Disney Renaissance

Hercules

Eisner

Hate all the post Jungle Book shit

Clint Eastwood killed it. If Frank Wells hadn't been going on a trip with him, he wouldn't have gone on that helicopter that wouldn't have crashed and wouldn't have killed him.

I didn't know Ursula was inspired by Divine.

Losing Howard Ashman to AIDS didn't help.

Agreed, R5. As a lyrical craftsman, no one who worked for Disney could top him. Not even the Sherman Brothers.

Hunchback.

I worked on the Hercules style guide for merchandising and everyone in the department was complaining how they couldn't market an ugly hero such as Quasimodo. They had a big closet clean-out of products and such and Hunchback was the only thing left. Even the employees didn't want the crap.

[quote]I worked on the Hercules style guide for merchandising and everyone in the department was complaining how they couldn't market an ugly hero such as Quasimodo.

So much for there ever being [italic]Picture of Dorian Gray[/italic] action figures.

The brouhaha over the proposed Disney's America theme park and the controversy over [italic]Pocahontas[/italic] left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.

Remember that episode of [italic]The Golden Girls[/italic] where they spent the night at a homeless shelter? That was the same season Dorothy and Sophia went to Walt Disney World. Meanwhile, over in California, this is going on at a time when Disneyland has never been more expensive.

Disney, Pixar (separate at the time), and DreamWorks realized that they could churn out 5, shitty CG films for the price of 1 hand drawn affair. The poor performance of the Princess and the Frog didn't help save drawn animation, either. They still had some hits like Frozen and the Incredibles, but overall, animated films are just low effort nowadays.

Disney also diverted resources into Marvel and LucasFilm, both of which are paying off massively.

Pocahontas killed it. Colors of the Wind was a shitty theme song. Very bland follow up to The Lion King. They should've stopped with there and called it a comeback.

R7 You must have some amazing stories.

The Death of Howard Ashman and the creation of Pixar is what ultimately lead to the death of the Disney Renaissance. Without Howard Ashman, the musicals were shit. And then computer animation came and stole the thunder from handrawn animation. I will always prefer handrawn animation though. Especially with people like Miyazaki out there.

In what universe should Quasimodo be attractive and cute?? His ugliness is the whole raison d'etre for the damn story ignoramuses!

One must presume that Disney procured significantly more Esmeralda figures for sale than Quasimodo figures. The ratio was just off, likely.

Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are two of the richest and most satisfying musicals of the Disney Renaissance, eclipsing The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid in vocal performances, songwriting and artwork. Alan Menken finally hit his stride.

Alan Menken writes repetitive shit. That's why he needs a good collaborator like Ashman to be successful.

Young children from what I'm told prefer the computer animation.

Hand drawn animation might as well be a movie in black and white.

[quote]Alan Menken writes repetitive shit

Whatever do you mean, r18?

[quote]Alan Menken writes repetitive shit. That's why he needs a good collaborator like Ashman to be successful.

And as demonstrated by Pocahontas, Hunchback and The Prince of Egypt, Steven Schwartz was every bit Ashman's equal.

R16 I had an Esmeralda Barbie doll. She was fabulous.

The many DTV sequels.

Not sure how popular it is with others, but I love the song from Tarzan, "You'll Be In My Heart", sung by Phil Collins.

With the exception of outlier, The Lion King, I've hated every modern Disney film. The music is pedestrian, repetitive and turgid. The old musicals used to dip playfully in different genres, be full of hooks, melody and character. In short, they were written to endure beyond a transient appeal to preschool girls.

Disney lost its magic a long time ago, in line with most cinema.

And no, I'm not an elder.

Remember when they inserted jokes for adults?

It was Bob Iger that completely sold the studio upriver. The man is disgusting. As soon as he became CEO, he decided that all animated films would be filmed as live action. Plus he got rid of hand drawn animation. He turned the parks into Fat Paradise for fraus and their ilk. I used to love Disney, but now I don't care anymore.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

[quote]As a lyrical craftsman, no one who worked for Disney could top him.

I did, r6.

[quote]Steven Schwartz was every bit Ashman's equal.

Please tell me you're being sarcastic.

[quote]He turned the parks into Fat Paradise for fraus and their ilk.

The parks were built to cater to them, so don't blame Iger for that. Any adult who complains about kids at Disneyland is a bit delusional, to say the least.

Thanks, Obama

toy story was the end of Disneys hand-drawn animated films.

I think CGI worked for toy story because the toys looked realistic, but I hate the way humans and animals look in computer-animation. It feels like your watching a video game.

The old hand-drawn cartoons were like watching a fairytale book illustration come to life. They were living works of art. Sadly those days are over.

Computer animated films are now the inspiration for Broadway musicals.

What a world! What a world!

R24 At the time, I was rooting for "Blame Canada" from the South Park movie for the Best Song Oscar. I still think it should have won.

Lion KIng. Aladdin and Mermaid were probably their last “good” recent movies but they were still artless and formulaic. Disney needs to be broken up soon along with big tech or they will suck all the life and creativity out of humanity. I’m only half kidding.

The thing was The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were so good because of the stories, the talent (of course, Ashman), the beautiful animation, two fantastic heroines, that everything after with the exception of maybe Aladdin and The Lion King couldn't measure up.

I do love Princess and the Frog, though. It's a shame it didn't kickstart a renaissance for hand-drawn animation. I prefer it over Tangled or Frozen.

