Disney/Pixar In General

Luckily Walt saw the implications of having a black person voice an ape.

However, he was wrong about The Beatles.

I can't think of any other film Disney's done, that wasn't a period piece, that was so clearly about a specific time.

I suspect Zootopia isn't going to age all that gracefully.

Why? Care to share with the class?

I don't see why it shouldn't....granted, it is a little bit more modern in showing a lot of technology, but so does 101 Dalmatians and said technology simply looks quaint nowadays.

If you are talking about the message... Racism and discrimination are always gonna be a thing we have to fight.

Well, what I think he's saying is that the way they're presenting it is pretty geared to the here-and-now.

@Smasher Ironically, he decided against it because he thought in the future people wouldn't remember the Beatles and it would feel very dated. Even the best make a mistake now and then.

I really hope Coco is good because over all 2011 on word has felt pretty lackluster from Pixar. I mean they released their best film in that time, and Finding Dory was pretty good, but otherwise everything has felt mediocre.

So I saw Moana.

It's a bit by the numbers and probably not the strongest "Disney Princess" film I've seen, but I had a lot of fun watching it. Was honestly super impressed by Dwayne Johnson's performance, Ma'ui alone is worth the price of admission for this movie.

But that is partly an accident. Remember, the production of an animated movie takes around three years. They couldn't know how political the movie would be upon release. They also couldn't know about Trump.

I thought they were referring to the copious use of modern technology, like iPhones, in the movie.

Also the use of cultural things (I hesitate to say "fads") based around iPhones like the Dancing with Gazelle app, which I think at some point will seem like the most 2010s thing ever. Then there's things like the characters making pointed meta-references specifically to which Disney films just came out and which ones were upcoming at that exact moment in time.

The thing is, those things won't date that badly because later audience still get the gist of the joke thanks to the fact that they were parodied into the context of the world. It isn't a Dreamwork thing that the joke is important to the story (ex: In Shrek, Fiona made a Matrix reference to take down Robin Hood, which show case her character or the parody of "It's A Wonderful World" shows how crappy the land is).

edited 18th Mar '17 9:14:47 AM by shatterstar

I remember some of the jokes in Zootopia bothered me, like the one about how no one used CD's anymore- but now that I think about it, Moana kind of had the same thing going for it too (I'm particularly thinking of the tweeting joke)

Yeah, that is the difference...I mean Gazelle is very Shakira, but you don't actually have to know Shakira in order to get what she is standing for because she is a constant presence through the whole movie and not just some singer who turns up randomly in the end.

To a certain degree, there are always contemporary influences in the Disney movies...for example Ariel's puff sleeves during her wedding are soooo Lady Di, and the crazy bangs soooo 1980s. Maleficient acts like a Hollywood diva. Aso. The trick is to make them part of the world and not something you only get if you have a degree in pop cultural references. Zootopia's most overtly use of making fun of something not inherent to the world of Zootopia are the godfather references, and they are kind of "safe".

I don't think you can equate all Disney movies in that regard. Some of them are far more mired in the era in which they came out than others — I'd point to The Jungle Book, which really feels like an Unintentional Period Piece to the sixties because of things like Mowgli's hairdo, the soundtrack and all the celebrity cameos/lookalikes. Or Chicken Little, which couldn't be more early 2000s if it tried.

There's also the Breaking Bad references, but those are pretty subtle and don't seem out of place even if you don't recognize them.

edited 18th Mar '17 2:21:21 PM by IniuriaTalis

Never watched Breaking Bad, so I can confirm that. I didn't notice.

Me neither.

Even stuff like Aladdin, which had a lot of cultural references, specifically picked jokes that were funny first and foremost over precision references (and as such had many jokes that were dated even at the time, yet didn't fail to hit home) and such should have about as much problem with dating as it did with the fact that kids didn't get any of those references.

I didn't pick up on any Breaking Bad references.

Two of the sheep helping Doug run the nighthowler distillation are named Jesse and Woolter and the leads of Breaking Bad (where in a highschool teacher secretly makes meth) are Jesse and Walter. It's not in your face, but it's deliberate.

Also the whole making the toxin out of blue berries looked very similar to them making blue meth on the show.

On that note, I really want them to make a Zootopia television series based on a cop/crime show.

Same here. I think if the Tangled and Big Hero Six TV shows are successful we could see. It is a logical show to do as the genre lends to an episodic format, it made over a billion dollars, and the two leads are people you could probably get for a series.

Not to mention that there are still parts of Zootopia which are entirely not explored.