Awesome article on making of Lilo and Stitich!

[ShyViolet]

https://www.polygon.com/features/226754 ... an-deblois

[colby65]

I find this whole thread kind of funny, because I've never thought of Lilo & Stitch as being underrated or underappreciated. Maybe it is in America? (I'm from Portugal). But even then, wasn't Stitch almost everywhere for years? The TV show was pretty popular too. I know tonnes of people who love it, many of my Disney-loving friends have Stitch plushies and mugs, I even have a friend with a a dog named Stitch. The movie also got me into Elvis. It was huge at the time it came out.

[ShyViolet]

Yes, I agree. It certainly was big when it came out, and Stitch has since become a staple of well-known Disney characters.

For some reason, the films between Lion King and Bolt/Princess have all been branded as “failures” by media writers…which makes absolutely no sense. Maybe they didn’t make as much as the Big Four, but many of them were still smash hits, especially Pocahontas, which was easily one of the top grossing films of 1995. Unfortunately, there’s been quite a lot of misinformation about 90s/early 2000s Disney.

[EricJ]

Disney didn't know what to make of it at first, and thought it was a summer movie that would be gone by the end of summer, in time for the big family-Thanksgiving release of Treasure Planet.
And didn't count on the sudden MDGA cult of Lilo-worshippers demanding that Chris Sanders be canonized as a saint, crying "No more NORMAL Disney films!", and almost literally being unaware there even was another animated release that fall.

For some reason, the films between Lion King and Bolt/Princess have all been branded as “failures” by media writers…which makes absolutely no sense. Maybe they didn’t make as much as the Big Four, but many of them were still smash hits, especially Pocahontas, which was easily one of the top grossing films of 1995. Unfortunately, there’s been quite a lot of misinformation about 90s/early 2000s Disney.

Okay, if people object to my names for it, then YOU find a name for Disney's self-resentment branding every movie from '95's Pocahontas to '05's Chicken Little as a "flop", even if they did get a bit of good audience reaction in theaters, like Mulan, Stitch, Tarzan and Groove.

Disney thought that they could print money after Lion King, when it was trying to copy the "epic" corny-melodrama of Lion King that sank Pocahontas and Hunchback with audiences at the theaters, and sent Disney into that naked-emperor funk in the first place.

[Daniel]

I'm sure Disney knew Pocahontas didn't have have the same commercial appeal and widespread excitement of The Lion King, nor did anyone rationally think the grosses would keep going up.

It was a tumultuous time with highs and lows, but to label it a time of blanket "flops" is shortsighted and not entirely accurate. We've been through this before.

[Dacey]

And Disney gave Stitch an enormous marketing campaigning. They weren’t expecting it to “go away”….

[EricJ]

I'm sure Disney knew Pocahontas didn't have have the same commercial appeal and widespread excitement of The Lion King, nor did anyone rationally think the grosses would keep going up.

Disney boardroom marketing does not have a great history of "rationality"--
Remember when box office analysts were already holding funerals for Pixar, when Cars didn't "outgross Finding Nemo" in its first weekend like the execs promised?

But yes, we have been over the theory that the audience's inexplicably venomous reaction to '97's Hercules was a delayed-reaction catharsis to the realization that Pocahontas and Hunchback didn't keep the momentum going from the "classic" Lion King.

[Dacey]

Remember when box office analysts were already holding funerals for Pixar, when Cars didn't "outgross Finding Nemo" in its first weekend like the execs promised?

No.

[Farerb]

I'm sure Disney knew Pocahontas didn't have have the same commercial appeal and widespread excitement of The Lion King, nor did anyone rationally think the grosses would keep going up.

It was a tumultuous time with highs and lows, but to label it a time of blanket "flops" is shortsighted and not entirely accurate. We've been through this before.

Didn't Disney view Pocahontas as a big lucrative film while The Lion King was their B project that would only appeal to little children?

