Forum - View topicZootopia Wins Animated Feature Film Oscar
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peno
Posts: 349 |
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With all due respect, the only good movie Disney did since 2000 to the end of Eisner era was Lilo & Stitch and even that is questionable. They tried to be innovative, but they either weren't ready yet (Dinosaur), were too late (Home on Range) or simply messed a good idea (Chicken Little). Even Emperor's New Groove, which was, after Lilo, second best movie of that era, failed financially. There's no wonder after a series of such failures, Eisner was fired.However, Eisner's spirit cursed Disney until 2010, when Tangled finally returned Disney to where they were supposed to be. I am pretty sure if they were only dependant on animated feature films, they would've been ended in bankruptcy that decade.
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ChibiKangaroo
 Posts: 2941 |
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Cats don't dance was an amazing idea with very flawed execution. Darla Dimple was such a smart character idea. Turning Shirley Temple into an evil psychopath was genius, and tackling racism in Hollywood through animal metaphor was brilliant and VERY timely (it still is). But the writing for that movie was just so bad. Most characters were flat and one dimensional. There were only a couple good songs, and we never really got any real world building to help flesh out the animals' struggles.
Princess and the Frog wasn't terrible, but it was small in a lot of ways. The character Tiana was actually a great character, and the songs from that movie were mostly fantastic. However, the story idea wasn't epic enough. They were trying to do something with more "modern" princess magic but the period of the story lent itself more to a deep discussion on racism or something. That aspect was there though more of an afterthought. I think the movie wasn't relevant enough to most current youth and on the other end, it didn't commit enough to its Jim Crow era setting. It's not close to the worst movie Disney made, but it clearly was a bungle and a missed opportunity to tell a more modern story. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Eisner was fired because it had become a full-on MUTINY among the fans as well as most of the in-house animators-- Our frustrations with the corny Pocahontas/Hunchback cliche's at the declining end of the 90's Renaissance were piled on Eisner's head--when Jeffrey Katzenberg should have shared some of the blame, as he took his Lion King "melodramas" to Dreamworks, to tank with "Spirit" and "Road to El Dorado"--causing us to all go nutty over Katzenberg's cheap anti-Disney/princess gags in the first two Shrek movies. In '03, when Treasure Planet had been sunk by a disastrous marketing campaign, Finding Nemo became a Dory-like summer juggernaut for lack of other good movies (and our new coming-out about being Pixar fans), and Katzenberg played up his "2D is Dead!" alibi for why "Sinbad" had bottomed out at the box office, Eisner went off the Trump-insane cliff in three distinct ways: 1) He was so cowed by audiences going gaga over "Shrek 2", he believed he had to publicly apologize for Disney giving us those terrible princesses all those years, and went on a Shrek-kissup strategy of showing us how much Disney now hated princesses. "Enchanted" was originally going to be a lot less of a feel-good comedy (Giselle would end up with a plumber in the slums and have to wait tables), Flynn and Rapunzel were originally going to be two transported contemporary teens who hate fairytales, and "Princess & the Frog"'s script of Tiana wanting to be a career woman and Naveen being a lazy unmarriageable jerk started back a little earlier before John Lasseter. 2) Since Nemo had made money and Treasure hadn't, Katzenberg "must have been right", and Eisner literally tried to wipe traditional animation off the face of the studio. 2D directors, including M&C and Beauty/Hunchbacks' Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, were fired if they couldn't adjust their projects to 3D (Glen Keane kept promising he would find a new "hybrid" style for his Rapunzel, but Lasseter eventually replaced him after delays), and Eisner at one point even floated the idea of re-animating Walt-era classics in 3D CGI, starting with Peter Pan. (The 3D Mickey-movie attraction at the Parks was meant to be a test of how Peter, Aladdin and Jasmine would look solid.) 3) You don't pick fights with Pixar. During the 00's, everyone knew "Pixar was making the good films", but they weren't part of the studio at the time, just under license contract, and the contract was going to expire after Finding Nemo. John Lasseter challenged that Pixar would not renew their contract and go independent if Nemo proved Pixar could survive on its own, and despite theories that Eisner deliberately sabotaged the marketing, it did rather well. Eisner countered by saying that Disney still owned "marketing rights" to the past Pixar films, and since Disney classified sequels as "character marketing", they could make their own direct-video Toy Story 3, Monsters Inc. 2, and Finding Nemo 2. Pixar said "you're bluffing!", and Eisner created Circle 7 Studios for just that purpose. Guess you know what happened to those three scripts--or at least the titles--after Lasseter later took over, and why Pixar was later "making all those sequels". (Ie., somebody had to, for legal purposes.) Also, the reason we have Steamboat Willie at the beginning of Disney movies was that studio head David Stainton wanted to create "WDFA" as a separate CGI competitor brand to Pixar, starting with, you guessed it, Chicken Little as the studio flagship. Meet the Robinsons was going to be the big second, but the initial cut turned out to be an unholy disaster before Lasseter made it his first big fixer-upper when he took over the studios. Nowadays, you can watch Robinsons and see the script transform from a wacky hyperactive Chicken-style Dreamworks-wannabe at the beginning to a huggy "new-Disney" Lasseter movie by the climax. That's the change we got. 
So: Now you know why Roy O. Disney started SaveDisney.com, and how it blew up into a big cult thing with the Lilo fans, although they were hoping for Chris Sanders, and Roy just wanted to some union restitution for all the fired directors. {Edit}: Be careful not to go into soapboxing territory. You obviously are passionate on the subject of Disney but you post multiple long lecture like rants in every Disney related thread. It's getting close to soap boxing on the topic so please be mindful. ~ Psycho 101 |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1791 Location: South America |
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Indeed. That shows how small the American animated film industry is: the US produces about 10 animated films per year, and since Disney/Pixar is by far the best animation studio in the US that makes features (there are only 3 major studios: DreamWorks and the one that made the Ice Age movies) it's natural they will win every Oscar for animation of the year. Interestingly, my favorite Disney animated film of all time didn't win the prize: Wreck it Ralph. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Blue Sky is the company that makes the Ice Age films. I'd consider Illumination Entertainment a major one too, though they only managed to break out of their self-created Minions trap last year. |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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I've been meaning to re-watch this one... EricJ, WOW. You really know stuff about this. o_o You're not secretly working for one of the studios, are you?  Or maybe you're related!?
Jk/ though I am impressed. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Oh, it was hard being one of those lost, scattered voices in the Wilderness trying to tell everyone that Shrek and Shrek 2 JUST WEREN'T FUNNY--Everyone kept wanting to use them as "weapons" against Eisner and praise them to the skies, and...well, you can see what effect it had on the animation industry in '02-'03. And I even left out the parts about all the post-Rugrats cable movies ("Powerpuff Girls Movie", anyone? "Hey Arnold: the Movie"? "Teacher's Pet"?) tanking right and left, causing analysts to hide under their beds and try to find some theory for "Why audiences didn't like 2D animation." Which, of course, Katzenberg eventually gave them. As I put it, "Everyone [in '02] was trying to kill off 2D animation, so they could figure out why it was 'dying'." It's a trauma I haven't been able to let go for fifteen years.  Oh, and just try being someone who liked "Treasure Planet" back then, and thinking "Lilo & Stitch" was a disorganized mess...That was the other quickest way to get bricks thrown at your head.
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