Disney (and, by proxy, Pixar) has become memetically famous for the quality of their later films. However, a lot of the problems with the studio started back in either its early years or the Renaissance period, enough so to warrant its own page.
- The Dark Age of Animation for Disney's animation studio saw the release of many films that were all criticized for trends such as numerous instances of recycled animation, the use of xerography creating a rough, "sketchy" look, and an increased emphasis on slapstick comedy. However, the film that started most of these trends was 1961's 101 Dalmatians, which was a hit at the time of its release and is still considered one of Disney's classic films. The recycled animation and xerography was accepted since it was the only way the studio could make a film featuring so many Dalmatian characters without the budget skyrocketing out of control (since, in the words of Chuck Jones, "spots cost money") and the latter worked well with the film's uniquely contemporary and stylized look. Meanwhile, the physical comedy was well-liked because it gave the film a different feel and style than its predecessors, such as Sleeping Beauty. In contrast, later Dark Age Disney animated films lacked new innovations, and this, coupled with the more blatant and seemingly lazy instances of animation recycling, as well as the art style going back to the more traditional painted look, made the flaws of xerography stand out even more.
- Many of the later films of the Disney Renaissance in the second half of the '90s were criticized for not being faithful to the source material they were adapted from. However, if you go through the earlier entries in the Disney Animated Canon (including the earlier films of the Disney Renaissance), you'll find that most of the films that are adaptations play fast and loose with the source material, often employing literal Disneyfication. For example, 1989's The Little Mermaid (the film that started the Disney Renaissance) gave the original Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale a happy ending and turned the Sea Witch character into a villain, and 1991's Beauty and the Beast, the film considered by many to be the best film of the Renaissance, turned the Beast into a hot-tempered Anti-Hero as opposed to a straightforward Nice Guy, and created the new villain Gaston as an Expy of Avenant from Jean Cocteau's French live-action adaptation from 1946 instead of using the sisters from the original story. The difference is that most of the earlier films were adaptations of stories that were either obscure or had been adapted/retold numerous times before, and so they stood out as new and unique takes on the original stories. The problem came when this approach was applied to actual history, as well as mythology and literature where the original source material is more well-known. For instance, Hercules received the most criticism in Greece where people are most familiar with the original myths, due to the Disneyfication toning down the morally ambiguous natures of the Greek society and especially the Greek gods in favor of them being nicer, and using Adaptational Villainy on Hades, a more sympathetic Greek god by modern standards, to make him become more of a Satan-like character which has become the popular image of Hades since then.
- A related problem some detractors have with the films is how several of their movies based off of pre-existing stories add so much Adaptation Expansion that they feel more In Name Only rather than actual adaptations of the books they're based off of. The thing is, Disney has never been afraid to apply Adaptation Expansion to their works. For example, 1940's Pinocchio expands more on the Cricket, who is given the name of Jiminy Cricket and goes from a minor character in the book to the titular character's conscience, while 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has Snow White actually meet her prince much earlier on in the story prior to the wicked queen's attempts at having her killed when said prince's counterpart in the original fairy tale literally didn't show up until near the end in said original fairy tale. People didn't have a problem with this at first, since many of the cases of Adaptation Expansion during the studio's earlier days involved adding somewhat minor details that helped flesh things out while still allowing the stories as a whole to largely unfold as they did in the original source material. But as time went by and later films came out that made use of Adaptation Expansion while also either adding in major deviations from the source material (in the case of animated films like The Hunchback of Notre Dame or Hercules) or having the stories of the films otherwise be so slavishly faithful to the previous adaptations as to make the expansion just feel like unnecessary Padding (in the case of the later Disney Live-Action Remakes), the more issues critics and viewers took with this practice.
