Why I don’t think Disney in any trouble

People believe that the Disney company is in a bit of trouble with several movies failing at the box office.    I don’t believe that and this post is going to explain why I think that is.   I’m not thrilled about their redos in the theme parks, but I still would like to visit the theme parks with a group of other Disney fans for personal reasons that I’m not going to get into.  But let’s get into the main topic of the post.

Some people think that Disney will go bankrupt due to failures at the box office during the opening week,  Strange World (2022) or The Marvels (currently out in theatres at the time of this writing; 2023) or Elemental (2023) but the last one recovered its money eventually.   I’m sitting there and thinking “so what if they’re a bit of a flop? They have been there before in history at least twice (maybe three times) and they survived basically unscathed at least.”   The making of Cinderella (1950) and the making of (depending on who you’re talking too) of Touchstone’s (who is a subsidiary of Disney company) Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) or The Little Mermaid (1989) is what made Disney get back on their feet after a slump due to reasons either inside or outside of Disney.

In the 1940s due to the World War II closing the overseas markets, so movies like Pinocchio (1940) Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942) couldn’t be released overseas and then, on top of that, Disney studios were hired by the USA’s Army to make propaganda films like a certain cartoon which is Donald Duck having a nightmare about serving the Nazi that people believe is banned.  So, because of their focus, mainly being that the North American market had to be content with what, is known as “package  films”, like: Saludos Amigos (1943) Three Caballeros (1945)  Make Mine Music (1946), Fun and Fancy Free (1947) Melody Time (1948) and  The Adventures of Mr. Toad and Ichabod Crane (1949),   Between the three things, there wasn’t a lot of money in the studio at that point. Disney Studios was going to go bankrupt. They were pinning their hopes on Cinderella being a success in the theatres to get them back on their feet.   And as they hoped, Cinderella (1950) actually was the last successful “Princess” film until 1989- Sleeping Beauty wasn’t successful at the box office for some reason, but that’s an entirely different story for another day).

After Walt Disney’s death in 1966, the company released The Jungle Book (1967) and then there was one last movie that Walt gave the green light to before he died- The Aristocats (1970).  But after that, the Disney company was floundering for awhile without him.  

 In the 1980s they tried to appeal to, I assume, the teen market with darker, more realistic films like  The Black Cauldron (1985) and the Great Mouse Detective (1986).  The Black Cauldron didn’t do so well at the box office due to the fact it got majorly messed up by a change in the management, so to speak, with Jeffery Katzenberg and Michael Eisner coming on board as part of the management team.  I have to admit I don’t know Katzenberg’s history pre-Disney,  but it seems to be that he  mostly worked with live-action films previously, so he didn’t understand how animation couldn’t be “as easily edited” as live-action films, so he fiddled around with the The Black Cauldron until I believe Michel Eisner talked to him.  And the company couldn’t go back to the “pre-edit” animation because of Katzenberg’s messing around, so the movie got released in the messy state it was in.  Which wasn’t good because the Disney company had been pinning its hopes on the movie to the point that they were even planning on making a restaurant in  a Disney park which was going to be named after the Gurgi character from the movie.  

During the making of The Fox and the Hound (1981), some middle-ground animators- people who came after the Nine Old Men animators  but before people like Tim Burton took over-like Don Bluth, quit working with Disney due to issues on the production and left the studios, which meant that young people like Burton who was starting out at the Disney company had to take over with making the movie.

Their next successful movie was either Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) by the Disney subsidiary of Touchstone Pictures or The Little Mermaid (1989). Both movies were successful at the box office -the latter is known for setting off the Disney Renaissance which lasted until 1999 with Tarzan (1999).  

Their last time the company had a series of flops or movies become popular later on was in the 2000s after the Tarzan (1999) movie. With movies like  Emperor’s New Groove (2000) Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) Lillo and Stich (2002) Treasure Planet (2002) Brother Bear (2003)  Home on the Range (2004)  Chicken Little (2005) Meet the Robinsons (2007) and Bolt (2008).  

Their first successful animated film in this time period was The Princess and the Frog (2009) even though not a lot of men or boys went to this movie, which meant they changed the name of the movie Rapunzel to Tangled (2010) for marketing purposes.  But that’s a different story for another day.

In conclusion, this is why I don’t believe Disney company will be going bankrupt anytime soon due to the fact, yes, they might be having flops at the moment, but they did it before and they still survived and they will do it again. They’re like the saying by Yoda. “Do or Do not, There is No Try”. They keep at it until something is successful. 

