Disney Animated Feature Post

This is the long Disney post I've been avoiding for a while. At first I had it broken down into something like eight posts, then I felt weird. What would somebody think if they came to this site and all they saw was some fanatic's discussion of Disney cartoons? Ugh...

So I then combined the posts into four, putting things together that naturally--because of historical timing--seemed to go together. Again I felt weird. Originally I hadn't wanted to put everything together since the post would be too long and unwieldy. Also, I wasn't sure if all I was going to discuss was Disney, or if it was really a discussion--like I think I originally planned on--on the animated feature's unofficial history in the States.

Jeeze, when I put it like that it already sounds boring. When I re-read some of the following passages, I cringed, trying to figure out why I had ever wanted to do this post in the first place.

So, when it was all said and done, I decided to lump it all together and toss it out there, like yanking a scab off all at once. Read it if you're a glutton for punishment or love Disney cartoons...well, the movies anyway. See how your own feelings compare with mine.

If you have ill feelings towards the mouse brand, which I understand, please skip it. I'll never be upset about it. It is a very long post.

So...it begins:

The Golden Age and the Second Age

Okay, what I"m calling the Golden Age is also known as Dictator Walt Age since that's how he was able to get the kind of beautifully soft colors and wild depth of field shots: an iron fist of control over likeminded technological whizzes yields round the clock development.

The films in the Golden Age are Snow White ('38), Pinocchio ('40), Dumbo ('41), and Bambi ('42). One other Golden Age film, considered in the canon, is the movie that Walt Disney really wanted to make: Fantasia.

Walt thought that the direction of animated features would be the direction Fantasia goes: a virtual collection of music videos set to classical selections. It turns out his other cretion, the one he bet his company on, the one the naysayers would never work, did work, and defined the animated narrative structure basically forever: Snow White.

With it's advanced rotoscoping--a technique by which movie film is used as a basis for animating cells--the realism in Snow White is quite astounding when you watch it today. It came out in 1938.

With it's success came the ambition that follows ambitious artists. Walt wanted to fix what he saw as deficiencies in the style with his next creation, an Italian story to which he'd secured the rights: Pinocchio.

In what's regarded as one of the greatest animated features in history, 1940 unleashed Pinocchio upon the world. Watching today one marvels at the sweeping shot of the village children heading off to school. Or how about the ocean's surface during the Monstro chase scene?

The growing conflict in Europe hurt the ability for Pinocchio to rely on those markets to help recoup some of the investment put into the film (Snow White did very well in Europe). The overall financial success for Pinocchio was short-lived, if it existed at all.

Fantasia wasn't what audiences had been trained to expect, and while Dumbo and Bambi share heartfelt stories and lush paintings, their running times thinned to just over an hour each. The growing European war and American involvement eventually spelled the end to Disney's experient with feature length animation.

Well, only until they could muster up enough cash to develop new ideas.

In the years between the end of this Golden Age and the beginning of what I call the Second Age, a period of eight years, there were a number of what have been titled "package films", or collections of smaller features. Things my brother and I grew up with, like Tres Caballeros, with Donald Duck playing the American, a Parrot playing a South American, and a Roosetr playing a Mexican stereotype, were among our favorites.

The last package film was a two piece entry: The Adventures of Ichobad and Mr. Toad. The Mr. Toad story is based on the Wind in the Willows, but since that story is a bedtime story, it lacked the pacing that they wanted, so they beefed the story up with other tales.

Ichobad Crane's tale is based on Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. We called it the Headless Horseman cartoon as kids growing up.

Once again, as it turns out, Walt Disney was ready to bet the farm--and his studio--on a full out animated feature. The success of which started the next era for the Disney canon, what I call the Second Age.

That all or nothing film, the second such Disney fare, was Cinderella ('50). It generated enough cash and good-will that they were able to flesh out a batch of fiilms still beloved by many fans.

Having owned the rights to Through the Looking Glass for years, the next film they made was Alice and Wonderland ('51). Two years later was Peter Pan ('53) and after another two years the world got Lady and the Tramp ('55).

Those four, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Later and the Tramp, are connected like the original four (five when you add Fantasia to the mix). That's the main reason I've lumped them into the Second Age.

