Jim On Film
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Problem One: Watering Down the Market
When Disney first entered into the realm of DVD, it created its Gold Collection, a collection marked by a mad year of releasing its animated titles to a special DVD edition that would include special features along with the higher quality DVD experience. As always, it released its classic animated features (known as the canon--its now forty-two full-length animated features) along with some of its films that blended live-action and animation, such as Pete’s Dragon and Mary Poppins. However, for the first time, Disney began classifying its cheap direct-to-video titles with its animated greats. The lines between the impressive Pinocchio and Fantasia became blurred with kids’ fare like Pocahontas 2 and Mickey’s Magical Christmas. Furthermore, with the flood of direct-to-video titles, the emphasis on experiencing the Disney films in the theater got lost among the push to have them on all video.

A word on these cheaply-made sequels. The stress on these videos is making a profit, and parents buy these videos sight unseen; quality is not important. As evidence of this, Toy Story 2 was originally intended as a direct-to-video sequel. Disney executives saw the film in production and realized how great it was. The film was lengthened and released to theaters, and of course, the rest is box office history. But this all happened because the film actually turned out to be good, as evidenced by the raving reviews the film earned, many proclaiming it to be better than the original.

Just this past year, Disney released the Peter Pan sequel Return to Never Land (produced by the television animation department) to theaters and has plans to release The Jungle Book 2 to theaters in 2003 (in addition to Piglet’s Big Movie, both animated by the television animation department). Reviews were hardly glowing for the poorly animated Return to Never Land and Internet buzz on The Jungle Book 2 is mediocre at best; they are hardly comparable to Toy Story 2 in warranting a theatrical release. Return to Never Land and The Tigger Movie both made modest but respectful box office grosses, and The Jungle Book 2 and Piglet’s Big Movie are sure to as well, but the question investors must ask is at the risk of what? What is the true cost of making and releasing these features?

The existence of these film are a result of the work of the Feature Animation department. Had the love and care had not been poured into Peter Pan, its sequel would not exist. Furthermore, in fifty years, when the original Peter Pan will still be making loads of money for the studio, Return to Never Land will still be seen as a cheap sequel that doesn’t live up to the original. The new characters in these films are not viable properties for the studio and never will be. The same love and care that went into the original films isn’t there.

If these films are allowed to water down the success of traditional animated films today, which in turn could bring a close to the creation of new films, Disney will have nothing to build on for the future.

In other words, just as nobody today really knows or cares about many of the most successful films of 1959, when Disney releases its 1959 flop Sleeping Beauty to video for the third time and to DVD for the first time in 2003, it will become a best-selling title, earning millions of dollars for the studio. Just as this happened for Sleeping Beauty, in thirty years, when Die Another Day is on the discount shelves at Walmart, Treasure Planet will receive its fourth reissue to the latest home viewing format in a collector’s edition. After having been almost unanimously praised by future critics as a Disney classic worthy of the name and regarded as a film that was under-rated at the time of its release, it will become one of the top-selling titles of the year, and kids will run to the store to buy Jim Hawkins action figures and Morph plush. At least, this is what history has shown us with other Disney "flops" and "critical pans."

Despite its final box office gross, as history has proven, Treasure Planet will still be a valuable asset to the studio in fifty years. Just as past Disney mega-flops--including Fantasia, Bambi, and Sleeping Beauty have proven--these films stand the test of time. The money made by a Disney animated film in its original release is a pittance compared to the financial role it plays in the future of the studio. The easy money made by these cheap sequels now may very well threaten the future of the real, long-term money-maker for the studio, quality traditional animation. The brand Walt Disney began in 1928 with the first Mickey Mouse cartoon will be destroyed.

Problem Two: Flooding the Marketplace
With so many films about human characters who sing songs released in the 1990s, some have suggested that Disney may have made their films look too much alike (despite key difference between all of them), which could have been another key factor in the drop of box office revenue.

Now, Disney is poised to run computer animation into the same problems. All of Disney and Pixar’s films have done very well. Since Toy Story was released in 1995, only three Disney and Pixar titles have hit the theaters. People can’t get enough of these films because they literally can’t get enough--they aren’t populating the marketplace . . . yet.

First of all, Disney is perched to make the same mistake in that most of it’s Pixar films. are all buddy films. Finding Nemo, to be released in 2003, looks to be, from previews, a buddy film. This is after the release of Shrek and Ice Age which were, essentially, buddy films. Now, Disney has set many of its traditional animators to focus on even more computer-generated animation. Eventually, audiences will feel that they are getting the same thing no matter how original or different these films really are.

As Disney gets caught up in the whirlwind of fallacious analyst reports that praise computer animation and decry quality traditional animation, it may come at the cost of traditionally animated features. This is not to say that, with the potential end of the partnership between Disney and Pixar, they should not be pursuing computer animated stories; however, to bank solely on it is unwise planning. With DreamWorks, Fox, Big Idea, Nickelodeon, and soon the independent Pixar to be populating the release calendar with computer animation, the market for such films is set to take a dive like every other trend.

To not develop traditional animation (particularly as other studios abandon it, leaving a need in the market in the future) is a bad decision which would likely have severe and uncalculatable financial ramifications for the studio for generations. Even during its most financially lean times, traditional animation has proven to be a cash cow for the studio for sixty-five years.