EXCITED FOR ONCE UPON A STUDIO short

I’m really excited about the very extensive Once Upon a Studio Short from the Walt Disney company. Unless you been living under a rock last Thursday the Disney company released a trailer for a Disney short that is airing on ABC for those of us who have ABC chanel in North America on Sunday October 15 or for those “across the pond” or those who don’t have ABC in front of the WISH movie in November

The trailer shows: Tinkerbell, Mickey&Minnie mouse, Bambi, Flower, Thumper, Rhino,Mittens,Bolt from Bolt, Peter Pan, Wendy, John Michael, Moana/Vaiana, Flounder, Jock, Trusty, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, Eyeore, Kanga, Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, Antinio having Pui, Meeko Pascal Crickcree (, and Cinderella’s bird friends , Aurora, Prince Philip, Hades, Cruella Devill, and one of 2 characters I didn’t actually know but I found out later is John Henry from one of the Disney Shorts,-Urslsa, Elsa, Anna, a mouse I didn’t recongize until of a character I didn’t recognize (Ben and Amos from “Ben and me” short), Phill, Louis between Ben and Amos and Luisa–Lusia holding the Cows from Home on the Range, and the mooses from Brother Bear, as well as what people believe is the horse that Icbhod rides in The Sleepy Hallow segement of 1949 package film, there’s Pacha and Kuczo, and behind Pacha you can make out a face that looks to be “We Don’t Talk About” Bruno, with Colonel Hathi and his Winifred, Drizella, Anastasia, Smee, Captian Hook and the Three Little Pigs- Fidler Pig, Fifer Pig, Pratical Pig, and to end of the short trailer was Goofy with his own Whilhem Scream fondly known as the “Goofy scream” being the accident prone goof that he is.

Beside the characters I named or referenced there’s going to be an total of 543 characters from over 85 different Disney movies and shorts going back to 1923 when brothers Walt and Roy O Disney started what we know now as of the Walt Disney Animation studio as the “Disney Brothes Studio”-that’s what the 100 years of Disney has been celebrating since January since the day after the short airs on ABC, is what I will call “Founder’s Day” for WDAS. And apperently after the group picture, the short will finish with a song and it will feature 54 voices. And there’s newely recording of Walt’s favourite song from Mary Poppins (Feed the Birds), being played exclusively, by the surving Sherman Brother who is 94 years old.

Another reason to be exicted is the fact not only are actors who originated the characters in Disney movies in the last 33 years are coming back to reprise their roles (Jodi Benson, Page O’Hara, Nathan Lane, Josh Gad, Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel) but Disney company is using archival recordings for Peter Pan (Bobbie Discroll), Winnie the Pooh (Sterling Hollway), Flora (Vera Felton) and others (Cliff Edwards) and they got permisson from the Williams’ estate to use unused recording of Robin Willaims as The Genie.

The characters’ will be drawn with new animation in the same kind of format that WDS used to create the the characters orginally -so ink and cell characters drawn that way, and characters like from 99 puppies (And maybe others characters) from 101 Dalmatians-being “drawn” in a Xerox kind of style, and CGI and computer animated characters from more recently flicks

One of the characters said to make an apperence in the short is Gugi from the 1980s The Black Cauldron so that this is the first time (17 years) that the Disney company has made any accknowledgement of that movie (which was a disaster) since Toyko Disneyland removed a hidden attraction that was all in Japanese called “Cinderella Mystery Tour” even though the only character from The Black Cauldron to appear in that attraction was the Horned King.

So that’s my take on the upcoming short and that everyone including myself is excited about. What are you thoughts about the short trailer which I embeded above?

Cinderella rant

I do get really annoyed by people saying that Cinderella should stand up for herself with her step-family. She did once in the 1950 movie- asking to go to the ball* since she was still a member of the family and “all maidens are required to attend” and she got a lot of trouble for it. That Lady Tremaine made her do a lot of chores (mend button holes, press one of the step-sister’s skirts, doing something about someone’s slippers and before Cinderella begins her regular chores, Lady Tremaine had extra chores for her to do) including the stuff she’s holding in the scene right before the two mice friends get Drizella’s bead necklace or Anastasia’s Pink sash in order to “spice up” Cinderella’s mother’s old dress. The extra chores that step-family give her led to the scene of :

Lady Treamine: “Yes?”

