Mickey Mouse as a character was not always the nice guy that we all know him to be today. He was a troublemaker (Miyamoto, 2023), rambunctious, even with a slightly sadistic character (Gould, 2008). In his silent and short first published cartoon, the Plane Crazy (1928), Mickey was portrayed as a pilot of a two-seater plane. Minnie Mouse, his girlfriend, was in the passenger seat. Once the couple took off, Mickey, annoyed by Minnie’s rejection of his courting behaviour, started performing daring moves with the plane in order to scare her. This caused Minnie to tremble from fear which was answered by Mickey’s laughter and his pull into an unwanted kiss. Here and in the subsequent cartoons Mickey Mouse’s personality capitalised on the feelings of fight, failure and anger (Andrew, 2024).
Mickey Mouse in Plane Crazy (1928)
Mickey was portrayed by Disney as silly, selfish and angry for more than half a century. Following rejections of the character due to his personality, in the 1930s, the company decided to create two supporting characters - Donald Duck and Goofy - that would accompany Mickey. This would provide a possibility for changes in Mickey’s personality. Donald Duck was assigned Mickey's anger, while Goofy absorbed the former silly side of Mickey. The aim of this change was to help protect the core dignity of Mickey Mouse and offer better storylines. However, this aim was not achieved because the new characters started to overshadow Mickey by becoming the centre of comedy action driving cartoon dynamics (Miyamoto, 2023). At this point, Walt Disney developed a feature that would help Mickey be at the forefront again.
Mickey was redesigned with a more modern look and made another appearance in the animated film Fantasia (1940), in the segment The Sorcerer’s Apprentice that would become the most famous. In this episode, Mickey Mouse is portrayed as a pupil of the sorcerer Yen Sid and tries out some of his mentor's magical techniques, but struggles to command them effectively. The story is based on the poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Der Zauberlehrling (The Disney Wiki, (n.d.-b)). In this appearance Mickey becomes a more emotionally empathic character and is now able to make mistakes and learn from them. This animation helped Disney to bring back the love of the public to Mickey Mouse. Since then, Donald and Goofy stayed in their roles of supporting characters that could take on the main character’s dynamics. This is how Mickey Mouse has developed from a mean mouse to an empathic and optimistic protagonist (Miyamoto, 2023).