The Continued Falling and Rising of Disney
The Downhill Slog (in that it is difficult and boring to get through)
In 1994, two months before the release of The Lion King, Frank Wells died in a helicopter accident, leaving the position of president open. Jeffrey Katzenberg lobbied for the position but tensions between him, Eisner and Disney led to Katzenberg being forced to leave the company. He went on to found Dreamworks SKG, together with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen.
Either coincidentally or as a result, after Katzenberg left the studio, the films being produced presented a trend of diminishing returns. While the films after 1994 were still commercial successes, critics started to notice that the Disney films being produced were becoming increasing formulaic, with Hercules generally considered the weakest of all the films. (Mulan and Tarzan were generally considered a return to form by critics).
After the release of Tarzan was a series of films that evidently tried to stray from the Disney formula, but still underperformed for wildly different reasons.
1999
2000
2000
2001
The Start of Darkness
By 2001, the failure of The Emperor’s New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire and the success of CGI films such as Pixar’s Monsters Inc. and Dreamworks’ Shrek led to the growing perception among executives and the public that hand-drawn animation was becoming outdated and falling out of fashion. In March 2002, just after the successful release of Blue Sky Studios' computer-animated feature Ice Age, Disney laid off most of the employees at the Feature Animation studio in Burbank, downsizing it to one unit and beginning plans to move into fully computer animated films. This lowered morale amongst the animators, to a point not seen since the decline of Disney in 1985.
CGI makes Disney cry :(
Meanwhile, at the Feature Animation Florida studio, animated feature films were still being produced at a lower cost. Lilo & Stitch was produced here and upon its release in 2002, it became the studio’s first bonafide hit since Tarzan.
2002
My personal theory is that Chris Sanders surgically removed the likeability of the future movies and injected it into this film. It's the only way to explain why the next few films suck so much.
Back at the Burbanks studio, production on Treasure Planet and Home on the Range continued. Treasure Planet was released in 2002 and ended up a box office disappointment. Brother Bear, produced by the Florida studio, released in 2003 and also did not perform well, critically or commercially, leading to the closing down of the Florida studio. The release of Home on the Range in 2004 and its subsequent failure was the final nail in the coffin for traditional animation. After its release, Disney officially announced its conversion of Walt Disney Feature Animation into a fully CGI and began selling off all of its traditional animation equipment.
2002
2003
2004
We have reached the darkest hour, people.
In the meantime, in order to make up for losses in the film department, Disney started focusing on merchandising of their existing good films, in lieu of putting effort into making new good films. This is what led to the creation of the Disney princess line so Disney could sell dolls, dresses and other accessories to girls by attaching the names of their popular female characters to the products. The Disney princesses became a huge cash cow for the company, rasing sales at Disney Consumer Products from $300 million in 2001 to $3 billion in 2006.
I hope you enjoyed watching these ladies growing up, parents of little girls everywhere, because they will be burning a hole through your wallet soon enough.
It also led to the much reviled direct-to-video sequels of the more popular Disney movies. These sequels, known derisively by Disney fans as “cheapquels”, were produced by Disney Television Animation unit and are by and far considered to be the worst films ever put out by Disney. They were made with small budgets and often were simply rehashing the original films they were based on, as well as usually missing the point of the originals. Most insultingly, starting with the 2002 Peter Pan sequel, Return to Never Land, they were released in theatres rather than direct-to-video. It was these cheapquels that cemented Disney’s evolution from a friendly, fun and creative studio to a soulless, cash-grabbing corporation.
Remember The Fox and The Hound, that tragic, thought-provoking story about two friends torn apart by the inexorable forces of society? Yeah, it has a sequel, where the two main characters join a band. And that's it.
Why was this made?
WHY WERE ANY OF THESE MADE?
Just after Brother Bear 's release, Roy E. Disney resigned from The Walt Disney Company, launching with business partner Stanley Gold a second external "SaveDisney" campaign similar to the one that had forced Ron Miller out in 1984, this time to force out Michael Eisner. Two of their arguing points against Eisner included his handling of Feature Animation and the souring of the studio's relationship with Pixar due to tensions between Eisner and Steve Jobs, then-CEO of Pixar. In January 2004, talks between Michael Eisner and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs over renewal terms for the highly lucrative Pixar-Disney distribution deal finally broke down.
