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  • All-Star Cast: Although not as blatantly advertised and abused as DreamWorks Animation, the movies in the canon will occasionally have a staggering roster of A-list celebrities lending their vocal talent. Before 1992's Aladdin introduced Robin Williams as the Genie, Disney preferred actual voice actors, with the oldest films having actors who were theater mainstays or those who were experienced with singing and providing voice work on radio shows. After that, they started to increasingly advertise celebrity roles. Some of the more blatant examples: Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi as the leads in Tangled, Miley Cyrus in Bolt (particularly egregious because she replaced a voice actor who had already recorded most of her lines) and perhaps Mel Gibson in Pocahontas.
  • Avoid the Dreaded G Rating: Averted until The Black Cauldron came along in 1985. Since then there have been a fair few other PG-rated canon entries, such as Lilo & Stitch, Tangled, etc. though the vast majority of the canon remains G-rated. This is becoming more and more common, though, as the G rating is increasingly seen as unprofitable.
  • Banned Episode: Make Mine Music eventually became this because of "The Martins and the Coys". Out of every film in the canon, this is the only one unavailable on Disney+.
  • Canon Foreigner:
    • Dinosaur is the only entry in the canon that was not made by Feature Animation - they produced the film, but it was animated by Disney's Secret Lab (formerly Dream Quest Images), a short-lived special effects department that worked on CG imagery and was intended to be a sort-of cross between Pixar and Industrial Light & Magic. Secret Lab was shut down long before Disney bought both of those companies, and Dinosaur was the only animated film they ever worked on.
    • The Wild is included in the canon in the UK, even though Disney didn't work on it at all. They just distributed it.
  • Children Voicing Children: Played straight for 90% of the canon. In fact, Pinocchio is arguably the Trope Maker.
  • Creator Backlash: Several of the films have gotten this.
    • Walt Disney didn't think much of Dumbo, seeing it as a filler feature to make up for the losses of Pinocchio and Fantasia and to get the money to allow Bambi to be completed. That he was very hands off with it compared to his other films, combined with it being made during the devastating 1941 studio strike didn't help either.
    • Alice in Wonderland was another film Walt was dissatisfied with, feeling the film was cold. He even said he was glad it failed at the box office.
      "I think Alice got what she deserved. I never wanted to make it in the first place, but everybody said I should. I tried to introduce a little sentiment into it by getting Alice involved with the White Knight, but they said we couldn't tamper with a classic. So we just kept moving it at circus pace."
    • Peter Pan was another one he didn't care for, mainly because he felt Peter was a cold and unlikable character. Disney animator Marc Davis said in an interview that he feels this way toward the Indians in the film, saying that they would have portrayed them differently if the film were made today.
    • According to "Before the Animation Begins", Walt absolutely hated the Xerox process and art direction of 101 Dalmatians, mainly because he felt it went against one of his goals—to convince the audience they aren't seeing drawings on screen.
    • In issue 26 of the magazine "Animator", Don Bluth expressed dissatisfaction with working on Robin Hood.
      "I drew with great excitement, thinking how good it was to work on a Disney feature. When Robin Hood was completed I decided it did not look the greatest of films. The heart wasn't in it. It had technique, the characters were well drawn, the Xerox process retained the fine lines so I could see all of the self indulgence of the animators, each one saying, "Look how great I am," but the story itself had no soul."
    • The Fox and the Hound: Several notable animators, including John Lasseter, Don Bluth and Tim Burton, rarely speak kindly of this film, citing its tight-budgeted animation, which all but did away with the innovative technology the company had invented, as the final sign that Disney had become a shell of its former self. Bluth, in particular, took it the hardest by leading a walk-out of several other animators who followed him to work on The Secret of NIMH during this film's production, beginning a long and bitter rivalry between him and the studio which went on until he retired in 2000. Burton also bailed during production of this film, which is the last one made before the 1984 management shift
    • The Black Cauldron is not held in high regard by either its staff or the company as a whole, not helping that it was one of the biggest flops that Disney ever experienced and destroyed the careers of its producer, Joe Hale (who had an editing run-in with Jeffrey Katzenberg that didn't help his chances), and co-directors Ted Berman and Richard Rich. It's so bad that Disney will rewrite their own history by saying The Great Mouse Detective was the first film to use CGI, not Cauldron.
