Ups and Downs

As the year draws to a close in a few days, I thought I'd look back on the good and the bad of this year in animation…

Coming off of a pretty strong 2012, was this year a good year for animation? If you ask me, it was very up and down. Heavy emphasis on very…

Mainstream American feature animation had quite an underwhelming year for the most part, either in the critical or box office department… Sometimes both. What's very notable about this year's batch of films is that it showed that adherence to a formula doesn't always produce good results.

2013's most successful animated films also happened to be the best-received: Monsters University, Despicable Me 2 and Frozen. The Croods, which got decent reviews, was also a hit in North America but did even better worldwide. Sony's Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 was a modest success at best, and it didn't cost too much to begin with. Epic also broke even, but overall it underperformed. Disney Animation, Pixar and Illumination won this year. Sony and Blue Sky did okay, DreamWorks had a big win with The Croods, but also had a good-sized loss with Turbo.

Frozen was another hit for Walt Disney Animation Studios' current winning streak, and it also was preceded by Mickey Mouse's first proper short subject 1995's Runaway Brain, the excellent Get A Horse! While I didn't gush over Frozen, its mix of Broadway songs, great character work on the two leads, sad moments, comedy, modern attitude and little doses of action really worked with many. Then again, I think The Lion King has quite a few flaws but people love it, and they loved this too. Props to Disney for making a film that really resonated with audiences, like they've been doing for, in my opinion, the past six years.

Monsters University, for me, was a fine film and much more consistent than Cars 2 and Brave, had a fine screenplay that balanced everything well and had very little flaws. Sure it was a lot more conventional than Pixar's usual films, but what mattered to me was Mike's character arc, the new faces and the storytelling. Lots of people liked it just fine, while others didn't. It's definitely on the more divisive side. But maybe once this "Pixar is on the decline" dust settles, this film and the one before it may get a fair re-evaluation.

I have not seen Despicable Me 2, so I can't say. Apparently, its crazy Minion hijinks and comedy worked with audiences of all ages. The critical reception was good, and I did think the first one was more than just enjoyable. Apparently Illumination succeeds in this department for now, because let me tell you, The Lorax was as bland and forgettable as they come!

There were no other real winners this year.

It seems like the family-friendly wacky comedy formula is finally beginning to wear thin. Audiences only went to see sequels/prequels to films they liked or loved (Monsters University, Despicable Me 2, Cloudy 2) or things that seemed interesting at the least. The Croods most likely caught on because of how weird it looked in the visual department, plus the aggressive marketing did make it look like fun. Frozen's last-minute good marketing emphasized story, characters and music, which got audiences of all ages into the theater on opening weekend.

Turbo's ads didn't do much for audiences, as it looked like a derivative "for kids only" film. Most reviews seemed to sing that tune as well, thus it had trouble when it opened. The Smurfs 2 only proves that the first film was something of a fad, and the first film also had all of summer to itself to make the amount of money it made. Free Birds was held back by very poor marketing, and the film itself got bad reviews and was soon overshadowed by Frozen. Unlike Turbo, it made its money back. Escape from Planet Earth wasn't going to be big to begin with, so it performed as expected. Planes did okay, but since it was for kids first, most adults and fans stayed at home.

This may be a turning point for American feature animation. Directors such as Chris Sanders, Kirk Wise and Henry Selick spoke about the problems of the American animation industry and the redundancy of many of the films. Meanwhile, our ever-so-understanding press bent over backwards and instead asked stupid questions like "Are there too many animated features?", "Is there an animation curse?"

Of course, people who don't give a damn about animation to begin with (they're still calling it a "genre"!) would ask such things, instead of considering the quality of the various animated features. All of them are computer animated, usually cost over $70 million to make, are family-friendly and happen to be comedic in tone. However, the best films do well because they happen to have substance or something that really ticks with the audience. It's something that can't emulated so easily, why did wacky caveman comedy The Croods do so well yet wacky turkey flick Free Birds didn't? It's really simple.

The films that underperformed consisted of Epic (made its budget back, but still did unimpressive business), Turbo and The Smurfs 2. Escape from Planet Earth and Free Birds were the sort of middle-of-the-road animated films of the year, a bit like Gnomeo & Juliet or Alpha and Omega. Low budget, not expected to be blockbusters, films that didn't make any mark but turned a profit.

This year, we didn't have anything that was really unique or against the norm. Monsters University, good as it was, was one of Pixar's quieter and less ambitious films. (They're saving the ambition for Inside Out, Good Dinosaur and the "Day of the Dead" film.) Frozen might've focused on two sisters and their relationship, but it was dressed in Disney conventions that we're familiar with, unlike last year's Wreck-It Ralph. Despicable Me 2 was… Well… Despicable Me 2. Fun? Probably. (I still haven't seen it.) But anything else? Was it Rango? Was it LAIKA-esque? Nope.

If last year could give us a small variety of animated films that didn't suggest "sameness", this year was the opposite. Everything else was either familiar or a sequel/prequel/spin-off. A year that included the likes of The Smurfs 2 and Planes no less. You know what would've been great? A wide release of a foreign feature, but let's face it, that rarely happens in North America. No big release for something like The Congress, or Metegol, or something from Japan. We're getting The Wind Rises next year thanks to Touchstone, GKIDS will give Ernest & Celestine a pretty decent-sized release. 2013 originally had the feature-length Phineas and Ferb movie and Henry Selick's The Shadow King. I think the year would've been a bit better had those two never been moved/postponed.

2013 was also a downer year in many respects, from the VFX industry woes to the constant layoffs. DreamWorks gave up to 350 employees the pink slip after Rise of the Guardians underperformed (by their expectations), many visual effects houses went bankrupt, protests ensued (remember the "green screen"), the Academy Awards even showed great disrespect to the people who did the effects for Life of Pi when they were on stage. Walt Disney Animation Studios had to lay off ten veteran animators because CEO Bob Iger was having the company's divisions lay people off.

Other woes included Pixar's decision to remove director Bob Peterson from The Good Dinosaur, resulting in some layoffs at the studio. They also shut down Pixar Canada, showing nearly 100 people the door because they wanted to move all of their resources under one roof. A shame, because Pixar Canada could've been what Disney Animation's Orlando unit was to the Burbank studio. The announcement of Finding Dory made more people upset than happy, and Brave winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature over Wreck-It Ralph led to a massive backlash. While the support for Disney Animation's triumphant video game adventure was nice and all, Brave perhaps got a little too much bashing, methinks. Booting Peterson off of his film - this is the fourth time in a row this director removal thing has happened at the studio - was met with anger and skepticism. Pixar has been a whipping post since the announcements of sequels and the release of Cars 2. This just made matters worse. 2013 really wasn't their year…

On the home media front, there has been disappointment. Disney foolishly believes that people will abandon physical media very soon, thus they have put out lazy Blu-rays of their animated classics, which either lacked bonus features or came with questionable, sometimes bad transfers. Warner Bros. (or more appropriately, their legal department) angered animation fans left and right with their censorship of the second volume of the Tom and Jerry Golden Collection (after years of releasing sets with potentially offensive content to general consumers, albeit with warnings), justifying it and driving WHV to postpone it indefinitely.

With this rush to go digital, what does it all mean for non-feature length animation? What does it mean for more obscure stuff?

But despite the doom and gloom, optimism prevails. You know why? Because it always does!

Walt Disney Animation Studios, despite the recent lay offs, is ready to go full steam ahead with a slate of films that'll open people up to what a Disney animated film can be. Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph were successful enough to support this ambitious new slate (which goes from now to 2018), and now Frozen is a bona-fide blockbuster! The sky's the limit, and honestly, this is something to get really excited about. Of course, the debbie-downers sniped at Disney for simply not telling us what was coming out on the various release dates, or were angry that none of the films are apparently not going to be done in hand-drawn animation. I say it was a wise choice to not reveal the titles.

Pixar is no different, they have films (a good number of which are entitled) scheduled for 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Debbie-downers will argue, "Their recent films are weak! They're not the same!" How do you know how the next batch of films will turn out? Why is a studio all of a sudden going to cease making good films just because of some inevitable trip ups? People seem to forget that great artists are still human beings. Also, the oh-so-bad Pixar happened to delight many with its first-ever television special this year: Toy Story of TERROR! It got acclaim, it did extremely well in ratings and it's a great way to keep Disney happy without having to make another film. (Well I sure hope that'll be case! I'll take tons of specials and a show or two over a fourth movie.)

Fox loaded their guns, claiming release dates for DreamWorks, Blue Sky and Fox Animation Studios productions. What's the latest date they have? December 20, 2018. Thinking ahead for sure, and also showing that animation is here to stay. Sony Animation even went ahead and announced that the September 2016 and September 2017 spots were theirs. Illumination also seems to have matured, canceling projects that weren't working and moving some around. What a shocker, since DreamWorks and Sony have these slates that are loaded with in-development projects. Illumination surprisingly removed a few from the line-up, knowing that they wouldn't go through any time soon!

The studios are ramping up their slates, but like I said before, they better start upping the quality and trying new things. Or at least differentiate their work for the time being, before any experimentation kicks in.

We have other studios making the leap into the mainstream world, Dallas-based Reel FX being one of them. Hopefully what they're doing kicks off a trend: A bunch of small-scale studios enter the field and help change mainstream animation as we know it by taking crazy, wild risks. Aardman and LAIKA try as they might, but we might need more studios to help… And a bigger push from someone else. Columbia/Sony Animation hasn't done well with Aardman, Focus Features can only do so much for LAIKA being a small distributor. No one looks into foreign animation, we never get films like Rio 2096 or The Fake in wide release form. It's also hard when you're not being backed by a corporate empire or marketing machine as big as Disney's. Just look at DreamWorks, they've been having trouble because their films cost a lot and they rely on the revenues from feature films to stay afloat.

