The Infidel

They had a great run with several now-classics, like (in no certain order) Little Mermaid, Lion King, Beauty & the Beast, Mulan...and then it seems like they handed the baton over to Pixar to make their animated films. Not that I'm complaining, mind you...I love the Pixar films, and own nearly all of them. Did Disney just give up on hand-drawn films? Sure, there's stuff like Princess & the Frog, and Tangled, but I doubt those ever reach the classic status that their films of the 80s-90s did.

Thoughts?

TomOpus

One could take this thread, move it back 30 years and substitute the movies you listed with Bambi, Snow White, Fantasia...etc.

Things change and evolve with most everything. And not always for the better.

Hokeyboy

Disney lost their creative way when they let executives micro-manage the process from the mid 90s through the Pixar buyout. With Lasseter Disney's Chief Creative Officer, they are making their way back, both with the Disney/Pixar films and the Disney Studio animation. "Princess and the Frog" didn't do the business it should have, but it was a quality film. "Tangled" was a massive worldwide hit and, while not hand-drawn, brought back a lot of goodwill for Disney animation. Even "Enchanted" was a nice throwback to "classic" Disney.

I'd *LOVE* for traditional 2D/hand-drawn animation to exist alongside CGI animation, but unfortunately the audience isn't there for it like it used to be. Then again, I'll take a single "Princess and the Frog" (which was a good movie, don't get me wrong) over another "Cars 2" or "Megamind" or the crapload of supbar CG-animated product out there any day.

Solid Snake

What was the last 2D flick by Disney before Princess and The Frig? Want it that movie w/ the cows and I think Rosanne voiced one of them...like late 90s or early 00's, no?

fumanstan

Home on the Range

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...mation_Studios

Recently, Winnie the Pooh was non existent in the box office but very charming.

Iron_Giant

Tangled was saved when PIXAR stepped in and made some "Suggestions" for the making of the movie:
-Changed the name
-Changed the story
-Animation
-Un-Tangled the movie Tangled

The Infidel

When I mentioned Tangled, I must have been thinking of another movie or something, because I could have sworn Tangled was a 2D film. Probably would have helped if I had actually seen the movie...I was going off promo stuff I thought I remembered seeing. My bad.

bluetoast

Don't worry man, I've seen Tangled a few times, and I still think of it as a 2-D movie, if that makes sense, it just had that feeling, like the older Disney stories. Reminded me of Sleeping Beauty at times. I really liked it.

PatF was also good, reminded me of the Little Mermaid era. Enchanted was also a lot of fun, and the 2-D segments were awesome.

Now, I hope they continue this trend, and we did have Winnie the Pooh this year which I heard was very good, still have to see that one. What I want to know is, why did they stop with the 2-D shorts? Back in 2007 before National Treasure 2, they had Goofy's How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, and I thought that was a great way to re-introduce 2-D to theaters (not to mention short films before the feature, but at least Pixar still does that), but after that...nothing. It would be nice to have at least one a year paired with a flagship Disney feature.

The good news is they still have the successful creative teams working there (in story, art and music departments), such as Andreas Dejas, who worked on animation in all of the movies mentioned in my post, save Tangled.

PhantomStranger

It's tougher to make them entertaining in a modern Hollywood dominated by business types with MBAs. Most studios have reduced the art of moviemaking for blockbusters down to a formula that leaves little room for creativity and vision. Traditional animation will be lucky to survive even in lesser venues, like television and direct-to-video products.

ScissorPuppy

The original idea behind Tangled was to give it a classic animated look using computer animation. Early production art looked really cool. Somewhere a long the way everything got changed to typical (but quality) CG. The film still retains a design of a Disney hand drawn film, but it doesn't look like originally intended.

Giles

Home on the Range - was just cringe inducing in my mind, Barr's voice is just grating to the nth degree.

yes, this year's Winnie the Pooh and it's short film - The Ballad of Nessie were underrated and an utter surprise if you ask me - very much a tune to the old school animation of Disney of yesteryear.

In regards to 'The Princess and the Frog' it's major problem was the script (and a pretty one-dimensional and bland villian) - I thought the cel animation was really good though.

milo bloom

OT sorry, but has that ever made it to DVD? (Please don't say it's on the National Treasure 2 disc....)

tks

Giles

I thought the Goofy short was on some promo demo disc.

Double_Oh_7

You should watch the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty... a great film about Disney's animation comeback in the 80s, and the birth of Pixar.

MrSmearkase

/\

Hiro11

Before Little Mermaid, Disney went through a long period of experimentation, darker material and more complicated story telling. Little Mermaid set a new template of simple story telling, long visually extravagant musical numbers, somewhat more multi-dmensional heros/heroines and slightly au courant/sarcastic humor. They weren't so much a return to the iconic Walt heyday of Snow White/Peter Pan/Snow White as a new direction.

I'd argue that Tangled and The Princess and the Frog are more a continuation of this trend than a break from it.

Groucho

I thought that The Princess and the Frog was a great return to that late-80's style. But nobody seemed to like it except me.

PopcornTreeCt

Hand drawn animation is just a medium. If the storytelling is there, then people will see it.

Solid Snake

this...for the most part.

Hokeyboy

Sadly, I disagree. Otherwise "The Iron Giant" would have been a MASSIVE blockbuster. Don't get me wrong, I *LOVE* hand-drawn animation and think as an artform, it SHOULD continue. But with modern audiences (read: Joe 6-packers), if it ISN'T CG-Animation, it needs some INSANE marketing to get asses in seats. Because otherwise, they ain't interested. No matter how good the story is.

I'd argue that pushing the whole "Princess" manufacturing angle really hurt "The Princess and the Frog", because right there you just lost the young boys, and once you lose them, there goes half the family.

RocShemp

I have to side with Hokeyboy on this since I have my own father as an example. He was decrying The Princess and the Frog as outdated and worthless because it had "old animation". he didn't bother to find out about the plot or the characters because the animation style was crap in his eyes. If it aint CGI, he just won't see it.

Ash Ketchum

I went to an advance screening of SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON with a film critic friend, who's even older than me, if you can believe it, and she kept complaining about how "flat" it was, as if she'd never, ever seen any classic Disney animation. I was furious at her. That's probably the last great 2-D animated feature I've seen come out of the American system.

In Japan, they do great 2-D anime all the time. E.g. such relatively recent hits as SUMMER WARS, THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME, WELCOME TO THE SPACE SHOW, MAI MAI MIRACLE and every freakin' Pokemon movie!

nando820

Thanks man, I didn't know about that short. I Youtube it and it was Awesome! definitely define some of our obsessions with Audio/Video Equipment. It sure does define my dad and I

Solid Snake

oh wow...didn't know this existed. Nice.

<iframe width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/OPA435yIuzQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

and just for the hell of it:

<iframe width="420" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BBgghnQF6E4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

nando820

I'll be on the lookout for it
<iframe width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/EyeoyRjEiUU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>