Jim on Film: Will the Sun Ever Shine Again?
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Will the Sun Ever Shine Again?

“What if the rain keeps fallin’?
What if the sky stays gray?�?
            —“Will the Sun Ever Shine Again�?
           from Home on the Range

It’s amazing the difference a day makes. Not too long ago, I was pondering the fate of Walt Disney Feature Animation. As I have written before, my love affair with Walt Disney Feature Animation began in 1988 with the release of Oliver & Company, a film heavily promoted in my Sears Christmas Catalog. I can still see the blue page preceding the toy section with the familiar promotional image of the dogs standing before a backdrop of New York City, the copy proclaiming Disney’s 28th full-length animated feature. The majority of my few theater-going experiences as a child were to see some of Disney’s best-known classics—Pinocchio, Cinderella, Peter Pan, One-Hundred-and-One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, and The Jungle Book—and in seeing this ad, I remembered having seen a special on television about the process of animation (which I later learned was a re-broadcast of the Hayley Mills hosted Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life) as well as another special about the significance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In my young brain, I was excited about being of the first generation to see a fantastic new Disney movie. Since that time, I have anxiously awaited the arrival of movies like Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Mulan. When I discovered the Internet, I gobbled up whatever insider information I could get as Tarzan and other films moved through the phases of production. As word circulated that things inside the most magical place on earth were not altogether healthy under the aegis of a myriad of MBAs, I still held hope as great films like The Emperor’s New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and Lilo and Stitch hit theatres and had me returning again and again to experience them on the canvas for which they were painted, the big screen.

But as traditional animation was phased out, my interest was too, particularly when the studio’s first solo computer-generated effort didn’t excite me. Of course, I’ve praised that film’s animation before, but I came to see the whole problem—while I love traditional animation, the art doesn’t matter if everything else is stifled. Brother Bear is, in my estimation, an awesome movie, but that probably has more to do with the storytelling rather than beautiful, hand-drawn animation. It quickly became apparent that the end of traditional animation was not the only malignancy threatening the studio. As a result of these two problems, as of a week ago, I could literally not have told you anything concrete about the future films of Walt Disney Feature Animation except that one was called Rapunzel and was directed by Glen Keane, in whom I had the faith to rescue it from the Shrek III direction word was that it was going. To me, this disinterest was a stark shift because until recently, there has not been a time since 1992 that I didn’t know what future movies were being released and when.

When I heard that Disney was purchasing Pixar and that John Lasseter was now heading Walt Disney Feature Animation, I felt hope. I couldn’t read enough about it on the Internet—commentary, insider response, people’s hopes, and what exactly the plan was. For the first time in awhile, I felt excited about something Disney other than having Dick Cook and Nina Jacobson at the studio. I became excited that some guy named Ed Catmull was involved and that Steve Jobs was there with a sense of artistic direction and that this guy Bob Iger wasn’t Michael Eisner all over again after all, that he may have actually gotten it, this elusive ingredient in Hollywood, vision.