But the higher ups at DreamWorks are also shrewd, as they are now finding other ways to keep themselves going. They lucked into Netflix, planning to release hours and hours of original programming that's intended to bolster franchises and also move merchandise. It could also make up for losses, Turbo F.A.S.T. is a fine example. That could very well put the film and franchise in the black, though to be fair, DreamWorks announced the show a good while before the film came out.

As for the whole smaller scale animation thing? Well, now is the time for distributors to seriously consider the options out there and not screw around. They can slowly build momentum, and get foreign animation into "modest success" territory at the box office. We can't just have the Academy Awards' token "Best Animated Feature" category giving foreign animation a scrap of recognition. Change needs to take place soon, because audiences this year have spoken with their wallets.

Plus, this year, Kickstarter began launching many interesting animated films, Glen Keane started up his own studio and a small company like Reel FX secured distribution deals with Relativity Media and 20th Century Fox. This is pointing to a promising future for animation, one that should inevitably happen. The big budget world can't always be the bearer of big hits; many blockbuster live action films did poorly or outright tanked at the box office this year while a good number of small films did quite well, great even. Even Steven Spielberg himself talked of the ramifications of everything being big budget.

It's time to go small. Leave the biggies to the ones who can afford to make them. (i.e. Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks…)

Look at Free Birds, the computer animation in it was competent and it was produced for $35 million. That's around half of what the relatively cheap Despicable Me 2 cost to make! France's A Monster in Paris, from 2011, looks good despite the budget it was made on, but no matter, audiences can enjoy that just the same if the story is good. Audiences do like hand-drawn animation, contrary to what the oh-so-wise executives would like to think. Any animation is good with audiences, as long as it is good or marketing makes it look good.

This year saw the announcements of several projects that have a lot of promise. Reel FX is gearing up for The Book of Life, which looks to be a game-changer like Rango. Beasts of Burden and W.I.S.H. Police are next, and going by what's been revealed, they both have potential. Paul McCartney will enter the world feature animation with High in the Clouds, which should also be a game-changer. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are going for animated food with the raunchy Sausage Party, which could popularize feature-length adult-oriented animation or set adult-oriented animation ten years back. Sony is looking to adapt Ratchet & Clank into a movie, which could signal a new frontier for both animation and video game movie adaptations.

The big studios still have good stuff coming. Disney Animation's Big Hero 6 looks to expand on the out-of-the-box settings of Wreck-It Ralph, being a manga-tinged superhero story with many cool little elements. DreamWorks has some exciting stuff cooking, from the How To Train Your Dragon sequel to projects like Home, B.O.O., Mumbai Musical among several other neat-sound projects that are in development. We got news about films like Flawed Dogs and Larrikins moving forward (Noah Baumbach is directing the former!), showing that DreamWorks has a lot brewing under their roof. Blue Sky even has some interesting stuff coming, from Anubis to Ferdinand. Hopefully those will be well-made and well-written. Sony Animation shows some promise too, with projects like original story Kazorn & the Unicorn and Genndy Tartakovsky's Popeye. Illumination seems to have matured a bit, clearing their crowded slate of re-imaginings up a bit and actually being gung ho about original projects.

Away of the big screens came some good stuff. Television animation is doing alright (despite some annoyances, like Cartoon Network's bigwigs canceling a show because more female viewers were tuning in. Imagine that?), and we've got some cool new stuff airing. Kickstarter, again, has been working wonders for smaller animation that wouldn't normally get picked up. More and more experimental and off-the-wall stuff makes the waves online, and many sites highlight them, which is good. Also, Disney released the excellent Disney Animated app for iPad, which you should definitely get.

On a bittersweet note, Hayao Miyazaki returned with the controversial but critically acclaimed The Wind Rises, which will get a wide release in February thanks to Disney, but it's his swan song. Judging by the reviews, he ended his feature film directing career with a bang!

All in all, we got a lot of exciting announcements and leaked details… But also a lot of bad news, a lot of disheartening happenings and whatnot. It doesn't suggest end times for American mainstream animation, to me it suggests that change needs to take place, and soon…

Maybe this coming year, things will look up. 2012 was a fine year in animation, right? One not-so-great year can't hurt, plus 2014 offers excitement. The big studios, for the most part, seem to be giving us the good, interesting stuff this year. Hopefully many of the films turn out to be good, and not derivative or "been there done that". Maybe studios will start investing in smaller scale stuff. 2014 may be bring good things, given the lesson learned this year. Maybe… Maybe...

Freezing The King - A Rant

Yes, Frozen may actually freeze The Lion King… At the box office, that is…

Box Office Mojo's Ray Subers, in his write-up of this weekend's box office results, suggests that the new Walt Disney Animation Studios event could possibly make more than $300 million at the domestic box office.

You heard that right. $300 million…

This excites me and frustrates me at the same time.

Frozen may have a shot at being the first Disney Animation film to gross $300 million in North America, and it could also possibly be their highest-grossing of all time. The Lion King's "initial release" domestic take was a then-monolith $312 million. The 2002 IMAX re-release added another $15 million, the 2011 3D re-release added a shocking $94 million. Its total lifetime gross is $422 million, and there's no way Frozen will beat that. Of course, we don't expect it to. I don't count re-release totals when it comes to this. (i.e. The Rescuers was the biggest Disney animated film on initial release back in 1977, but of all-time counting re-issues? Nope.)

This weekend, the icy film lightly slipped a great 15% from its previous weekend. The film has grossed $192 million in nearly a month. The Christmas week will greatly add to it, and it'll have excellent legs afterwards. It's got the animation and family film world all to itself until The Lego Movie opens in February, because… Let's be honest here, The Nut Job ain't touching this film with a 39 1/2-foot pole.

The great thing about this is, it not only shows that Walt Disney Animation Studios is a worthy competitor at the box office (a few years ago, they weren't), but also a roost-ruler. Pixar currently sits on top alongside Illumination (though I have a feeling that outside of Despicable Me and Dr. Seuss, they'll be making good-sized hits at best), and occasionally DreamWorks. Very few animated films have topped $250 million at the domestic box office since 2010. Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 have raced past that mark, now it looks like Frozen will do the same. Yes, Disney is sitting up there with the giants… Finally…

But why am I also somewhat peeved about this? I should be all-out happy with this film's success, right? Right?

Well, I am happy - first and foremost - for the film itself and Walt Disney Animation Studios. They've deserved a $200M+ domestic hit since Bolt. But that's just it…

If you've seen my review of Frozen, you'll know that I am not gushing over the film. I didn't think it was a "great" movie, but a "very good" movie instead. I had problems with it, and at times I felt that it was very inconsistent and even a little undercooked. Considering the hell this project went through for nearly two decades, I guess we can all say that we should be happy that the film is decent at the least. This could've been a major league disaster, so I am thankful for it being good.

I can accept the fact that something like this went through a lot to get to the big screen, but I'm just not too keen on all the hyperbole. "Best Disney animated film since Lion King!" Stop that already, please take the time to watch films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tarzan, Lilo & Stitch, Bolt, The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, Winnie the Pooh and Wreck-It Ralph. If you did and still consider this the best since Lion King, fine. At least you have seen the films, but I get the feeling that a lot of people haven't, or only saw them once when they were ten and rejected them.

If Frozen hits $300 million domestically, it'll have scored a 4.5x multiplier, which is a notch higher than Frog and Tangled's multipliers. I bet you if both of those films opened with $66 million like this film did, they would've grossed around the same amount in the end. Problem is, Frog opened with $24 million, Tangled opened with $48 million. This film would've opened with around the latter's amount if the marketing department didn't wise up and give us that wonderful "First Time in Forever" trailer, heavily plug the soundtrack and make the film look good to people over the age of twelve.

Frozen's got the legs that Bolt, Frog and Tangled had. It's only outgrossing them by a wide margin because of the opening weekend gross, plus some added hyperbole. When you put it out there that it's supposedly the "best" since Lion King, obviously people will flock to see it.

Now I'm not angry that Frozen is outgrossing what I believe are superior films (such as Bolt, Frog, Tangled and Ralph), I'm just cautious because Disney suits may react to this success the wrong way. Executives tend to do this kind of thing. I can hear it now, actually.

"They like modern princess movies! They like Broadway-style musicals! Make more!"

Okay fine, you can make more. I am anticipating Giants, which is essentially the third "modernized fairy tale musical", the first two being Tangled and this of course. I'd be down with one every three years, it's not a bad template. Tangled's story is very different from Frozen's. If there are any similarities, then they are very small. Snow White and Cinderella aren't the same, but they happen to have princess leads, handsome princes, cute animals and are based on fairy tales. Storywise, they are very different.

But if Disney executives push Disney Animation to just stick to fairy tales, I won't be pleased. Fairy tales may be what Disney is best known for, but other classics like Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, One Hundred and One Dalmatians and heck, freakin' Lion King, prove that Disney is more than just fairy tales. They are also more than just snarky comedy-drama Broadway musicals.

Why am I concerned though?

Well, Disney Animation's next two films are not fairy tales nor are they musicals in a "classic Disney" sense. Big Hero 6 is about as anti-Renaissance-era Disney as you can get, ditto Zootopia. I'm glad they are, because I'm not keen on Disney sticking to a formula. Walt hated formulas, he wanted to be diverse. I believe Disney Animation should be that way, all of the time. Try something different, but still revisit what you tried before every once in a while because it is a top menu on the item.