Cinderella: “The carriage is here”

Lady Treamine “Oh Why, Cinderella, you’re not ready child,”

Cinderella: “I’m not going”

Lady Tremaine: “Not going? Oh what a shame, but there will be other times..”
Cinderella “Yes goodnight”

Now we got that out of the way.. I was thinking of ways of how the step-family could punish her for standing up to her more. Of course I thought of them possibly kicking Cinderella out of the house. At best, she could get a paid job at another chateau, or even as a paid maid of all work at the local shops. At worse, she would have to do a Fantine from Les Miserables.

Something else I thought of was the step-family denying her food but that came with a bit of a hitch. How could they make sure Cinderella didn’t eat when she’s the one who cooks the food? The only thing I could think of is that someone (Lady Tremaine?) having to sit around in the kitchen to make sure Cinderella didn’t eat anything. I can’t imagine Lady Tremaine or Drizella sitting around the chateau’s kitchen making sure Cinderella isn’t eating anything On a related note for the 2015 live-action movie exactly whom was cooking the food if Cinderella was locked in the attic for several days it seems?

End of my rant

*I just want to point out in at least Perrault’s Cinderella- it took about a week if not several weeks for the step-family to get ready for the ball. There were two balls in the Perrault’s version.

I have these two ideas for a fairytale story but don’t know which one to do or combine the two ideas

One have a version of Cinderella where Cinderella has either full blood sisters, or half-sisters who are just as evil as well as the step family. Also instead of a pumpkin and turning it into a coach. I could use a watermelon (or a squash) and turn it into a limo.

My other idea is somehow try to make all the European Princess stories connected together (but it means a lot of disasters would need to happen). Someone curses princess &prince A (now King and Queen A) that it will be many years before their descants will be happy since something terrible would happen (and no its not SB).

 

DISNEY DID NOT KILL OFF MOMS IN THEIR MOVIES!

I have always heard a rumor about Walt Disney. It has been said that the reason that most of the Disney movies do not show the mother, is because after the success of Sleeping Beauty, Walt Disney purchased his mother a house. The furnace at some point exploded and killed his mother, and he always blamed himself. Is this true, or just another work of fiction?His mother’s death may have been the most shattering moment of Walt Disney’s life. Though he seldom exhibited emotion outside the studio, he was inconsolable — a misery deepened no doubt by the fact that she had died in the new home Walt had given her, and by the culpability of his own workmen. (A report on the furnace ordered by Roy determined that the “installation of the furnace showed either a complete lack of knowledge of the requirements of the furnace or a flagrant disregard of these conditions if they were known.”) In the following months [Walt and Roy] regularly visited their mother’s grave site, but Walt never spoke of her death to anyone thereafter. When, years later, [One of Walt’s (adopted) daughter] Sharon asked him where her grandparents were buried, Walt snapped, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I am so sick of hearing the “Urban Legend” that Disney killed off the moms in the movies because Walt felt responsible for his own mom’s death.  First of all, the motherless pattern was well established BEFORE the death of Flora, his mom, who died in 1938  with Snow White already out and Bambi and Pinocchio the making.  Most of the stories available for Walt Disney and his company to adapted had parentless children except in some  cases for a stepmother (Snow White, Cinderella) or an animal subsiute (Tarzan and Jungle Book). In the time  the fairy tales were first told, children were mostly motherless since they (the moms) usually died of childbirth/illness  I mean whats the point of a coming-of-age-story if the REAL  mom was actually there? There WOULD be no story.

Peter Pan‘s Lost Boys AREN’T orphans just because they “don’t remember”  their moms doesn’t mean they are orphans.  Since according to the real Peter Pan the Lost Boys fell out of their prams and when no one claimed them  they were sent off to Neverland.  As for Peter Pan himself? He ran away from home. You guys remember Mary Poppins? How often did Jane and Michel see their parents? Only for a short time in the morning and night. The rest of the time they’re with a Nanny. Oh and according to Peter Pan Wendy, John and Michael Darling did start forgetting their parents.. but in the first place..like I said before..if you grew up only seeing your parents and spending time with only employed help (Katie Nanny) you probably wouldn’t remember your parents either.

In the original J.M. Barrie  Peter Pan, Mr. and Mrs. Darling adopts them–the “lost boys”. Techinally the whole plot of Peter Pan (which was actually  called oringally Peter Pan and Wendy)  is about moms in the first place.

