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

milo otm

also yeah, Lion King's a good cut off, it gets pretty dire fast

I have a soft spot for Mermaid and Rescuers Down Under because they were the first Disney features I saw that were released after I had a kid of my own -- I tried to recalibrate my perceptions and see them as I thought a child might. Still, when Sarah finally saw Mermaid in the early 90s, she hated it because Ursula scared the shit out of her. Will probably vote Mermaid.

even though i really really want to vote for it tbh i don't remember the ducktales movie being all that good. if they'd just released all of the episodes of the show where scrooge is searching for the 'valley of the golden sun' as a movie it'd tower over all of this crap.

lion king just edging aladdin

the lion king felt like straight up focus group Disney. Skillful and all but there's something really off putting about it to me.

there's a tumblr post going around that laments the point in time when ariel's "i'm sixteen, i'm not a child anymore!" stops being something you agree with and starts being something you're appalled by. i loved little mermaid as a child, but i rewatched it last year and ariel was a real asshole. it was fucked up of king triton to destroy all her human artifacts like that, but he probably didn't have a mermaid military school to threaten her with and he had to do SOMETHING.

i've also rewatched lion king and b&tb fairly recently, and preferred b&tb despite its problematic elements. the lion king has an animal cast, which i've realized now that i'm prejudiced against, but also i found the transition between young simba and older simba jarring. i didn't realize until recently how quickly some of the plot points blow by in these films. simba and nala go from wisecracking childhood pals to sexytimes in basically 30 seconds. at least with beauty and the beast the montage showing them moving from antagonism to love is well-done.

i should try to rewatch aladdin before voting, i haven't seen it in forever and have no idea how it holds up.

As a big, often very defensive 'Hunchback' fan I don't think this is a quality cutoff.

Having only watched it as a kid I thought Aladdin was one of hte Disney classics but then rewatched it some years ago and found it really boring except for the parade scene.

Beauty & Beast is super-formulaic but in an effective, good way, the numbers are nailed, the opening song is so good at being an opening scene. Lion King also holds up in terms of craft although I never connected to it as emotionally as many friends. "Part of Your World" is the best musical song ever. Rescuers and Ducktails both enjoyable series, universes but these movies feel like products of tv / home media, not big filmmaking. Not sure what to vote for.

I watched (okay, occasionally peeked at from around my laptop) Hunchback for the first time a few weeks ago. It was pretty entertaining.

i rewatched it last year and ariel was a real asshole.

lol. Still voting for it though. I have the fondest memories of it and now that my daughter's watching these movies it's the least annoying/problematic of the bunch.

little mermaid is the disney movie i'm kinda most concerned about my daughters watching. essentially isn't it a flick about a girl who gets rid of her voice to get a guy?

Well, she makes a devil's bargain... It's pretty plain to the viewer that exchanging her voice for legs is gonna be a pretty bad idea for Ariel and she'll be in for trouble ahead.

For years I marveled at brazenly dirty lyrics to the B&B 'GAston,' song, only to finally read the lyrics and learn the questionable phrase read "no one's NECK's as incredibly thick as Gaston" and heave a sigh of relief/sorrow

honestly beauty and the beast's message is probably worse: a physically and verbally threatening man (well, "man") can be transformed by a woman's love.

I've always been disturbed by Chip and Mrs. Pot. Who is the father? Did he leave after hitting his kid? There's a whole abusive allegory in that cupboard.

cutoff makes perfect sense as lion king was last release while katzenberg was there (curious which was the last one he had any hand in developing). loved aladdin at the time though robin williams and gottfried there really setting some bad precedents. lion king peak of disney 2.0, crazy katz blowup coincided w/ it, the timing helped create dreamworks and seal disney 2.0's doom. voted beauty, which at the time got praise for being vaguely feminist (comparable to frozen now), interesting it plays sexist now apparently.

i like ariel when her motivation is curiosity and the obsessive desire to learn more about the surface world. then it all suddenly gets transferred to "eric" and it's duller, not to mention one big trip to the problemat. this movie gets points just for being underwater, tho; i love its physics.

beauty and the beast is probably the best here because even disney can't completely sanitize it; the source material has such dark and confusing psychosexual implications that even tho it's not cocteau it's still spooky and has unpleasant implications. nevertheless belle may be the most successfully Plucky of disney heroines.

aladdin is undignified.

the lion king was my favorite thing in the world when i was little. because it's not based on a fairy tale with old black-forest ghosts crawling around it, al leong is otm about its story: it's the button-pushing creation of a bunch of hacks drunk on campbell. locks all its primal-cliche beats neatly into place. (in high school i read this book and the parts that hadn't already appeared in campbell or in story were mostly about suggestions the author had made at lion king script meetings that would have improved the film had they not been ignored). i used to think it was problo that the hyenas were clearly a brutally oppressed class who deserved to rise up and take their share from the lion supremacists but on the other hand it's neat that scar hijacks their revolution and is then torn apart by his betrayed underlings. movie is still thoroughly racist towards hyenas tho.