But here's a big concern of mine…

What if Disney were to view Bolt, The Princess and the Frog, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph as the sort of Oliver & Company and Great Mouse Detectives of the last 5 years? Or "lesser" films that were successful but not huge (i.e. Hunchback, Hercules, etc.)?

When Disney was finally smashing the box office left and right with popular hits like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and so on, those two 1980s films - one was a profitable and critically well-liked film, the other was a modest success that got mixed reviews - fell to the wayside. The Great Mouse Detective is never promoted with a lot of fanfare whenever it comes around, ditto Oliver & Company.

The Great Mouse Detective may not be a sweeping musical event like Beauty and the Beast, and I do consider Beast to be a better film than Mouse Detective, but that doesn't mean the Sherlock Holmesian rodent romp should be treated like a red-headed stepchild. Yes, I believe Disney treats it like that to an extent, at least it's listed in the classics canon. The Great Mouse Detective in my book is a brisk, fun, breezy, simple adventure story with some very likable characters, a highly enjoyable villain and some incredibly entertaining sequences. A film more people should at least watch. It was also the first film directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, who would give us some of Disney's most beloved films after that. However, it's not really promoted like other Disney films, its DVD and Blu-ray releases lack the attention and care given to the disc releases of something like Beast (now I'm not asking for a packed mega 2-disc set, though that would be nice), and it's just really kind of… Obscure. It isn't dated, it's not a product of its time. It's a Victorian-set sleuth story, that's kind of timeless if you ask me.

I'm not saying Disney should shove Basil of Baker Street, David Q. Dawson, Olivia Flaversham, Professor Ratigan and the rest of the cast down your throat, but come on! A little push, maybe some more prominence in merchandise and theme parks? Maybe that could attract… You know… Potential fans? Yes it's on Netflix, but that isn't enough if you ask me. It's more than just an "obscure Disney film that happens to be on Netflix." (Over a decade ago, something like Disney's House of Mouse was a good way to keep many characters in the minds of fans, casual viewers and whatnot.)

As for Oliver & Company, well… That's kind of tricky. Again, I don't think Disney should shun any of their animated classics, but Oliver & Company is a near-embarassment because it was really just amped up to be hip in 1988, to make a safe, quick buck. That it did. It was the highest grossing animated film on initial release at the time, and it just functioned as a way to keep Disney Animation trucking and to also show Don Bluth that he wasn't going to be the only one ruling the roost. That being said, it should not be forgotten. It's a footnote, and Disney should treat it as that. Not as an obscure "Ehhh we're scraping the bottom of the barrel so we have to put it out on Blu-ray" film.

Then there's the post-Lion King Renaissance-era films. Films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hercules seem to only be discovered by nostalgic 90s folks today, Mulan and Tarzan are in good standing since they were sizable hits back in the day, ditto something like Robin Hood - which was always doing fine in video sales in the 1980s and 1990s - or Pocahontas, though they could get a little more push from the Mouse. Maybe more prominence in merch and parks, that always helps. Maybe some of these films, like Mouse Detective, aren't animated Citizen Kanes. Maybe they may not be iconic, but that doesn't mean they should be neglected or seen as "lesser". You can make films like these, well, popular enough.

After Disney got the box office and critical power they had been waiting for in the early 1990s, they effectively shoved The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company out of sight. The latter, I can see why. Again, it was dated and just thrown together to make an easy buck. But why did the former have to get shut out? It wasn't dated or cobbled together, it was a genuinely enjoyable flick. Oh what? It didn't make a blockbuster total at the box office? Whatever. They should've used its modest success to its advantage, treat it like a little Sword in the Stone or Robin Hood. Something of the sort, a little profitable film that continues to do well and garner fans.

See, this is why I'm a bit worried about Disney possibly shutting out some of the last string of films. Bolt was a modest hit, as it did double its budget worldwide and sold well on DVD/Blu-ray. It got great reviews, too! Kind of like Great Mouse Detective, and Disney ignores that film even though it got good reviews and it has a sizable fan base.

Meet The Robinsons will probably get the shaft, big time. Wasn't a box office hit, got okay reviews at best, and is seemingly already forgotten. It's seen as a sort of slightly salvaged mess, one Lasseter could not save, etc. (I beg to differ, but…)

The Princess and the Frog and Tangled are safe, being familiar princess films and merchandising monsters.

Winnie the Pooh might not have been seen by many, but the character is now and forever. It's pretty much safe.

Wreck-It Ralph, box office-wise, is above the Oliver & Company spot. It wasn't a modest success, it was a success. Doubled its budget, sold well on home video, merchandise sold well. Out of the other films, that one is the least likely to be pushed aside. But the video game angle could hurt it, as some inside the company may view it as dated… Like Oliver & Company. Unlike that movie though, it was well-received, it took home a few awards as well! It's kind of in the middle.

But back to Frozen, now that I got the "forgetting thing" out of the way.

Another big concern of mine is this…

How will Disney approach future animated features now that a familiar tale has become their biggest hit since The Lion King?

Disney's marketing department has shown that they can't always market a film correctly, which is true of pretty much every other big studio. For instance, this year Warner Bros. totally botched the marketing for Pacific Rim, making something unique look like just another dull summer blockbuster or "Transformers with giant monsters". Fox couldn't make DreamWorks' Turbo look like anything but a silly kiddie film with its been-there done-that trailers and ads. Last summer, Paramount sold DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians as an action-packed film, something quasi-cool for action-loving teens, and the movie blew up in their faces. In the process they left out the whimsy and imaginative tone that would've attracted other demographics.

… and so on… Disney has had a history of bad marketing outside of animated films: John Carter, The Lone Ranger, Prince of Persia, The Sorcerer's Apprentice…

But… Bolt and Frog's marketing (done by the previous team, not the current one that was established in 2009 after Rich Ross took over) was inexcusably poor, Tangled's was too cynical. Yes, it gave the film its good-sized opening weekend gross, but it did alienate adults and fans in the process. Ralph's marketing also shut out adults, with its emphasis on "Hero's Doody" jokes and less emphasis on the story. Frozen's campaign smartly emphasized the story, music and characters (albeit at the last minute) which in turn got more adults to show up. Sorry Scott Mendelson of Forbes, but I feel that your defense of the kid-centric marketing is way off.

Had Ralph or Tangled's campaigns did what Frozen did in the end, they would've performed similarly to this new picture.

Now that the studio has a huge hit under its belt, the marketing needs to keep things going. Good marketing sells a movie, no matter how good or bad the movie is. Disney Animation, of all things, just needs to be sold properly to audiences. Big Hero 6 needs to be an event, Zootopia needs to be an event, Giants, Moana, all the future projects. All of them. They need to be events! They need to look appealing to moviegoers. The studio is firing on all cylinders and are delivering top notch stories with great characters, lovely animation and a diverse batch of settings, themes and narratives.

Let's hope that Disney emphasizes the future films' qualities in the trailers, ads and marketing materials instead of just slacking off, instead opting to be cliche and pelt the audiences with jokes, jokes and more jokes - like trailers for every other big-release animated movie out there. Big Hero 6 isn't a big musical fairy tale like Frozen, but so what? The Incredibles was an animated superhero film and that was big, Marvel movies are in, superheroes are in. Period. Strike the iron while it's hot! Big Hero 6 could very well nestle itself in the top five highest grossing Disney animated features league. Zootopia is a talking animals film, but that doesn't matter, make it look awesome to the general public! Show how cool the animals-only world of the film will be! Don't market it like Ice Age 12 or whatever, it's more than that!

The goal is to show audiences that Disney Animation isn't just about fairy tales, once upon a time stories, musicals and cutesy talking animal romps. Disney Animation can tackle anything, they can do a space opera, a mystery thriller, an epic fantasy, a small-scale drama… Anything! Audiences may think Disney can or "should only" do fairy tales, no. They can do more, Pixar wins because of this. Diversity rules in the end, and Disney can get other audiences to go see their animated films by tackling new genres. In turn, their audience will grow and grow. They can sit right alongside Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. No wait, they already do!

I'm not saying Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Giants, Moana and the rest should all be $300 million+ blockbusters… That's unreasonable to expect. Pixar couldn't do it, The Incredibles didn't come close to Finding Nemo's huge $339 million gross. (The press went all "What went wrong?", especially when Cars' opening weekend was a little below The Incredibles' opening weekend.) But I all want them to do very good, so they keep the studio going and also get the public to accept new kinds of stories from Disney, so no one goes "But Disney should only do fairy tales! That's what they do best!"

This kind of thing was attempted last decade, but corporate meddling and mismanagement ran that plan into the ground. Dinosaur was killed by the decision to make the dinosaurs talk in hip slang. Emperor's New Groove cost too much because it evolved out of another movie that was already costly enough, it looked bad from the previews and the actually good movie had to rely on word of mouth to make its money… And it still bombed. Atlantis was not allowed to be the cool epic action film it could've been, ditto Treasure Planet plus the marketing made it look like "Disney Extreme Sports… In Spaaaaaaaaace!" Brother Bear and Home on the Range were aimed at kids first, which alienated everyone else. It's quite telling that the derivative, cynical, Shrek-chasing Chicken Little did better than all these films. It's also quite telling that a good film like Lilo & Stitch outgrossed these films.

I see this new era as a revival of that failed plan, but this time, there's no David Stainton or executives having too much control over the product. If Wreck-It Ralph was made in 2002 during the Eisner-Stainton era, it would've tanked, because its screenplay would've been dumbed down, its better ideas would've hit the cutting room floor and the marketing would've made it look terrible. Nope, Wreck-It Ralph was a hit because the screenplay played to adults and kids - it didn't pander to them, bad ideas hit the cutting room floor and the marketing made it look good enough.

Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana, Dean Wellins' "Space Race" film, King of the Elves and several others are risky and different like Dinosaur, The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis, Treasure Planet and Sweating Bullets (yes, Bullets became Home on the Range, but that early incarnation of Disney's failed Western had lots of potential). The difference is, these films are going to be allowed to be good movies… And what they want to be. That's all thanks to the awful, horrible devils that are John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, plus the great writers and animators who bring these stories to life.

Now also…

Attendance and grosses are two different things…

The Lion King's initial $312 million domestic total translates to roughly 74 million tickets today. If Frozen finishes up with $300 million, it'll have sold less than 40 million tickets. Still a big amount of tickets, but…

Grosses don't mean everything. People still saw films like Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph. People have discovered the likes of Bolt and Frog on video, television or other ways. Frozen may make a lot, but Disney better not reserve a throne for that film whilst telling the canine, the frogs and the video game wrecker to take a hike. They already did that to the hunchback, the super-strong hero and several others.

So hopefully the success of Frozen doesn't continue Disney's rather unfair trend of picking and choosing, and hopefully it doesn't drive Disney to go about selling their future animated films the wrong way. They should use the success of Frozen and the films before it to their advantage. Even though Bolt and Frog didn't outgross Chicken Little, they still outgrossed films like Treasure Planet, Brother Bear and Home on the Range. Chicken Little was lucky, because in 2005, if you were CGI and had a DreamWorks-y attitude, you were a hit. Today? Not so much.

Since Bolt and Frog outgrossed the non-fad films from the studio during the 2000-2005 period (minus you know who, of course), they could be used to demonstrate a growing momentum. It's kind of similar to how Disney used the grosses of Oliver, Mermaid and Beast to prove that Disney Animation was getting bigger and bigger. Bolt and Frog could be them saying: "Look. We're slowly winning back the audiences we lost." Now add in the success of Tangled and Ralph, they'll show: "Look! We got even bigger with those two!" Then Frozen can be their capper, their Aladdin/Lion King smash: "We're back in action now!"

This in turn could really hype up the next string of films, it could drive the marketing department to want to keep the gravy train going. The Renaissance fell after The Lion King because we started getting films like Pocahontas; films that were messes, byproducts of misguided intentions clashing and executive meddling. The declining quality of films got good amounts of people to stay away, not marketing. The marketing still gave it their all when readying films like Hunchback, Hercules, Mulan and Tarzan to at least help the films make their money back. Guess what? The films did good at the box office! Hunchback, Hercules, Mulan and Tarzan were by all means "hit films" back in the day. Lion King was that rare, once-in-a-lifetime freak success that also hit the summit of the momentum mountain. Did they really think that Pocahontas would repeat that? Or Aladdin's then-enormous $217 million gross? It doesn't work that way. The ignorant higher ups scoffed at the post-Lion King films just because they didn't make Aladdin or Lion King numbers despite being very profitable and selling like mad on home video afterwards. Boo-frickity-hoo…

The quality is consistent with these new films, thanks to the studio's current environment. No formulas, no repeating, no annoyances in the films that drive audiences away. No focus groups telling them what to do, no executives taking their cool ideas and watering them down for toddlers. The current Disney brass better know this, and they better take advantage. A new Renaissance is upon the studio, one that could last a very, very long time.

Time to go big or go home.

In fact… That should be Big Hero 6's tagline. "This Fall… Go BIG or go home!"

First Pick

Nowadays, studios have to claim dates very early on in order to set up a fortress of sorts. The big budget film world is a very competitive one, and so is the world of family-friendly animation. The six big studios currently providing our mainstream animated fare happen to produce costly films generally aimed at a wide variety of age groups.

So getting a good release date is very, very important. Also, summer and the holiday season aren't the only options anymore, and for the better. With more studios coming up, they can't just cram everything into one season or timeframe. Just look at this past summer!

But the problem is, when a studio picks a date, they'll usually stick to it. This especially applies to animation.

For a non-animated example, The Avengers was slated for May 4, 2012 as far back as March 2009. No way was it ever going to move, and it was pretty much a given by the time Iron Man 2 opened in theaters worldwide in spring 2010. The date simply told other studios, "Back off, this our territory!" Naturally, a lot of studios avoided releasing their big blockbusters up against the massive Marvel event. Those who did, well… Didn't fare too well, but maybe they were aware of their less-than-stellar product to begin with. *cough*Dark Shadows*cough*Battleship*cough**cough*

Animated films are scheduled in similar ways. If Pixar gets a mid-June date, back off... Unless something happens and Pixar has to end up moving the film. Other studios can be brave, Fox certainly has the balls to keep How To Train Your Dragon 3 in the mid-June 2016 spot despite the fact that it opens against Finding Dory. They're also content with releasing Blue Sky's Peanuts mere weeks before Pixar's The Good Dinosaur. Prior to this, DreamWorks and other studios usually kept their films a good distance from whatever Pixar was releasing.

However, is this "first pick" routine detrimental to some studios' output?

I think it has been to Pixar in the recent years. I think penciling in exact dates for in-development films like Newt, Brave and Cars 2 back in early 2008 wasn't a wise move, neither was scheduling The Good Dinosaur and Inside Out years before their planned release dates. I think what would be better would be Pixar claiming dates, but not specifying what will be coming out on those dates. Just look at Walt Disney Animation Studios…

They have four untitled entries slated for 3/4/2016, 11/23/2016, 3/9/2018 and 11/21/2018. We fans have heard of projects like Zootopia, Giants and Moana. We put together the puzzle pieces and figure that those three will be the first three of the four undetermined releases, in that order. Blue Sky Disney's Honor Hunter knows what's going on up at the Hat Building, so this may all come true. Zootopia was also revealed at D23, right after the Big Hero 6 presentation. That Marvel-based film opens on November 7, 2014, the following Disney Animation film will open in March 2016. Logically, Zootopia will most likely be the March 4, 2016 Walt Disney Animation Studios film.

But… Disney never outright said that Zootopia is opening on March 4, 2016. You know what I think of that? That's a very smart move.

Giants doesn't have a release date in addition to not being officially announced by the company, ditto Moana. Why is this a good thing? Well, what if Zootopia runs into a wall during production? *knock on wood* Don't want any nasty studio politics to rear their ugly heads, nor do we want to gets the news that director Byron Howard - since this is his first solo film - was removed from the project. No, no, no and NO. We don't want any of that…

I think by not officially confirming that March 2016 date for Zootopia, Disney is essentially allowing the artists to breathe so that the films turn out to be great. Maybe Zootopia will make it to spring 2016, maybe it won't, maybe it might need more time. Maybe Giants will be in a very good state that it'll move ahead of it, and Zootopia's crew can iron out the kinks with a small delay relieving them of the pressure. Maybe, maybe…

As long as we get the films soon and they come out great, what's not to like? Now let's look at a studio like DreamWorks.

Their schedule shuffles constantly… Too many times to name!

Me and My Shadow moved between the November 2013 and March 2014 timeframe quite a bit before the studio officially removed it from their slate. Rise of the Guardians was at one point a holiday 2011 release. The Croods hopped around spring 2012, fall 2012 and finally spring 2013. Films move a lot on their schedule, but here's the thing… Why chisel in dates if it the films aren't quite ready? Why set the dates in stone so early on when story problems is being worked out? For instance, they could've said The Croods was coming but not announce a "spring 2013" date or anything. Just give Chris Sanders, Kirk DeMicco and company a lot of time to figure out the story… But not too much of course, impose some kind of deadline ("We need it out before, let's say, 2015-ish?") and let it all play out from there.

Animated features are retooled even mere months before they open, changes are always made. I think by saying "Well our new film - [insert name here] - will come out on MM/DD/2014!" when said film is still in a bit of a pickle, you somewhat hurt the project. Again, look at Pixar's The Good Dinosaur. Obviously that film was not ready for next summer, and the delay, no announcement of a new director and everything else shows…

Let's look at Walt Disney Animation Studios again. Dean Wellins has had a "space race" project in the works since roughly 2011 (it had to be around the time he finished the for-some-reason-unreleased Tick Tock Tale), around the time Zootopia was pitched and Jack and the Beanstalk project/Giants was taken off of the shelf. As Zootopia and Giants moved forward, "Space Race" fell behind. Ron and John's Moana, also pitched sometime in 2011, moved ahead of it as well. Honor Hunter also said that other projects pitched after "Space Race" have also moved ahead of it. See where I'm getting at? Disney not setting a date for it might help the project, because the issues can be fixed without an exact release date looming (in this case, November 21, 2018). That being said, if they don't give the crew some form of a deadline, then we'll get a mess. We also don't want that.

If anything, temporarily putting something like "Space Race" on the back burner if it isn't working is the best solution. Meanwhile, what if Moana seems to be moving forward at a rapid rate? Well, if Disney puts it ahead of Giants, that could be detrimental to that film. Why's that? Well, according to Honor Hunter, Giants is more than ready to move ahead. Since Giants sort of fell into the earlier spot first, it wouldn't be fair to just outright say "Moana! Coming Thanksgiving 2016!" when the the film might not be ready for 2016. Again, props to Disney for not outright saying what exactly is coming out on 3/4/16, 11/23/16, 3/9/18 and 11/21/18… They're giving whatever is in the works a lot of time to breathe.

Now Pixar should really do the same. The 2017-2018 slate should remain the way it is for a long while, three "untitled" projects. Who knows what will be ready for release on 6/17/16, 11/22/17 and 6/15/18.

Studios ought to secure dates in order to warn other ones to back off, but at the same time, they should not say what films they think are going to come out on those dates.