- One could blame Aladdin for the Stunt Casting of famous comedians as comedic side characters in Disney animated movies. Many at the time attributed Aladdin's financial success to the casting of Robin Williams as the Genie, which managed to attract mainstream audiences who would otherwise be indifferent toward animation.note While some, including Williams himself, were frustrated with Disney overmarketing and overhyping the Genie, Williams's performance worked because the character was tailored specifically for the actor and the Genie's comedic schtick suited the film's light-hearted fantastical tone. However, Disney and other animation studios became seemingly obsessed with the comic relief sidekick voiced by a famous celebrity to the detriment of their films. Most notably, many criticized the casting of Jason Alexander as the gargoyle Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, feeling that Alexander's performance as a kid-friendly comic relief sidekick was an annoying distraction in a darker and more serious movie involving hellfire and sexual imagery. Subsequently, several animation fans felt that this fad led to celebrities taking roles away from professional voice actors and ironically contributed to the stigma of animation being too childish and commercial.
- The earliest of Disney's Direct to Video sequels, 1994's Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, didn't get much hate upon its release — not because it was especially better than its later counterparts, but because it wasn't advertised as an outright follow-up to Aladdin. It was only a pilot for Aladdin: The Series on television, and is seen as pretty good by the standards of a TV pilot. When Disney began churning out similar projects of even lesser quality, and then advertised them as the canon sequels for their most famous and beloved films (even releasing a handful of them in theaters), then the entire enterprise was condemned as an exercise in Sequelitis. What's more, many sequels suffered from poorer animation, which would be more forgivable in a pilot to a series with a smaller budget, but was more noticeable in later sequels that had no such excuse. These came to an end for good when John Lasseter became the head of Disney and cancelled most of the sequels that weren't too far along in development, leaving only those that were nearing their release intact.
- On a similar note, in the early 2010s Pixar began making sequels or prequels to their most popular films. While 2010's Toy Story 3 was well-received for its emotional tone, 2011's Cars 2 was criticized for being too dark for its target audience and for having Mater as the main character, while 2013's Monsters University was considered So Okay, It's Average at best and outright bad at worst. The thing is, this isn't the first time Pixar has made sequels to their films. As Toy Story 2 demonstrated all the way in 1999, they've made sequels to their most popular films since all the way back in their earliest days of existence. People didn't mind this at first since Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 were the only sequels they made at the time, they were of high enough quality to be worth watching on their own merits, and Pixar released plenty of original material (specifically, exactly seven original films) in between to keep things fresh. But when Pixar began producing almost exclusively sequels of far more base-breaking quality in the early 2010s, many people grew worried that the studio was undergoing an Audience-Alienating Era. While the studio managed to Win Back the Crowd with the critically-acclaimed Inside Out in 2015, it's not very easy to talk about the studio without mentioning its Audience-Alienating Era in the early 2010s.
- Many movies in the Disney Revival era, like 2013's Frozen, 2014's Big Hero 6, and 2016's Zootopia, are often criticized for overusing the premise of a Hidden Villain, with The Reveal at the climax revolving around unmasking them. The trend started back with Pixar, with 1999's Toy Story 2 and 2001's Monsters, Inc. having Hidden Villains in Stinky Pete and Henry J. Waternoose III. What saved those two was that there were other villains to pick up the slack (Al McWhiggin and Randall Boggs, respectively) and that their later villainous actions matched their previously established motives and characterizations. Later films with hidden villains played around with it more by introducing them around the midpoint, like Syndrome or Charles Muntz, giving the films time to let them take the spotlight. Disney, noticing this trend, followed suit (although it was attempted earlier in 2001's Atlantis: The Lost Empire with Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke), but unlike Pixar, Disney seemed to think that such a reveal worked better as a last-act twist, rather than it being something to build up to, or foreshadow. The first film of the canon to seriously utilize this twist, Wreck-It Ralph, mitigated this factor by having King Candy very obviously have something to hide and come across as the villain from the get-go, while also having the major twist involving him revolve around his hidden true identity instead of the fact that he's the villain, with the story of this identity being explained prior to the reveal for good measure, and a good deal of clues for viewers to catch regarding it. Frozen (2013), on the other hand, had the villain Hans Westergaard revealed near the end in such a way that makes his entire character do a 180-degree spin with barely any hintsnote that his actions were going to be leading to this, and it happens so late that the only evil act he successfully does in the entire film is lock Anna in a room; while Big Hero 6 and Zootopia have Robert Callaghan and Dawn Bellwether repeat the same story beats: they are the evil counterparts, respectively, of Hiro Hamada (if he gave in to revenge) and Judy Hopps (if she gave into her prejudices). As a result, Disney's "twist villains" began to be looked at more negatively for how not only obvious and not surprising they'd become, but also for being overused while also leaving fans wishing for a return to the more Obviously Evil and utterly unrepentant in their villainy type villains that they'd previously grown up with and loved in the canon's earlier days (something that would ultimately happen with King Magnifico).
