The Walt Disney Animated Canon

Black Lead

I was watching Lady and The Trampin a friends house he had got allot of old Disney Videos from a friend for his kids and after watching it I felt like digging out some of my old Disney films to watch for the first time in ages.

I was at that age when Disney where still re-releasing films in cinema before that finally started releasing films on VHS in early 90s and the first i can really remember was The Great Mouse Detective and for the next decade they produced some great films such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast, The Lion King but somewhere in the late 90s the Disney films started going downhill in quaility and Pixar and Dreamworks rose up pushing Disney into the number 3 position in my eyes when it come to animated films and yes I know Pixar is owned/related to Disney but i tend to view them as seperate and i think DreamWorks is connected to Disney aswell but not sure how. Another problem with the Disney films in the past decade is the amount of straight to video sequels, midquels/sidequels prequel cash-ins of films in the animated canon.

John Lasseter i think is a key person these days sacked by Disney for wanting to do something new ended up producing all the Pixer film now he is back at Disney and this year Disney returned to form with Bolt the best Disney since ... I dunno Hunchback of Notre Dame, Meet the Robinsons was great but felt like to me belonged to the Pixar canon rather than Disney canon and next year The Princess and The Frog will be returning to a traditional 2D-animated style with the people behind The Little Mermaid working on it it feels like its going to be a great film.

You can see the Walt Disney Animated Canon here http://www.disneyanimation.com/aboutus/history.html 48 alltogether but the the package films of the 40's, the Winnie the Pooh film and the above mentioned Meet the Robinsons don't seem to fit the canon so I personally trim the Canon down to 40.

For me the canon had 3 great eras the late 30s to early 40s, 50s and the late 80s to mid 90s and I don't want to list my best and worst because I'll be here all night making up a Top 40 and I'm not sure what the point of my thread is but what memories/opinions do you have of The Walt Disney Animated Canon ?

Ridley

Didn't realise Rescuers Down Under was made that late. These days it would be a straight to DVD film away from the Classic brand.

Judging by that list I jumped off just before the wave of CGI started up, and liked them all between 1950 and 1999. Even though they follow the same template. I think They should have got behind more 'traditional' 2D because:

1/ The CG ones Disney have made of that list have been meh to horrible. Such as Chicken Little's 81 minute soundtrack advert.
2/ At least someone in the west would still be making them and not assuming the style is dead because Shrek was/is popular.

Roar

50s disney would be my favourite - cinderella, alice in wonderland, sleeping beauty, peter pan, lady and tramp.. all amazing, wonderful films

alice is my all time favourite disney movie, i love the colours (it's so dark in places, with the colours almost taking on the appearance of neon as a result), the songs, great characters and it's so fantastically surreal. magic stuff.

Ruu_Old

I've started watching all the Disney stuff since visiting the parks in Florida. List of films, I am working my way from the bottom up (up to Ugly Dachshund on the list). I like Sword in the Stone from the 1960s.

Dman001

The Rescuers and The Fox and The Hound are very under-rated but excellent Disney films.

Disney should leave their CGI films to Pixar (which always end up been fantastic films) while Disney should concentrate on 2D, traditional animated films.

Mikey23

Watched Pinocchio for the first time last night. Truly beautiful animation in places, really enjoyed it.

Their issuing, withdrawing & reissuing policy makes it difficult enough to put a collection together though - I missed out on the Fantasia Anthology, which is going for an extortionate amount on eBay these days.

Ann22

I love the old fairy tale ones.... in particular 'Snow White', it's very dark and quite scary for young ones..brilliant. For humour 'Aladdin' and 'Finding Nemo' are great.

ashyle

It can be hard to find classic Disney films on dvd, I think they only rerelease them every so often?
I recently rewatched Pocahontas and it takes on a whole new perspective when you're older, I was taken aback by just how romantic and sad it is!
Aladdin is one of my all time favourite movies, it just cracks me up. I have the Aristocats which is so good, the animation and the music... I love Mulan and Toy Story and The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast too. Ooh I get so excited talking about Disney

Looking at the list, they made a lot of crap in the 80s, barring Little Mermaid and Fox and the Hound. The 50s to early 60s are great, the real girlie ones like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Alice, Peter Pan, Dalmatians. Ha, Song of the South, looking back it's so racist. Zipidedooda...

I think Disney should stick to 2D films. I remember reading somewhere that kids don't actually like the look of 3D-computerised images at all!
Although I saw the new film 'Up' when I was in the states, I recommend it, it made me cry...

Sleazus

Mikey23 wrote: »

Their issuing, withdrawing & reissuing policy makes it difficult enough to put a collection together though - I missed out on the Fantasia Anthology, which is going for an extortionate amount on eBay these days.

A-men to that. Also the way that the videos end up being inconsistently packaged when they are let out.

Although you're in luck with Fantasia - along with (I believe) Beauty and the Beast, it will be making is Blu-Ray early debut next year. I can't wait to get hold of it (having never seen Fantasia 2000.