What do you think?

Disney Slate Update: Alice Returns, Jon Favreau Hits the Jungle

Disney is slowly but surely beginning to fill 2016 up with definite releases. For a while, 2016 only had three films: Two Walt Disney Animation Studios films (in reality, those two currently "untitled" films are Zootopia and Giants) and a Pixar film (formerly something untitled, now Finding Dory) - now it has a big live action tentpole release. Not the first Star Wars spin-off, not one of Marvel's untitled movies, not the delayed fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film...

Alice in Wonderland 2…

When is it coming out? May 27, 2016.

For a while, I've been predicting that the long overdue sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton box office smash would be a summer release in 2016 since that's the earliest it can open at this rate. Well, it's now moving forward after talk of a new director (The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted director James Bobin) and a few other things. But one thing is definitely certain, it is not going to repeat the success of the first one - well, domestically at least.

Alice in Wonderland, as many have pointed out, happened to open at the best possible time. Avatar kickstarted a brief 3D craze, the marketing for the film was excellent and everybody and their brother wanted to see it hence that huge $116 million opening weekend gross. But the legs, despite the movie having pretty much the whole month to itself, weren't anything spectacular because the movie… Well… Wasn't all that good.

Anyways, it's sure to do very well overseas given how huge the first one was plus Johnny Depp and Mia Wasakowski are of course returning. I have no real interest in it, and if anything, I'd be happy if Disney took its Memorial Day weekend release date and gave it to Finding Dory instead, because that's currently set to open against How To Train Your Dragon 3, and Fox most likely won't move that DreamWorks sequel. After all, they are in something of a match with the Mouse House. (The Fantastic Four fiasco, putting films out on the same days as Disney's…)

The other new addition to their slate is Jon Favreau's live action take on The Jungle Book, which I have very little excitement for. I like Favreau and I think he'll make a pretty good film (as long as the script is alright, we don't want another Cowboys & Aliens), but I'm tired of Disney's dependence on live action re-imaginings of classic stories that they already adapted into animated features (see Maleficent and the 2015 Cinderella), which is why I'm hoping Brad Bird's Tomorrowland is not only good, but blows all of those films out of the water at the box office.

Disney is jettisoning original live action films and live action films based on riskier properties because of how poorly John Carter and The Lone Ranger did at the box office, though they'll never take the blame for the failures. It must be the movies, right? Right? Yeah yeah, you've heard it from me many times on here, but damn it I'm a broken record - bad marketing and corporate negligence killed those two films! That annoys me greatly, and it annoys me that Disney is holding potentially cool live action fare like The Stuff of Legend, the third TRON, Terra Incognita and Matched at bay, favoring the safest options possible. Oh… And remakes of other films, too. Do we really need remakes of classic live action Disney fare like Flight of the Navigator and Pete's Dragon?

Walt didn't start making live action films for nothing, he took big risks with live action from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Mary Poppins. Now the studio just wants to rehash what worked in the past, while Marvel continues to expand on a huge connected franchise and Lucasfilm will continue making Star Wars films… Tomorrowland better be a huge hit because we need some fresh, new stuff in the mix. Live-action Disney can't just be about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars and re-imagings/remakes…

The film could be good, and I hope it will be, because Walt's film is a very loose adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's stories and this is one that could be redone and fleshed out. Disney already tackled the books in a proper manner with a live action film in 1994, but Favreau could make something interesting. But still, I'm just not feeling it. I guess if Disney's game plan wasn't "remake our animated classics to go with the dark, gritty, updated fairy tale/classic story trend", I wouldn't mind its existence so much. Alice in Wonderland was one thing, and give them credit, it is a visually cool re-imagining… But it's Hollywood, of course they're going to milk that dry. I'd rather have something like Alice in Wonderland once in a blue moon, but no… Maleficent, Cinderella, an Oz sequel, a Cruella de Vil origin story (*cringe*). Bo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ring!

The film is set to open on October 9, 2015… A very interesting choice of release date for many reasons…

When's the last time Disney released a big budget tentpole movie in October? When do studios ever release big budget blockbusters in October?

If anything, the success of Gravity might've motivated them to place a film in the early October spot. The month will slowly but surely become a blockbuster month… All the months will be in due time. It's well-spaced out from The Good Dinosaur, which opens at the end of November that year and it's far enough away from Marvel's Ant-Man. Between July 31 and October 9, Disney will probably throw a few small-scale films out into theaters along with that IMAX space film that they announced for a 2015 release.

So now their 2015 slate should look like this…

Small-Scale Film - January/February
Cinderella - March 13th
Disneynature Film - April
The Avengers: Age of Ultron - May 1st
Tomorrowland - May 22nd
Inside Out - June 19th
Ant-Man - July 31st
Planes 3 - August (it's more or less confirmed, sorry folks)
Small-Scale Film - August
IMAX Space Film - September
The Jungle Book - October 9th
Small-Scale Film - October/November
The Good Dinosaur - November 25th
Star Wars: Episode VII - December 18th

The Mouse House will practically destroy every calendar in the future if they go by this template…

Now with another 2016 release being officially announced, when will we get more? Let's leave Marvel out, since Kevin Feige said that we won't get anymore big Phase 3 information until next spring. When will Disney outright say that Zootopia is in fact Walt Disney Animation Studios' March 4, 2016 release? When will Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales get a release date? When will Lucasfilm announce what the first Star Wars spin-off/origin (most likely Han Solo) film will be and when it'll hit theaters?

Ahhh, the waiting game...

The Good Decision

Yesterday, I talked about how Pixar's decision to delay The Good Dinosaur was actually a good move. One that inspired confidence in me rather than fear. Now, I will expand on this...

In addition to the announcement of the delay, Ed Catmull once again spoke...

"Nobody ever remembers the fact that you slipped a film, but they will remember a bad film. Our conclusion was that we were going to give the film some more time."

There you have it. This tells me something... This tells me that the Brain Trust is well aware of the consequences brought on by the Cars 2 and Brave fiascoes. Of course, my theory about those films and what they went through is that the problems were rooted in the release schedule. In April 2008, Pixar confidently felt that Newt would be ready for summer 2011, The Bear and the Bow/Brave would be a fall 2011 release and Cars 2 would be the summer 2012 film. They announced these dates very early on, which may have put tremendous pressure on the filmmakers.

Moving Cars 2 from its original summer 2012 date to summer 2011 most likely put a lot of pressure on original director Brad Lewis, so much so that the film probably was a giant mess by the time John Lasseter took over as director in fall 2010. I think that project was a salvaged one, big time. Not that it says anything negative about Brad Lewis' abilities as a director, I just think that cutting the time given to him took a toll on him and his project. If anything, Cars 2 could have been much, much worse. You heard next to nothing about Newt between summer 2008 and February 2010, when it was reported to be "dead" by a commenter on the TAG blog only for its shelving to be officially confirmed by Pixar in May of that year. I don't think it had anything to do with Rio similarities, that film was in trouble for a while - Rio coming out just didn't help. Brave's director change made more people say that Pixar was on the decline, and Brenda Chapman's comments added to that. But is her dissatisfaction with Pixar's work ethic all just sour grapes? Insinuating that Pixar does the same old story over and over makes me question her, I didn't hear such talk from Jan Pinkava or Brad Lewis. Bob Peterson seems to be taking his ousting from his project pretty well, I'd say. Or were the Brain Trust truly unfair to Chapman? No clear cut answer here, as both sides are contradicted. (I'm not getting into that again.)

Then you got the sequels, but that's a moot point because Toy Story 3, Monsters University and Finding Dory had to be made - no two ways about it. Circle 7, anyone? Plus, Andrew Stanton himself confirmed that Disney did some nudging, but Stanton essentially said, "We tell them that we'll do it when we are ready." This is why you didn't see a Nemo sequel 3 years ago, and why you won't see one for another 3 years. Cars 2? Bob Iger probably coaxed John Lasseter into making another one, but again, that's my own little conspiracy theory. It's a coincidence that these director changes occurred when all these sequels were coming, because three of the four sequels had to be made, the fourth was obviously greenlit for the green paper, and Pixar wanted to take their time on the main three that they had to do. Toy Story 3 is considered a masterpiece, and Monsters University got better reception overall than Cars 2 and Brave... As if sequels/prequels are such a bad thing...

About Monsters University... The only big complaints I see about the film basically say "It was too safe." I heard no criticisms of the story or comic relief or whatever, just "It was safe/dull/bland/lacking/vanilla/etc." The consensus seems to be, "It's Pixar's best since Toy Story 3, but it's not all that great."

That didn't go through a director change either, as the story was pretty consistent and smooth. Cars 2 and Brave's stories aren't bad, they just have some problems, Cars 2 especially. Monsters University was always a summer 2013 release too, it wasn't announced back in 2008 or 2009. By the time it was announced during the spring of 2010, it was probably already in good shape. The November 2012 date was probably just picked by Disney to hype it up, after all it was first announced as "Monsters, Inc. 2" back then. Looks like Dan Scanlon had time to craft a solid story, because he had a lot of time to do it and he had no officially announced release date on his back.

Not to mention, nothing is ever set in stone in the world of animation. A film could be well into production when the people behind it realize that there are problems. Sometimes a last-minute fix or two can work, just look at Toy Story 2! Many Disney films apply as well, and probably countless other animated films from other studios. Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois didn't have much time to retool a very problematic How To Train Your Dragon over at DreamWorks, but they gave the project their all and saved it from becoming a possible disaster. Sony Animation's Hotel Transylvania went through six different directors and took six years to finally complete. Heck, the world of live action films is no stranger to this!

