Right now the Disney brand has been hitting some hard times. Rival animation studios are on the up and up and the once subsidiary company of Pixar has been growing in popularity so much that they've been heralded by some as the "only good thing about Disney these days".
Now during the 1990's Disney was going through what was arguably it's biggest line of financial and critical successes. The time known as the "Disney Rennaisance" from 1989 when they released the Little Mermaid all they way to 1999 when they released Tarzan. It was a time when their films were given a great deal of critical acclaim, popularity and big box office numbers.
Bt then the 2000's arrived. At this time many Disney films were trying to go in directions the company had never gone into before to see what worked and what didn't. This time I have dubbed the "experimental era".
For those of you who want to know exactly which films I'm talking about, here's the list:
2000 - Dinosaur.
2000 - The Emperor's New Groove.
2001 - Atlantis the Lost Empire.
2002 - Lilo and Stitch.
2002 - Treasure Planet.
2003 - brother Bear.
2004 - Home on the Range.
2005 - Chicken Little.
2007 ? Meet the Robinsons.
2008 ? Bolt.
Now, in previous animated films, Disney?s strength always laid in recreating classic fairytales with a mostly European aesthetic and character types. True, they tried going in a non-European direction with films like Mulan and Pocahontas but those films still had a fairytale element to them and were still largely in the establish story framework Disney had always worked with.
But in this new era, they tried changing that. They tried full on action films like Atlantis, comedies like New Groove and even started into science fiction with Lilo and Stitch.
But these changes were somewhat jarring to some, calling Disney out on their changing a format and film style they?d always grown up with. Many did not like this direction and as such this era of their films is often derided for it?s perceived low quality and inconsistency. In fact only one film (Lilo and Stitch) was popular enough to warrant the creation of a franchise, and even then it was frequently used as a point of criticism towards Disney for milking what that film had by going on.
Because the studio never got the massive success from this experimentation they?d hoped for, they returned to form, with fairytale type stories now returning to the menu with the Princess and the Frog and Tangled.
So what about all of you?
Do you believe what people always seem to say about this era? That is was a waste? That it had nothing to offer?
Or did some good come out of this attempt to shake things up?
Now during the 1990's Disney was going through what was arguably it's biggest line of financial and critical successes. The time known as the "Disney Rennaisance" from 1989 when they released the Little Mermaid all they way to 1999 when they released Tarzan. It was a time when their films were given a great deal of critical acclaim, popularity and big box office numbers.
Bt then the 2000's arrived. At this time many Disney films were trying to go in directions the company had never gone into before to see what worked and what didn't. This time I have dubbed the "experimental era".
For those of you who want to know exactly which films I'm talking about, here's the list:
2000 - Dinosaur.
2000 - The Emperor's New Groove.
2001 - Atlantis the Lost Empire.
2002 - Lilo and Stitch.
2002 - Treasure Planet.
2003 - brother Bear.
2004 - Home on the Range.
2005 - Chicken Little.
2007 ? Meet the Robinsons.
2008 ? Bolt.
Now, in previous animated films, Disney?s strength always laid in recreating classic fairytales with a mostly European aesthetic and character types. True, they tried going in a non-European direction with films like Mulan and Pocahontas but those films still had a fairytale element to them and were still largely in the establish story framework Disney had always worked with.
But in this new era, they tried changing that. They tried full on action films like Atlantis, comedies like New Groove and even started into science fiction with Lilo and Stitch.
But these changes were somewhat jarring to some, calling Disney out on their changing a format and film style they?d always grown up with. Many did not like this direction and as such this era of their films is often derided for it?s perceived low quality and inconsistency. In fact only one film (Lilo and Stitch) was popular enough to warrant the creation of a franchise, and even then it was frequently used as a point of criticism towards Disney for milking what that film had by going on.
Because the studio never got the massive success from this experimentation they?d hoped for, they returned to form, with fairytale type stories now returning to the menu with the Princess and the Frog and Tangled.
So what about all of you?
Do you believe what people always seem to say about this era? That is was a waste? That it had nothing to offer?
Or did some good come out of this attempt to shake things up?
