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Five Disney animated canon films will be destroyed and you can choose, which five do you pick?
Inspired by the post asking which five animated canon Disney films to save, now it's time for the opposite: what five animated canon Disney films will you condemn to the void? Only films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios count for this question, which means that all the direct-to-video sequels are not contenders. I think this question will still be a bit easier to answer though.
Can I destroy the “live action” lion king? It’s technically animated. I watched it in theaters with my family. The best they could say was that it wasn’t terrible, but I can’t agree. I was looking out for the new Beyoncé song and, after the movie, I couldn’t even remember where it was in the story. It’s like everyone forgot the basic rules of writing a musical.
Edit: okay, I’ll make an actual answer. I guess I can’t delete the Lion King remake. But if there is any flex in the rules I will spend all 5 deletions on the remake.
Let’s first delete Ralph Breaks the Internet. It’s just a bad movie. Nothing else to say here. Terrible follow up to a fantastic movie.
Next let’s remove Meet the Robinsons. Is not a bad movie, but it’s pretty forgettable.
Now let’s drop The Black Cauldron. I haven’t seen it, but it sounds pretty bad.
Here is where it gets pretty tough. There isn’t anything I feel great about nixing. I’ll go with Tarzan. I just don’t feel very strongly about it.
Now I just don’t know what to do. I love the idea of Frozen 2 just because of the third one coming out. But I think I’ll go for Big Hero 6. Is a good movie, but I think I would be okay if I never saw it again.
They should have doubled-down on the "nature documentary" angle, jettisoned all the musical sequences, and really made it play out like an episode of Planet Earth but with talking animals.
I watched the movie after I’ve been to South Africa that same year and have been to safaris.
And I really enjoyed the movie since I felt like I was back there
The Beyoncé song wasn’t notable because it wasn’t actually part of the story. It played in the background while Simba was running somewhere, IIRC.
Yep. If I remember right, it was when Simba was traveling back to pride rock. I actually had to find a clip of the song on YouTube to convince myself it existed after I got out of the movie. Not part of the story and zero emotional weight.
Meet the Robinsons felt like the entire movie was made for that one t-rex / corner gag.
Yeah it does. Honestly I had no idea it was Disney. I guess I assumed it was some other studio.
My own picks:
Also I will forever mourn the magical star boy from the concept art, the fact they cut that for a dumb star mascot just shows how far Disney's standards have fallen on the executive levelI was floored by Frozen 2. I watched it with my kids with 0 expectations and a few parts of the soundtrack made me cry more than once. I mean the story et al are kinda ok, not superb, but whoever made that music is some sort of a manipulative genius. It's in my top 3 of Disney cartoons and I think Frozen 1 is the unneeded prequel to it.
We were on a Disney Cruise this fall and the cruise director was giving the overview of what movies were playing. He said "Wish is playing, and you should go see it if you haven't, and judging by the ticket sales, you haven't". Got a huge laugh from the crowd. And no, we didn't go see it.
Well the first thing I thought of was Song of the South, because it's notorious and I think a lot of people, including Disney themselves, want it removed from the public consciousness. It is partly live action and partly animated but I think it would go on your list because it was produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios.
The only part of the movie I've ever seen is the "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" song because it was on one of the Disney Sing Along video tapes. Also that song won an Academy Award so it's kind of famous. And it was used on the Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland.
Frozen 2, Chicken Little, Wish, Fantasia 2000, and Ralph Breaks the Internet. The villain in Home on the Range is too good to erase that movie forever, and Fantasia 2000 just lacked the class of the original and was too focused on cameos and lackluster musical sequences.
Oh man, I loved Fantasia 2000 as a kid. It played a critical role in me developing a taste for classical music and jazz. I can definitely see how it doesn't hold up to the original though. It's a shame Disney no longer has an appetite for these kinds of projects anymore.
Can I save the Firebird segment at the very end? The rest, I agree, disappointing. But man, I loved that part. The fact that it was recognizably Mt. St. Helens is pretty cool, too.
The chaotic neutral in me wants to see what happens if you got rid of Disney's early films. If none of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, or Cinderella existed, would Disney even exist in any recognizable form in the present day?
Those are big ones, but I'm sure they'd pilfer other fairy tales instead. Ultimately it's their storyboarding and animation that won them their popularity, not the original stories. You'd need to really pull the foundation from under them and delete Mickey, Donald, and other consistent Disney characters. Those are the ones paying dividends for them.
For similar chaotic curiosity reasons I'd go with:
Fantasia
Make Mine Music
Wreck-It Ralph
Frozen
Moana
Black Cauldron? You monster, Gurgi only wanted some munchings and crunchings!