    • Animator Will Finn enjoyed working on The Little Mermaid, but he stated on his Small Room blog that he wasn't happy with his animation of Grimsby, saying there are only one or two scenes he did that don't make him cringe today.
  • Disowned Adaptation:
    • The nephew of Carlo Collodi, the author of the original The Adventures of Pinocchio book, hated the Disney adaptation for playing fast and loose with his uncle's story, and even unsuccessfully tried to sue the studio for misrepresenting his uncle's work.
    • Per word of Chuck Jones (who did his own animated adaptations of Kipling's stories) in his book Chuck Jones Conversations, Kipling's daughter hated the Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book for being an In Name Only adaptation of her father's work.
      "Before we started our film, I discovered that Kipling's daughter was still alive and called her. In an elegant, British Dowager-like voice, she confirmed my pronunciation (of Mowgli's name) and added, 'And, I hate Walter Disney.' It was the only time I ever heard anybody call him Walter. In her lifetime, she said nobody ever pronounced anything but Mauwgli."
    • The descendants of Victor Hugo bashed Disney in an open letter to the Libération newspaper for their ancestor getting no mention on the advertisement posters for the Disney adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and they harshly criticized the film itself as a vulgar commercialization of Victor Hugo's story.
  • DVD Commentary: Half of the Walt Disney movie canon have made commentary for their films:
    • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: Commentary by animation historian John Canemaker, with archival audio excerpts by Walt Disney
    • Pinocchio: Commentary by film critic Leonard Maltin, Disney animator Eric Goldberg, and Disney historian J.B. Kaufman, with archival audio excerpts by animators Ward Kimball, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Eric Larson
    • Fantasia:
      • First commentary by animation historian John Canemaker, with archival audio excerpts by Walt Disney
      • Second commentary by Roy E. Disney, conductor James Levine, and restoration supervisor Scott MacQueen
      • Third commentary by Disney historian Brian Sibley
    • Dumbo:
      • First commentary by animation historian John Canemaker
      • Second commentary by Pixar director Pete Docter, Disney historian Paula Sigman, and Disney animator Andreas Deja, with archival audio excerpts by writers Dick Huemer and Joe Grant, animators Ward Kimball, and Wolfgang Reitherman, sound designer Jim MacDonald, and layout artist Ken O’Conner
    • Peter Pan: Commentary by Roy E. Disney, animation historian Jeff Kurtti, with archival audio excerpts by Walt Disney, animators Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Marc Davis, and Ward Kimball, live-action reference model Margaret Kerry, voice actor/live-action reference model Kathryn Beaumont, film historian Leonard Maltin, and animation historian John Canemaker
    • Sleeping Beauty:
      • First commentary by Disney historian Jeff Kurtti, with archival audio excerpts by production designer/background artist Eyvind Earle, voice actor Mary Costa, supervising animators Ollie Johnston and Marc Davis, background artist Frank Armitage, Pocahontas director Mike Gabriel, and Pocahontas art designer Michael Giaimo
      • Second commentary by Disney historian Leonard Maltin, Pixar director John Lasseter, Disney animator Andreas Deja, with archival audio excerpts by Walt Disney, production designer Eyvind Earle, and supervising animators Marc Davis, Ollie Johnston, and Frank Thomas
    • The Jungle Book: Commentary by composer/song-writer Richard M. Sherman, supervising pencil animator Andreas Deja and voice actor Bruce Reitherman, with archival audio excerpts by director Wolfgang Reitherman, directing animators Ollie Johnson and Frank Thomas, and co-screenwriter Larry Clemmons
    • The Little Mermaid: Commentary by writers/directors Ron Clements and John Musker, and composer Alan Menken
    • Beauty and the Beast: Commentary by producer Don Hahn, directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale and composer Alan Menken
    • Aladdin:
      • First commentary by producer Amy Pell and writers/directors/producers Ron Clements and John Musker
      • Second commentary by supervising animators Andreas Deja, Will Finn, Eric Goldberg, and Glen Keane