[Farerb]

I find this whole thread kind of funny, because I've never thought of Lilo & Stitch as being underrated or underappreciated. Maybe it is in America? (I'm from Portugal). But even then, wasn't Stitch almost everywhere for years? The TV show was pretty popular too. I know tonnes of people who love it, many of my Disney-loving friends have Stitch plushies and mugs, I even have a friend with a a dog named Stitch. The movie also got me into Elvis. It was huge at the time it came out.

There's an interesting observation about Lilo and Stitch. I've never seen anyone disliking it, most people would say they love this film, and yet it's not really anyone's favorite or in anyone's top ten. I guess it's because the film is fun, but it doesn't really fit what everyone's thought of how Disney films are like. Not that it's a bad thing, it definitely makes the film more distinctive than the rest of the Disney canon.

[Ben]

Didn't Disney view Pocahontas as a big lucrative film while The Lion King was their B project that would only appeal to little children?

Yes. Katzenberg totally believed that LK was going to bomb, and that they would bounce back with Pocahontas. All the animators wanted to get onto Pocahontas, since that was seen as the A project, thus disproving any theories, views and conjecture about how these things work and what Disney was thinking… Pocahontas had a huge marketing spend and was seen as continuing the more "mature" aspects of B&TB that JK would continue to chase with POE at DWA. It was a big deal, and the only "disappointment" was when it didn’t makes as much as the Big Four, but then that’s the reason we refer to them as the Big Four.

[EricJ]

There's an interesting observation about Lilo and Stitch. I've never seen anyone disliking it, most people would say they love this film, and yet it's not really anyone's favorite or in anyone's top ten. I guess it's because the film is fun, but it doesn't really fit what everyone's thought of how Disney films are like. Not that it's a bad thing, it definitely makes the film more distinctive than the rest of the Disney canon.

I've always been in the position that I like the characters (although it took the Disney Channel cartoon to achieve that), but the movie itself was an unfocused first-draft mess that didn't seem to know whose main story it was telling, making it hard to figure out who to become emotionally attached to.
(Is it about Nani's search for a job, and Lilo ruining it? Is it about Lilo being "misunderstood", even though she wildly indulges her own issues? Is it about whether a slobbery alien destructor will turn "good"? Who's the villain, the Oscar Homolka alien, or the big whale?)

When it came out, the movie rode a Shrek-like wave of anti-Eisner zeitgeist, and the fact that the movie was so cold, puzzling and against the post-Lion King melodrama-musical assembly line seemed like "Take that, Pocahontas!", but that didn't make it a 100% instantly heartwarming film on the level that Pixar was making them.

Remember when box office analysts were already holding funerals for Pixar, when Cars didn't "outgross Finding Nemo" in its first weekend like the execs promised?

No.

Short memory. To spare you your next post, Bob Iger pushing Cars 2 into production wasn't because of "its rampant success", but to shout down the naysaying of analysts still crossing their fingers and hoping for "Pixar's first flop", and Iger wanted to rub the success of the movie's toy-marketing in their faces.

Still, "More money than Nemo"? That goes down in Wishful-Thinking history right next to the miller claiming his daughter could spin gold.

[Farerb]

It probably wouldn't have been as successful as it was if it had been released between The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast, but I still think it's harmless fun, though I can understand if some find it a bit boring in the middle.

[Dacey]

Short memory. To spare you your next post, Bob Iger pushing Cars 2 into production wasn't because of "its rampant success", but to shout down the naysaying of analysts still crossing their fingers and hoping for "Pixar's first flop", and Iger wanted to rub the success of the movie's toy-marketing in their faces.

Yes I have a very “short memory” because you are recalling something here that didn’t happen.

That’s not how Iger worked. That’s not how Disney works. That’s not how Hollywood works. That’s not how any of this works.

Also, can’t Lilo & Stitch EVER get brought up around here without the discussion turning into this same tired rant?

[Ben]

"Analysts hoping for a flop" proves the guy has more hot air than Boorish Johnson over here… Everything he says is cough..cough, if you get my drift.

Okay…officially moving on now. Boring same-old same-old posts — particularly those filled with inaccuracies, half-truths, half-baked theories and out and out falsehoods, will be removed.