100% agree, R25

OP

Ursula is the one of the most compelling villains to ever appear on screen

That’s why Disney is working on Ursula, after Cruella’s success.

Jeffrey Katzenberg's departure had a lot to do with it. Frank Wells's death, as mentioned upthread, seemed to destabilize the top of the company, too.

Highly recommend James B. Stewart's DISNEYWAR if you're interested in the Eisner years.

Culture change. Disney tried to follow the action-adventure route with Atlantis, but DreamWorks completely overshadowed with Shrek, who shaped a new paradigm for Western animated movies.

[quote]Not sure how popular it is with others, but I love the song from Tarzan, "You'll Be In My Heart", sung by Phil Collins.

I despise that song. Fuck Phil Collins!

I did.

Stop watching baby movies.

Hunchback.

I worked at Disney doing the style guide for Hercules and they had tons of Hunchback merch they couldn't give away, even to the employees.

Just be glad Disney animation didn’t die with [italic]The Black Cauldron[/italic]. That was the ultimate coulda-shoulda-woulda for the studio in the early 1980s. Maybe the film would’ve been less of a flop if they hadn’t cut it as much as they did, I don’t know. Either way, its fate was sealed once Ron Miller resigned in disgrace after the Saul Steinberg debacle that almost broke the company up back then.

I know I'm an outlier, but for me it was The Lion King. I was 12 when it came out and it was the first film i found so boring I slept through most of it. Also, to this day I hate the songs.

I don’t remember a thing about Hunchback. Not one song, not one scene but I can recite all the songs of the other movies. It definitely was a break from their usual films. Hercules was another outlier. They finally returned to form with Mulan and Tarzan and then kaput, nothing ever since.

The Great Mouse Detective is probably their most underrated work from their "dark" period.

Hunchback wasn't a flop. Not even close. It wasn't a huge success like Aladdin and The Lion King, but still was the fifth highest grossing movie of 1996. Hercules can be considered a little underperformance, but Mulan (1998) and Tarzan (1999) were two undeniable successes. After that things started to go wrong.

What made them think that another Winnie the Pooh movie would single-handedly bring back traditional animation when TV animation had already done everything they could to run that particular franchise into the ground?

It wasn’t terrible, all things considered. It had songs by the same people who went on the road the score for [italic]Frozen[/italic]. But Disney set it up to fail on purpose by scheduling its release directly up against the latest Harry Potter movie. They knew darn well the two adaptations of British children’s literature would cannibalize each other.

On the road = onto write

I'm a huge fan of hand-drawn animation. Watercolor backgrounds are beautiful and feels serene and nostalgic. I also find drawn faces are much more expressive and emotional than the cold, plastic-y look of CGI. I love works by Miyazaki and older Japanese animators.

R41, I second this recommendation, although I lost interest in the story around the time of Ovitz shows up. Losing Katzenberg killed it. He was an asshole but he was an uncompromising asshole who got people to work at their highest level. Combine that with Eisner’s taste level and Wells’ managerial style, it was the perfect chemistry, although Eisner had turned on Katzenberg by the time Wells died.

The influence of Nickelodeon also hurt it. Disney movies had a class and elegance to them. The goofy jokes made Disney seem trashier and less essential.

[quote] The goofy jokes made Disney seem trashier and less essential.

Watch it.

Eisner makes a big deal about Katzenberg’s behavior around Wells’ passing, but he was never going to give him Wells’ job. He was embarrassed by Katzenberg and found him gauche and tacky. For Katzenberg, it was a bitter loss because it was the carrot at the end of the stick that was dangled for him to stay.

Katzenberg had to sue Disney to get the bonus compensation he was owed. David Geffen even intervened to help Katzenberg.

Hunchback may have been too dark for a kid's movie, but the opening song "The Bells of Notre Dame" is one of my favorite pieces of Disney music.

They should bring Song of the South to Broadway. (Talk about your Great White Way😬)

It was more than just Michael Eisner who had a problem with Jeffrey Katzenberg. Roy E. Disney especially grew to dislike him and said that he would start a proxy fight if he got Frank Wells’s job.

Roy E. Disney eventually had problems with everyone, including, most famously, Michael Eisner.

Eisner brought his downfall on himself. He learned every wrong lesson from the first 10 years he spent at Disney. Putting retail people in charge of the theme parks is a mistake the company is still paying for to this day.

Aladdin and the little mermaid were masterpieces which are hard to top. The lion king, finding Nemo and beauty and the beast were also excellent films.

Technology rules today and hand drawn animation is viewed as old fashioned and expensive to create. Pixar films really came in and took over after the success of toy story and monsters inc.

Why did everything stop after Tarzan? Why didn’t they try to make more movies?

They did, R85, but they cost more than they made so they switched to digital to follow the crowd.

Wasn’t the next big movie after Tarzan The Frog Princess? That was 10 years later, 1999 and 2009. Then Tangled came out a year later and they never went back to hand drawn.

People are forgetting that there were a solid number of animated features between Tarzan and Princess and the Frog. There was Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Lilo and Stitch, Brother Bear…

Yeah exactly. It took them a while to run out of goodwill from the Renaissance and the misses piled way up.

[quote] There was Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Lilo and Stitch, Brother Bear…

Shudders...

[quote] There was Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Lilo and Stitch, Brother Bear…

But those are second tier movies, not the flagship Princess/Fairytale movies. Those hardly count.