Disney/Pixar In General

I actually rather like Return To Oz for its relative fidelity to Baum's original books. Emphasis on "relative."

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Similarly, so was Return to Oz, but that has a cult following.

Technically, so does Black Cauldron, but the same can be said of pretty much any Disney movie to one degree or another.

The original Frankenweenie was Disney too, though that was live action.

I've never heard of that movie. <reads description> I must watch this...

edited 9th Feb '16 8:09:34 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

You never said it had to be something Disney already adapted.

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

Return to Oz and The Black Cauldron are actually pretty good points of comparison in how to do dark fantasy for kids right and wrong. Return to Oz uses darkness to its advantage in sucking the viewer into the story and making them more and more invested. The darkness in The Black Cauldron, by contrast, is gratuitous. It doesn't make any of it more interesting, and it ultimately makes the movie seem even more immature for thinking that just adding grimness to a story will make up for the shallow writing.

Yeah, I like the moodyness of the Black Cauldron, but it's just kind of a dull movie honestly.

It helps that a lot of the dark bits of Return To Oz come straight out of the Oz books - excepting the bits in Kansas; that's only in the movie to provide the "And you were there" stuff we expect from Oz.

It's not faithful to the tone of Baum's books - he explicitly said in the introduction to the first that he wanted to write a fairy tale "where the heartaches and nightmares (found in Grimm and Andersen) are left out" - but it works as a dark reimagining of the material.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

It is kind of ridiculous how The Nightmare Before Christmas is not a part of the canon, but Dinosaur is.

I have A LOT to say about a LOT of things, and NO little minded opinions will hold MY opinion back.

RIP

Back in 1993, Disney was confident enough in its formulas and put off enough by its dark tones to just put it under the Touchstone label.

By the early '00s, the Disney formulas had stopped working and they were ready to try anything.

EDIT: Kind of wanted to post this...

edited 11th Feb '16 4:34:03 PM by Aldo930

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

I think they picked Dinosaurs because if they had picked Nightmare before Christmas they would have been forced to acknowledge Jack and the Giant Peach too, and they really wanted Tangled to be the 50th Disney Classic. Acknowledging Dinosaurs after all, even though it was technically not made by the animation studios, was the easiest way to do this.

Not necessarily, James and the Giant Peach was part live-action so it might not have counted anyway.

It's not like Disney doesn't treat Nightmare way better than Dinosaur anyway.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Live-action/animation hybrids are generally not counted in the canon, if there's enough live-action to really make the difference.

The Three Caballeros has some live-action mixed in with the animation but overall, it's animated and it's canon.

James And The Giant Peach has enough live action that it's a hybrid and doesn't count.

And films that are mostly live action but have animated sequences in them don't count, either, such as Mary Poppins or Song Of The South.

edited 15th Feb '16 10:34:49 AM by Aldo930

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Well, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time and Fantasia 2000 have live action sequences as well.

The bulk of it is animation, though; the live-action sequences are only there to introduce the animation.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Valentine's Day 2016 at Disneyland, with Rapunzel smoulders, Jedi Jasmine and Aladdin, and one very awkward Valentine for Kylo Ren.

edited 17th Feb '16 5:10:47 PM by Tuckerscreator

I feel obligated to post one of the biggest What Could Have Been scenarios in Disney's history...

This could have been a truly great film.

But alas, the war came along, and Disney's partner in the idea eventually developed it into a film with Danny Kaye with no animation.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

There's something strangely amusing about Sofia's rabbit friend having a New York accent. XD

Flora is the most beautiful member of the Winx Club. :)

Is it sad to say that I actually own a copy of this?

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

There's a 60th Anniversary special for Disneyland on tonight.

Flora is the most beautiful member of the Winx Club. :)

Has it really been 60 years?... Well, it has, give or take eight months. Maybe Disney got to producing this special when the day came and they realized "Hey, wait, like, Disneyland opened 60 years ago today, didn't it?... Aw, shit! We missed it!"

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

It's one of those moments where you somehow forget about a major event despite you knowing it well.

I'd like to think they remembered it was Disneyland's 60th after waking up from their ninth consecutive Frozen-fueled orgy of hookers and blow.

Unless that's not the way things work in Hollywood...

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

That would be Stratton Oakmont.

Flora is the most beautiful member of the Winx Club. :)