New Era of Disney

Since this was getting discussed in the Frozen thread a lot, I figured it warranted it's own thread. With Disney essentially being looked as once more as top tier Animation Company I've been wondering how best to actually define this era?

Princess and the Frog brought the musical back but technially Meet the Robinsons was the first film released under John Lassester as the head honcho.

I'm tempted to say 2Dork Age era, personally.

edited 1st Mar '14 4:50:53 PM by Grounder

Seems like the Disney/Pixar era, starting with The Princess And The Frog. It's not the first film released after John Lasseter and Ed Catmull took over, but it was the first film that went through the whole Pixar-ish filmmaker-driven studio peer review process from start to finish.

edited 1st Mar '14 5:31:47 PM by Servbot

Since Disney's had a Golden Age (From the original Snow White And The Seven Dwarves to Disney/Bambi), A Silver Age (From Disney/Cinderella to The Jungle Book), and a Renaissance (From The Little Mermaid to Disney/Tarzan), I believe this new age should be called the Platinum Age (Started with The Princess And The Frog or Disney/Bolt, depending on who you ask, and is still going today).

edited 1st Mar '14 7:03:22 PM by DingoWalley1

We could call it the Disney Bronze age.

There are so many splintered Disney-related threads in this subforum...can we just kinda lump them all into a General Disney Thread or something? Do we have one of those? Not to kill the discussion or anything, but one thread instead of thousands for what is essentially the same overarching topic seems a lot less redundant.

Just because one age has been labeled as 'golden' or 'silver' doesn't mean you can't label another era as a 'second golden' or 'second silver' age.

I'm inclined to call it the "CGI age"...might be confusing, because Disney did (awful) CGI movies before Tangled, but in the end, it's exactly what it is, the era in which Disney managed to position itself on the CGI market.

I have no dog in this race, but I'm of the opinion that “ages” can never be properly defined until they're over.

@0dd1 YES. PLEASE. PLEASE.

The main intent with this generation seems to be to try to return to depth and wonder of the Disney Renaissance, but with clipping off the rough edges that today have rendered films like The Little Mermaid to be criticized to pieces today. Not really a second renaissance, more a continuation and improvement of the first.

Yeah..... I just think that this new Disney era isn't looking like I'll enjoy it. I'm older, and the movies are no longer made for my demographic as they had been in the 90's. I'm a fan of hand-drawn animation and love to do it, anyway, and Disney doesn't have faith in it anymore. The colloquialisms characters in Tangled and Frozen have are way to jarring against the classic fantasy setting.

We can call it the Platnium Age or the Crystal Age, as a tribute to Elsa. :)

edited 3rd Mar '14 8:38:28 AM by kyun

Isn't Plantinum or Crystal slightly better than Gold?? Either way, I'm not looking at this as a second era on that level. I'm just looking at it as more GOOD films from a regime that needs to continue this trend.

It's odd though how history repeats itself...back in the 1980s, Disney was pretty much down on its luck. As they were in the early 2000s. They did a couple of movies which were modest successes - back then The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Company (which I still think is one of Disney's worst but was a financial success nevertheless), in the 2000s Bolt and Pat F. Then they made the one movie which put them back on the map...ironically TLM and Tangled are similar in some aspects, and not just because they are both Princess movies with Menken songs. Then they made a movie which just slipped through the Cracks (The still always overlooked Rescuers Down Under which, even if people now that is exist, is rarely listed as a Disney Renaissance movie, and Winnie the Pooh). It followed a true Disney Masterpiece (Beauty and the Beast vs. Wreck it Ralph). And then, carried from this success, Disney made tons of money on the next movie (Aladdin vs. Frozen...and in both cases I think that the two successful movies which came beforehand were actually the better ones).

We could call the current era the "Short Title Renaissance".

edited 4th Mar '14 11:26:03 PM by swanpride

Hey man, don't you be dissin' Billy Joel as a canine Artful Dodger.

That means Big Hero 6 will be as successful as The Lion King.

Oh God. That means more MARVEL Studios/Disney animated movies about superheroes! DO NOT WANT!

I think Frozen was already as successful as The Lion King. Which, if we're following a pattern here, would make Big Hero 6 this generation's Pocahontas.

OH GOD. :O

Thing that is working in Disney's favor this go around compared to the 90's is that John Lasseter is running the show, not Michael Eisner.

But Eisner wasn't evil when the Rennesance happened. He was, however, during the Dork Age of the 2000's.

And Iger is noticably associated with those things about Disney i hate. Notice how it was him who announced Disney won't do hand-drawings again for the planned future. He was not present at the Disney Oscars party.

One of the biggest contributing factors to the decline of the first renaissance was an over-reliance on formula, though. Currently, Disney seems to be taking steps to avoid that by dividing their films between traditional fairy tale adaptations and more experimental films like Wreck-It Ralph and Big Hero 6, which doesn't really sound like anything attempted in Disney's main canon before.

In terms of story in the Disney Renaissance, they were all over the place though! Certainly a reliance of formula wasn't in that area.

Notice also how Wreck It Ralph and Big Hero 6, which you cited as Disney going against the formula, are more aimed at boys than girls. Zootopia also looks to be in that realm.

edited 5th Mar '14 10:56:29 AM by kyun

Aye, that one of the big things that held back Hunchback.