The next "age", as I call it, the Lean Years, started in 1959 with a film that could go either way, but I deemed it the best of the group it heads and is closer to temporally: Sleeping Beauty.

The Lean Years and the Dark Years

What I've been calling the Lean Years I do so because of the nature of the films: the stories are good, but the animation quality's slow decline as the animators unionized is seen in full bore near the end of this period. Does unionized animators immediately mean poorer quality filmmaking? Of course not, but when you run your animators into the ground, forcing them to work like mad for eighteen hours a day to not only invent a style of art, and the technology necessary to make that art possible, but also to physically draw and paint every single cell, you either end up with a masterpiece or a disaster. Walt got the former, but his treatment of his staff caused them to do what was necessary for them.

Sleeping Beauty ('59) still had some of the qualities that were seen in the Second Age films, and lacked the xeroxing that gets used later in the Lean Years, and I can't really understand why I lump it in with these others...maybe because of the clsoeness of time.

One Hundred and One Dalmations ('61) gave fits to the "spot watcher", the guy tasked with making sure the spots match up from cell to cell. This is one of my mom's favorites. I liked it as a kid as well, but it always seemed like the backgrounds were harsh, or bled, or some other thing that ends up looking less soft as the Original four or even the Second four. I'm not sure what it is.

In any case, Sword in the Stone ('63), Jungle Book ('67), Aristocats ('70), Robin Hood ('73), and The Rescuers ('77) followed. You might be able to see why Lean is an appropriate term for the era. In eighteen years there were seven films, and each of which got progressively worse looking. The Rescuers, which of course I enjoyed when I was a kid, even had disgruntled animators inserting a Playboy pinup in a cell during a fly-by scene.

Robin Hood had scenes lifted directly from Jungle Book and Aristocats. Ever notice how Baloo and Little John look nearly identical?

Whatever slide in quality one would, or wouldn't, ascribe to the Lean Years, pales in comparison to what came out during the Dark Years, a time that coincides with the the ascension of Don Bluth.

I'll have a separate post about Don Bluth, a former Disney animator and director who got fed up with the company's direction and left to start his own animation company. In his time heading his own production company, Bluth made some of the most memorable animated features of the 80s: An American Tail ('86), Land Before Time ('88) and All Dogs Go To Heaven ('89).

The Dark Years for Disney, namely the '80s, are the very years affected by the absence of Bluth. The animated films in this era are mostly forgettable. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I've yet to rewatch any of them recently.

We have The Fox and the Hound ('81), The Black Cauldron ('85), The Great Mouse Detective ('86) and Oliver and Company ('88).

The end of the '80s, though, saw the reassertion of Disney's domination of the feature animation field of film business with a movie that started the next era, the New Renaissance.

That film, a film that Walt Disney had purchased the rights to at the same time as Snow White and Through the Looking Glass was the Danish Han Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid ('89).

The New Renaissance and the Post NR Era

These two eras, even if they can be dissected as such, as I do with reasons, started the regeneration of the Walt Disney Animation Studio and the reinvigoration of the brand.

The New Renaissance and Post NR Era I have split in '96/'97. I have the New Renaissance starting with Little Mermaid ('89), sneaking in behind it is Rescuers Down Under ('90)(the only non musical from this era), Beauty and the Beast ('91), Aladdin ('92), The Lion King ('94), Pocahontas ('95), and the Hunchback of Notre Dame ('96). This is where I usually make the break.

With undisputed financial powerhouses being created in Mermaid, Beast, and Aladdin, the company then came up five aces deep with Lion King. Pocahontas and Hunchback came directly after, and surfed on the goodwill created by the Lion King wave.

Something else happened in 1995, the same year that Pocahontas came out: Toy Story was released. It wasn't until 1999 that Pixar released A Bug's Life, and another year for Toy Story 2. Things get really rolling for them with Monsters Inc. in '01. But in the late 90s, it was still mostly the Mouse.

The hit or miss nature with the Post New Renaissance Era is almost the defining characteristic of this period.

Hercules ('97), Mulan ('98), Tarzan ('99) and The Emperor's New Groove ('00) were interspliced with Fantasia 2000 and Dinosaur (both 2000), followed by Atlantis: Lost Empire ('01).

