The Great Disney Debate!

[I Started A Cult]

I would honestly like to hear your opinion on Disney as a whole.
Here's mine:
In the early days, Disney used to be a really good company, I have always liked their old films, both for their animation and the moral values they preached. But at some point along the way, they took the wrong fork in the road. Nowadays, they try to push all their live action shows, with bad music and even worse moral values, (e.g. that every adult out there is just another Big Person) and overly sexualized characters (I don't think Selena is even a high-schooler) with a unique ability to live anything down. (if I were them, I'd have fired Hannah the instant she started posing nude) But there is still hope. The bulk of their animated productions (with the exception of their kid shows, especially Little Einsteins, which I have a genuine problem against) are the kind of thing I wish they'd keep pulling off, sweet, breathtaking, profound, goofy, and smart.
However, I have heard that they never even paid the voice actors of their old films...
What's your take on the matter?

 

[LightningTopaz]

Most of their animated stuff is very well done, and up until recently, their live stuff was too--but their live stuff is currently hit-and-miss.

For instance, I liked Flubber and the live 101 Dalmatians, but was annoyed by High School Musical (the songs just felt boring and there were too many of them)

 

[hurristat]

I never really liked Disney... one, because Walt supported the Nazis (although not as much as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh did), and because he also had a field day during McCarthy Red Scare accusing his colleagues.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

That's one person though. You can't take that out on the whole company, especially since he died decades ago.

I just want to know why they decided to drop 2-D animation the second CGI came along. They basically said that Princess and the Frog was their last 2-D film, which sucks. CGI isn't better, it's just different. You're supposed to AUGMENT, not replace entirely!

 

[Usagi-Zakura]

I love the old Disney Movies.
I hate every other show that runs on Disney Channel.
I ESPECIALLY hate Disney Channel Original movies (and their shows by extension)

Old Disney films are awesome. They have beautiful animation (you don't need CGI...honestly. Leave it to Pixar, they're funny, and frankly it feels more like their thing.. I thought Chicken Little was a Pixar-film before I actually saw it...) and beautiful music. (Hannah Montana is "okay" at best... but most of these so-called "stars" get their popularity because they've got a show on Disney Channel.. I doubt Miley's CDs would sell half as good if she DIDN'T have that stupid show).

Another thing I love about Disney movies is the dubbing. Being an anime-fan I'm used to seeing 4Kids and Saban's dubs of animes running in Norway, which were badly dubbed in English and often even worse in Norwegian... With many Disney Movies there are times I can barely tell the difference between the original VAs and the Norwegian ones, sure they're not just the same, but check out the multilingual-reel of the Lion King for one, it plays Hakuna Matata in several different languages and sometimes its hard for me to tell when the voices change.

Now they're having contests for letting fans voice some of their characters... what the...

 

[Hitomi]

I do not like how Disney portrays history. (This would encompass not only Disney films but Disney's theme parks as well.) Pocahontas has to be one of the worst animated movies ever.

However, for entertainment value, I really love Disney/Pixar movies (minus Finding Nemo, which I found to be one of the most annoying movies ever) more than classic Disney. I know this sounds odd, but I don't care for most classic Disney movies, with the exception of Sleeping Beauty and The Lion King.

Live-action Disney is the bane of humanity, however.

 

[Nicoleta01]

I prefer older Disney movies, like Snow White or even Lion King, as they feel better movie-wise IMO, can't quite explain it.

I stopped watching the Disney Channel years ago when they started adding shows like That's So Raven or even Suite Life (Both of which annoy me). The only show I'll watch on Disney now is Phineas and Ferb, which while not the best show, it's a 100x better than Hannah Montana.

I also didn't like Disney acquiring Pixar, or the Muppets or Marvel (Up for voting on the 31st, not quite a done deal just yet). Overall, Disney has been producing fewer high-quality movies for several years. >.<

 

[Heidi]

I'm more or less a classic Disney fan, some Disney/Pixar movies are good, but most of them aren't very appealing. For example, UP! To me, it seemed like an idea that was pulled out of a hat, no real thought into it. Throw in some cheeky moments, sad moments and the demise of a evil villian and apparently you have a blockbuster. But I just didn't like it. Not to say Disney Classic is perfect either, I still can't see how Beauty and the Beast became popular as well, everyone has their preferences.


Then we come to Disney Channel. I personally think it's an abomination, but there are many reasons for and against that.
1) We grew up, we're not liking the stuff we would have liked when we were kids. We're maturing and Disney has realized that they need to target a younger audience now, instead of us.
2)The quality of the shows have decreased. Eg: Hannah Montana. It's a girl emphasising how great of a life she has, while saying that she's just an ordinary girl at the same time. It's clearly contradictory and crap, to be blunt.
3. The child-stars they are churning out. There are a couple that are okay (Demi Lovato, Ashley Tisdale [For Ashley, to a degree]), but most of them have no talent whatsoever and are being fueled by either their looks or their daddies. The old child-stars have either died out or gone on to better things (Shia LaBeouf) and are being replaced by slutty and dimwitted 'role models'.