implications implications

even the anomalies here are interesting - ducktales as representative of afternoon cartoon disney that probably doesn't get enough credit in disney's rebirth, rescuers down under as proto-straight to video sequel they would mine the hell out of in years to come

Darkwing became a favorite of my roommates and I in late undergrad years. That and Animaniacs.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/5af65785b3163ab26156e3ea6ca1840d/tumblr_msca2woFGH1sh28k6o1_400.gif

Ariel having to lose her voice to morph into a different form is cool. There's a vague psychoanalytic kind of logic about it.

i loved the disney afternoon as a kid, pre-teenage years. darkwing duck, talespin, BONKERS, gooftroop, the aladdin series.. all great imo. never got into the lion king tv series but liked the movie well enough.

Disney animated features 1991-2000 poll
A Poll New World: Disney Animated Films of the 90s

don't remember ducktales anymore. would probably go for little mermaid for the music

― k3vin k., Wednesday, March 12, 2014 11:31 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oops - didn't even think to look for other polls on this one, sorry guys. Still think it's worth doing since it kind of continues the rolling discussion from the other threads maybe? Also it's been fun to have these in such small chunks I think...more discussion on each movie.

re: the cutoff - not really 'quality' based for me, just familiarity really - although I do feel like, Hercules aside, the second half of the decade maybe goes for more "grown-up" or teen oriented, more human characters, slightly darker tones visually (and maybe thematically?). This one is a "which is my favorite" poll, and the next one will be "which of these should I finally watch"?

re: DuckTales and the Treasure of the Golden Suns TV special/opening arc: yes yes yes. El Capitan forever.

Lion King as feline Hamlet, with JTT as the prince of Denmark, enemies beware.

"I've never seen a mighty king with quite so little hair" is a friggin gross line.

little mermaid i kinda sorta resent because it's so completely eclipsed andersen's (admittedly kind of fucked-up) story. i think most of the changes made in other, older disney movies are defensible (i doubt many ppl would argue that snow white should have ended with the queen being forced to dance herself to death in red-hot shoes), and i doubt anyone wanted to see poor ariel commit suicide, but the distance between the tone of the source material and the tone of the movie is really kind of incredible here.

TLM boasts the most enduring songs. My four-year-old niece has seen all these but will hum "Under the Sea" and AHHHH-AHHHH-AHHHH AHHH-AHHH-AHHH KEEP SINGING!!! all day.

I was going to say: not even Disney stamped out the sexual undertones in Hunchback, in which the priest by the fireplace sings a song celebrating/cursing his lust.

I don't think comparing it to source material is a fair argument no matter what angle you go for. They could make a tragedy into a romcom and it would be irrelevant to the quality of the movie, no exceptions.

in other words

http://25.media.tumblr.com/e6751ffda7821ae0d1e7e1c24f7ecf75/tumblr_mj8jrh39n61rfduvxo1_500.gif

you're right, i prob wouldn't care if i actually liked little mermaid (pinocchio isn't anything like the book, and iirc neither is bambi), but i kind of hate it. 'fake broadway musical' is my least favorite type of disney film.

fox and the hound is very different from the book

ha, speaking of broadway musicals, my sister is obsessed with howard ashman, so little mermaid is a clear favorite of hers. she made me watch a dvd featurette where howard ashman gives a presentation to the other disney guys about how musicals are structured and how the little mermaid's songs map onto that structure, and it was actually pretty interesting. he talks about how difficult ursula's song was to pull off because it's both expository and motivating a huge plot-turning change, and you risk the audience's suspension of disbelief when you're doing so much in such a short amount of time. like i mentioned earlier, i liked the montage in beauty and the beast where belle and the beast grew closer, and it turns out that was scored by an ashman song too ('something more').

always thought that despite the usurping uncle, timon + pumbaa make lion king functionally more henry iv than hamlet. wish he banished them at the end.

iirc disney only started claiming that lion king was based on hamlet after ppl started pointing out this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimba_the_White_Lion#The_Lion_King_controversy

haha i never read this part:

Matthew Broderick has said that when he was hired as the voice of Simba in The Lion King, he presumed the project was related to Kimba the White Lion. "I thought he meant Kimba, who was a white lion in a cartoon when I was a little kid," said Broderick. "So I kept telling everybody I was going to play Kimba. I didn't really know anything about it, but I didn't really care."

Not sure how I'm voting really. Beauty & the Beast is the one that I would for sure never allow a child to watch if I had any say in it - I mean it is explicit training in some of the most dangerous ideas loose in our society, papered over with the idea that it's somehow progressive because Beauty is clever, misunderstood and (initially) 'independent.' Really it should be pulled from the shelves like Song of the South, or at least retroactively re-rated R or something. Lion King almost as noxious but at least it lacks this fig leaf.

