DISNEY POC »

Dr. Joshua Sweet, one of the heroes of Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire, is a heroic member of the team searching for the undersea world of Atlantis. And he's the first black character in the history of Disney animated feature films. That may surprise you. After all, you may remember Eddie Murphy's routines in Mulan, Samuel E. Wright's rendition of Under the Sea in the Little Mermaid, Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox in Song of the South or the crows in Dumbo. But none of those characters were human. "It has taken a ridiculously long time," says Atlantis director Kirk Wise.

Kida - the Forgotten Disney Princess
Atlantis: The Lost Empire is not considered a Disney classic, but is definitely one of Disney’s gems, as a film that takes on mythological ideas and expands upon it by creating a plausible world that blends the spiritual with the scientific. It has a few problems - elements of White Savior-ism for example - but I consider it one of Disney’s great underrated films.

The one character that I think is perhaps one of the most underrated women in Disney’s animated films is Kida, Disney’s forgotten princess of Atlantis. As she was created in the post-1990s Disney Renaissance but pre-Princess and the Frog, she is unfortunately in the limbo of Disney films. She is also one of the few princesses who is not the protagonist of the film she is in, and the only princess not to be featured in a musical film, the big stick that drives her into not being considered among the princess elites.