And also to touch on what Blackjack said, they're replacing good ol' 2D animation with CGI. CGI is great, but as he said, it's just a different style. They shouldn't kill it off just because there is a new style, people will greatly miss it. Nostalgic experiences will perish.

My two cents.

 

[Umbreon Freak]

Disney should really stick with what they're really good at, animation. I think everyone has had enough of the live-action crap.

 

[Heidi]

Disney should really stick with what they're really good at, animation. I think everyone has had enough of the live-action crap.

Everyone but the pre-pubescent children who love Disney.

 

[Ino-Chan]

Burn everything but the 2-D animation, Jack Skellington (I think his movie wasn't 2-D) and the little children programs.

 

[Heidi]

Burn everything but the 2-D animation, Jack Skellington (I think his movie wasn't 2-D) and the little children programs.

I believe The Nightmare before Christmas was clay animation, I'm probably wrong.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

No you're right, it was stop motion.

As far as messing up history, Disney's not alone in that. Look at all the "great" paintings that show Biblical scenes with Middle Ages trappings, for instance.

 

[Steven]

I do not like how Disney portrays history. (This would encompass not only Disney films but Disney's theme parks as well.) Pocahontas has to be one of the worst animated movies ever.

However, for entertainment value, I really love Disney/Pixar movies (minus Finding Nemo, which I found to be one of the most annoying movies ever) more than classic Disney. I know this sounds odd, but I don't care for most classic Disney movies, with the exception of Sleeping Beauty and The Lion King.

Live-action Disney is the bane of humanity, however.

This, except that I do like Finding Nemo. =(

Everyone but the pre-pubescent children who love Disney.

It isn't like most pre-pubescents can form their own jusifiable opinions, anyway.

 

[Heidi]

It isn't like most pre-pubescents can form their own jusifiable opinions, anyway.

Correct, but they can form the idea of somethings thats 'cool'.

 

[bell02+]

^^^ Yeah, Nightmare before Christmas was a Claymation.

There is a lot of Misconceptions about Disney (from what I've read, mainly on other forums)... My personal feelings towards it is that it is silly to truly hate a company. I do like Disney, but I don't like everything they've done (so to speak), yet I understand them.

Also, maybe it is just me, but I don't consider "The Lion King" as an old Disney movie (maybe it's just my age), but I consider it like a second wave movie. To me, old Disney movies are movies that Walt Disney actually worked on and was Alive when it released. That said, I don't particularly like as many old movies as I use too, now when I watch those movies I become over-analytical and have a hard time enjoying old fashioned messages with things like Snow White needing to be rescued or Cinderella wanting to be a princess. (Not that those are the best examples as that wasn't the main moral message they were selling in each of those movies, only as an example of what was considered acceptable in old film and animation I tend to not look as favorably towards anymore.) I just tend to like those films for the historical and nostalgic/classic reasons, than the actual content.

Then there are just old movies I just don't like because I don't like them. Like Sleeping Beauty, I hated that movie even though I liked the way it was drawn because I felt the story left a little to be desired, and also because the idea that they had the prince go to slay the dragon for the sake of it being a dragon. (Growing up I was a fan of dragons, and the mentality was that they are all bad, but as a kid I thought it is just stereotyping dragons as bad when they don't have to be, for example) I also wasn't a fan of the Black Cauldron, I just didn't like that movie. As for a more later film I didn't like, I am not a fan of Monsters Inc., the idea was novel at best for me, but I just wasn't a fan of the story, so when up came out I kind of expected a let down at some point. Don't get me wrong, I recognize that they are great, critically acclaimed movies, but I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I could (mainly because of the second half of Up felt more anticlimactic or at least when in a direction that held hands with the audience a bit more).

I also don't participate in the 2D vs 3D debate, because to me it sounds too much like Live Action vs Animation debate that was more prevalent before 3D become popular. To me they are just both different mediums where one isn't superior to the other. I'm rather surprised any implications that Princess and the Frog would be the last Animated movie, it seemed to me that they implied the opposite with simply having it and all the talk up they made to hand-drawn animation. Also, the only Disney studios 3D films I liked was Bolt, although Meet the Robinsons and Dinosaur were enjoyable.

Also, it should be mentioned that Disney has been doing 3D for a long time, featured in films like the Lion King and even the Little Mermaid if I remember right. (Not even to count Pixar's stuff in the 80s) They also basically did the first full Length 3D movie with Toy Story like they did the first full length animated movie with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To be fair, 3D didn't even become mainstream until Dreamworks started making more Animated movies (because the Pixar movies were spread so far apart) Disney just seems to always be the Pioneer in Animation making it hard for me to believe any Animation fan can hate them.

