Un-Disney Movies

[Sotiris]

Are there any films from the animated canon you consider "un-Disney"? I'm not asking whether you like them or not but whether you think that either based on concept, subject matter, visuals, tone, or overall execution do not fit with the rest of the canon or don't correspond to your idea of what a Disney movie is/should be.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I haven't seen it yet, but Something Wicked This Way Comes doesn't sound like your typical Disney movie. A product of Ron Miller's attempt to redefine what the studio could make.

[Disney's Divinity]

I don't really think Disney has much of an identity these days, really. They're mostly the same as PIXAR only with more female characters and, on occasion, musical numbers. Big Hero 6 and Wreck-It Ralph especially don't feel Disney at all to me. Zootopia feels like a PIXAR film, too, but less so than those two in large part because Judy definitely fits with Disney.

Chicken Little is another one, when Disney was trying to be Dreamworks; Lilo & Stitch did a nice balance of appearing like a Dreamworks film in advertisements while being a pure Disney film in actuality. Bolt's somewhere inbetween those two. It doesn't quite feel like a Disney film, but it isn't full-blown Dreamworks humor either.

Even before the PIXAR takeover, there were quite a few films that didn't fit neatly with the brand. Pocahontas, Hunchback, The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Dinosaur. Even Hercules feels a little like an outlier because of the design, humor, mythological aspect, etc., even if it has many other things that suit Disney (a protagonist with an impossible dream, a great villain, an "I Want" song, etc.). Although Disney has other quirky movies--like OH&OD, for example--so Hercules doesn't feel too out there for Disney.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

For some strange reason I overlooked the fact that the question was about the animated canon. In that case, I will say that Meet the Robinsons didn't feel like a traditional Disney movie for me. Or The Emperor's New Groove. A squirrel can suddenly pull a balloon and a needle out of thin air? That's something I remember from the old Looney Tunes cartoons.

[thedisneyspirit]

The Nightmare Before Christmas. It's one of my favorites, but it feels so different from anything else Disney made around the time, or even today. No current celebrities as voice actors, no pop culture jokes, more simple writing, different type of songs...It just feels like one of those made for TV Halloween specials from the 80s than a Disney film.

[WarriorDreamer]

(Not seen it but from previews in my opinion) The Rescuers feels a little different. And Hunchback is more serious than usual.

Some of the other CG movies mentioned like Bolt I agree with too.

[Disney Duster]

I actually agree a lot with Disney's Divinity! But the whole violent alien thing and a bad alien experiment turning good, plus, just weird aspects of Lilo & Stitch really feel un-Disney to me. I still accept it as a Disney film, but only because a lot of others do. However I completely disagree about Hunchback. That is just Disney being mature and grown-up, it's still Disney and it's not like it's PG-13. The filmakers even said it seems unlike usual Disney at first, but when you really look at it it's like a fairy tale with a protagonist locked in a tower.

[thedisneyspirit]

If they're made by Disney themselves, how can we go and call them non-Disney?

[Farerb]

I feel like most of the 70's and 80's films don't feel like Disney. All of the post Renaissance films don't feel like Disney, including Lilo and stitch, though I still like the film.
Regarding the revival - yes they have the Pixar formula applied to them, but they also retain a lot of of aspects of the Renaissance, either their music (Tangled, Frozen, Moana) or the romance (The Princess and the Frog and Tangled) or the humor (The Princess and the Frog and Moana - you can see a lot of the same humor of Aladdin and Hercules applied into them, especially Moana) or the fantasy elements. The only films from the Revival that don't feel like Disney to me are Wreck-it Ralph and its sequel, Big Hero 6 and Zootopia.

[DisneyBluLife]

Fantasia as a concept for a feature lenght movie is a very unlike Disney type of idea by the today standards of the company. But it was a typical "Walt Disney's madness" idea in order for his company to test new grounds.

[estefan]

For me, the first thing I think of with Disney is quality family entertainment, of the sort that takes us to a different world for an hour or two. These films can have memorable characters, amazing visuals and a want to appeal to a wide audience of any age. They can be focused on fantasy or they can be focused on the growing bond between two or more characters.

I don't believe in putting Disney into a box and saying they can only do one or two types of movies. Walt Disney himself disliked being boxed in and thought of as only doing one thing. There were many who thought he should only restrict himself to only making animated shorts, but he went and made "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" anyway. He also went ahead and made live-action films, nature documentaries and even an entire theme park, despite the naysayers telling him to stick in his lane. Walt Disney was often open to experimentation and he, of course, was famously disappointed he never got to make "To Kill a Mockingbird."

In short, if it's produced by Disney and released by Disney, I have no qualms calling something a Disney movie. Even the Marvel and "Star Wars" movies released by Disney over the past several years fit into my idea of Disney.

[JeanGreyForever]

For me, the first thing I think of with Disney is quality family entertainment, of the sort that takes us to a different world for an hour or two. These films can have memorable characters, amazing visuals and a want to appeal to a wide audience of any age. They can be focused on fantasy or they can be focused on the growing bond between two or more characters.

I don't believe in putting Disney into a box and saying they can only do one or two types of movies. Walt Disney himself disliked being boxed in and thought of as only doing one thing. There were many who thought he should only restrict himself to only making animated shorts, but he went and made "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" anyway. He also went ahead and made live-action films, nature documentaries and even an entire theme park, despite the naysayers telling him to stick in his lane. Walt Disney was often open to experimentation and he, of course, was famously disappointed he never got to make "To Kill a Mockingbird."

