Estefan...no one but Disney can do Disney. If you don't believe that, whatever you Disney "fan", but as a Disney fan, I believe that. But even without that, when I saw the Prince of Egypt or Anastasia or other films that tried to be like Disney, they still felt different to me. I wondered if they were Disney but there was something about them, that I could tell they weren't Disney. It is really only the general undiscerning masses that can't tell.
The people at Disney
do need to think of how they can make all their films clearly, well, Disney, and not something any other studio does. And thinking about what Walt might have liked is just one of those ways. They can not know, but they can try, they can think about it. And they can also feel very sure, they can feel confident that they really are making something Walt would be proud of. Not just because lots of people think it's good, but because it's so Disney.
And Lilo & Stitch didn't seem like considering it at all.
Now to
Netty. You're back! Yays!
But we must now talk about this. First, I also mentioned Bambi and 101 Dalmatians and other Disney films, not just fairy tales.
However, I have pointed out numerous times that if Walt did one genre three times out of all the other subjects, obviously he liked that genre particularly because he did it two more times than the others! You can say that maybe he only did the fairy tale again and again to get money. Well, maybe with Cinderella, even though he said he strongly identified with that story, she was his favorite heroine, it had his favorite piece of animation, and become one of, if not his most favorite film, but then how do you explain Sleeping Beauty when he didn't need to make money then?
2099net wrote:Cinderella: story adaptation
What?!
I do want to bring up that as far as I know it's hard to pinpoint exactly what a fairy tale is anyway. The Grimm and Perrault stories were called Household Tales or Tales of Times Past. Not only Pinocchio but Peter Pan and even Alice in Wonderland feel like fairy tales to me. In many ways Disney made them fairy tale like.
But most, if not all of those films you listed do have something in common with each other. Magic or fantasy. The first five Disney films all had magic somewhere, except Bambi, which still had princes and royalty, in a forest with talking animals. But any talking animals film still involves fantasy because, well, it's talking animals. Scif-fi is different from just talking animals and fantasy. Now, I might be okay with some sci-fi, but it was the way Lilo & Stitch did it so wacky and violently with aliens that I just felt a strong feeling of negativity from the Walt watching it in my mind.
As for the other things you said Disney covered, yea, all those things could be in fairy tales or in general fantasy films, too.
As for the Live-Action films, well I was talking about the DAC's, but today's Disney should strive to make all their films, animated or live-action, be something only Disney would make. I'm still a little ehhhh about Touchstone and Miramax, but there is indeed a reason they are not called Disney and have their seperate names.
But even if he may have made more live-action films, and shows, and the theme parks, more than the DAC's, the DAC'S have always been
the heart and most important thing of the company, in many ways
the company.
Roy Disney said they were the heart of the studio and what the studio was all about, it's in the new "Waking Sleeping Beauty" film. There's a reason Walt made the fairy tale castles the center of the theme parks. You can see the picture I'm painting. But as a side note, making live-action films is a lot easier, quicker, and cheaper, not to mention more paid attention to and attended by the public, so him making more of those than animated films has little to do with what he liked the most.
As for Walt complying to the standards of the times, uh, he disliked things like Psycho and other things like that. So, yea, he very much liked what he was making. I mean, maybe his films would have been a little bit more like his earliest features had they not flopped, but there's no doubt Walt liked what he was doing and that's why he made it. If you really think he just made so many of those things just to appease people or make money, well then, well then, you "fan" of Disney.
That list you made of things he made that means he would have approved of certain things...first of all, I never said "this means he would have approved of this" I said "I feel he wouldn't have approved of this and this is
some evidence". Next, remember, I was talking about his animated films, so bringing live-action films into it doesn't help.
I did, however, think about 20, 000 Leagues in relation to Atlantis and did consider it but one big thing is 20, 000 Leagues was a book.
AH, there it is. One other thing that Walt clearly did was did movies based on classic stories. Even Lady and the Tramp was slightly based on a story, not to mention even real life Disney worker's anecdotes which are stories. I definately approved of Tarzan, Hercules, and even Mulan and Pocahontas which are legends, like folklore, like fairy tales. The Lion King, claimed to be Disney first original story, still had talking animals, royalty, and magic.
However, Treasure Planet shows exactly why I feel he wouldn't approve. It's the way they did the classic book. They put a modern twist on it and even retitled it, something Walt never ever did.
Next, his wacky comedies were not nearly as wacky as some of things in today's Disney films, in fact, the wackiest, worst humor is found in Disney's recent flops and even Lilo & Stitch which, while not a flop was still not Disney coming back to what it was, no one really thinks of that movie when thinking of Disney.
But also, Disney's wacky comedies are probably not Walt's proudest moments, you know...actually, that goes for a lot of his live-action films. Probably even most. The live-action stuff was more quick and cheap and easy and more appealing to the masses, so he could kind of experiment with them without doing all the stories he really loved that he reserved for particularly special films and the DAC's. That just seems to be what was going on there. And the DAC's have all become timeless and strongly identified with Disney while almost all of that live-action stuff is not remembered these days, just Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks if even that.
Also, the animated films can be controlled more than live-action can beto get the Disney touch. Walt was able to decide a lot more in how everything was in the animated films. Because you are drawing up a whole world, whole actors, you plan and come up with every little detail.
Finally, things like divorce and what not can definately be in Disney films (well, I think), it's just the way they do it, if they do it with wacky violent crude aliens, well then, no.
Maybe if Stitch's transformation into a "good Disney character" didn't feel shoehorned and unbelievable, if not impossible and highly unlikely, probably because he was so un-Disney to begin with.