 

 

Alice in  Wonderland: Alice doesn’t HAVE A STEP-MOM-where in the world do people get that idea? She has a SISTER who’s the only other character seen at the start/ending of the movie/book!!! But in the books I think she has mom (but who isn’t seen–if I remember correctly all of the animals in Wonderland (after the tear sequence) is suppose to represent people who were on the outing and one was the REAL Alice’ mom.

Sword in the Stone (spoiler) the so-called FATHER, Sir  Ector, in this movie is a FOSTER father, NOT his birth-father.  Merlin took Arthur as a baby to Sir Ector’s place. So not related. (Arthur’s REAL dad is the king who died).

Dumbo  HIS mom DOES NOT DIE!!! She is alive at the END of the movie.

Chronicles of Narnia: The kids DO have a mother. She’s right there at the beginning of the silly movie!!! But like Peter Pan the action takes place away from home.

The Lion King: Simba has a mother WHO DOES NOT DIE–Sarbi. We see Sarbi in 3-4  sequences: opening, “Your son wants you” sequence,  the “bath” sequence,  and when Scar calls her.

Sleeping Beauty–Auroa DOES have a mother but she grows up in a household of what she believes are AUNTS but in reality are fairies.

Cinderella–well it depends on what version your read (the Egyptian story the Cinderella character was an orphan and didn’t even have a step-mom/sisters but instead fellow slaves who taunted her because she was “fair-skin” slave from Greece). Another version has a step-mom but the dad is too enchanted by her that he doesn’t noticed how his daughter is being treated.

In short I think people have way too much time on there hands for both this and the racism and any goofs in such movies.

In connection with the above topic think about how many superheros been orphaned?

Superman

Batman

Spider-man (2x)

Lets take a look at some other non-fairytales:

Wizard of Oz (orphan, raised by extend family)

Oliver Twist (orphan until meets his grandpa) and other Charles Dickens novels except for Nicholas Nickerby

STAR WARS (main characters orphans)

A Series Of Unfortunate Events (main characters-orphans+many others)

Lord of the Rings

and how could we forgot this series?:

HARRY POTTER!!

Could you imagine  ANY of these stories with a mom?

OK take Ron’s mom in the 7th book constantly breathing down the trio’s necks until the wedding got crashed. That’s what all these stories would be like which would equal=no story.

Since if a mom was there for Belle,  she would have gone with the dad and the dad would have never gotten lost. If Ariel had a mom she probably wouldn’t be forbidden to go to the surface (guessing) . There would be no CINDERELLA since she gets her name from doing  jobs and sleeping beside the Cinders of  the fireplace, if her mom was there (or father in the gender-reversed version). Nor would there be Snow White if the mom was living.  Not to mention that all 3 of these people would have to have an arranged marriage if the parent(s) were still living.

There would be no PETER PAN if he had stayed with his family (and maybe no Lost Boys either?).Dorthy would never have been blown away by a Tornado if she been living with parents (guessing-we don’t know where her parents live originally). Superman would still be living on Krypton   if his parents were alive hence no “A bird, no a plane, its SUPERMAN!!!” Spider man’s aunt&uncle wouldn’t have been killed  if he had been living with his parents. If Oliver even HAD a mom 1) he wouldn’t have run away and fall into the Fagin’s/the Artful Doger’s gang. and 3) nothing would have ever been done with the Poor Law and the “poor houses” of the 1800s. There would be no Jungle Book or Tarzan if the Mowgli&Tarzan’s parents had lived.

Tom Canty in the verisons  of the Prince and the Pauper (I read/heard–((Wishbone)) .) he isn’t an orphan. Edward is a half-orphan though. His mom died when he was just a day old.]

Would you rather have you kids watch Cinderella’s step-sisters cutting off parts of their feet to fool the prince and then later get blinded by Cinderella’s bird friends?  Watch Snow White’s step-mother fail TWICE in trying to make her (Snow White) dead or watch the step-mother dance around in hot-iron shoes till (the Queen)’dead? (Just be glad in Disney’s version that Snow White is 14-in the original she’s seven).  Would you rather  watch Pinocchio hanged (at the end)  and Jimmy Cricket squashed within first 10 mins of the movie?  Lion King since its based on Hamlet, would you want everyone to die in that movie?

If you have a big deal about it . Go make a time machine and go talk to the authors of the fairytales (who just adapted it from their homeland(s). Than if you surive those times without getting married again. Come back in 20 years.