But the two-in-a-row director musical chairs debacles at Pixar inspired a lot of skepticism in fans and many other people, and when it seemed like The Good Dinosaur would restore the studio's "former glory" (in their eyes), Pixar surprised us yet again. This time, it was a veteran who was being removed from his project... Not a relative newcomer or someone who hasn't been there for a long, long while. Even I got very worried, but now there's hope...

I personally believe that John Lasseter and the Brain Trust are more than concerned about what just happened between the fall of 2010 and the summer of 2012...

The Cars universe is very near and dear to John Lasseter, it's such a personal endeavor for him... And he thought he saved the sequel from turning out to be a complete disaster, only to see the finished film get fired at with scorn and absolute disapproval - to the point where people gave up being fans of Pixar. Lasseter defended his film, using "audiences loved it" as an excuse... If anything, that suggests that the criticism really hurt Lasseter's feelings and he wouldn't be willing to address the film's problems. Listen to commentary on the Cars 2 Blu-ray; he clearly loves this universe and is very passionate about it.

He's also been rather quiet about Brave and even Monsters University. You don't sense much enthusiasm from the Brain Trust towards those films, the way they were enthusiastic about films like Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3 didn't seem to be there. I think they've realized that removing the directors and not delaying the films in order to salvage them was a series of bad moves. The critical reception of the last three films, the general "Pixar is declining" mood coming from the ever-so-nice press and the overall backlash didn't pass by them. I think they are aware that they inspired so much worry, skepticism and even anger.

This all explains to me why The Good Dinosaur was ultimately delayed by a year and a half... Pixar truly wants a quality production here, and they'll do whatever it takes to ensure that the film is great. Ed Catmull more than sums it up in his statements. The Brain Trust and Lasseter aren't the heartless creativity-killing bastards that everyone is making them out to be, or so it seems for now. Should The Good Dinosaur turn out to be a bad film, then I say we should question what the Brain Trust is doing - not necessarily yell "They were evil!"

Pixar delayed it knowing that they wouldn't have something ready for audiences next summer, they were willing to break the one-film-a-calendar-year tradition to save this film from being below par. Catmull points out that people will remember a "bad" film (although many will say "But Cars 2 was bad! Catmull is just sugarcoating things!")...

If anything, this situation is a combination of the Ratatouille pre-production woes and the release schedule causing problems...

There was a time when you had to wait for Pixar films, you did not have the privilege of getting a new film from the Emeryville studio every year. I became a big fan of Pixar at the age of 10 back in fall 2002, after numerous repeat viewings of my Monsters, Inc. DVD and immersing myself in the set's two discs worth of bonus features. When Finding Nemo came out (I was in fifth grade at the time) and I saw the release date for The Incredibles at the end of the teaser, I was basically thinking, "Wow... That's a long wait. I'll be in seventh grade by then!" When Cars was delayed from November 2005 to June 2006 - a month after the trailer debuted no less! - I was pretty upset about that. I remember thinking, "Awwww, that's way too long!"

Flash-forward to today. Pixar releases one film every summer, and plans on releasing two in a calendar year every once in a while in addition to one every year. That's a big feat. DreamWorks releases 2-3 films every year, but to be honest, I don't think all of their films are of high quality. For every How To Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda 2 leaving me satisfied, there's a Megamind or Croods that fails to impress me.

Andrew Stanton spoke up about this new scheduling problem a few moths ago...

"We can’t have the amount of labor it takes to do these movies at the same time because it becomes unsustainable economically, but it means if one director has a problem, everybody’s connected to the same bed sheet. You pull one end and it makes wrinkles in the other one. It’s a new problem."

He hit the nail on the head. A Brain Trust member no less! In addition to that, he mentioned that hefty $200 million budgets and the ramping up of the schedule puts "strains" on the studio's resources.

I mentioned this earlier in the month, the whole "one-a-year" thing can create problems and Stanton more than sums up what I thought: It was the problematic schedule all along, not the Hawaiian Shirt Man being some egotistical devil or the Brain Trust being control freaks. Again, look at Walt Disney Animation Studios' last five films...

Cars 2 and Brave could've been beyond messy due to the release dates approaching so soon, and the director changes were a result of the Brain Trust acting fast. Consider it like panic mode for them: "The film is in trouble and the release date is almost here! It's got to be fixed!" Again, Cars 2 had the unfortunate date switch happen when the film was still in development. Brave had to be finished in less than two years. The new director of The Good Dinosaur has more than two years to fix the film, and with no film coming out next year, there will be more concentration from everyone else involved. I'm more than glad that Pixar delayed this film.

Now you may ask, "Now that they have time, why is Peterson not back on board?"

Again, Jan Pinkava... Pinkava just wasn't fit for directing his personal project, Ratatouille. It was chock full of issues and it just wasn't working. Brad Bird had to save it, but in the process, he made a modern masterpiece and one that's called the pinnacle of Pixar's storytelling prowess. Perhaps Bob Peterson just couldn't make this film work, much like how Pinkava couldn't make Ratatouille work. Brad Lewis and Brenda Chapman, from the way I see it now, couldn't work wonders within such a tight schedule. If Cars 2's release date was undetermined for a long while, it probably would've been a pretty strong film, ditto Brave. Pixar can't assign dates to films anymore, but rather let them and their creators breathe... And when one is truly ready, then ink a release date for it.

I understand that competition is wild, and first pick is a big deal, but... Disney and Pixar proved earlier this year that you can pick a bunch of release dates for films, but not tell anyone what exact films are hitting theaters on those dates. If I didn't read up on Blue Sky Disney prior to this year's D23 Expo, I'd have no idea that Zootopia was going to be the March 2016 release. I'd have no idea that the November 2016 and March 2018 films would be Giants and Moana. If I knew about the latter two films, I wouldn't know exactly when they'd be coming out. Remember, Bleeding Cool's Brendon Connelly implied in an article that Giants could very well arrive at movie theaters long after 2016... But we all know it's definitely the fall 2016 release for now thanks to Blue Sky Disney and the information that Honor Hunter gets.

So in the future, Pixar should just pick dates and not say what's coming out on those dates. Teddy Newton's film for example - don't say it's slated for fall 2017 two or more years before it's expected to hit theaters! Same goes for Mark Andrews' untitled project and Dia De Los Muertos! Disney Animation isn't outright saying that Giants is coming in November 2016, heck they're not even saying that Zootopia is the March 2016 release! By not setting the dates in stone, you're not pressuring your creative teams with ticking clocks. It all brings me to a specific line from Toy Story 2... I bet you can guess what it is...

That's right... "You can't rush art!"

In the end, I think Pixar just learned a lesson. It's life, people make mistakes and learn from them - Pixar is no different. The people there are not gods of perfection or anything of the sort, and they know that. Let what happened from the fall of 2010 to the summer of 2012 be the mistakes, and these few weeks being the "learning" phase. The resulting films released from 2011 to 2013 forms the sort of punishment (okay, that may sound harsh - but you get the idea, Pixar doesn't need to be "punished") for what they did, and now they're attempting to do better next time around. And if you ask me, that's welcome.

At the same time, I can accept the fact that not every Pixar film is going to be perfect. I'm totally fine with a string of greats and a string of not-so-great films. I'm no longer in shock, because we got two films that had problems and a film that was not spectacular plus... They're only human and they can't make every film great or perfect. It's reality, Walt Disney's animation unit went through the same kind of phases where the films weren't up to snuff and no one seems to bat an eye.

Just think about it too... Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur are both coming out in the same calendar year... What if both are bonafide critical hits? What if both are considered excellent by critics and audiences? I can just hear it now... "Pixar, what a comeback!" "They picked themselves up out of that slump!" "Looks like John Lasseter isn't so bad after all!" The tides will turn fast, really fast. People will be praising them out the wazoo and covering up their snide comments they made during the last few years. I bet it'll happen, and I'd gladly eat crow if it doesn't.

Almost as if Pixar is well aware of the backlash and the reaction to their last three films, and they're up to something... They're making sure that they make a big splash in 2015...

The Pin

From time to time, I have a couple Disney films on my queue of sorts... The ones I rewatch over and over at a certain time in a year, ones I analyze and pick apart... This timeframe's model happens to be Pocahontas...

Pocahontas, out of Disney Animation's lengthy history and fifty-two animated classics, seems to be one of the more divisive films that the feature animation unit put out. It was controversial in many aspects, and amongst Disney fans, it's either a very flawed film or another phenomenal entry from the so-called Disney Renaissance. Many have picked apart its major problems, and I certain gave it quite the review for my best-to-worst list... So what is it about this film that often lands it in the bottom ring of Disney animation? Why did it deflate Disney's "Renaissance" or Second Golden Age?

I do believe that Pocahontas is the worst film that the animation studio produced during the 1990s, and definitely one of their weaker films as a whole... But it's not a terrible film. It's just a terribly misguided one, and one that sums up the absolute worst of the Renaissance era. Or more appropriately, the Eisner-Katzenberg era of Disney animation, which was flawed to begin with.

The late 1980s and early 1990s are looked back upon with respect and love. Most people will tell you that Disney's all-time best were made during this era: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King... It was a time when it finally became acceptable for adults to go to see animated films in theaters or anywhere else, especially family-friendly ones from the standard bearer of genuine family entertainment. But unfortunately, a lot of ignorance built this praise up. The praise for those films overshadowed the older classics like Pinocchio and Bambi.

Disney went along with it as well. I feel that the success of Beauty and the Beast, from the record-breaking blockbuster-sized box office run to the hugely enthusiastic reviews to the Best Picture Nomination, really got to the heads of the executives. Disney's older films were shunned and Beauty and the Beast got all this love, as if it's this be-all end-all Disney masterpiece that stomps out all the others. The definitive Disney animated film and definitive animated film, period. The film continues to get this kind of prestige.