    • The Lion King: Commentary by producer Don Hahn and directors Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff
    • Pocahontas:
      • First commentary by producer James Pentecost, directors Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, composer Alan Menken, lyricist Stephen Schwartz, art director Michael Giaimo, and co-writer Carl Binder
      • Second commentary by producer James Pentacost and directors Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg
    • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Commentary by producer Don Hahn and directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale
    • Mulan: Commentary by producer Pam Coats and directors Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook
    • Tarzan: Commentary by producer Bonnie Arnold and directors Kevin Lima and Chris Buck
    • Fantasia 2000:
      • First commentary by executive producer Roy E. Disney, conductor James Levine, and producer Don Ernst
      • Second commentary by directors and artists Don Hahn, Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Dean Gordon, Bill Perkins, Eric Goldberg, Susan Goldberg, Michael Humphries, Roy Disney, Gaëtan Brizzi, Paul Brizzi, and Carl Jones
    • Dinosaur:
      • First commentary by directors Eric Leighton and Ralph Zondag, visual effects supervisor Neil Krepela and digital effects supervisor Neil Eskuri
      • Second commentary by producer Pam Marsden, music composer James Newton Howard, co-producer Baker Bloodworth, and art director Cristy Maltese.
    • The Emperor's New Groove: Commentary by producer Randy Fullmer, director Mark Dindal, art director Colin Stimpson, character designer Joseph C. Moshier, story supervisor Stephen Anderson, and supervising animators Nik Ranieri and Bruce W. Smith
    • Atlantis: The Lost Empire: Commentary by producer Don Hahn and directors Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale
    • Lilo & Stitch: Commentary by writers/directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois and producer Clark Spencer
    • Treasure Planet: Commentary by writers/directors/producers Ron Clements and John Musker, producer Roy Conli, supervising animators Glen Keane and John Ripa and art director Ian Gooding
    • Brother Bear: Commentary by Rutt and Tuke
    • Home on the Range: Commentary by producer Alice Dewey and writers/directors Will Finn and John Sanford
    • Chicken Little: Commentary by director Mark Dindal, producer Randy Fullmer and visual effects supervisor Steve Goldberg
    • Meet the Robinsons: Commentary by director Stephen J. Anderson
    • The Princess and the Frog: Commentary by co-writers/directors Ron Clements and John Musker and producer Peter Del Vecho
    • Tangled: Unofficial commentary by animators Amy Smeed, Adam Dykstra, Jennifer Hager, Miyuki Kanno-Long, Adam Green, Daniel Peixe, John Wong, Zach Parrish, Marlon Nowe, Doug Bennett, Joel Reid, Mark Mitchell, Kira Lehtomaki, Patrick Osborne, Darrin Butters, Becky Bresee, Chris Cordingly, Chadd Ferron, Clay Kaytis, John Kahrs, Chad Sellers, Jason Figliozi, and Malcon Pierce
    • Wreck-It Ralph: Deleted scenes commentary by director Rich Moore, writer Phil Johnson, and story supervisor Jim Readron
    • Moana: Commentary by directors Ron Clements and John Musker
  • Fandom Life Cycle: Ranges from 2 to 5, depending on the film. Most of the Walt Disney-era films, 1990s films and more recent films get to 4-5, but the lesser-known films of the canon have their fair share of defenders.
  • Franchise Killer: There have been at least five close calls where Walt Disney Animation Studios was nearly shut down.
    • The first were the triple failures of Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi; mixed with the onslaught of World War II, the studio lost a lot of money. The post-WWII years found Disney in a position where it was too financially risky to make full-length feature animated films, but also too financially risky to not have the steady stream of feature animation revenue that cartoon shorts alone couldn't provide. They compromised by releasing package films until they felt that they'd recovered enough to tackle a full-length film again with Cinderella - if Cinderella had bombed, Walt Disney admitted that the studio probably wouldn't have survived. Luckily for them, it became a massive hit, ushering in a new decade of Disney feature films.