- Likewise, people also eventually took issue with the characters who "could" have been villains (i.e. Namaari, Alma and Bruno, etc.), but turned out to be either Good All Along or at the very least misunderstood (assuming there was even an antagonist at all) instead, that Disney started featuring in the Disney Animated Canon not too long after audiences had finally started getting tired of seeing twist villains. And initially, audiences were fine with it, since it offered a break from the numerous twist villains and let them watch the film without having to wait for the other shoe to drop on a character who turns out to be Evil All Along. As this new approach fell into heavier use, however, audience interest once again waned, as they once again wanted the Obviously Evil villains that they'd grown to know and love, feeling that trying to make them too sympathetic or not outright villains at all made them far less interesting.note
- One of the many reasons why Frozen (2013) has gone from a fan-favorite to a very polarizing film is because of all the overexposure the film receives. It's not uncommon to find an Anna or Elsa doll in stores like Walmart and Target. This actually isn't the first time Disney cashed out one of their movies. They've always done this to advertise their films or because of how successful they were. It's not uncommon to find dolls for various Disney Princesses like Cinderella, Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine in various toy stores. And of course, there's plenty of other films in the Disney Animated Canon as well as among the offerings of Pixar that have all had merchandise sold based on them as well (i.e. The Lion King, Winnie the Pooh, Toy Story, et cetera). And much like with all the other aforementioned merchandise, people didn't initially have a problem with Frozen getting similar merchandising treatment due to said treatment only feeling natural after the film's success. But when Frozen began to get considerably more merchandise, seemingly even moreso than any other animated film that Disney had released before or since, many people grew sick and tired of seeing the film everywhere (with some unfavorably comparing the way Disney treats Frozen to the way Cartoon Network treats Teen Titans Go!) and just wanted the studio to let the film go and allow one of their other animated films to have more time in the merchandising spotlight.
- Disney Live-Action Remakes:
- The films have gotten criticism for their occasional instances of Stunt Casting from the very beginning, but it didn't lead to major backlash until a few years down the road. In 2016's The Jungle Book, many critics felt that Bill Murray's performance as Baloo was the weak link in an otherwise strong film — partly because Murray had minimal experience in singing and voice-acting, and partly because Baloo's personality (as a laid-back wiseass) was mostly just a riff on Murray's actual public persona. Most of them were willing to forgive it, though, since newcomer Neel Sethi's acclaimed performance as Mowgli largely made up for it. 2017's Beauty and the Beast similarly got some flack for casting Emma Watson as Belle, since Watson had minimal experience in singing, making her a questionable choice for a character with so many musical numbers. While her acting was widely praised, critics generally felt that her singing was one of the weakest parts of the film, which was all the more glaring since she was the protagonist. But when 2019's Aladdin cast Will Smith in the role of the Genie, the choice proved so unpopular that it was already generating bad publicity long before the film actually came out. Not only was Smith such an instantly recognizable public figure that his presence came off as distracting, many critics and viewers felt that his distinctively contemporary style of comedy was horribly ill-suited to an epic period fantasy. It didn't help that the Genie was a far more iconic character than either Baloo or Belle — and unlike them, he was already permanently associated with an iconic performance by a completely different actor. Taken alongside the films' previous casting choices, Smith's performance has led to the accusation that the filmmakers care more about snagging big-name actors for publicity's sake than appropriately casting characters.
