy is the closest we get to any black characters in the entire film, and that worries and bothers me. Why are fairies predominantly white? They're fairies. Especially when you're creating a film to work as a learning tool for empowerment for little girls, you want to be a little more inclusive.

Pirate Fairy should be watched by anyone who is a Disney fan or a Neverlander. It's got beautiful animation (better than Frozen, I dare to say), it sticks to canon, it has a couple inside jokes thrown in there, and the girl power is abound. I think anyone who is young at heart will be pleasantly surprised that this film isn't just a cash-grab, but a legitimate piece of animation and storytelling.

THE MOVIE ITSELF: Pirate Fairy was pleasant, and I had few complaints about its animation, storytelling, characterization, consistency, or themes. It was actually more than what it had advertised, and that is always a great surprise. However, it is aimed at younger audiences, so those who are not Disney nerds and looking for a good Saturday date film, this may not be for you.  A-

ENJOYMENT FACTOR: I enjoyed it thoroughly. Again, I got what I paid for, and then some.  A-.

VERDICT: I am in no way saying that viewers should only go see movies inside their comfort zones. If that were the case, I would have never seen Judd Apatow films, Mayazaki movies, or even Au Revoir, Mes Enfants. But I learned from a young age that you need to try things you don't like to see if you actually like them. So please, please go see movies that you don't think you'll like. Go read books you wouldn't usually pick up. But it is the writer's responsibility to properly represent their work. And it is the filmmaker's responsibility to inform you of what you're paying money to see. My verdict? Go explore. Go see movies. And go rent The Pirate Fairy on Netflix.