Lloyd Alexander, author of the Chronicles of Prydain, said it better than I:
I'd like more Chronicles of Prydain adaptations, though not from modern Disney. It would make for a great series and game.
Edit: source for the rest of the interview!
There are so many things I love about the way that movie was made. But by all means, the end result was a mess. The film had a lot of technical innovation, and I think was actually the first Disney animated film to use CGI (not counting Tron, which is practically an animated film with how much they use painted-on effects). The film is a landmark in Western animation that go alongside The Thief and the Cobbler as must-see examples of the medium.
Yea wtf man, that movie was metal.
I would wipe out:
Bambi
Sleeping Beauty
Brother Bear
Lady & The Tramp
Tarzan
Bambi left too many children emotionally scarred
Sleeping Beauty was lacklustre and lacked any depth to any of the characters.
Brother Bear - I've never watched it but I can't think of a single thing about the theme or characters that is appealing.
Lady & The Tramp was horrendously stereotypical and racist/classist.
Tarzan always felt undercooked and rushed. Collin's music had to do some heavy lifting here, better to put the old boy down and out of it's misery.
The Brother Bear home video release has a commentary track by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as their McKenzie-brothers-inspired characters from the movie. I don't remember anything else about Brother Bear but that special feature alone makes it worth preserving IMO.
anything after 2000 can go.
So Atlantis, Lilo and Stitch, The Emperor's New Groove, Treasure Planet, and The Princess and the Frog, among others? There are a few great gems, though I do get the sentiment. I think it's around the mid-2000s that Disney films started losing their heart, particularly with the shift to 3D computer animation.
I know a lot of people who are completely enamored about Treasure Planet, but I can’t stand it. It’s the ugliest film Disney has ever made. The designs look great as stills, but in motion, especially with terrible 2000s CG in the forefront, just make a lot of things look like they are wet animated kidneys and bladders and other internal organs. It actually makes me more nauseated than most gore films.
I agree with @tomf that there is a manufactured feeling to the rest of them, but I enjoy them nonetheless. But I will single out The Princess and the Frog and maybe a few other Disney films as being carried largely by their soundtracks. I’m not saying the rest of it is no good; that’s not true by any means. I just think they would not have become so popular without them. Frozen without Let it Go would have just been let go.
all gone for me :) they all feel too manufactured… if that makes sense.
"Manufactured" is the best word I've heard yet for how a lot of recent movies feel to me. The ones I named feel less like that, but the rest? Definitely just feel hollow and lacking something.
A comment I saw on a song from Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio keeps coming to mind. That film had a soul and heart, and a lot of films these days just don't. And Disney is one of the prime examples of that, because their older stuff definitely had a heart. It makes the absence even more notable compared to other studios' works.
It drives me nuts. I think Disney plays it extremely safe, ensuring their films can be viewed in every country without any complaints.
I loved his Pinocchio. He's got such a knack for capturing dream-like spaces.
Not sure if we're including Pixar in the list of stuff to burn, but I want to save all of those.
Not just Disney, a lot of studios are doing that these days. They're trying to appeal to as many demographics as possible, they feel like... a collection of elements, rather than a cohesive singular story. I can just feel executives getting involved and muddying up the original vision to become some mass-produced spectacle, until it loses the original voice. And that's assuming it had a voice and vision to begin with, feels like a lot of newer children's films are really just "what will appeal to kids?" than telling a good story.
His Pinocchio was one of the first films I'd seen with an actual, genuine heart in a long time. I honestly don't even like the Pinocchio story for some reason, but that film still left me in awe. He wanted to tell that story and had no one to stop him or force him to change elements, and the result was spectacular.
Also, Pixar is safe from the purge. They don't count as part of the Disney animated canon.
We're definitely in the minority of seeing his Pinocchio (weird thing to say...) --- but yeah, the few I know who did get to experience it have the same response as us. It's a shame it doesn't get more love.
Some of the crap kids will watch is insane. When I had a young kid, we mostly watched Pingu and George Shrinks, which I think I liked more than him.
If you want a recent animated movie with heart go watch The Wild Robot. It's absolutely beautiful and better than anything Disney has made in years.
The first two are the exact same story, and it wasn't good either time. Shallow and boring.
The Little Mermaid 2 introduced one of the most annoying characters ever conceived in Ariel's daughter, Melody.
Pinocchio is just...I don't like puppets and I don't like the story.
Peter Pan is just gross. Nothing about the story is appealing to me.