Jim on Film: Bolt: Beginning of the Beginning
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�Disney animation is back!� That�s what the trailers for Bolt seemed to shout when they began running earlier this year. Inside me, I could feel a rumble of excitement as the cleverness of the plot and the richness of the characters bubbled forth with authenticity.

As pretty much everyone knows, what sets Bolt apart from the past few features from the newly dubbed Walt Disney Animation Studios (a sterile name compared to Walt Disney Feature Animation, in my mind) is the presence of John Lasseter. Okay, John Lasseter and a lot of sad recent history, which includes tragic massive cuts in animation staff and the rescue of the division from the clutches of well-intentioned however sadly misguided executives that used the same artistic geniuses that created The Lion King and Pocahontas to introduce the world to Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons.

A scene from Bolt
(c) Disney

But what is most exciting about the trailers for Bolt is the authentic Disney feel of the characters. It would have been tempting for Lasseter to mold Walt Disney Feature Animation into Pixar Feature Animation at Disney, but the characters of Bolt feel uniquely Disney. Seeing these original and clever characters reminds one of seeing the characters of The Little Mermaid and The Rescuers Down Under for the first time, that zap of excitement that says, �This could be fun.�

When I saw Home of the Range, I couldn�t help but ask a question presented within the film, �Will the sun ever shine again?� In the bonus features of the invaluable documentary Dream On Silly Dreamer, the artists tell vividly of the hostile environment within the animation studio as non-artist executives began to panic in the face of growing box office for CGI animation and stagnant box office for Disney�s traditional animation.

Perhaps the most damaging effect of the panic was the unwise dismantling of the visual development department and the encroachment of non-artist executives into the storytelling process. If you take the visual development out of the process of developing a visual medium, then replace storytelling experts with accountants who have aspirations, you wind up with, well, with Chicken Little.

By the time Dream On Silly Dreamer was filmed in 2002, the visual development department had essentially been dismantled and the story department was operating like an engine badly in need of a tune up, and by Home on the Range, the movies were starting to show it.