Little Mermaid may actually be the most defensible of the 'big' ones, insofar as the giving-up-of-legs is framed as a bad call, but difficult listening hour is sooooo OTM that it would be so much better if the plot weren't about a man, but just Ariel's curiosity about the wider world. It could even be something like Kiki's Delivery Service, where the conflicts and emotional drama grow directly out of the disappointments, misunderstandings and terrors of stepping out into this wider world. The relationships with the sisters could be prioritized - she misses them, they misinterpret her surface adventure as a signal that she doesn't need/love them, etc. etc. Maybe she makes a best friend on the surface and that friendship is pulled apart/jeopardized by the ~world that doesn't understand~ (see Fox & the Hound). Basically, what if it were a Miyazaki movie and not a Broadway/Disney number? Because the animation is there, the songwriting is there...oh well.

Kinda tempted to vote DuckTales, which I did see in the theater, packed into the neighbors' station wagon, but remember not even slightly. It'd be an honorary vote for the TV show, which was great and I think kind of universally agreed upon (at the first grade lunch table) as the best thing on TV or at least on par with Ninja Turtles. I haven't seen Rescuers Down Under, but when I finish the first one I could give it a spin - it's the only one of this batch available on Netflix, and I'd be interested to see how the Rescuers concept plays with, I believe, a bigger budget and updated technology - first film to use the "CAPS" system of computer-inking and coloring the hand-drawn cels.

it would be so much better if the plot weren't about a man, but just Ariel's curiosity about the wider world. ... Maybe she makes a best friend on the surface and that friendship is pulled apart/jeopardized by the ~world that doesn't understand~ (see Fox & the Hound). Basically, what if it were a Miyazaki movie and not a Broadway/Disney number?

haha doc casino you're basically describing ponyo!

haha, maybe i should skip the unheralded rescuers sequel and finally watch ponyo..

I voted Beauty because the ballroom scene made me feel like I was watching The Future Of Animation

Incidentally, if Wiki is to be trusted, both Rescuers Down Under and the DuckTales flick were experiments whose box-office disappointment confirmed the "all blockbusters" approach. But this again is where I think Katzenberg's fiat has to be thought of in the same terms as Walt's; some other person might have said, "ehh, pretty good returns for being a sequel to a movie no current kids have seen, up against Home Alone, and with an Australian theme that's already lost its shine." Granted, I'm not sure how different this world would be - more films about adventurous mice? - but still.

first entry in teal&orange.xls you were correct

I'd almost vote for B&TB because Angela Lansbury.

i voted beauty + the beast and i'm curious if detractors (particularly doc casino) feel the same way about the original source material as they do about the film? i ask bc fairy tales in general contain all kinds of dodgy stuff

the famous katzenberg letter, he begins to discuss rescuers down under some starting on pg 15

Uh, saw the 4 big ones. A friend had Beauty & The Beast on laserdisc, so we watched that a whole bunch of times until he got TERMINATOR 2 and omg bye-bye stupid foofy wannabeast. Gaston song is amazing though! Remember seeing a clip from The Little Mermaid at some sort of Apple conference thing where they were showing off this amazing new thing QUICKTIME and they had the Under the Sea scene shown at the size of a postage stamp. No idea why I was there. Same presentation showed off the amazing NEWTON!

Actually, this is the era I've seen the most of, since the Norwegian TV channel didn't show Disney movies when I was a kid and the video stores didn't have 'em either. I do recall seeing Pinocchio at a birthday party, but that's about it for the earlier movies. Great big pop cultural gap, that.

Anyhoo, here's some important additional data to aid you in your selection:

Little Mermaid = “Homer, that’s your solution to everything, to move under the sea"

The Lion King = “The circle of KNIFE”

Beauty & The Beast = "Like my loafers / Former gophers / it was that, or skin my chauffeurs / But a greyhound fur tuxedo would be best"

The only thing I remember about the Rescuers sequel aside from John Candy was Ebert's outrage over the racial coding of the villain.

xpost

The Little Mermaid definitely inspired the best Simpsons joke, yes.

i voted beauty + the beast and i'm curious if detractors (particularly doc casino) feel the same way about the original source material as they do about the film? i ask bc fairy tales in general contain all kinds of dodgy stuff

― Mordy , Wednesday, March 12, 2014 6:46 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haven't read the fairy tale in ages but the plot outline to me seems like basically the same idea and presumably it was very 'functional' in medieval German villages: something for mother (or dad) to tell kids to explain why daddy seems to fly into violent rages, smash things, make mommy cry - and how he really is a great man and father underneath, so don't worry if the fellow we set you up to marry seems to do those same things. So... why make a movie of this in 1991, for children, again?