- 2017's Beauty and the Beast and 2019's The Lion King proved to be highly divisive films, in part for making changes to the movies they were adapted from that many fans saw as unnecessary. While those changes wouldn't necessarily be bad by themselves, some saw them as gratuitous pandering to "bad-faith critics" who had trivial complaints about the originals.note To a degree, this was also true of 2015's Cinderella and 2016's The Jungle Book, which were much more widely acclaimed. Among other things, Cinderella gave Lady Tremaine additional backstory to explain her hatred of Ella (which not everyone liked), and The Jungle Book changed King Louie into a Gigantopithecus to placate people who complained about an orangutan being in India (never mind that Gigantopithecus are extinct). But even if those small changes weren't exactly necessary, they were easier to tolerate because they were mostly overshadowed by larger changes that actually made for stronger stories: Cinderella gave the Prince, previously a Flat Character, considerable Character Development to make his relationship with Ella more meaningful, while The Jungle Book added a great deal of actual drama to a story that was originally pretty light on emotion. Furthermore, both Cinderella and The Jungle Book were released nearly fifty years after the original animated movies debuted, so the numerous changes made sense to keep up with modern tastes and societal changes. Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King's changes, on the other hand, mostly just added additional weight to the movies rather than actually making them better, since the originals already had well-paced stories with rich themes and strong characters, and there wasn't a lot of room for improvement. They were also based on films that were less than thirty years old when they were remade (both having been released in The '90s), and generally agreed to have aged pretty well—making the changes seem even less necessary.
- 2019's The Lion King was criticized for its hyper-realistic CG animation sucking out the movie's emotions and soul, a problem that can be traced back to 2016's The Jungle Book (both films being directed by Jon Favreau). However, this wasn't viewed as a problem in The Jungle Book because the animators gave the characters facial expressions that conveyed emotions, which, alongside the amount of changes to the story compared to the original, gave it some degree of its own magic. The Lion King, on the other hand, was mostly a Shot-for-Shot Remake where the characters had very little discernable emotion in their facial expressions, sending the animals down the Unintentional Uncanny Valley in the process of them seeming empty.
- Some viewers of the 1994 version of The Lion King claimed Scar was a Devil in Plain Sight and called the other characters idiots for trusting him. But this was largely restricted to good-natured ribbing, and could be attributed to Fourth Wall Myopia, since while he was prone to treating others with contempt and throwing around barely concealed threats, he was also enough of a manipulator to pass it all off as dry sarcasm, presented himself as the "cool uncle" to Simba, and is visibly scrawnier than Mufasa, so it makes some sense that nobody would suspect him of regicide. The 2019 Lion King's take on Scar, however, is far more aggressive, lacks the original's charisma or wit, treats Simba and Mufasa with naked spite, doesn't seem particularly weak physically, and acts like he openly hates everyone he interacts with, making the same criticism much more common and valid. This wasn't helped by numerous Adaptation Induced Plot Holes that made his actual plan a lot more obvious and reliant on others acting irrationally or out of character (i.e. he only recruits the hyenas right before his plan to kill Mufasa, when they have no reason to trust him, and he doesn't knock Zazu out at the gorge, meaning his scheme had a witness who could easily poke holes in his cover story.)
