Disney+ Streaming Recommendation: Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 Are the Weirdest Movies Disney Ever Made

There are plenty of lists of forgotten and utterly incomprehensible Disney movies that are now streaming on the recently launched Disney+ service, but The Cat From Outer Space or The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes aren’t nearly as weird as the fact that the third movie the studio ever made was a high-concept, nearly dialogue-free classical music art film. Fantasia and its much-delayed sequel, Fantasia 2000, are streaming on Disney+ and they’re really worth watching—or listening to, at the very least.

It really is wild to think that, after making Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (a huge, immediate, award-winning hit) and Pinocchio (a disappointment at the box office), Walt Disney’s next move was to animate classical music. Fantasia was initially supposed to be an animated short that would bring Mickey Mouse back into the limelight, but The Sorcerer’s Apprentice—which famously features Mickey as an irresponsible magician who gives a broom sentience—was awfully expensive to make. So, Disney decided to make the segment part of a larger concert film.

The result is unlike anything Disney made before, or since (with the exception of Fantasia 2000), yet the 1940 original is a masterful display of the company's artistic talent and ambition—a relic of a time when Disney was a man rather than a massive, monopolistic content factory. Sure, there were plenty of shrewd business decisions that went into Fantasia’s creation and marketing, but in 2019 watching it feels like watching a relic of an almost totally alien era in pop culture.

The first Fantasia consists of eight segments. Of these, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is probably the most iconic, in no small part because it stars Disney’s mascot and explicitly evokes a sense of magic. Fantasia also reimagines Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring as a story about evolution, and while the scientific accuracy of the segments hasn’t aged well despite the MC’s boasts, the dinosaurs are just as awe-inspiring now as they were when you watched as a kid and fast-forwarded the VHS tape just to get to this part (or was that just me?).

Dance of the Hours delights with its slapstick animal ballet set to a joyous composition, while The Nutcracker Suite ditches the familiar Christmastime iconography for a more verdant palette. Chernabog, the demon at the center of the ominous, haunting Night on Bald Mountain, might truly be the most terrifying villain in all of Disney's history.

There are some problematic moments in Fantasia, to be sure, especially in the Greek-myth-inspired Pastoral Symphony. The Disney+ version of the film, as with all edits Disney’s shown since the late ’60s, cut out scenes of a little black centaur girl polishing a white centaur’s hooves, but even still, there are some questionable gender politics and less overtly racist depictions in the segment. Perhaps more than any other Disney movie, Fantasia really does seem like it’s of a different era, for better and for worse. The musical and artistic nature of the film might help smooth over these flaws, but it doesn’t excuse them.

Fantasia 2000 also seems like it’s from another era, though it can feel a little more dated than timeless. Walt Disney’s initial vision was to have a new and ever-changing version of Fantasia every year, and Fantasia 2000 attempted to make his dream come true a mere...60 years later. Fantasia 2000 has some delightful segments, like the Al Hirschfeld–inspired take on a stylized New York in Rhapsody in Blue and a rendition of Stravinsky’s The Firebird, which makes the title a literal, epic phoenix of flame and destruction. But it’s occasionally weighed down by nascent CGI techniques that haven’t aged as well as the original’s hand-drawn charm, along with some odd celebrity cameos. (What do Steve Martin, Penn & Teller, and Angela Lansbury have to do with classical music? Beats me!)

Still, Fantasia 2000 truly sounds fantastic, and even if it doesn’t quite match the strange majesty of the original, it feels wholly unique. To watch either Fantasia is an escape—not just from the dialogue and tropes of the rest of Disney’s library, but from the modern movie landscape where Easter-egg-laden franchises dominate the landscape. It’s harder to imagine a Fantasia 2020 than it is to imagine a spin-off of a spin-off (of a spin-off) getting the green light. Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 are wonderfully unique, perhaps the purest form of art the House of Mouse has ever made.

And, if nothing else, pop on either Fantasia in the background while you’re working. Turn Disney+ into Spotify, and enjoy the sounds of celebrated symphonies from some of history’s greatest composers. If you do decide to take a glance at the TV, you just might find yourself captivated, momentarily, by some deeply magical feats.

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Originally Appeared on GQ