The thing that I admit I don't like, is not something I fault at Disney, it is just an aspect of culture and society that I've always despised and that is the idea of idolizing celebrities.

No offense to people that aren't there yet, but it's just hard for me to imagine being a teenager is fun even with all that money if you have people looking for you to slip up 24hours a day 7 days a week. It just sounds like a horrible life! I think parents just put too much of an unrealistic idea on these people, which then invests too much of those feelings into their kids that it is okay to put all of their trust in them that they can live their lives as them 100% (which in turn, I believe doesn't make them more moral, just more impressionable to not making their own decisions). Not to mention the unneeded stress it adds to the celebrity.

Parents should be teaching kids morals, not Television idols; that just what I think anyways (That kids need to realize that if they want to avoid bad influences they'll be dodging people all their lives, but if they learn to make their own positive decisions they won't have to be worried about doing "bad" things).

As for the Disney Channel itself, I like the idea, but I strongly dislike the direction it is going in. To blame that on Disney, however, isn't fair as Nickelodeon started it. Disney Channel started out as basically a 24 hour network to show Disney and Children's movies, and that was great because back then there was no cartoon network and sometimes you didn't want to watch Nickelodeon because not everyone loved every program at the time (Because they were really the only kid's channels). Then they started to put their old Saturday morning cartoons on it, and then later their original programs to compete better with Nick and really that was a success and when I consider them to become a real channel. Reason being is at that time, Children Shows had just moved past trying to be child shows of popular adult programs and started to move into an area of making programs "good" trying to push censor boundaries and creating more complex plots. However, sometime after Disney seemed to see that parents were just demanding more moral celebrities, and that they could just create cheaper shows by pumping out celebs and attaching cheap shows and music to hook the kids to where the parents would stick them to watching it. After that success, every other channel started to do it starting with Nickelodeon and continuing with Cartoon Network, and that is just something that I don't like... but I respect because it is efficient, "what kids want", and makes them tons of money. So that much is hard to argue, but so far, Disney has shown that they will cater to what ever people want and are open to change, and even more recently, show that they, unlike other companies, still value their more niche fans with 2D animated movie Princess and the Frog, hands off accusations of Studios like Marvel, Pixar, and Ghibli, and the recent acquisition of Naruto Shippuden. (Basically saving Anime from being almost completely cast off of TV) Just to me, it seems childish to hate Disney (for reasons of things like Hannah Montana or Zack and Cody), as right now they seem to be at least putting an effort to maintain some of their former greatness even though the money tells them not to bother.

*I think I should also mention that I see Disney and all the companies they own as Disney.

------

Also, I forgot about the political stuff. Yeah, Disney does put the wool over people's eyes on their stories one way or another, wither it is removing and changing parts in history like Pocahontas or blatant rip-off (or homage) of Kimba the White Lion in Lion King... but they are kid's movies. None of the Disney movies are particular accurate portrayals of the original stories anyways. It's basically the only way they can put those stories for kids. I don't want to be so dismissal of rip-off accusations, even though people would say "That's just Disney using the old once tolerated dirty tactics", I still think Disney should acknowledge Kimba in the Lion King and say it was inspired by it, but I do like everything that movie had done.

As for the Hitler Accusations, I hear that, and I believe that (even though I've never got the chance to see any confirmations), but at the same time they had Anti-Nazi propaganda cartoons as well, and played a heavy role in that, and all of those cartoons (from every studio) are horribly offensive and socially embarrassing. WWII was a time when everyone was looking really ugly, to tell you the truth.

 

[zel]

my opinion on disney:
give me my fantasia and gtfo ಠ_ಠ

i like their old animated stuff like the jungle book & the lion king & whatnot. but that's about it. none of that live action shit has ever or will ever be good. and their 3D animated stuff isn't too hot either. shoulda kept it 2D IMHO

 

[Falconwing]

Disney's old animated movies with the great songs and messages about the circle of life and all that stuff that we grew up with and now as teenagers have AMV's of Avatar with those songs... were all really good. And even now I still think Disney is going strong and making some good films. Say what you will about HSM, but I'd kill to have a school like that... where the biggest problem was divas. And I'd get to sing a lot.

 

[ferrari-kun187]

I have to say, their old films are awesome, some new (1990s-2000s) animations are pretty good (with a few exceptionally bad ones), and Non-Pixar assisted CGI films sucked (especially Meet the Robinsons). Some of their live actions are pretty good (also contains exceptions, ie: not too much of a fan for Hanna Montanna. Seems too girlish for me and not too much a fan for country rock.) . The Suite Life of Zach and Cody isn't that bad...well, a majority of the episodes at least. Disney world is quite fun actually. Ever since my family went there, we pretty much abandoned Disney land XD.

Overall, Disney is still keeping some of it's cool. They still need work on their animations and CGI.

 

[Miya902]

"Disney channel took the magic out of Disney" Quote, some stamp on DA I saw. Thats all I have to say. x3