On the otherwise-excellent "Beyond Beauty" bonus feature on the 2010 Blu-ray of the film, someone (whose name escaped me) mentions that Beauty and the Beast was the first Disney animated film to get adults emotionally invested... Ummmm... Bambi? Snow White's heartbreaking scene where the dwarves assume she's dead? Dumbo?! To say nothing of the other animated films Walt produced?!?

On The Lion King's original DVD, one featurette ends with someone saying that The Lion King was when Disney finally made "entertainment" as opposed to "children's entertainment" for all those decades... Walt Disney never intended his films for young audiences, but rather everyone. Maybe the public finally saw Disney animation as for adults by 1994, but that's because a certain era put a stain on animation that plagues the medium to this day. In fact, the attitude that the general public had towards animation - especially Disney animation - was that it was just kids stuff. The great film classics like Snow White and Pinocchio? Kiddie stuff.

Anyways, see where I'm going with this? That 1991 film's success built this sort of arrogance. Corporate Disney saw Beauty and the Beast as high art, but everything before it? Just kiddie babysitter stuff. Bambi? Yeah, that's a film fit for tykes in a daycare, that's not a masterpiece. When these classics came to home video for the first time, most of the ads advertised them as babysitting tools for parents. And people exclusively complain about what Disney does today and how it would piss Walt off? Beauty and the Beast gets so much love whenever it comes around, as if it's Disney's all-time greatest film. Personally, I think it's 3rd Tier material at best. I know that's probably a controversial opinion, but I think that Beauty and the Beast, while very good, shows why Disney's Renaissance wasn't going to last.

Disney Animation began following a rulebook by this time, and Aladdin and The Lion King basically cut and paste The Little Mermaid and Beast's successful elements with some new things thrown in, but not much differentiates these films. Thankfully, the formula worked on these two films thanks to overall strong storytelling and whatnot... But it was bound to get tiresome. How much more films that followed the same structure could the audience take?

Enter Pocahontas. After Beauty and the Beast got nominated for Best Picture - but ultimately lost - in early 1992, Disney probably felt that Aladdin would make up for that loss and finally get an animated film a Best Picture nomination. Ironically, 6 years earlier, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted nothing to do with animation. That was until a certain someone else had to make an animated film that did well, then Katzenberg and Eisner got into animation, Katzenberg especially. In the process, he learned things he never knew and it thankfully killed some of the ignorance he had towards the medium. He's still ignorant towards it to some extent nowadays, but at least he learned something.

Katzenberg was heavily involved with Aladdin, as he probably wanted this thing to top Beauty and the Beast in every way, shape and form. Aladdin toyed with pop culture references and comedic elements that weren't in the previous Disney films, while also experimenting a bit. I feel it's one of the more experimental and wacky Disney animated features of the era, certainly more exciting in a way than some of the others. At the same time, those contemporary jokes posed a problem - in 10 years they'd be irrelevant. But that didn't matter, the sights were on popularity. The moment.

Aladdin outgrossed Beauty and the Beast by a very wide margin. $217 million was certainly a huge leap ahead of an already big $141 million. Disney was now in blockbuster territory, the film was the highest grossing release of the year. (Yes kids, $200 million was massive back in 1992.) The critical reception? Through the roof! But it got no Best Picture nomination, and I'm willing to bet that this drove Katzenberg and the execs to really amp Pocahontas up as the next big thing. The one that would ultimately take home that golden statue and give them more street cred in the film industry...

Now you may be asking, what about The Lion King? It's well-known amongst Disney fans and historians that Disney didn't think too highly of this film when it entered development - imagine that! The Burbank studio and the execs were hyped about Pocahontas: A film based on a historical legend, rife with potentially adult themes and drama, social commentary and many other things. Disney's executives saw something grand with this film. The Lion King, on the other hand... "Who would want to see that?" Even a lot of the animators at the time preferred to work on Pocahontas.

The Lion King would be the first Disney animated film to be (partially) animated at the Florida unit that the company launched in 1989. But The Lion King started to build up momentum, and would ultimately precede Pocahontas on the release slate. It was building up to be the next big thing, and Katzenberg found himself personally involved in it once again. Perhaps a little too much. Anyways, The Lion King opened in summer 1994 and became Disney's biggest commercial success and so on. $312 million domestic and $768 million worldwide, critical acclaim out the wazoo, record-breaking video sales. It's one of Disney's most popular films... But no Best Picture nomination. By this time, and I'm not sure if the suits realized this or not, the Academy probably wasn't planning to ever pull a Beauty and the Beast ever again. Apparently the nomination really ticked a lot of people off... Because you know, animation is not equal to live action, right? Right?

Katzenberg left Disney in September 1994, when Pocahontas was pretty much in the can. Early footage was unveiled to the public on the hot-selling home video premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with a full trailer following in November when The Lion King landed itself back into theaters all around the nation. The full trailer, like The Lion King's full "Circle of Life" sequence trailer, used the entire "Colors of the Wind" sequence. This would later be included on the previews on the VHS of The Lion King, to further whip up anticipation.

Pocahontas would be Katzenberg's last "attempt" to make a film that would be the next Beauty and the Beast in terms of popularity... And boy does it feel like it...

Where to begin with Pocahontas?

Pocahontas uses a legend that quite frankly shouldn't have been used for Disney's 90s template. What was that template you may ask?

• The soundtrack has to be composed of Broadway-esque "burst out into song" songs. There had to be the love ballad, the silly fun showstopper song, the villain/dark song, the "I Want" song and the introduction song. All of them have to be Billboard-friendly.
• The plot needs to have a romance.
• The story needs to be your typical good-vs.-evil deal.
• There has to be a cute sidekick or two to lighten the load for kiddies (because Disney Animation is for kids first and foremost, ya know?) and to sell lots and lots and lots of toys.

This formula wasn't entirely suitable for stories like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, but those were fairy tales. The artists had every right to take liberties with them, as long as they didn't insult the original or the audience. The Little Mermaid, regardless of whether it has the original tale's ending or not, is not insulting to your intelligence... Unless you're against Disneyification to begin with. Beauty and the Beast? Same thing. The film functions as a good adaptation, because Disneyification isn't the devil. Some may argue that some Disneyified tales are actually better than the originals. All subjective, of course.

The legend of Pocahontas on the other hand, well... It's not suited for this formula. This is history that they're tackling here, not a fairy tale or a fictional story. It was already a flawed film from the start: A Disney musical about Pocahontas and a piece of American history told through song, cute critters and formulaic G-rated elements.

The first problem that truly effects Pocahontas is the villain. The English settlers are lead by such an obvious villain. Already, any potential drama concerning the conflict between the Native Americans and the Europeans that would've made this film a truly adult Disney film is thrown out the window. The villain, Governer Ratcliffe, is a gold-digger. All he wants is riches, but why? He has no connection with the titular heroine or anyone else, really. He's just a powerful guy who just wants the gold, but for what reason? During the "Mine, Mine, Mine" song, he vaguely explains his motivations but he's about as cardboard as you could get. Greedy want-it-all villains aren't interesting, there needs to be more to them! When the settlers fail to find gold, he exclaims that the Natives are hiding the gold! Such an idiot, and definitely one of Disney's weakest villains. It all the more makes the "Savages" sequence goofier than it should be.

This is such a childish and cowardly way to avoid better ideas, ones that would've made this film sit alongside Walt Disney's best - films that are for adults as much as they are for kids and everyone else. Why not just focus on both sides and their prejudices towards one another? We see that the Natives and the Europeans mean well, but don't understand each other, are afraid, cautious and prejudiced. But instead, we get the greedy gold-digger driving much of the conflict by having the British destroy the land and even take a few casualties. Politically correct much?

Yes, this Disney film succumbs to political correctness. A first, and one that undermines Disney animation as a whole. The earlier films never did this, but it seems like the executives didn't care. They thought that slightly touching upon the darker side of American history for a Disney animated film was a surefire way to get people to take the film and Disney animation seriously, and of course... To get that damn statue! Again, that prestige. It's forced and it feels like it was thrown together just to be a success, rather than be a genuinely good film.

Good intentions or not, Pocahontas is already botched by this. "Colors of the Wind" is also a fine example, it's just preachy. "I'm not a savage, you're ignorant" in song form, that's basically it! There's a reason a lot of people have such a hatred for James Cameron's Avatar, it's because it repeats the same mistake that this film makes and much worse. The diabolical villains are humans, humans that just want to do whatever they can to get the riches, and that the Na'vi wouldn't ever do this. At least Pocahontas, if you remove Ratcliffe for a second, has both sides being prejudiced and the ending does ram that idea home in a preachy manner... But with the villain, it just weakens all of that. Why have a villain when you could just let the prejudice from both sides be the main conflict?

The other problem with "Colors of the Wind" is just that it feels like it's just teaching children about diversity, and "Savages" teaches them about racism. Why does this have to be some sort of history lesson? Or better yet, why is the film pandering to children? Another no-no in Disney animation, contrary to popular belief. The lyrics are just so blunt. It makes the picture feel like a children's film about American history more than anything. This should've been an epic Disney film for the whole family, but again, that's all thanks to the suits' cluelessness. They just seemed to have no clue, what made Walt's films and the last three films work? Clearly they just weren't getting it.

So the good-vs.-evil template doesn't work for this story. Does the love story fare better? A bit...