Do note at this point Pixar films were the only way Disney's film department is making any real cash, so Eisner was being a real dumbass
Not long after, Disney released Chicken Little in 2005, their first fully computer-animated film. Although it performed fairly well at the box office, critically, it performed worse than the previous films.
2005
Disney's first CGI movie done without Pixar, and trust me, it shows.
Like I said, CGI makes Disney cry
Later that year, after two years of Roy E. Disney's "SaveDisney" campaign, Michael Eisner announced that he would resign and named Bob Iger, then president of The Walt Disney Company, his successor as chairman and CEO.
Brought into power and ousted from it by the same campaign.
And that, kids, is the textbook definition of irony
Under Iger’s reign, talks with Pixar reopened and in January 2006, Disney announced that it would be acquiring Pixar for $7.4 billion. As part of the acquisition, Pixar executives Edwin Catmull and John Lasseter assumed control of Walt Disney Feature Animation as President and Chief Creative Officer, respectively.
All hail Disney's new lords and saviors!
(Seriously, John Lasseter is my hero)
The Second Disney Renaissance (i.e. the 2nd good part)
While Disney executives had originally discussed closing Feature Animation as redundant, Catmull and Lasseter refused and instead resolved to try to turn things around at the studio. Lasseter and Catmull set about rebuilding the morale of the Feature Animation staff, and rehired a number of its 1980s "new guard" generation of star animators who had left the studio, such as Ron Clemens, Eric Goldberg, Bruce W. Smith, and Chris Buck.
Catmull and Lasseter also brought to Disney the Pixar model of a "filmmaker-driven studio" as opposed to an "executive-driven studio". They abolished the previous system of requiring film directors to respond to “mandatory” notes from higher-ups in favour of a system where fellow producers, directors and writers would give feedback. Also, they removed many layers of bureaucracy between the filmmakers and the executives, and Lasseter established a routine of personally meeting weekly with filmmakers on all projects in the last year of production and delivering feedback on the spot.
"And he wants the filmmakers to be in charge of making the film, not the executives!"
"Next thing you know, he'll want us to treat them like friends!"
Finally, Lasseter renamed Walt Disney Feature Animation to Walt Disney Animation Studios, and re-positioned the studio as an animation house that produced both traditional and computer-animated projects.
So that's how we got here
The first film released after Lasseter took over was Meet the Robinsons. Having been in production since 2004, it was the last remenant of the dark ages before Lasseter, being neither commercially nor critically successful. The next film was Bolt, which was originally American Dog and directed by Chris Sanders. However, Lasseter interverned in the production, replacing Sanders with Bryon Howard and Chris Williams, who retooled the film. The final product had the best critical reception of any Disney film since Lilo & Stitch and was a moderate financial success.
2007
2008
Baby steps back to the top
All subsequent films were all critically acclaimed as well as financially successful with the exception of The Princess and The Frog, which did not bomb but still did not meet expectations, and Winnie the Pooh, which had an underwhelming box office. Coincidentally or not, both these films were traditionally animated.
2009
2012
2010
2013
2011
2014
And we're back to being awesome
The most recent three Disney princess movies all come from the Second Disney Renassiance. While the princesses of the first Disney Renassiance were influenced by Second Wave Feminism (or rather, its backlash), these princesses are influenced by Third Wave Feminism of the 1990s and 2000s. Third Wave Feminism has less concrete goals and ideals than the first two waves, but the main point is on gender roles and stereotypes. As such, the princesses of this generation are more like fully-fleshed out characters than the princesses of the past. While the Disney renaissance princesses were active protagonists, they had no character arc, meaning they did not grow as people. The current generation of princesses are not only active protagonists, they have clearly shown character arcs, indicating that their gender has no bearing on their role in the story, so they can by proactive and grow as a person, just like the males.
To sum up this glorious mess, a brief recap video
(it only shows up to Tangled though)