PeterPanfan wrote:Peter Pan-I am glad Kathryne Beaumont came back but it needed more than carried over supplements from the 2002 Special Edition and all these boring games. I was overall dissapointed in this as it's my favorite Disney film.
Unfortunately, Kathryn Beaumont
didn't come back for any of the new Platinum features. All her input was old material. The 2002 commentary was culled from outtakes for the 1998 featurette, and she has no part in the four new featurettes ("Lost Song", "In Walt's Words", "Tinker Bell", "Peter Pan That Almost Was"). We did get a few brief and new soundbites by Margaret Kerry, though. Still, I have to agree that
Peter Pan is the most disappointing of the Platinums, if only in terms of quantity.
Anyway, my thoughts on the Platinums are pretty much the same as I said in
this post from the "Loss of Quality..." thread:
Top-Level Platinums: (Most Fulfilling DVD Experience)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Aladdin
Mid-Level Platinums: (Great and Informative Material, but not quite as exhaustive as previous Platinums)
Beauty and the Beast
Bambi
Cinderella
Lady and the Tramp
Lower-Level Platinums: (Good Material, still feels rather lacking, deserves better treatment in a future release)
Peter Pan
The Little Mermaid
The Lion King
But for the sake of this thread, I'll go into detail about some...
Least Favorite - Film and DVD 1:
The Lion King, obviously. It's hard to want to sit down and watch bonus features for a film that I completely and utterly dislike. Granted, I did watch all the material at one time. But I rarely ever even watch the movie, much less the bonus features. The continental navigation is one of the stupidest ideas Disney had for DVD. I don't mind the "Journey" arrangements, as they're focused on one topic (Story, Production, etc.) But all the featurettes are far too segmented and can't really flow well from one to the other. Also, there is literally NO input from the voice cast, and half the time, the people in the featurette are more on the praising/backpatting side rather than the explanation/here's-some-interesting-tidbits side.
Least Favorite - Film and DVD 2:
The Little Mermaid. There was a time, years ago, when I enjoyed this film. When I actually liked the characters and the stories and would hum or sing the songs. Over the years, the film has not aged well with me, and I count it as my second least favorite after
The Lion King. Unlike
The Lion King, however, the DVD presentation is very straightforward and much more balanced between praising and educating. Unfortunately, at the same time, what's offered just is...well, boring for me. I watched the documentary once, and didn't like it. I watched it again a few months ago, and still didn't like it. I can't put my finger on what it is about the doc that I don't like. I'm sure I said it somewhere else, but I don't feel like looking for it again. Of the other materials on the disc, the only ones that I really got excited for was "The Little Match Girl" and the virtual ride-thru. Nothing else really grabbed my interest, not even the audio commentary.
Most Disappointing:
Peter Pan. Essentially, it's the SE with only about 40 minutes of new material and a few hundred more stills. I absolutely love the film, but the DVD is just so disappointing. So many missed opportunities here. I mean, honestly, they couldn't be bothered with creating a new documentary or extending the old one with new/vintage interviews? 16 minutes is NOT a documentary! I'm grateful we at least have the commentary, which I consider the true documentary on the disc. But again, there are so many missed opportunities here. Where the hell is the Christmas show? Why aren't there any storyboard-to-film or live-action-reference-to-film comparisons? And what's the logic in having two songs in the Deleted Songs section, but not including the two that have almost always appeared on the soundtrack CD? And goddammit, where is my THEATRICAL TRAILER??? There's so much that should have been included besides the stuff I already mentioned, but instead Disney chose a dumbass repeat-the-movie-in-lower-quality-on-the-second-disc English Read-Along. WORST. PLATINUM. BONUS. FEATURE. EVER.
Better Than I Initially Thought:
Cinderella. I have to say, I used to call this the fluffiest of the Platinums (I even said it in page 2 of this thread!) based mainly on the stupid Princess Royalty Room or whatever it's called, along with the lousy music videos and the still-headscratching Cinderella Stories. But I recently gave the Backstage Disney section of the bonus disc a once-over and was pleasantly surprised at how much actually is offered. The documentary really wasn't up my alley, it seemed more focused on (again) praising the work behind the film rather than offering a really in-depth discussion about it. But there were still a lot of nice gems to be found, especially in all the vintage materials (song demos, tv shows, trailers, etc.). The two other featurettes (the nine old men and Mary Blair ones) were good, too. I would have preferred additional live-action footage (beyond the stills in the storyboard-to-film comparison), though.
Most Straightforward:
Lady and the Tramp and
Bambi. These two stand out not as Platinums in the
Snow White or
Aladdin sense, but are really outstanding ones nonetheless. Both offer a 50+ minute doc that (surprise surprise) is informative first, entertaining second, and praising third. I especially love the "Disneyland" excerpts for
Lady and the Tramp, and the reliable multi-plane camera excerpt on
Bambi. Unfortunately, both still have its drawbacks.
Lady and the Tramp is commentary-less, a big bad mistake that Disney made. And while we get some excerpts of rough animation and storyboards in the doc and "Disneyland" featurettes, it would have been more interesting to see them on their own as well (either as production progression reels or as side-by-side comparisons). And
Bambi's deleted scenes are very paltry, especially when it's known that there's so much more (even beyond the graphic ones, there's other deleted scenes/storyboards that could have been included). Also, there are obviously more than just the one theatrical trailer for
Bambi, and as much as I loved "Inside Walt's Story Meetings" (they should do this feature for all the Walt-era films), I would have also loved an audio commentary, perhaps with John Canemaker and Dickie Jones (animation historian and voice of Bambi).
A Lot, But Still Not Enough...:
Beauty and the Beast. A couple weeks ago, I gave the entire set a whole viewing, but only focused on the production stuff (so no "Break the Spell" games or music videos for me!). And I have to say I felt hugely disappointed. The documentary is comprised of 18 featurettes that range from really-well-done-but-shorter-than-I'd-like ("Strength of Character" and "Animation" stand out for me), to not-long-enough-to-cover-sufficient-ground ("Finding the Story", "The Stage Is Set", "A High Profile Preview") to just-too-short-and-glossy ("Bringing the Story to the Screen" and "Awards"). All in all, the 50-minute doc really is more of an overview of production rather than a nice meaty in-depth piece. Then there's the other brief featurettes and vintage materials that I'm glad are included, but again, I'm upset at the exclusions. Where's the storyboarded (and likely temp-voiced) Extended Prologue? Why don't we get storyboard-to-film comparisons or original song demos? Surely there could have been some production progression reels? I won't even get into the whole offer-an-even-more-truncated-version-of-the-documentary-in-the-Mrs.-Potts-section.
Best:
Aladdin and
Snow White. Both are obviously the most exhaustive, and
Aladdin benefits from having a unique design to the presentation of their bonus materials. It can be watched either in a straightforward way (of 110 minutes) or picking-and-choosing, thus allowing people to skip around to what they want to see. I remember someone said there wasn't as much vintage materials/interviews as they'd like, and I partly agree with that sentiment. I would have liked seeing the original tv special in its entirety instead of having it re-edited and split up among the new featurettes. Also, the "Rough Stuff" really is the only main place to see animation tests and live-action reference footage, and can be rather lacking. The still galleries also aren't as exhaustive as they could be, but they do benefit from the Art Review featurette. For
Snow White, the second disc really is a boatload of materials, and all of it is definitely worth going through several times over. I'm still not fond of the film itself, but I actually enjoy watching its bonus features.
Scaps
I think overall Aladdin has the most going for it in terms of bonus features. The 2 commentaries and 2 hour panel session are among some of the most in-depth on any PE, I wish mermaid would've gotten some of the same attention.