Pocahontas and John Smith's relationship is mostly undercooked, as it could've been a great dramatic center that ultimately fired the conflicts up even more, more so than some stock villain. The film at least tries to succeed, but the problem is that the characters are overall not that great. Again, that's a byproduct of the good-vs.-evil story which rushes things and doesn't give us good story arcs for Pocahontas, John Smith or anyone else. Even worse, executives excised Pocahontas and John Smith's pivotal love ballad "If I Never Knew You", and much has been written about that. Let's just say that move was rock-bottom for Disney, cutting an important song out of the film because kids got bored during a test screening. I shudder at the thought of Katzenberg getting his way roughly 6 years earlier with "Part Of Your World".

That leads me to discuss the next big problem. Disney's suits felt the way most people felt about Disney animation in the 1970s and 1980s: It's for kids first and foremost...

In this film, we get three cutesy critters that interrupt the film from time to time. Thankfully they don't speak, but what are they doing in this film? All they are there for is to make kids laugh, no different from Flounder or LeFou or the Gargoyles. They add very little to the story, but it could've been worse. Percy, Ratcliffe's snobbish pug, was originally going to speak and at times he'd interact with a John Candy-voiced turkey named Redfeather...

As much as I love John Candy as Wilbur in The Rescuers Down Under, and as funny as I think he was throughout his career... I'm satisfied that this turkey got cut. Candy is a great, funny talent, but this character would've been very much out of place. So out was the fowl, in came cuddly raccoon Meeko and mischievous hummingbird Flit. Their slapstick goes against the serious themes of the film (and at times, the film does get a bit violent and dramatic), but the suits pushed for this because it apparently worked in the last couple of films. You can't try to aim for adults with drama and adult-level themes while trying to get the kids interested with cute comic relief like this... It doesn't work and it didn't work in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan and Tarzan either.

But then we get to the more fantastical side of the film, which is either a good thing or a bad thing. It is a Disney film after all, so why not try to get a more magical element going? I feel that the animators were having a lot of fun with this angle of the film, as Mike Giaimo's art direction more than accentuates it. Nature plays a considerable role in the story, especially with talking tree Grandmother Willow. Pocahontas communicates with the animals, but you've got other things like the wind and her dream. The more spiritual stuff is not really explored here, but perhaps this is because the suits and producers were too afraid to make the film less serious than it already seemed. There's this stoic tone to it that kind of makes the film a bit dull, and with such art direction and magical aspects, it should not be dull. Even the film's original VHS release has a rather uncharacteristic cover, as Pocahontas doesn't have a big appealing smile on her face. Unusual for a Disney video cover...

Yes, at times, Pocahontas tries to be super-serious, and not in a good way. It's the kind of seriousness that feels forced, much like an action film trying to emulate a Christopher Nolan film by being unnecessarily dour, brooding and desaturated. The character designs of the Natives are almost too realistic and as a result, they're almost stiff. The English settlers are a little more caricatured in both their looks, their actions and their movements (Wiggins immediately comes to mind). The animals? Very cartoony and fluid. It's a very odd, uneven blend of character design styles. John Candy's turkey would've made things even more imbalanced.

The biggest problem with this film is that it has no idea what it wants to be. The executives were chasing the Oscar and that prestigious status, but at the same time they wanted to make something accessible for kids and something that would sell loads and loads of merchandise. That's really not a good mix, and it's what further hurts this already problematic Disney film.

So how is it not terrible?

Where the suits fail, the animators and creative team succeed completely. Michael Giaimo's art direction (he's also handling Frozen's art direction) bursts with color and pops...

American's wildernesses are stunning to look at, and the rather different and minimalist style they go for here really works. Back to the color though... It's very saturated and yet it heightens the more fantastical side of the film, even though that side is not fully explored. Despite the simplistic lyrics for "Colors of the Wind", the melody is great and the visuals are just so beautiful to look at. In fact, the songs all sound fine despite the lyrics of many of them. "Steady as the Beating Drum" is probably the best song in the film, as it's one of those Disney songs that immediately plunges you into the film's atmosphere and it really works. "Listen To Your Heart" is also beautiful, but it's a two-parter than isn't something bigger.

"Virginia Company" isn't bad either, having a more classic Disney feel to it in its singing and tone. It serves as a fine introduction song, one that starts the picture off with a striking drumroll. "Just Around the River Bend"? Yeah it's an "I Want" song, but it's pretty-sounding and the scene is nice, but that's about it. "Savages"? It's basically a preachy version of "The Mob Song", with such blunt lyrics (Stephen Schwartz wrote this?!) and obvious ideas. "If I Never Knew You" should've never been cut of course, it's melancholy in tone and the film totally needed it. It's not like the other love ballads where they advance the characters' relationship, this one actually suits the story quite well and only heightens the drama. Damn you Disney suits...

Then there's showstopper "Mine, Mine, Mine", a bombastic song set to a rather over-the-top scene. Singing about digging gold and being powerful, the title alone indicates how shallow the villain is... But there's something about it that I really enjoy, more so than the other songs in this film. Menken's lyrics are well constructed, but this song almost borders on a parody. It's like someone put together a Disney parody and said, "Hey, what if Disney made a musical about American history? It'll have this song about an evil European gold-digger singing about all the power they'll have. Of course, gotta have a villain song like that!" But the scene is enjoyable and a literal blast, despite the lyrics and parody-esque tone to it.

There's nothing wrong with making a musical based on this legend, but with a stronger story, a song like "Mine, Mine, Mine" would've been different and not anything remotely close to seeming like Disney mocking their own shortcomings of the era. And we wouldn't haven gotten something so painfully simplistic as "Savages", where the film literally has to spell everything out for the kids in the audience. Again, why should a Disney film have to do that?

Anyways, the film is overall handsome-looking and great-sounding. The score is quite fine, too. The voice actors give it their all as well, and there's a few fun characters in the mix as well such as Ratcliffe's overly optimistic servant Wiggins. Meeko, Flit and Percy aren't annoying, they're just out of place in a film like this. They're actually similar to Pascal and Maximus from Tangled, but those two silent comic relief animals work because they are more part of the story and they fit in with the film's tone. Maybe these three critters would've been better off in something like that 2010 film.

In the end, Pocahontas is just a big mess. It's not horrible or really that insulting, it's just a film that doesn't have any clue what it wants to do. It perfectly represents the struggle between the creatives and the executives, and it perfectly represents how clueless the suits were at the time. It's a film that tries way too hard to be adult, but yet it comes off as a more childish effort in Disney's canon. The pandering doesn't help, either. There are sheds of beauty and greatness littered amidst the ho-hum story, the tonal issues and the overall self-important coating.

Audiences seemed to think so, or were at least disappointed one way or another. Pocahontas was no doubt a box office success, opening with a big $29 million and grossing $141 million at the domestic box office. It was met with pre-release controversy that may have affected the film's opening weekend chances, but word of mouth was not as impressive as The Lion King's. It was letdown for many, and critics either thought it was lacking or an absolute insult to their intelligence. After the film's release, more controversy ensued whether it was from Native American groups or Christian groups, the latter were always on Disney's tail at the time.

But simply put, coming off of something like The Lion King, this mess would be a letdown for many. It just felt so phoned in and thrown together, and its ambitions were so obvious in a not-so-good way. It was, reputation-wise, a bit of a disaster for the company and one that did great damage to the animation unit. Future films were greeted with indifference, as nothing from the company has reached the high attendance of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. Disney was on top of the world in the early to mid 1990s, but ticking many off and creating such controversy hurt the company's reputation and Disney animation's reputation.

It didn't help that later that year, Pixar's Toy Story come on like a tidal wave. It was whip-smart, fresh, much more adult (by not trying to be something it wasn't, just naturally doing what it set out to do), great for all ages, groundbreaking and something new. Toy Story was nothing like the Disney films released at the time, and John Lasseter has stressed that many times. Sadly, Disney didn't take any cues from that. They stuck with the formula until it wore thin, only to go about new things the wrong way. It took the same man who had the ambitions to go about making films like Toy Story to cure Disney animation's problems over a decade after Pocahontas came out: The suits' powers.

Pocahontas was the bullet that wounded Walt Disney Feature Animation, fired carelessly by executives who had no idea what to do with the goldmine they came across. Disney's massive and legendary animation unit was beginning to die a slow death despite some successes, the executives then beat them to the ground as the millennium rolled in. After the merger, Disney animation is soundly getting out of the coma the suits under Michael Eisner put them in with films like The Princess and the Frog, Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph. They're walking again, and now it's time to run.

Time has seemed to heal the wounds though, as Pocahontas' annoyances are a little more tolerable now. Today, it's just a bland film whose ambitions just couldn't pan out since there were so many to begin with, and the fact that all of them were just misguided. The response towards it doesn't seem as fiery, and it seems to gain fans while others have a nostalgic love for it. Despite my problems with it, I find it entertaining and enjoyable enough. Sometimes a lesser film can be fascinating to watch because of its shortcomings, I'm the same way with music. Why is that Beatles song the worst? Why is this album the worst Led Zeppelin ever did? I love the look of it for the most part, and I'm excited to see what the art director brings to the table for Frozen. The songs, despite the lyrics on many of them, sound nice and are catchy. The film has its beautiful moments, ones that suggest how much better this film could've been.

As such, Pocahontas is lower tier Disney work in my book. Despite some positive elements, Pocahontas is limited by too many clashing visions and ideas. It has a pretentious sheen and a lack of vision, but does it deserve to be treated horribly? No. It's more of time capsule and a cautionary tale, but within that hard shell is some great animation and some creative sparkle.

"Pocahontas" sits in the fourth tier on my work-in-progress best-to-worst Disney Animated Classics list. What are your thoughts on this Disney animated film? Sound off!