Disney Renaissance 2/Disney Revival

[droosan]

The fact that any of you guys seriously considers that there is a recognizable 'pattern' between sequential Disney films released 20+ years apart makes me ..

[GeorgeC]

I'm more upset by the fact that for all the talk about a revival of classic Disney animation it really hasn't happened.

It's all CG... Almost all the time for American theatrical features.

What's the difference between the Disney and Pixar feature units? Does it really exist anymore? What's the point of two units unless they alternate films every other year (which they are NOT doing; Pixar does a film every year and Disney at least every 18 months)?

And the stories are just as derivative, predictable, and safe with plotlines ever a 5-year-old can recite by the fourth or fifth film they see -- whether it's the same company making the films, or a small group.

Pixar has become a predictable franchise developer. And junk like Cars 2 and Planes which would haven't been made 10 years ago is getting green-lit all the time now.

This is why I stopped seeing American animated feature films in theaters. No point in seeing the remake of last year's story. Gee, another fairy tale or "Road" picture this year.

Occasionally, there'll be a bright glimmer like Despicable Me but even that will get sequelized, warranted or not.

I feel bad for the kids of today... BUT, then again, they're so used to mediocrity and being spoon-fed instead of developing and thinking for themselves that I guess most of them won't ever really notice how bad the film situation is now. The state of pop culture, let alone society, isn't that great right now. You have to really, REALLY look for the good because it's even more precious and rarer than before. We're at a sad slope now that looking backwards was equalled by the miserable animated feature film output in the 1970s and 1980s. It really feels like a complete fluke that the Disney Renaissance of the late 1980s took place at all. Guess it was a good thing that management wasn't paying as much attention back then... and that stories and characters could get developed... and serious development work finished before everybody was pushed into full-steam production.

I'll be very pleasantly surprised if I ever see anything of the sort happen again with traditional animation in the US.
I don't think Europe will ever develop the economy to do hand-drawn features with as much regularity as they came out with in the US during the 1990s. Maybe that's a good thing; the compressed production schedules and budget overruns did as much damage as executive interference did to an entire industry in the US. (NOTE: If I were to lay the blame for the downfall of American animation on two people most of all, they'd be Eisner and Katzenberg. I don't think I've seen two other poseurs do more damage and generally walk around without a clue about golden gooses. 'Nuff said. There have been entire books and college theses written about how horribly these two screwed things up for everybody else in animation.) I've seen what I consider remarkable work done by Europeans for a FIFTH, sometimes a TENTH of what an American production would cost... and I still can't figure out what where all the money is going in Hollywood features...! ( => Insert drug jokes, star perks, exorbitant salaries, and executive critiques here.)
May the French filmmakers and Aardman continue to be successful and lucky with their endeavors. Outside of Japan and maybe Korea, I don't really see anyone else doing traditional-style films with any sort of regularly. May their best production units and studios never develop the shortsightedness the US market did; I hope they understand it's about character and story and NOT the mechanism by which the film's animated. That's a lesson Disney and the rest in the US still haven't learned with regards to feature animation.
I don't know that there's been anyone as open and far-sighted since Walt Disney in the West I'm afraid to say. He didn't close everything down to cut payroll or shutter a studio he didn't understand and frankly didn't want. He may have been pre-occupied by Epcot, the Disneyland TV series, and live-action but he never lost his love for animation... never forgot where he came from.

Japan's a weird story in some ways... Most of their feature films don't make money in theaters but they don't let even serious bombs like Akira, Wings of Honneamise, or Ghost in the Shell keep creatives from developing and animating new films. It seems like sometimes they're actually given chances to keep going forward as long as they don't lose TOO much money. There do still seem to be some people higher up with souls that realize there's a bit more than just money involved in filmmaking and art.
[Please, Droo, if you can, inject some of your perspective. You're in a unique position being as it were "between two sides" and having family on both sides of the Pacific. As far as I'm concerned, I could be blowing hot air. I'm just saying what I've seen, heard, and witnessed with my senses. You've crossed back and forth and seen both societies and I'm sure talked to people who work in film industries in North America and Japan.]
Weird at that considering some of the contradictions overseas. There's no question anime production can be just as mercenary if not ten times more cut-throat TV production-wise than the US. Just like the US, most shows don't get sold unless the producers figure they can make money off of toys -- which is why Pokemon is into Season Infinity and the fifty-millionth Gundam series just got greenlighted. On the other hand, shows like Evangelion, Macross, and Sailor Moon seem to burst out of Japan more frequently than the Justice Leagues, Power Puff Girls, and Batman: The Animated Series do in the US.