Bookmarking the Katzenberg letter for later viewing...

aladdin takes this because it's great and the sega game was also great

i never played the games to the lion king, littlest mermaid or beauty and the beast but they're all pretty great too tbh

just occurred to me the other day that 'under the sea' is totally based on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcQ3vNOAk8k

Beauty and the Beast.

Remembered the dumb ending to TLM, flipped coin, voted Rescuers.

aladdin was my favorite of these as a kid but i don't really remember why, maybe i just identified more with the male lead? have no idea which i would like most now. i think i've actually seen beauty and the beast the fewest times of the big musical disneys, my sister had most of the others on vhs but not that one, but i can definitely imagine it aging the best and aladdin aging the worst.

i'll have an actual opinion on the next batch since there's one in there that i always liked

also am i just making this up or did all of the musicals have exactly 5 musical numbers?

Little Mermaid definitely has more, but I think they got the formula down more after that. I'm sure someone's made charts or something - gotta have an early-movie song establishing the big themes/setting, another one for the protagonist's state of mind or personality at the beginning, a villain-introducing number, a lighter or comic-relief number for the supporting cast, and a love theme. They don't sing through the climax and denouement, so that about does it except for reprising one of the above at the end, bada-bing bada-boom.

does tlm have more? i count: part of your world, under the sea, poor unfortunate souls, the chef's song, and kiss the girl. (un

I think I was counting "Fathoms Below," which tbf I don't really remember much, but it seems like it serves the same role as "Arabian Nights" and is thus redundant to "Under the Sea" as a scene-setting curtain-raiser. Maybe not a 'full' song though. Definitely not counting the gag song that Ariel's sisters don't finish.

aladdin doesn't have a villain song, another strike against it i guess

Woah, that's true! Never realized that. Wonder if they had one planned and cut it in favor of Robin Williams getting two big numbers? I could also see some really different version of Arabian Nights being given to him (he could be welcoming a suitor or something), in which case the "it's barbaric, but hey - it's home" might actually help set up something in the movie rather than just being discomfiting.

But really what's clearly missing is a showstopper for the Cave of Wonders, huge missed opportunity.

For years I marveled at brazenly dirty lyrics to the B&B 'GAston,' song, only to finally read the lyrics and learn the questionable phrase read "no one's NECK's as incredibly thick as Gaston" and heave a sigh of relief/sorrow

― r. bean (soda), Wednesday, March 12, 2014 1:42 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahahahahahahahaha

gaston is an awesome villain. so is ursula, though. actually, even though his characterization is super-racist, so is jafar.

i loved beauty and the beast so much as a kid.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

bottom two are right and the top 4 are all great so ya cool whatever

Awesome turnout. Wow. Kinda surprised Aladdin beat The Little Mermaid, but I shouldn't be - it outright won one of the other polls covering similar territory. Just on technique and entertainment skill and so on, I'd probably rank the big musicals the same way the voters here did - Little Mermaid does not have Robin Williams, thank god, but it is still a bit rougher and rustier.

Next one coming tomorrow!

Disney animated features: Mannerism (1995-1999)

I thought the live action Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast and Jungle Book were better than they had to be, but holy shit the live action "Aladdin" trailer looks like some straight-up mid-90s garbage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foyufD52aog

whooooooof

These movies are literally the most pointless thing ever.

This is from a few years ago. I knew about the Lion King ripping off Kimba The White Lion but didn't know about the extent and assholery of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfJvKIDS9n8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1YHXnlJWI4

just tried to give the DuckTales movie a whirl since we've got a free trial of D+ to goof around with and OOF, had to bail like two minutes in as the middle eastern stereotypes piled up. maybe it gets better later but i regret throwing it a token vote here if indeed i did so.

Racial stereotypes in a Disney movie???! Oh my stars and garters

i mean this is a major beef of mine with plenty of their stuff, cf. Aladdin. just didn't know to expect it in this one, jeez.

designed lights for a junior prod of TLK opening tonight, tried to brecht it up as much as i could lol. the lionesses have a "hunting song" that ends w them bringing down an an antelope and feeding on it in a circle upstage (tossing plastic bones away etc); i hit them with a blood-red strobe and black out everything else for a few seconds before simba runs in like "hi mom!!" and lights return to normal daylight for mom turning around wiping her mouth; later when simba witnesses his father's murder it happens in the same blackout and the same strobe. more like the circle of death

and yet nothing i could think of or do could ever stand against the power of my own pale 1/1000th onstage imitation of

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.

pure hi-tech propaganda. i argued for gaston upthread as most effective villain of this era (stand by this) but a huge point in scar's favor is the cut from the climactic timpani hit sealing off the monarchist ecstasy of this opening directly to scar relishing the first spoken line of both movie and show: "life's not fair, is it?"