Disney animated features: The rappel à l'ordre (1989-1994)

you prefer your Disney princesses as tops.

Maybe I was a little too old for most of them; the difference between seeing something at 5 and seeing it at 8 is probably quite large

yeah, I hadn't really thought about it but it seems that B&TB is a kind of cut-off point for me, I enjoyed Aladdin and Lion King back then but I don't have the same attachment to them.

B&TB was my favourite but the unpleasantness of Belle and Beast's relationship does taint it, yeah. I'd maybe have preferred it if it was just Belle hanging around the village, humiliating Gaston every so often, then heading off to Paris for an exciting cosmopolitan life. The Rescuers Down Under is one that I have probably an inappropriate amount of affection for as I was just the right age to watch the video a million times, but now I don't even particularly remember the plot. Kid goes missing, scary hunter dude (voiced by George C. Scott!), giant golden eagle (nice flying scenes iirc), somethingsomethingsomething.

Ducktales movie is alright but I may throw it a vote anyway, pretend I'm voting for the TV series and that classic NES game.

There's no way I could put generic jock Gaston over Scar or even Jafar for that matter, who works a very similar languid but less gratuitous sarcasm but lacks the Jeremy Irons factor and degrees of menace. Gaston ain't really working the fear factor like the others either because the focus of our trepidation for most of the film is supposed to be the Beast. Not that a villain has to be scary to be effective but it does rob him of a dimension that has helped make some of the others iconic. As a kid I was legit terrified by some of em but Gaston didn't really register as much more than standard dickhead.

Plus some of Irons' delivery is simply peerless I mean shit like this?
http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6fu60awnR1rwcc6bo1_500.gif
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view7/2947554/long-live-the-king-o.gif
Can't have seen the films in close to a decade but I know exactly what it sounds like.

In fact Scar wins just for, "I know that your powers of retention are as wet as a warthog's backside."

Speaking of the funnies, I'd go James Woods' Hades. Vaguely remember loving Prince John as a kid because he mirrored my earlobe tug-thumb suck, pacifier combo.

ok is this the worst piece of movie writing ever?

you prefer your Disney princesses as tops.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, March 15, 2014 4:29 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_li4g6obGup1qghkx5o1_r4_400.gif

the irons inflection i always think of is "but when it comes to brute strength... i'm afraid i'm at the shallow end of the gene pool."

You have nooooo idea

^^^

when gaston first realizes that belle has a thing for the beast there's a shot of him wearing an expression of such shocked disgust that when he began saying "sheeeeeeeee's as crazy as her old man!" i powerloled cuz it sounded for a moment like he was headed for "jeeeeeeeeeesus CHRIST!"

the other highlight from TLK is 'well stttthhlippery as your mind may be"

when he began saying "sheeeeeeeee's as crazy as her old man!"

http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsC/2615-9760.gif

"Goes to show it's in da genes!"

And go cock-a-doodle-doo.

As a kid I was legit terrified by some of em

ursula and her fuckin worm garden or whatever the hell that was scared the christ out of me when i was a kid... more than any other disney thing ever, easily

the lion king came out when i was 8 and me and my dad saw it together in the theater. i mean how could it not be my favorite... when (spoiler) mufasa freakin dies... thats some real shit man.

i havent seen any of these since i was a kid but i did watch the opening scene of TLK on youtube recently and i wont lie it still gave me chills. you can just coast after an opening that good. its become part of Disney Lore that it was actually made by the b-team and they didnt have high expectations for it, pocahontas was supposed to be their next huge hit

Y'all are making a good case for Scar in terms of Shakespearean menace and presence. Kind of feeling dlh on Gaston though, as with Cruella - something great about the ones that just feel like outsize versions of real-life assholes you've hated.

Just checked out some clips of the DuckTales movie, was disappointed to realize the animation wasn't that much better than the TV show. As a kid I remember it being a major step up. Of course, the TV show already looked damn good for a daily cartoon at the time.

i honestly had no idea there was a theatrical duck tails movie until this poll. and i watched a ton of ducktails as a kid

if you'd asked me to list the disney films from this era i would've forgotten it but when i saw it i remembered it existed, comparable to the goofy movie that'll be showing up in the next bunch

ahem, that's a goofy movie

haha you're right

looking at wikipedia alot of those direct to video sequels to disney classics were in fact not direct to video and got wide release in theaters. when nobody was looking disney actually released theatrical peter pan and jungle book sequels. somehow this seems more of a low than the black cauldron.