Much as I love superheroes and action/adventure, it would also be nice to see something "different," too.
Maybe that's why so many animation lovers look outside the US for entertainment or inspiration, OR drop their animation interests altogether and move on.

[ShyViolet]

Should Frozen now be considered Disney "canon" (like Up, Wall-E, Aladdin, Lion King, etc...)?

[eddievalient]

Unfortunately, yes. Continuing the earlier discussion, if I had to compare Frozen to something, I'd compare it to Brother Bear. Lilo And Stitch came out and was so phenomenally good, that Brother Bear just felt flat by comparison and was an extremely disappointing followup to such a great predecessor. I think we have the same situation here. Wreck It Ralph was such a great, fresh, unique, funny film and Frozen was...not. Oh well. At least we've got Big Hero 6 to look forward to. That one's bound to be better.

[Dacey]

I could make a statement debunking what Eddie just said...but instead I'll just point out that Brother Bear didn't follow Lilo & Stitch. There was a certain underrated space movie released in-between those two.

[Ben]

It's a bit of a moot point anyway, discussing if Frozen is part of the Disney "canon"...of [I[course[/I] it is, just like Tangled and Ralph were before it, and Big Hero 6 and whatever comes next will be! If it doesn't follow an imagined pattern of releases (my own approach here is that it's easy to see comparisons to the kinds of films that the Studio made in the 1990s to the ones Walt produced in the 30s and 40s but that a more modern comparison can't really be made other than seeing a progression in confidence and artistry), then a film shouldn't be "left out" because it doesn't "fit"!

Frozen is a movie that comes as the latest in a line of films that started with Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, and appropriately in the 90th year of the company's existence (not that this was noted in the opening logos, which would have been nice). I think you can make comparisons in how the artists have become confident again, and the films stronger with each release, but there isn't a "pattern" and not every film will fit into this pre-programmed thinking, it just doesn't work like that.

[EricJ]

I could make a statement debunking what Eddie just said...but instead I'll just point out that Brother Bear didn't follow Lilo & Stitch. There was a certain underrated space movie released in-between those two.

That ended up forgotten among the audience love for the one just before it, just like a certain videogame movie.

It's a bit of a moot point anyway, discussing if Frozen is part of the Disney "canon"...of [I[course[/I] it is, just like Tangled and Ralph were before it, and Big Hero 6 and whatever comes next will be! If it doesn't follow an imagined pattern of releases (my own approach here is that it's easy to see comparisons to the kinds of films that the Studio made in the 1990s to the ones Walt produced in the 30s and 40s but that a more modern comparison can't really be made other than seeing a progression in confidence and artistry), then a film shouldn't be "left out" because it doesn't "fit"!

Exactly--You can't say that Tangled = the revolutionary, note-perfect Renaissance-starting Little Mermaid, and Frozen = the sloppy, goofy, mainstream-trendy, overpraised/mis-Oscared Beauty&Beast, because where would that leave Ralph?

[droosan]

I could make a statement debunking what Eddie just said...but instead I'll just point out that Brother Bear didn't follow Lilo & Stitch. There was a certain underrated space movie released in-between those two.

Eddie's kinda-sorta 'technically' correct-ish, in that Brother Bear and Lilo & Stitch were each produced almost entirely at WDFA Florida .. while Treasure Planet was made primarily at the main WDFA studio in Burbank (with contributions from the WDFA unit in Paris, France).


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Frozen is a movie that comes as the latest in a line of films that started with Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, and appropriately in the 90th year of the company's existence (not that this was noted in the opening logos, which would have been nice).

I agree entirely with this statement.


Though, there are a few out there who don't consider the current incarnation of Disney Animation Studios to be the same entity, in one unbroken lineage, from 1937 to today ..

Some 'hardcore' afficionados might consider Home on the Range to be the last 'true' Disney animated film (since most of the traditional hand-drawn staff was cut loose, afterward).

Even-more-'hardcore' would be the notion that The Little Mermaid was the end-of-the-line (since it was the last to use physical hand-painted cels).

More 'hardcore' still are those who hold that Disney canon ended with The Fox and the Hound (the last film with animation supervised by members of "the nine old men."

And most 'hardcore' of all are those who advocate that it all ended with The Jungle Book -- the last animated feature on which Walt Disney himself had any input.

[Dacey]

Wait, so, according to Eric, Wreck-It Ralph has been "forgotten"?

I'm gonna be honest: I don't really get the Frozen negativity. We're always wishing that Disney's movies would be big hits, and this one reached numbers no one saw coming. However you felt about Frozen, there's no point in denying it was a quality effort, so being bitter about it finding the success that it has is just beyond me, really.