- Some of the later live-action remakes have gotten criticism for going out of their way to add feminist subtext to the original films in ways that are widely seen, even by fans who agree with the messaging, as shallow and superficial at best and fumbled at worst, adding little of value to the films' stories. For example: 2017's Beauty and the Beast attempts to make Belle a more empowered character by positioning her love of reading as an act of rebellion (which largely goes nowhere), 2019's Dumbo includes a subplot about the main character's daughter being an aspiring scientist (which largely goes nowhere), and 2019's The Lion King turns Nala and Shenzi into Adaptational Badasses with a major fight scene (a change near-universally viewed as unnecessary). As Lindsay Ellis famously pointed out,
most of these instances come across less like earnest attempts at examining gender issues for their own sake and more like attempts to paper over Disney's own history by "fixing" films that have historically faced criticism for enforcing traditional gender roles (which usually just results in the meta-commentary overshadowing the actual stories). The trend largely started with the 2015 live-action remake of Cinderella, which similarly went out of its way to improve upon the original by depicting Cinderella's relationship with the Prince as a mutually loving and supportive relationship between two empowered adults who view each other as equals (as well as attempting a deeper exploration of the themes of emotional abuse). Unlike in the later films, however, this was viewed as one of the best things about it, since it actually made for a more satisfying narrative that could stand on its own as a narrative, and actually made the characters more interesting. - Many viewers were disappointed and angered by Disney choosing to cut the songs from Mulan (2020). However, this was not the first of their live-action remakes to remove songs that were present in the original movies; Cinderella (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), and Dumbo (2019) all had songs excised. The reason this didn't get the same backlash is twofold, as explained by Sideways. First, these movies generally kept the most important and/or memorable songs (such as "The Bare Necessities" and "Baby Mine"), while the new Mulan movie cut all of the songs, including the iconic "I'll Make a Man out of You". Second, in the previous cases, not all of the songs were essential; there were musical numbers that could be cut out without negatively impacting the story (such as "Pink Elephants on Parade" and "Colonel Hathi's March"). In the case of Mulan, however, it was like most other Disney Renaissance movies in that the musical numbers were too tightly woven into the story for them to be removed without affecting it, and since the filmmakers essentially replaced them with nothing by failing to convert them into scenes with the same emotional weight and intensity, the movie was left feeling not only less fun than the original, but also hollow, disjointed and rushed.
- One of the biggest criticisms about 2022's Pinocchio is that it made Pinocchio go from a Cheerful Child who needs Jiminy to help guide him through life into a bland Vanilla Protagonist who seems to already have a conscience of his own and can tell the differences between wrong and right. The thing is, this isn't the first time Disney has made the protagonist somewhat bland compared to the supporting cast. For example, 1951's Alice in Wonderland has the titular Pinball Protagonist being surrounded by all the goofy and outlandish characters in Wonderland and serve as the grounded Foil and Straight Man to the more attention grabbing and wackier characters that she interacts with. And other protagonists before and after her prior to 1989's The Little Mermaid, such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Mowgli, largely served as The Everyman with only small hints of more individual personalities on display for those who looked between the lines. Not a lot of people saw this as a bad thing, though, because Alice and the other similarly bland at first glance protagonists were still likable on their own merits. The 2022 live action remake's version of Pinocchio, on the other hand, was seen by most viewers as so bland and uninteresting that some have admitted to actually rooting for the Coachman over him.
- One of the many reasons why 2023's Peter Pan & Wendy is such a divisive film is because of the first of the two titular characters acting much meaner, crueler and more childish than his book and especially animated Disney counterpart. The thing is, this was hardly the first time they'd given a character from a preexisting classic story the Adaptational Jerkass treatment. For example, in the original Beauty and the Beast fairy tale, the titular Beast was never a bad guy to begin with. He was shown to be a Nice Guy for the most part with only a few moments of being temperamental. In the animated movie, he starts the film off as a rude, selfish, and bad-tempered Jerkass before eventually learning to love and subsequently developing into a more lovable Jerk with a Heart of Gold. People didn't have a problem with this particular instance since the Beast still proved largely likeable after sufficient character development and showed an acceptable number of signs of his better nature underneath the newly created rougher edges. It also helped that the movie showed how much the curse tormented him, meaning audiences could feel sorry for him even when he was at his worst. But when Peter Pan and Wendy made Peter Pan much more needlessly cruel and unlikable in comparison to his counterparts in previous adaptations and the original source material with very little (if any) redeeming Hidden Depths, people started finding it more than a little difficult to root for him or care about what happened to him.
