Disney's long decent into mediocrity
 

We all know it's been happining. Rather then write out something, I'm just going to post this editorial. Far more... intelligant and indepth than anything I could hammer out myself.

http://www.savedisney.com/vision/edi...dv022704.1.asp

Rather scary that somebody would put that much effort into saying "Cinderella II is a pretty fucking stupid idea"... but I certainly can't disagree.

The "mad libs" bit was spot-on.

I believe they could have saved themselves a few days and just had "DISNEY SEQUELS BLOW, HERE'S PROOF" then the mad libs.

But who really cares about sequels that go unannounced straight to video and are aimed primarily at an audience that can't pronounce the title?

That is so true. Original Disney movies were classics, but the sequals were crap. Walt Disney was someone who revolutionized cartoons, but look at what his brand has become. But I actually blame the public. If the general public wasn't so fanatical and didn't buy everything just because it has a license on it, then these sequals wouldn't sell and they would stop being made. Then Disney would start producing quality movies again.

I didn't know the squeels actually selled! :eek: And I'm not just being sarcastic. But wasn't that dinosaur thing their's? It was quite good. Exept for the story. That wasn't that good.

I didn't like Dinosaur. And they did sell, because when I was young, I actually got my mom to buy one of these movies, and I've seen other people with disney sequals also. There has to be a reason to keep making these movies, and if people don't buy them, then there's no reason to make them. Besides, I know there is an army of small children that beg their parents to buy the next cinderella movie. I was one when I was little.

You know what was really and truly awful, was the fifteen million Land Before Time sequels. What a disgrace.

I think the only Disney movie I've ever had bought for me the sequel to (not 100% I did or not, don't feel like checking) was Aladdin. I was little, it seemed pretty cool. Of course, It's not half-bad if you can ignore the musicals.

The Return of Jafar was the first Produced sequal to a Disney film, but its also been the only one I think that was made with much of the same people who did the original film and had at least some effort put into trying to make the thing close to the originals quality. Except maybe that second Peter Pan movie which I never saw because I have since boycotted every sequel ever made by them (Return of Jafar was pretty good, but mostly just because it starred Iago and it was like the Series, both of which I like).

Cinderella, Pochahontas, Hunchback...heck, there's a Snow White II now...that's just sickening. But in any event, Disney's demise wasn't just from these films. I actually wasn't enjoying their works aside from certain ones anyway. But dispite my personal opinions on which are good movies, tv series, etc. or not, I think Disney's demise is just a combonation of two things. One was the fact that, while a great visionary and a guy who could pool excellent resources and such, Disney himself wasn't exactly all original. Most all of his works except a few show that 95% of the time he just took things, mostly from British or American folk stories and/or novels and made movies of them. He added interesting elements to the characters and basically created characters 90% of America would read out of a book and think of the look of that character from the movie. Even Disneyland shows this, with Disneyland being mostly just a huge collection of most of Walts favorite things. Not bad and I love Disneyland, but also almost all of it isn't really 'innovative', rather its creative how he combined everything together into one area. Its always been strange to me that the design team that does the work on creating the look and accuracy of the park (and sometimes on the movies) is called the 'innovation' department in Disney...because I alot of the time see them doing the least amount of innovation and more of the 'how do we make a Pirate (historical type of person not original) into being in a ride...'

But really, at base, he was just making already done stories and such into moving movie form. Even such things as the Lion King (combonation of Othello, Hamlet, Biblical themes and a few others) and most of the other recent works from Disney have been this way. So, when you take him out of the picture and replace him, you have a very thin line that can be crossed and make the company do basically either go beyond even what he could do or just go downhill, both options being VERY easy to have happen. The problem is, he was replaced by only one half of what he was, just a pure buisnessman. It took time and Eisner for a while stuck it on the normal Disney path, but he's since...well.....gone mad in my mind. The sequels were just the last straw in my mind. First he made the Disney Store, then he started ripping up Disneyland....now these sequels are just the final blow to me, just a casual Disney fan. I think the real Disney fans should be at his door with pitchforks, tar and feathers...

And with all these emphasis on sequels and ripping up Disneyland, very little is getting done on actual 'new' things. Just about the only 'original' story I've seen from Disney in 10 years (aside from Pixar films) has been Lilo and Stitch, which I'd say is probably one of the better movies along with Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin in the last 15 years. But, its really no surprise to me why the amount of money gained, both Stateside and most definitly internationally has been continually lessening for the in house Disney works while Pixars and their non-animated works are getting more fame and fortune. Disney films have not always come up with original stories and such, but now adays, alot aren't even coming up with good characters and sometimes even Animation to mask that....

And eventhough I don't like the Animation style of Pixar over many others, I'd still like to see a movie at the graphical level of Toy Story 1 with an original plot and good characters to something like Mulan (which isn't THAT bad, but it doesn't exactly move me to go see it again after I have seen it once). And these sequels are just showing how Eisner and his group of workers would prefer to just make something that 'looks' and 'feels' like one of those old Disney movies than actually work on something completely new and something to surpass everything else on the market.

Now with my BIAS towards Anime, I'd probably take one hellva work from their studio for me to say they could surpass the influence of the last 15 years of Anime, but hey, that's just the Anime geek who sees it like that.

::Goes and hides from Priest::

I have been saying for at least 5 years (since I saw an advert for Pocahontas II in Germany) that Disney has been suffering from a chronic illness, one which I like to call Cashus Innus. Anything vaguely interesting and original, they squeeze dry for every last penny.

Most of their good films over the last 15 years have been spoilt with sequals and/or series. In fact, the only two I can think of at the moment that haven't are Mulan (Which I liked) and Brother Bear (Probably because it's too soon. Wait and see...)