    • The second was after Sleeping Beauty flopped. The rise of television meant that people weren't going to the theaters to see animated films they way that they used to, meaning it was no longer cost-effective to make animated films traditionally. The development of the Xerox animation technology ended up lowering costs and preventing Disney from shutting down completely, but they still had to lay off a lot of animators in the early 1960s in the wake of Sleeping Beauty's financial failure. It didn't help that Walt's personal interest in animation had long since waned, having become more interested in other ventures, especially Disneyland.
    • The third was after the death of Walt Disney in 1966. The other executives felt that theatrical animation was no longer viable, particularly since the studio had proven in the 1950s that it could make successful live action, television and theme park projects to carry the company (the short animated film division had already been shut down in 1962). There were plans to close the division after the completion of The Jungle Book, but director Ken Anderson was able to convince the executives to keep it open a little longer, claiming that Walt had plans to make The Aristocats, previously a live-action short film intended for television, into a full-length animated movie. Wanting to honor Walt they agreed. And luckily, when The Jungle Book became a huge hit in 1967, it convinced them that there was a future for animated movies, leading them to green-light more.
    • The fourth was The Black Cauldron, which was such a huge financial misfire that it nearly took the studio down with it (it was still able to kill the Disney careers of directors Ted Berman and Richard Rich and producer Joe Hale, plus it's one of the factors that forced Ron Miller to leave and allowed Jeffrey Katzenberg into Disney). Thankfully, the modest success of The Great Mouse Detective managed to keep the studio afloat until The Little Mermaid came in and started the Renaissance.
    • The fifth wasn't a single film but the large amount of commercial and/or critical disappointments that lasted for years after Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney and started DreamWorks Animation. Once Pixar was officially integrated into Disney, there were once again talks of permanently shutting down the studios. Thankfully, Bob Iger, John Lasseter, and Ed Catmull decided to work on reviving the studios with the Pixar charm instead of shutting it down out of being overshadowed by Pixar. Years later, Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia were released, showing that the studios was once again at the top of their game.
  • Genre-Killer:
  • Magnum Opus Dissonance: The Sword in the Stone has been criticized for being the most "through the motions" movie of Walt Disney's nineteen animated films, and admittedly the artists (excluding Bill Peet) weren't that interested in the project from the onset. However the animators who worked on the film were incredibly proud of it, feeling that it had the most technically accomplished character animation of any of the films that they'd worked on.
  • Orwellian Retcon:
    • Some of the racist imagery of their earlier films is downplayed or completely removed in contemporary times. A particularly egregious example is the removal of a black servant pony during a segment of Fantasia.
    • In one scene in the original VHS and LaserDisc releases of The Lion King, a dust cloud kicked up by Simba seems to form the word "SEX." Although the animators claimed that it actually said "SFX" (special effects), the scene still got edited in later editions.
    • A meta example with the franchise itself. On the release of The Fox and the Hound, only three package films are represented to make the canon lineup an even twenty, with some of them added back to make The Black Cauldron twenty-fifth in release order. Decades later, Dinosaur, a third-party release from a studio that had long gone under, was added into the canon to make Tangled the fiftieth release.
  • Preview Piggybacking:
    • The teaser trailer for The Lion King (1994), which consisted of the entire "Circle of Life" opening, was shown in theaters with The Three Musketeers and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. Because of the positive response, Disney released extended teasers for Pocahontas (with a re-release of The Lion King) and Dinosaur (with Toy Story 2). The latter movie's extended teaser, which was a sneak peek of a scene from the movie, was also on the VHS release of Tarzan.
    • A sneak peek at the upcoming Disney film Wish (2023) was shown during the television premiere of Encanto on ABC.
  • Production Posse: Check any of the credits in the Disney Animated Canon starting with The Aristocats and you'll begin to notice several recurring names in both the cast and crew. Here's a small rundown:
    • The Dark Age Of Disney:
      • Phil Harris, Pat Buttram, Sterling Holloway (a remnant from the studio's Golden Age) and George Lindsey.
      • If the film had a male child protagonist during that period, he was probably voiced by one of animator/director Wolfgang Reitherman's sons.