- Similarly, Peter Pan was also featured in a far crueler light in 2022's Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers just the year before, depicting him as the villainous "Sweet Pete". Animated Actors aside, he was just as bad, if not worse, in that film for putting other fictional characters into his debt by playing off their addictions, kidnapping them when they couldn't pay up, and then turning them into horrific bootleg versions of themselves to star in knockoff movies for his own personal gain. Again, unlike Peter Pan and Wendy, audiences somewhat felt bad for him since this Peter had his career halted for the horrific crime of growing up and nobody wanting to help him (which was eerily similar to what actually happened to Peter Pan's original voice actor, Bobby Driscoll), and he was still highly entertaining despite the fact he was subjecting literal childhood icons to cruel fates. Fans were also far more forgiving of Sweet Pete than they were of the new Peter Pan because Sweet Pete was explicitly a villain, while the new Peter Pan was still played as the good guy despite his immaturity and cruel acts. Finally, the Chip 'n Dale movie was a raucous parody of animation in the mold of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in which characters not behaving like fans would expect them to was part of the entire joke.
- Wish (2023):
- The protagonist, Asha, drew some flack for apparently being defined by being dorky and strange, especially since her eccentricities tended to come off as more off-putting than endearing. But Asha was not the first quirky, socially awkward leading lady in a Disney film; she was just following in the footsteps of Rapunzel, Anna, Moana and Mirabel Madrigal. There were, however, factors that made these qualities more genuinely funny and enjoyable in the previous characters. Not only were they fresher and better executed, but there were also in-universe explanations as to why they were like that, or at least other qualities that helped prevent them from being too one-note. Rapunzel and Anna both had plot-relevant reasons to be the way they were, since Rapunzel was raised in isolation and Anna had a fairly secluded upbringing without many people her own age to interact with. Meanwhile, Moana and Mirabel both had other major personality traits beyond being weird and dorky; most notably the former's zest for adventure that made her an engaging protagonist and the latter's insecurities that made her sympathetic and (for some audience members) very relatable. Without these in-story justifications or other identifiable defining traits, Asha attracted many criticisms of coming off like a shallow, paint-by-numbers attempt at creating an adorkable character, with some critics saying that the type of protagonist she represents has worn out its welcome in Disney films.
- One major criticism of the movie is that "This is the Thanks I Get" sounds too upbeat for a Villain Song. But this has precedent in "Gaston" and "Shiny", both of which had similar sounds and were still well-received by critics and audiences alike. Part of the difference was that both songs had strong in-universe reasons to be the way they were. "Gaston" is mostly the townsfolk singing his praises to cheer him up after Belle rejects his marriage proposal, while "Shiny" works because Tamatoa is a pompous narcissist hyping his greatness and trying to convince Moana to see things his way. In addition, "Let It Go" actually started production as a more villainous song, but was changed to not be one because it was too upbeat, and the story would better suit what it was changed into becoming. In contrast, "This is the Thanks I Get" didn't match the tone of the situation; rather than underscoring how Magnifico feels betrayed and threatened, it comes off like he's not taking his own problems very seriously. Moreover, Gaston and Tamatoa both got to be more sinister musically, the former getting a much darker song where he manipulates the villagers into helping him try to kill his romantic rival, the latter transitioning to a more intimidating and malevolent set of verses hitting Maui where it hurts. In contrast, Magnifico never gets another chance to show off his villain chops musically; his first number is a song about protecting the wishes in the style of a romantic duet.