And four theatrical Pooh pictures since 2000, of which I remember at most two being released. We'll have the chance to admire (?) them later, but it really makes me wonder what the logic was for giving those a theatrical release, but not other things. I suspect that there was just a strong pushback against these things after Rescuers Down Under, and Katzenberg or somebody laid down the law: sequels on video only! Maintain the prestige of the brand! Or something. And then somebody sooner or later said, ehh, you know, we can wring a few extra bucks out of these, just stick them in theaters on a slow week. Bafflingly, Piglet's Big Movie was released scarcely a month after The Jungle Book 2.

yeah it's a curious decision, the legions of direct to video sequels made some sense, not hurting the brand anymore than an afternoon cartoon spinoff while being ridiculously more lucrative (and tbh they did eventually kinda hurt the brand)(though in a weird way this worked out for them since the specter of a crappy direct to video toy story sequel apparently played a role in pixar staying w/ disney), but that flood of sad theatrical releases just amplified the sense that disney had been left behind by pixar and dreamworks. anyhow this is probably best left for that thread when the time comes though i won't even be able to vote in that one - the last disney flick i've seen was mulan though i've been tempted by this current quasi-renaissance (big idina fan what can i say)(ha casino did i or my sister ever tell you about me dragging her to see the rent movie?) and i loved the poster for that last winnie the pooh movie -

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/Winnie_the_Pooh_Poster.jpg

- that's alot of urine!

earnestly looking forward to voting for a goofy movie, which has a small but ardent following among people my age and probably a little younger. i dont know if its within my power to explain why, though... its one of those fraught childhood memories that you cant really describe in all its complexities (maybe dlh can)

my understanding is when it comes to goofy movies a goofy movie is the goofy movie

haa, i don't remember the rent movie incident

It's funny, these poll chunks really do oscillate between ones I've seen a lot of and ones I've seen hardly any of, which is the fun of running the polls for me really. The late 90s is a mysterious wasteland, but then I've actually seen a good handful of the early 2000s ones. And then, basically nothing.

As for direct-to-video sequels, the amazing thing is that they kept some degree of quality control or at least self-restraint - some sense that each of them had to be packaged as filling an important place in the continuity, telling us the full story of a specific character (though Aladdin's really are just 'the further adventures of Aladdin'). Whereas there are, I shit you not, thirteen Land Before Time films - I mean at a certain point that is just shit to fill out a rack near the checkout counter for wee ones who may or may not have the slightest attachment to the original film.

Ten minutes into Rescuers Down Under, and wow, what a night-and-day difference to the first film, visually at least. This is bright, colorful, three-dimensional, and clearly presages some of the techniques of Lion King when it comes to the fauna. I'm not sure why this little kid who can talk to animals can just scramble up a hundred-food rock face without breaking a sweat - really thought the whole opening was going to be some kind of spirit guide dream sequence - and is then stymied by an eight-foot hole in the ground but I'm willing to give it a chance since George C. Scott just showed up.

http://i459.photobucket.com/albums/qq313/doctorcasino/rescuersdownunder_zpsaede2dae.jpg

is this what australia looks like y/n

i seem to remember from waking sleeping beauty that rescuers down under was the first disney movie to use digital coloring techniques?

also, maybe i should save this for the next thread, but a few years ago my sister took a college screenwriting class from one of the writers of a goofy movie, who was also one of the co-writers of the bill and ted movies. she said he was taken aback by how excited everyone in the class was about a goofy movie, he clearly didn't rate it as anything significant.

reddening, that's correct about the digital coloring - and it seems to have really paid off. This is such a pleasant movie to look at, it makes all but the best sequences in Little Mermaid look quite flat and shabby in comparison. Just got through a very cute sequence of the world's mice relaying the alarm to New York, complete with big 1940s war-coverage arrows streaming across the globe. I still think the story's off on the wrong foot - as in the first film, the villain's behavior and decision to kidnap the kid really doesn't make any sense, and the heroes are only involved because it's their job to rescue kids - not a really organic premise for drama. But I should shut up and let the movie do its thing.

haha but i did pause to follow youtube's suggestion that i view the Princess and the Frog trailer, and it's kind of amazing: under the preparatory heading "After 75 years of magic..." we get footage of... Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King. Seventy-five years! Now I know why my childhood seemed to last forever.

further disconnected observations on The Rescuers Down Under:

* John Candy as the bird is a terrifying harbinger of Robin Williams as the genie, but at least some of his jokes are kind of funny and he does get introduced listening to "Black Slacks" by the Sparkletones so that's cool.

* the computer stuff isn't limited to the coloring technique - for the first time there's a lot of computer-generated geometry that's been painted over, a la the clock scene in Great Mouse Detective. Some of it looks pretty decent, some of it doesn't. Sydney Opera House looks like hell. Nice seeing both that and the UN building in one Disney movie, though.

