Love, love, LOVE them! They ARE Disney’s Hook and Smee, and I can’t imagine anyone else filling the roles. While Corey Burton & Jeff Bennett are great, they obviously have based their interpretations of the characters on Conried & Thompson’s original work. The characters wouldn’t be who they are without those two. Even their body language and facial expressions are based off of Conried and Thompson’s live-action reference model recordings. (You can see just how many traits Hans and Hook share in common here.) I really wish we still had access to those original recordings and not just the stills but even they are pretty awesome.

I don’t know how Hans and Bill felt about working with one another, but I suspect by the time they finished recording, they were good friends because only those who get along so well in real life can play off of one another on screen the way Hook and Smee do and make it sound believable. They later worked together again for Disney in the early production of Sleeping Beauty and you can still hear them as Kings Stefan (before Hans was replaced as the voice actor) and Hubert in this unused song and once again, it sounds like they’re having a blast. I don’t know why they ultimately recast Stefan but you don’t cast two actors as a dynamic duo like that twice (even if it was just in the early days) unless their chemistry is good.

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, who animated Hook and Smee respectively, were also good friends in real life. There’s a great documentary about their many contributions to Disney history called Frank and Ollie and you can absolutely tell how much they cared about each other not just as coworkers but as best friends. They occasionally joke around and poke fun at each other and I think some of that warmth definitely made it into the film as well.

It’s interesting to me that Hook and Smee have a different dynamic than most villains and henchmen. While most villains could honestly get along fine without their henchmen and the henchmen are only begrudgingly doing their job because they’re afraid of the consequences, Hook can’t function without Smee. He NEEDS him, whether or not he admits it. And Smee, although intimidated by Hook, also seems to genuinely care about him when no one else does. It’s one of the many things I love about these characters.

Frank Thomas - Love You Deep Or Not At All (1970)

Exquisitely haunting country ballad. Described as country noir by Numero group.

🏴‍☠️ During the making of the movie “Treasure Planet”, Glen Keane, the supervising animator for John Silver, used animation of Captain Hook in “Peter Pan” by Frank Thomas to study the movements of a CGI arm for the character of John Silver. One of the main challenges in making “Treasure Planet”, was how to make hand-drawn animation and CGI animation one union. 🦾

I agree with you about certain things. I think the NRC characters being proactive is a big part of it as well. People tend to be drawn to more active protagonists. Granted, there are some exceptions to that, but that's what I've noticed over the years. TWST is no different.

I also think that the Walt Era Princesses get a lot of unneeded flack and are misunderstood. Cinderella and Snow White especially, since they are both abuse survivors and did what they had to in order to survive. (Seriously, Snow White traded her skills for food and shelter, which makes sense because she was a maid in her stepmother's palace before. She didn't do it because "women must to stay in kitchen.") Thankfully people are coming around to Cinderella and Snow White, at least.

Although I still disagree about Neige to an extent. He is a frustrating and odd character to dig into. He works well until Rook infodumps his backstory in Book 6 and it all falls apart.

I said this before, but Neige would have been stronger if the game either cut Rook’s infodump entirely or kept the backstory but made Rook wrong about who Neige is now.

Neige has a tell, don’t show problem. We are told what he is like, but the game never actually shows any of it. There is no real hint of Neige having hidden issues either or it being a public facade. That makes him hard to read and unintentionally Gary Stu-ish. It's so bad that Vil unironically comes off as the better Snow White analog than Neige in my eyes, due to him actually displaying off all of Snow White's core personality traits beyond her naivety and gullibleness.

Without that backstory or if Rook was wrong about him in the present, then he would be a lot like Kalim. If that were the case, then both of them would be genuinely good people. Thanks to being used to getting their way and having most of their hardships cleared for them for different reasons, they’re naive, oblivious and inconsiderate of how their actions affect others around them, harming others they care about in the process. That would make him flawed while having not turning him into the second coming of Maurice Cole. If Neige grew up poor, then it's possible for the fame and money to get to his head a little. Plus, that would make sense thematically thanks to Book 5 coming after Scarabia, which focused on systematic injustice and privilege. Neige would also be a foil to Kalim, showing how far he has come since that arc. But then, Rook has his little speech, and Neige comes apart for me.

My theory is that the writers tried to make Neige like Snow White, but fails at getting across any of that to the audience. The game needed to either develop him and show those traits or keep everything the same and remove or undermine the infodump. We did not need that information about Neige in the first place. Idk, that's just my take.

Having said all that, I do agree that if the game bothered to show his issues behind the scenes, if he had any, then that would've helped as well either way. It's another reason why I wish he had more screen time during Book 5 and interacted with Yuu and Vil more.

As a side note, I really need to look for that one book you mentioned. It sounds like an interesting read and a fantastic writing resource. I also love reading Disney books like that in general to understand those stories better.

So, I have one counterpoint. How do we know what Rook says is completely accurate?

I know some people are aware, but in media, particularly in Japan, people who give actors, models, and idols their platform will hide things that are considered... unwanted. Two anime that I've seen that talk about this: Tamon's B-Side and Skip Beat! I know Aggretsuko covers it in a season and I think it's also a thing in Oshi no Ko (but I haven't seen that). And yes, it's a real thing. Actress who was Kaoru Kamiya in the live action Rurouni Kenshin movies a few years back got in BIG TROUBLE with the movie people because: she got married. Which ruins the ability of fans to imagine having a relationship with her.

We know what Rook, a fan who is not necessarily close to Neige, knows. Actors hide significant others or families or aspects of their lives to be more 'marketable'. Rook, for all his behaviors, is a fan. He doesn't know the ins and outs. We want to trust him because we know him, but it does not mean he's ACCURATE.

And we know this, because he didn't even realize Vil despised Neige, until Vil tried to KILL Neige. He had moments where he had an idea Vil was having issues, but it didn't hit him what was going on until Vil tried to poison Neige. And Rook is Vil's vice housewarden/dorm leader and friend. Rook is fallible.

Rook is not close to Neige. Neige knows of him because of letters he gets, but they don't know each other. Sure, Vil gives a little bit of what he knows about Neige in Book 6, but while Neige views them as close, Vil does not. He probably hasn't really heard Neige if Neige has tried to open up to him at work.

And what Rook says about Neige? That is probably carefully curated content to make Neige super marketable to fans. Rook's infodump can and should be viewed as "This is how Neige is seen by the public" NOT "This is how Neige is."

Because this game is marketed to Japanese audience first, you have to consider that Neige and Vil likely have the problems that Japanese actors, models, and idols are known to go through. They have to hide parts of who they are, they deal with obsessive stalker fans, they probably have fans who will get super pissed if they get a significant other, and they have to carefully curate who they are in public so they don't get KILLED by a fan who'd get angry for betraying the mental image that fan had.

So I take what is said Neige as not very accurate. Out of anyone who talks about Neige, the one who has the most accuracy? That's Vil. And he's a person who DESPISES Neige.

Anyways, the book you are looking to read? It's this:

Disember Day 26: “Frank and Ollie”

Two of the biggest names in Disney animation from Walt’s era: Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, they were two of Disney’s“Nine Old Men” and had been part of the Disney animation studio since its earliest days, they had been since the mid 1930’s and brought to life many characters such as Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Mr Smee, Baloo, Mowgli and Bagheera~