Most people tend to pin the movie that started the "Disney Renaissance" that dominated the 1990's as starting with 1989's Little Mermaid. Do you agree with this? Do you think it started earlier (ie, with Oliver and Company or Great Mouse Detective?) Or do you not start it until later? How do you feel the Disney movies of the early 90's hold up? Were they part of your childhood? If so, are you able to view them without nostalgia goggles? How do the most recent Disney movies hold up to these Classics of 25 years ago or so?
I'd say GMD was the real start, but Oliver and Company really wasn't that good, so it's tough to say. Mermaid was definitely the big hit that reallly put Disney back on the map though.
All the early 90's movies are beloved classics that still hold up, but I think I might be biased since I was really young when they came out. But I still think even if I were an adult in the early 90's I'd still love them.
I always forget that Rescuers Down Under came after The Little Mermaid and is technically part of the renaissance. Down Under to me feels more like a forgotten gem than a classic.
Mermaid was great, Rescuers Down Under is beautiful but usually forgotten for some reason, Beauty and the Beast is fantastic, Aladdin is my personal favorite and will always be a classic, while Lion King is over-rated but still decent.
Stream on as part of a marathon through the history of Disney. Tonight is Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Little Mermaid, and Rescuers Down Under. Shorts on now, first movie in a few minutes. live stream dot com slash oakshappyfuntime
By far the best movies ever made. Even the current movies are decent, but will never catch the magic that movies liek Mermaid, Beast, and Aladdin did.
>>80967623
Roger Rabbit now starting.
Little Mermaid and all those other Renaissance movies still hold up I think. I still get amazed at how beautiful they look. I think in terms of visual they're still better than the current movies like Frozen and Zootopia, but the newer movies are probably better in terms of story.
>>80967444
>but usually forgotten for some reason
It was an obvious cash grab at the Aus fever of the 80s and 90s with little real heart put into it beyond good animation.
>>80968290
>talking shit about Marahute
Bitch fight me
>>80968290
>Aus fever
This was a thing? I never heard of it. And I don't know, I would say the breathtaking animation is proof enough that a lot of heart was put into it. Was it just not marketed as much as Mermaid and BATB?
>>80968960
Olivia Newton John obsession
Mad Max
That shitty movie about solar-powered race cars
Rescuers down under
Crocodile Dundee
The Crocodile Hunter
Fern Gully
To name a few things.
>>80967008
Oliver and Company wasn't that good. The Great Mouse Detective was like Meet the Robinsons and Bolt: better than what they had been coming out with before, but not on the level of Little Mermaid/Princess and the Frog.
>>80967623
>>80967623
Credits rolling for Roger Rabbit. Little Mermaid starting soon.
Oliver and Company wasn't great, but I still loved it.
Little Mermaid is a true classic, and a real step up in animation quality even from like Great Mouse Detective. Also I'd say Howard Ashman and Alan Menken are who really pusehd Disney into the Renaissance. It's just not a Renaissance movie without Menken.
The Lion King and Mulan will always top my Disney lists
The Disney Renaissance was a lie made to sell VHS tapes. Those movies were made by committees and focus groups. It happened after Don Bluth blew his chance at letting creative people be in charge of animation by trying to be 1000 times more autistic than Walt ever was. We still live in the medieval times of animation.
>>80968960
The Simpsons reference it when they go to Australia
How should I organize my Disney, /co/? Alphabetical, chronological, disney/pixar/live action?
>>80969716
Also I have WFRR on a different shelf, should I add it to my Disneys or no?
Little Mermaid's now on the credits. Rescuers Down Under starting in a few minutes.
>>80972296
>The Disney Renaissance was a lie made to sell VHS tapes
You're thinking of the Disney Vault
>>80972505
I like having it ordered chronologically with the sections separated as Disney Animation Studios/Pixar/Everything Else
>>80973222
Tell me all about this Disney Vault, because as a kid it concerned me.
>>80973290
It was a modernization of the old format of re-releases. Before VHS tapes were a thing, Disney re-released Disney movies in theaters every 7 years or so to reach a new generation and get more money. When VHS hings became a thing, they kept to only releasing them every few years, on VHS instead of in theaters, and in a limited amoutn to increase demand. Then they'd go back in the Vault, so that if you don't buy it RIGHT NOW, you'll have to wait another 7 years or so to buy it again.