* the love triangle story is just tedious. Katzenberg OTM about this movie going from nowhere to nowhere in this regard. In general the plot is lumpy - underdeveloping some threads, overdeveloping others. I don't regret having watched it though - the animation really did put it a cut above. I feel confident in saying it's a better viewing experience than the DuckTales movie, although I haven't seen that in twenty-four years; since I find so many of this batch of movies objectionable for other reasons than craft, I might end up voting for this. Little Mermaid, though...

A Goofy Movie is wonderful, v. 90s time capsule

Never got the love for A Goofy Movie, maybe bc I'm European... (?1??) Basically feels like a random story from one of the Donald Duck comic magazines.

It was past my cutoff point for childhood interest - I definitely watched a bit of the show, but was not invested in it, so by the time the movie came out it was kiddie stuff for me.

Reminds me re: direct-to-video sequels, another reason just has to be that they can be fast and cheap, coming out soon enough that kids who loved the main film would still be begging for the sequel. Versus Rescuers Down Under - not sure how long that was in development but it had to be a few good years, and really, if you were 7 in 1977 you were prooooobably not in the prime market for a followup by 1990.

voted for the movie i went to see on my first date

I remember the opening scenes of the Ducktales movie - Launchpad 'landing' the plane, trek through the desert, exploring the... pyramid? - being quite impressive, I'll have to rewatch and have my memory dashed.

one thing aladdin has over the rest (and over most other disney movies) is that it actually comes up with a really clever way to dispose of the villain. a surprising number of disney movies end with the villain falling off a cliff, which i always assumed was because they don't want to actually have the hero kill someone.

Ha, Down Under ends with lovable underdog mouse Bernhard straight dropping the bad guy into apool full of vicious crocodiles, which is ice cold considering the next scene is Bernhard proposing to Bianca. Of course, it's a waterfall that finall does in the baddie.

all the talk about a goofy movie has me wondering: do kids today grow up exposed to any of the old disney shorts, like the ones where goofy is demonstrating how to ski or fish or whatever or the ones where chip and dale are pissing off donald? those things were on the disney channel 24/7 when i was a kid so i have what feels like hundreds of them permanently implanted in my memory, but i get the sense they've sort of fallen off everyone's radar these days.

We never had Disney channel, so even for someone my age (born 81) I pretty much got to know all those characters from their much-altered syndicated action/adventure show versions. I mean, I knew what Donald Duck looked like but I'm not sure I really ever saw many Donald Duck cartoons until I was an adult, whereas the Looney Tunes were constantly on. I even saw more Woody Woodpecker and company than the Disney stable; Mickey Mouse was basically a cipher by this point.

Growing up in Norway in the 80s -- one Norwegian TV channel, two Swedish ones -- there wasn't any Disney on either as I recall, with one great exception that's become something of a sentimental touchstone for my generation: The christmas special. This was an hour long show shown on Christmas eve that consisted of a bunch of mostly winter or Christmas-themed old shorts (santa's workshop, the, uh, "problematic" version; various chip'n'dale hijinx,; Huey&c in a big snowball fight; uhh, "Ferdinand the bull" (my favorite. The Swedish narration was amazing)

Oh, the other big Norwegian TV Christmas tradition is Cinderella.
The East-German/Czechoslovakian co-production, that is! The entire movie dubbed to Norwegian by one guy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%99i_o%C5%99%C3%AD%C5%A1ky_pro_Popelku

Fwiw, I see my wee nieces and nephews watching more of those old Disney shorts than I ever did, mostly thanks to youtube. Occasionally in some dubbed version or other, cuz they don't really notice whether Donald speaks English, Polish or Spanish.

did you guys have Dtv?

one thing aladdin has over the rest (and over most other disney movies) is that it actually comes up with a really clever way to dispose of the villain. a surprising number of disney movies end with the villain falling off a cliff, which i always assumed was because they don't want to actually have the hero kill someone.

ha true. gaston is a plummeter. i don't even remember what happens to ursula and i just watched it. she explodes or something. was hoping she'd become a creepy piece of kelp. scar is torn to pieces by his own minions, tho, that's pretty cool.

as a sherlock holmes fan i love a cliff.

i never saw the goofy movie :( but i read a lot of hype about it because my bff (disneyer than me) had a million issues of DISNEY ADVENTURES magazine and i read all of them at sleepovers. it had comic-book adaptations of all those shows: talespin, ducktales, bonkers, etc.. those are what i remember because i don't think i saw much tv until, idk, 1997, and when i did i was mostly a nick kid. i did watch a lotta Disney Channel Original Movies later in the decade (and into the next). that's a poll.

a goofy movie, excuse me

i remember when they had the stuff at burger king

get outta here you never went to Burger King

i had so many burger king pogs alfred

i kept them in a tin with the batman logo on it