Jim on Film
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Like a Stone

For many, many years, the Disney Company kept their classic animated features in a special category unto themselves. In their video releases, for example, the films with the “classics�? and “masterpiece�? labels were either from the animated canon, such as Dumbo, Cinderella, and The Jungle Book, or featured animation from the Feature Animation department, like So Dear to My Heart and Mary Poppins. As new animated features were released to theatres, the trailers would showcase the best of the studio’s animated films before getting to the newest addition to the canon, a sign to the audience that this newest film was continuing the great legacy of animated entertainment. The advertisements would further encourage this connection by adding phrases like “Walt Disney’s 27th animated feature, Oliver & Company.�? This sort of phrasing would also appear on the back of the studio’s video releases. This categorization was apparent in other places as well. A good example of this was in the video chain Suncoast Pictures. On several occasions, Disney would have lists posted of all the studio’s animated features from Walt Disney Feature Animation to guide shoppers in getting the entire collection. During this time, Disney made the point of letting us know that these films were special.

Even when the studio released its first animated feature from the television animation department, Duck Tales: The Movie—Treasure of the Lost Lamp, the studio released it under a MovieToons title to help separate the costume jewelry from the studio’s crown jewels. There was no mistaking that Duck Tales was meant to be fun but not to be compared with Beauty and the Beast.

It was with the studio’s Gold Collection DVD releases where the lines were not only blurred but erased, whited-out, and written over. When this happened (and since) not only were classics like Alice in Wonderland, Pocahontas, and Mulan put on the same plane as cheapquels, but they were also mixed in with Disney’s collaborations with other studios, such as Pixar.

Then, Disney began releasing feature film versions of their animated television series. Movie versions of Doug, Recess, and Teacher’s Pet all reached theatres. After the moderate box office grosses of these films proved tempting, the studio then began to release television-quality animation to the big screen with classic feature characters in films such as The Tigger Movie, Return to Neverland, and The Jungle Book 2. Right now, this blurring of the lines have been helpful in increasing the sales for cheapquels and television animated features; however, Disney needs to stop and evaluate the destructive consequences of an audience that buys based on a pre-existing trust that is slowly eroding.

Since that time, many others have written about the danger the cheapqels pose to quality feature animation at Disney. In short, not only are these films made on the cheap and feature sub-par animation, storytelling, artistry, and music, but they have also blurred the lines to the extreme that most people, when deciding which movie to see, can’t tell the difference between an artistic achievement like Treasure Planet and the kiddie fare of Return to Neverland. In a review in Newsweek, one reviewer actually thought the monstrosity named Teacher’s Pet: The Movie was part of the studio’s rich animation legacy, in the same boat as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, and Tarzan. Furthermore, with Feature Animation characters appearing in television-esque animation on the silver screen with Feature Animation advertising, it’s no wonder the average viewer didn’t run to see Brother Bear. After all, if I loved The Little Mermaid as a kid and, as an adult, bought The Little Mermaid 2 without realizing the difference between a film masterpiece and a quick-buck rip-off, I wouldn’t have “wasted my money and life�? on seeing Brother Bear either.

It’s important for the studio to stop dumping the output of Walt Disney Feature Animation into the same stew pot as everything else. Over the past few years, the studio has seen a steep decline in the box office revenue of films from its Feature Animation department. As I’ve written about in many articles, there are many different reasons for this, from poor marketing (The Emperor’s New Groove and Treasure Planet) to bad release placement (Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet). No doubt, these cheapquels, theatrical cheapquels, and television shows masquerading as features are also doing their damage.

And what’s that damage? Personnel at Walt Disney Feature Animation have been drastically cut. Many of our favorite artists who created our favorite films and characters are no longer animating. Animation masters like Kirk Wise, Eric Goldberg, Ken Duncan, and many others have voluntarily left the studio. Home on the Range, for now, was the last of the beloved theatrical Feature Animation-quality traditionally animated features. People like Andreas Deja are hard at work on cheapqels instead of developing exciting new projects with exciting new characters. And now, the studio has continued to tighten its belt by requiring that all animated features have developed scripts before being allowed to go into production, a step that ignores the crucial step and role of involving story artists and those who can tell visual stories in a visual manner. This isn’t just extremist ranting anymore; it is a problem that is taking its toll.

Furthermore, Disney animation fans are slowly losing sight of the difference between Walt Disney Feature Animation and the cheapquels. There were die-hard animation fans who were complaining that the Mickey Mouse Three Musketeers movie was only being released to video and DVD, as if it was a good thing for sub-par animation to compete with the likes of Home on the Range and The Incredibles on the big screen. Even now, there are those advocating a theatrical release for the Bambi sequel. These films are the gallons of water being added to Walt Disney Feature Animation’s stew pot. What, one decade ago, most animation fans were decrying as an abomination of the animation art form is now slowly getting a welcome. If that’s the case, we might as well start writing the rest of the Pinocchio trilogy and forget about Feature Animation.