[eddievalient]

I'm not bitter about Frozen being successful (although I really don't understand why everyone went so nuts for it) as much as I'm concerned that Disney will take all the wrong ideas away from its success, much like DreamWorks post-Shrek. Shrek 1 came out and was a surprise smash hit. Then, Shrek 2 came out and was even better and made even more money. Following this, DreamWorks did a string of comedies that weren't terrible but were pretty bland for the most part in a failed attempt to recapture what had made Shrek so popular in the first place, even turning the series that started this trend into a pale imitation of its former self. It took several years of mediocrity before they got back on track and started doing quality work again and I'm afraid that Disney's going to fall into the same trap. I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't know. It's too early to tell at this point one way or the other.

[EricJ]

Wait, so, according to Eric, Wreck-It Ralph has been "forgotten"?

Yes. Mostly by the fangirls who didn't realize there was a NON-princess movie in between the two they already know. And nobody sang in it. (Two, if you count Winnie the Pooh, but that wasn't intended as a major tentpole for the year, and we all know the reason most people didn't notice it.)
Okay, you might find a few fangirls who still want to be Vanellope, but they're pretty rare nowadays.

It ended up being forgotten by the Oscars, since no mainstream audiences quite knew what to make of all the "Videogame cameos!" hype and mention that M. Bison and Sonic the Hedgehog were in it, and thought it was a "niche" film for gamer nuts. By the time audience word-of-mouth spread that it was actually a sweet lil' film, we were already into December, and the Oscar voters had bigger fish to fry keeping their eyes on the big pre-destined December films (Les Miz, Hobbit). And in the end, they never got around to most of the Best Animateds, but hey, what could go wrong with voting for the Pixar?--It's not like they're suddenly going to slip up, is it?
I know somebody saw it in theaters, but everyone I talked to didn't catch it till it was on disk. And yes, because they thought it was a "videogame movie" and they "weren't into that".

I'm gonna be honest: I don't really get the Frozen negativity. We're always wishing that Disney's movies would be big hits, and this one reached numbers no one saw coming. However you felt about Frozen, there's no point in denying it was a quality effort, so being bitter about it finding the success that it has is just beyond me, really.

It GOT LUCKY. If a Pixar besides Monsters U had been up that year, it would've probably gotten the votes too. It's become a big hit with musical fans who are glad Disney is "back" with musicals after Tangled (and nothing else they know of), but when they start parroting "Best Movie Since Lion King" before it even OPENS, think there's more nostalgic love of Lion King here than there is of Frozen. And no, I won't get into the whole "Post-Mermaid delayed-reaction" thing about B&B; I assume most people know that one by now...I hope.
(And let's not even get into a detailed analysis of the "Oprah song" that pretty much handed the movie its award on a plate with the fans. Everyone's got their own crazy personal self-help-therapy interpretations of what they think it means, and considering that it's being sung by a character who's hiding herself away, there's a good chance most of them may be wrong.)

[Dacey]

Pretty sure with a box office take of $189 million in the US alone--to say nothing of fantastic home video sales--. and toys at Disney Store being sold out before Christmas, Wreck-It Ralph has not been "forgotten" by anyone. Especially since Frozen's marketing highlighted the film in all of its trailers and posters.

But whatever. As was the case with B&TB, I'm sure we've all just been "tricked" into thinking we liked Frozen, right?

Makes much more sense to celebrate Disney's first animated feature Oscar win, instead of indulging in crazy, non-existent conspiracy theories.

[ShyViolet]

Interesting look back at a time when the Princess movie musical was considered "dead.":

http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... isdom.html

[Bill1978]

Interesting this thread popped up cause the other day I was thinking that if the Disney Renaissance was in Stage 2 then that would mean Big Hero 6 is doomed to get the Pocahontas response. Big opening, but disappointment it's not Frozen resulting in a decent box office but because it didn't much the previous film it kinda gets forgotten and people start speculating it's the end of the Disney Renaissance.

[LotsoA113]

I actually think Disneys doing an excellent job at preventing a Pocahontas effect happening, where each new film after their biggest feature underwhelms, in terms of marketing. They're smartly giving Big Hero 6 a different release date (still November, but it's not Thanksgiving and that makes a world of difference) and whereas Pocahontas was obviously trying to mimic The Lion King in its ads (Colors of The Wind=Circle of Life), Big Hero 6 is more action oriented than Frozen, and they've been effectively emphasizing that difference in the ads.

In terms of quality of the film itself, we shall see. Considering how underwhelming I found Pocahontas, I do hope Big Hero 6 also deviates from the past in that manner.