>>80973235
Looks pretty damn good. Got room left for Zootopia and that Little Mermaid 2/3 I've been eyeing
I'm probably in the ultra-minority here, but I liked some of the post-renaissance movies made from 2000-2003. They were underrated, IMO. I mean come on, there was literally nothing wrong with Emperor's new groove, or Lilo and Stitch, or even Treasure Planet. Also, they were still making movies of their 90s shows (Recess, Teacher's Pet)
Sadly, around 2006-2009, Disney started focusing less on animation and more on teenybopper shit like Jonas Brothers, Hannah montana, etc.
I rewatched Little Mermaid recently, and it holds up. However, the visuals do make the film an outlier from the other Menken musicals, because it seemed like they reserved much of the complicated angles and coloring/shading for select sequences, namely Part of Your World. Down Under's use of the CAPS system really indicates that this is a new period, even if the movie itself isn't as memorable or marketable.
>>80972505
Chronological is the only way.
![walt-disney-screencaps-princess-aurora-prince-phillip-walt-disney-characters-31869594-2560-1005[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/7y78Puj.jpg "walt-disney-screencaps-princess-aurora-prince-phillip-walt-disney-characters-31869594-2560-1005[1].jpg")
>>80967008
I spent the past year watching an assortment of Disney feature films, alternating between a Renaissance movie and one from some other period (either Golden Age, Post-Renaissance or Revival), with the Renaissance ones in chronological order. Made for an interesting way of viewing them, getting to see side-by-side the differences between time periods. Most of them I either hadn't seen, or simply don't remember since I was too young (the only ones I vividly remembered were Fantasia, Aladdin and Lion King).
There seemed to be different priorities in general depending on the decade in terms of the content. The first, pre-WW2 movies seemed to focus on pushing the envelope with animation. Stuff like Snow White and Fantasia are an absolute treat to the eyes, and in my opinion stand above every movie made after WW2, in terms of animation. The 50s were kind of generic in comparison, probably the worst decade for sameface as far as the human designs go, but the animation was still fantastic. Then, starting with Sleeping Beauty and through to Walt's death, things were stylistically interesting, especially the backgrounds. I haven't started any of the so-called 'Dark Age' stuff yet, so I can't comment on it.
The biggest thing, in my opinion, that can be attributed to the success and continued appeal of the Renaissance movies is the music. Music was always a huge part of Disney animation, what with the Silly Symphonies and everything. It was almost always used as a companion to the animation, and the ones with words more often than not were just the characters singing about whatever activity they were doing at the time. However, starting with Little Mermaid, the music was used to express the intent of characters, like in the case of villain songs, which weren't a thing until Little Mermaid. Songs also helped to flesh out the stories further, which also had a bit more meat to them than those of the Golden Age.
>>80967008
I have never seen The Little Mermaid, the Beauty and The Beast, Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians, and who knows what other films.
>>80977166
It helped that they started off the Renaissance by getting a literal musical lyricist on board for the first two and a half movies, and from those successes, they kept up with that formula and were able to get people like Elton John and Phil Collins doing the music.
They also started a for better or for worse trend in Aladdin by having Robin Williams in it, which led to shoehorning a celebrity into the movies. In that case it was fantastic, as well as stuff like James Woods and Danny DeVito in Hercules, but it also brought on some of the worst aspects in some movies, like Eddie Murphy in Mulan or Jason Alexander in Hunchback.
One key thing that all the movies have to them as well is either primarily human casts (aside from Lion King), especially as far as main characters go, as well as very human stories and humanized characters (which Lion King does have). In retrospect, I think that's an important part of their success.
The Renaissance started to end with Fantasia 2000, which was of course not a human story driven by song like the previous 90s movies, but instead an animated companion to music. Dinosaur continued in the opposite direction as the Renaissance formula. The final nail in the coffin, so to speak, was when Kingdom of the Sun, which was to be a return to that formula, was scrapped and became The Emperor's New Groove. Not that it was a bad movie, but it was primarily a comedy, unlike every other Disney movie before it, and comedy alone can't really compare to the spectacle that the other movies had created.
>>80975338
Holy shit dawg, I'm jelous