In short, if it's produced by Disney and released by Disney, I have no qualms calling something a Disney movie. Even the Marvel and "Star Wars" movies released by Disney over the past several years fit into my idea of Disney.

Completely agree with this post. Just look at Walt's first five fully animated films, better know as the Golden Age of Animation. Snow White and Pinocchio were the most similar in tone as grim European fairy tales, but Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi were all completely different in content and nature.

Frankly the only film that feels really un-Disney to me is The Emperor's New Groove but that may be more because as a child, it was one of the first Disney films I remember looking forward to watching in theaters and I was deeply disappointed at how different it was from Disney's typical fare.

[Disney Duster]

Walt may have wanted to do all kinds of different things...but point is he did make Disney a brand and some films don't fit that. Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi are still about nature and fantasy.

[JeanGreyForever]

Walt may have wanted to do all kinds of different things...but point is he did make Disney a brand and some films don't fit that. Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi are still about nature and fantasy.

Except there are some Disney films that are considered quintessentially Disney but they wouldn't fit under either nature or fantasy like 101 Dalmatians or Lady and the Tramp. Even live-action films like Old Yeller, Pollyanna, and The Parent Trap wouldn't qualify under those classifications either, lacking magic or natural forest settings.

[Disney's Divinity]

Star Wars and Marvel films "Disney"? Whaaa.... I guess that's the way Disney, the company, would like us to feel, too, but not for me. Walt was experimental and inventive, yes. That's why 3D films aren't inherently un-Disney, because no doubt Walt himself would've jumped into 3D first if he'd lived long enough. But that doesn't mean PIXAR, Dreamworks, Blue Sky, etc. would feel "Disney" if you just slapped the Disney name on the box.

[thedisneyspirit]

Yeah I agree with Divinity. Faithfully slobbering over and insisting the acquisitions are also "Disney"; when they weren't even created in the studio in the first place, is just a psycohpant commentary. By following estefan's logic, Fight Club is the Most Disneyish movie ever then.

There's something entirely different that what Walt personally would've wanted to do, then acquiring the properties made by other people decades before. by following that logic, the original comics Spiderman then were also Disney's property then?

[Disney Duster]

Except there are some Disney films that are considered quintessentially Disney but they wouldn't fit under either nature or fantasy like 101 Dalmatians or Lady and the Tramp. Even live-action films like Old Yeller, Pollyanna, and The Parent Trap wouldn't qualify under those classifications either, lacking magic or natural forest settings.

But 101 Dalmatians and Lady and the Tramp are fantasy because they feature talking animals. Also, the question of this thread was what animated films are un-Disney to us, not live-action.

I generally agree with Disney's Divinity and thedisneyspirit on this matter.

The funny thing is a long time ago Disney's Divinity said he didn't believe in the Disney Essence, but here it is.

[estefan]

I actually don't consider any movie not made by Disney to be Disney, even if they acquired it later. So, no, I don't count any of the Fox movies as Disney, even the future ones released by them. I don't view The Muppet Movie, the first two Star Wars trilogies and the first batch of Marvel films to be Disney, either. I also never considered the Miramax titles to be Disney, as that studio operated as its own thing and Disney only intervened if they felt uncomfortable releasing the movie or they didn't like the budget.

However, the newer Star Wars and Marvel films Disney did make do fall into the Disney template of being rousing films that appeal to people of all ages and are able to send people off to different worlds for a few hours with daring heroes and menacing villains. Really, it's hard to know what Walt Disney would have thought of them as we don't know what his views were on superhero comics and Star Wars didn't exist yet when he was alive.

As for Touchstone, even if that was only a label, it did fulfill Disney's desire to make films like To Kill a Mockingbird. And even with more risque themes and the occasional profanity, the plots of Splash, Adventures in Babysitting, Three Men and a Baby, Turner & Hooch and Dead Poets Society would not have been out-of-place in a Disney branded picture. Adventures in Babysitting was even remade as a Disney Channel Original Movie recently. Dick Tracy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Nightmare Before Christmas were also originally intended to be released as Disney films, with Nightmare eventually being changed back to one several years later.

Although the truth is Walt Disney has been dead for over fifty years, so it's hard to know what he would think of the directions his company went in, so all we can do is speculate. I do remember Roy Disney saying in a documentary that his uncle would have hated the "What would Walt do?" mentality that the studio execs found themselves following in the '70s. He did, after all, embrace changes at the studio and moving forward with new ideas. One of his most famous quotes was that Disneyland would never be finished, because of the endless possibilities of the future and how audience demand might change and I think that applies to the movie studio, too. I think a good Disney studio is one that both acknowledges and takes inspiration from its past, while also understanding modern tastes and what the audience looks for in a movie. Although audiences wanting rousing and emotional stories with compelling heroes to root for and villains to root against is something that hasn't changed since Walt's day.

[Jules]

^^

'Nuff said.

[Disney's Divinity]

I don't agree with the "What would Walt do?" mentality of putting every new thing under a microscope either--if I did, I would be against Broadway-style music in the '90s films and onwards--but, no, I definitely don't think Star Wars and Iron Man and Spider-Man and on and on are "Disney" films whatsoever. Because I guess you could apply that kind of thinking to any studio then. I guess The Avengers would feel like a Ghibli film not at all dissimilar to Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke if it just had the Ghibli logo stamped on top of it. That's absurd to me, but, more than that, it sounds like what a corporation would say, not a real person.