The Rescuers Down Under
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The Rescuers Down Under is an animated film prduced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on November 16, 1990. This film, which takes place in the Australian Outback, is the sequel of the earlier film The Rescuers (1977).
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Characters
The Rescuers Down Under had the familiar characters from the first Rescuers movie, the mice Bernard (Bob Newhart) and Bianca (Eva Gabor). New characters included the albatross Wilbur (John Candy), brother of the albatross played by the late Jim Jordan in the original; Jake the kangaroo mouse (Tristan Rogers); and the movie's villain, an animal smuggler, who was called Percival C. McLeach (George C. Scott).
Disney firsts
The Rescuers Down Under is notable for its firsts for Disney. It was the first Disney traditionally-animated movie to completely use the new computerized CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) process. CAPS allowed more efficient and sophisticated post-production of the Disney animated films, and made obsolete the traditional pactice of hand-painting cels. As a result, The Rescuers Down Under was the first feature film for which all original film elements were completely made within a digital environment. The film was also the first sequel made by Disney to one of its animated films.
On its first release, The Rescuers Down Under was preceded by a short film starring Mickey Mouse in an adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper. (This was only the second new Mickey Mouse short made since the 1950s, the first being Mickey's Christmas Carol, which was made to accompany the re-release of The Rescuers.)
Box office popularity
The film did poorly in the box office (making only $27 million), at least partly due to stiff competition from the hit film Home Alone. Consequently, there were no further sequels.
Rumors
In 2003, people on Amazon.com and the IMDB forums were saying that Disney was announcing a sequel to The Rescuers Down Under called "The Rescuers: Journey to the Black Castle", based on the original book by Margery Sharp. There was another topless woman rumor that had the topless woman during the beginning flight scene in Australia. The rumor has been proven false, due to Disney looking at the frames of the film, due to it being animated on a computer.