Open the vault
Nov. 26th, 2019 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI've been taking advantage of D+, and my recent reading of "Disney War", to watch a whole bunch of Disney animated films that are more interesting for their production history than as movies themselves (and some that I'd always meant to watch and somehow missed):
Black Cauldron - Wow, okay, Jeffrey Katzenberg is an ass, but he was not wrong about this film. It is unintelligible and yet overly adult gibberish. I mean, the animation is beautiful, but the movie is awful. I say this as someone who ADORED the Prydain Chronicles. This movie is so bad it made me go reread some of Book of Three to reassure myself that the books were not equally bad.
The Great Mouse Detective - I'd never seen this one before, and it doesn't have much to offer an adult viewer. Except to ponder why they thought an opening where a little girl hiding in a cupboard, witnessing a violent abduction of her father, then running through the ruins shouting, "Father? Father?" before the Disney logo played was appropriate for children. Also, surprise racism!
Treasure Planet - What a boring film. Easily one of the worst adaptations of the source material. Decent performance by David Hyde Pierce, but completed outweighed by one of Martin Short's most annoying characters. Also the mesh of CGI and traditional animation has not aged well.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire - I enjoyed this one, but it's pretty forgettable. Wide array of side characters with great voice performances, but it is ultimately, like Stargate before it, about a nerdy white guy who just happens to know more about an indigenous culture than the members of that culture. Oh, yes, please tell me more about how the white guy is the only one with the secret knowledge to read the sacred texts. That story never gets old.
Also, this and the last movie couldn't make it clearer that Disney in this period didn't give a crap about little girls and was actively courting little boys. From the house that gave me Mulan, it's pretty depressing to see them make a corporate decision that, since they already have girls watching, they don't need to pander to them with uplifting feminist role models anymore. No, instead, what they need is to produce soulless action films. And when that didn't work, to just buy the IP with the boy audience built in.
Lilo and Stitch - AMAZING. Holy crap. As good as everyone says--I don't know why I didn't watch it before. I'm definitely watching it again. It's easily one of Disney's best.
Black Cauldron - Wow, okay, Jeffrey Katzenberg is an ass, but he was not wrong about this film. It is unintelligible and yet overly adult gibberish. I mean, the animation is beautiful, but the movie is awful. I say this as someone who ADORED the Prydain Chronicles. This movie is so bad it made me go reread some of Book of Three to reassure myself that the books were not equally bad.
The Great Mouse Detective - I'd never seen this one before, and it doesn't have much to offer an adult viewer. Except to ponder why they thought an opening where a little girl hiding in a cupboard, witnessing a violent abduction of her father, then running through the ruins shouting, "Father? Father?" before the Disney logo played was appropriate for children. Also, surprise racism!
Treasure Planet - What a boring film. Easily one of the worst adaptations of the source material. Decent performance by David Hyde Pierce, but completed outweighed by one of Martin Short's most annoying characters. Also the mesh of CGI and traditional animation has not aged well.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire - I enjoyed this one, but it's pretty forgettable. Wide array of side characters with great voice performances, but it is ultimately, like Stargate before it, about a nerdy white guy who just happens to know more about an indigenous culture than the members of that culture. Oh, yes, please tell me more about how the white guy is the only one with the secret knowledge to read the sacred texts. That story never gets old.
Also, this and the last movie couldn't make it clearer that Disney in this period didn't give a crap about little girls and was actively courting little boys. From the house that gave me Mulan, it's pretty depressing to see them make a corporate decision that, since they already have girls watching, they don't need to pander to them with uplifting feminist role models anymore. No, instead, what they need is to produce soulless action films. And when that didn't work, to just buy the IP with the boy audience built in.
Lilo and Stitch - AMAZING. Holy crap. As good as everyone says--I don't know why I didn't watch it before. I'm definitely watching it again. It's easily one of Disney's best.