Mulan and Emperor's New Groove were surprisingly good. The others?

It's during this time, from '97 to '01 that the excitement seems to be gone from the releases, at least slowly waning.

Maybe the year I chose to delineate the break is arbitary, but the downward spiral of the excitement-wane was noticeable.

Plus, Pixar was making a name for itself and Shrek ('01) gave some legs to Dreamworks. Although it would be nine years for Dreamworks to come up with another truly inspired entry, How to Train Your Dragon ('10). Megamind ('10) shows they're getting closer to Pixar-like mojo.

The next era is almost a return to the dark days. That may be an exaggeration, but the overshadowing by Pixar is the main theme.

The one bright spot in this Emergence of Pixar era is the first film from this period, a little film that was made specifically for my mom (kinda like this post): Lilo and Stitch ('02).

The Emergence of Pixar and The Pixar Era

The main theme of these eras is obviously Pixar, and Pixar is now a part of Disney. But we all know that the development side and origins of the company are not with Disney as the driving force or bank.

The Disney films during the Ermergence era ranged from the small and excellant Lilo and Stitch ('02), to the poor Treasure Planet ('02), Brother Bear ('03), and Home on the Range ('04). Roseanne Barr (is she still Arnold? Oh yeah, just Roseanne) as a cow? Uhhh...nevermind. Wonderful sitcom of course (best recognize).

Disney's dabbling in computer generated films marks probably the last time anyone can consider something somehow NOT the Pixar Era: Chicken Little ('05), Meet the Robinsons ('07), and Bolt ('08).

Compare those with Dreamworks' various franchises. Which are better?

Dreamworks seems to act like putting big voice actors into their features makes up for stories being based on dated trends, "current" events, and puns. Disney's computer stories lack the charm that Pixar conjures. Another company, Blue Sky, with it's Ice Age franchise and Rio ('11) have mixed big actors into a somewhat charmed offering. They really nailed the look of parrots walking,though, in Rio.

Universal's Illumination Entertainment's Despicable Me ('10) had the usual plot-holes vs. big actors problems that many Dreamworks features get, even as it was amusing to watch transpire.

But, really, an era I call the Pixar Era should be, and is, dominated by Pixar.

Up? Wall-E? The Incredibles? Finding Nemo? Finding Nemo, people! Toy Story 3! Wow, that incinerator scene? Ratatouille?

In any case, if we look at the most recent Disney productions occurring in the Pixar Era we see The Princess and the Frog ('09)--a well meaning return to traditional cell animation, and Tangled ('11), the fiftieth feature in the Disney Classic Feature canon and a computer animated one at that. 50th.

I've done some reading about Tangled, about how they used Snow White's cottage as a design model, about how they devoted plenty of development time to the background color scheme and maiking it look like a Romanticist painting from the eighteenth century, and about how they decided to change the name from Rapunzel to Tangled (some say to coax the boy element into the audience)(uhhhhh, okay).

I haven't seen either, but I'm interested for cinema's sake...and I really like the city of New Orleans, which plays a role in the princess/frog movie.

So...excellance? Greatness? Highwater marks? I'd say confidently that the best Dreamworks animated feature is a tossup between the first Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon. A highwater mark for recent Disney has to be 1994 and Lion King. The best animated feature from Disney though...even though it's harder to pick the best episode of the Simpsons, people seem to have settled on one ("The Last Exit to Springfield", Season 4).

I'd have to say Finding Nemo has been the best Pixar film, mainly because of the stunning beauty and gentle tenderness of the story and it's various environments. Ratatouille hits me in a special place, though. There were things I didn't much care for in Wall-E and Cars...

My pick for the best non-Pixar digitally animated movie would have to be ILM's first ever offering at a feature length film: Rango ('11).

Rango seemed to mix good voice work with somewhat famous actors with a touching story, and if you can get over Ned Beatty basically playing Lotso again as the wheel-chair bound tortoise mayor, you'll probably enjoy it.

I'll have a quick post about Rango specifically that I planned out the moment I saw the scene, but hadn't gotten to post yet, and then decided to hold off until this 'toon month.

Was this all really that boring?

(Seriously I didn't forget The Secret of NIMH ('82). See future post on Don Bluth.)