    • The Renaissance Age of Disney:
    • The Millennium Age of Disney:
      • John Lasseter, Peter Del Vecho, Roy Conli, Clark Spencer
      • Byron Howard, Don Hall, Jennifer Lee, Stephen J. Anderson, Chris Williams, Rich Moore, Nathan Greno, Jin Kim
      • Alan Tudyk, Henry Jackman, Robert Lopez & Kristen Anderson-Lopez.
  • Recycled: The Series: As mentioned under Canon Discontinuity on the main page, a number of DAC films got Sequel Series and Spin-Off shows:
  • Referenced by...: Knights of Buena Vista is a Campaign Comic using the animated films (and others) as source material.
  • Transatlantic Equivalent: The UK does not consider Dinosaur as part of the canon. Instead, they include The Wild (which, unlike Dinosaur, was not produced by a Disney-owned studio; Disney simply distributed it) as part of the canon, which the US does not.
  • Uncredited Role: Until 1984, there was a rule that animators had to draw at least 100 feet of film (roughly 68 seconds) in order to be credited. There are other specific examples on their own work pages.
  • Unisex Series, Gendered Merchandise: Although Disney films are for everyone, merchandising isn't so lenient. Many of the toys released are aimed at girls, especially the Disney Princess canon.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Two books have been written on the subject, The Disney That Never Was and Disney Lost and Found (focusing on My Peoples and Wild Life specifically alongside deleted segments from completed works).
    • The Nightmare Before Christmas was apparently supposed to be Disney's 32nd animated film, to have been released during the 1993 holiday season, with The Lion King, then Disney's 33rd animated film, being scheduled for the 1994 holiday season. Then Nightmare was rebranded as a Touchstone film due to being Darker and Edgier even by Disney's standards (and some of the animated canon's entries are more mature than others) and Lion King found itself pushed forward to summer 1994 and directly replacing Nightmare as Disney's 32nd as a direct result of said rebranding. Had things gone as planned, Nightmare would've been Disney's first non-hand-drawn film, as well as the first and so far only stop-motion entry, in the animated canon.
    • Bambi and The Jungle Book were long considered for sequels, but were ultimately turned down, allegedly due to Walt Disney's wariness towards sequels (he only shown considerable interest in following onto Fantasia, though in the form of adding new separate segments to rereleases of the first). While the second films of all three franchises were eventually made decades later, only Fantasia's made into Disney Animated Canon. Note that had Bambi's Children came to fruition it would have been the first sequel to be inducted.
    • One of the most intriguing potential films that we may never see is an adaptation of Terry Pratchet's Mort, and even got up to concept art! The story goes that after The Princess and the Frog, Musker and Clements wanted to adapt the book as a traditionally 2D animated film, but there were a few main factors that meant they couldn't:
      • The Disney executives were a little apprehensive of Death becoming a Disney character.
      • When The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh underperformed, combined with the smash success of Tangled, it made the financial prospects of doing another 2D film uncertain.
      • The Pratchet estate would only sell the rights to Discworld as a whole, meaning that Disney would have to basically option the entire 34 book series just to adapt one story.
    • A few Recycled: The Series were considered but never left the cutting room floor [1].
      • Some of these shows were developed for a proposed Disney Heritage project, in which shows based on the films would be promoted globally in hopes of increasing the films' popularity. While execs for Disney Channel International was enthusiastic about it, Disney Channel USA was not as it would have to finance half of the project and wanted to focus more on tween programming as they believed that genre would be more successful domestically. The Emperor's New School was an exception, presumably partly because its premise fit what the Disney Channel was aiming for.
      • Brother Bear: The Series: Set after the first movie, Koda would've tried to add more orphaned animals to his and Kenai's family — a hyper husky puppy, two owlets, and Doohickey, the last surviving member of an elephant/platypus hybrid species. Koda, Rutt, and Tuke would've had their voice actors reprise their roles, though Kenai would've been voiced by Will Friedle. The series got as far as an animatic pilot and was a hit with test audiences, though The Emperor's New School was greenlit over it due to the above reason as well as its mother film being a slightly bigger hit in the box office and buzz in the U.S. over Brother Bear.
      • A Robin Hood animated series and a Mulan animated series called Mulan and the Treasures of Qin were also considered.

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