Any Disneyland or Disney Nerd here?

[megazone]

I have had a annual pass for disneyland since 1998.
I am obsessed with Space Mountain.
Any disney animation film after Beauty and The Beast is CRAP!
Discussion?

[megazone]

But I digress.....
If you ever go to Disneyland make sure it's during October:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stkXrk0-K7I

[Heero]

I have had a annual pass for disneyland since 1998.
I am obsessed with Space Mountain.
Any disney animation film after Beauty and The Beast is CRAP!
Discussion?

I put the crap marker at Pocahontas (when they decided to try a style change), although Mulan is quite good.

[usamimi]

I agree, Pocahontas was awful. Disney movies have been really hit or miss since then (with many of them being misses, sadly.) I liked Mulan, too. Wreck-it-Ralph was awesome, too,

I've actually never been to any of the Disney parks, but I've always wanted to.

[Animusubi]

I went to Disneyland once when I was very young, like 11 or 12. I remember getting sick from a burrito at one of the restaurants there and missed the last day we were at Disneyland. I've yet to go back.

I don't really agree that anything after Beauty and the Beast is crap, but they are definitely hit and miss, like usamimi said. I really liked Tangled and Wreck-It-Ralph. But I wish they'd go back to more traditionally animated movies and let Pixar do most of the 3D movies.

Pocahontas was BORING. But the animation was really pretty.

[usamimi]

Yeah, the animation of Pocahontas was pretty. The movie itself was pretty abysmal, though.

Out of Post-Beauty & The Beast, non-Pixar Disney movies, I'd say ones worth watching would be:
-Aladdin (PLEASE tell me you've at least seen this one, I watched this so many times as a kid I still know lines by heart. XD The writing in it was surprisingly awesome.)
-The Lion King (mostly because Jeremy Irons singing is pretty much one of the best things ever)
-Mulan (non-white lead female character kicking ass?! YES PLEASE! Also some of the best songs in this movie.)
-Fantasia 2000 (I'm a sucker for the original Fantasia, though, so maybe I'm just biased)
-The Emperor's New Groove (probably one of my favorite movies EVER, I won't even lie. I find it adorable and hilarious. The sequel was awful, though. :/ )
-Lilo & Stitch (again, adorable and hilarious. The writing was spot on in this, and I loved their use of watercolor backgrounds and unconventional character designs.)
-Chicken Little (from the trailers, I thought this was going to be stupid, but...it was actually kinda cute?! WHO KNEW?!)
-Meet The Robinsons (I might be biased, though, because I like Time Travel stories, but this was actually a funny, sweet movie. It's also got a Danny Elfman soundtrack!)
-The Princess and the Frog (LOVE the art, the characters, the music, and a really solid cast. And that "Oh, y'all from Shreveport?" line kills me every time, but that's probably because I live 45 mins from there. XD)
-Tangled (I'm still kinda pissed they changed it from the original concept because it sounded REALLY COOL, but they still managed to make a cute, fun movie that I enjoyed.)
-Wreck-it-Ralph (ok no joke, this movie made me cry like twice. Maybe I'm just a total sap, though. And all the nods to video games, ahhhh, this movie is amazing.)

Honorable mention: Goofy Movie (I know it doesn't line-up with their normal theatrical releases, but omg I still adore this movie XD)

[Heero]

(Leaving out any and all Pixar films)
Aladdin & Lion King maintain the quality and aesthetic of the "Disney revival" (that started with Litle Mermaid, even though I liked the preceding "Oliver & Company").
Pocahontas was a bad idea all around IMO.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame was a similarly bad idea, had decent songs, but never should've been greenlit really.
Hercules was a good idea, but HORRIFICALLY badly executed. (several things against it for me but my wife will never forgive the movie for trying a "sypathetic" depiction of Hera)
Mulan was probably the last great 2D film from House of Mouse
Tarzan was a bad choice (IMO) but was actually surprisingly well executed for what it was, but still not great.
Emperor's New Groove was better than expected, but again, still not a great film. I consider it to be like lots of anime in that its fun to watch but never gonna be a classic and largely disposable.
I will admit that I STILL have never seen Atlantis. My impression was that it was Disney going back to the anime well and trying to re-imagine (or "Disney-fy") "Nadia", but as I said, I have never actually watched it.
Lilo & Stich is a kids movie. It has merit, and was strong enough to get an anime spinoff in Japan (I think) but of all the (decent) movies from the second Boom period, it is probably the most clearly targeted to the child, home video demo.
Treasure Planet, ... what? why?!?
Brother Bear SERIOUSLY?!?
Home on the Range seriously, who the hell was running the ship at this time?!?
Chicken Little Haven't watched, but wife & I DO love "Fish out of Water".
Meet the Robinsons IS better than expected, but that is PARTLY because expectations were so low. That said, I WILL always appreciate this movie for "I have a big head, and tiny arms. I just don't think this plan has been thought through"
Bolt & Wreck it Ralph (as well as "Wall-E" and "The Incredibles" from Pixar) are two 3D animated movies I will fully acknowledge. I think they are both great, but Bolt will always have a special place for me because I'm a dog person.
The Princess & the Frog ... horribly, terrible, AWFUL execution of a decent idea. I get the desire for more races in the "princess" stable (it was VERY successful for that) and the idea to set it in New Orleans was clever. But the story was a mess, the songs were generally bad and most of the characters not particularly compelling. It really SHOULD have been better. (I think I also dogpile this movie in my head because it was the last 2d animated movie and did nothing to recommend continuing the style to Disney)
Tangled was somehow, SOMEWAY better than I expected based on the trailers. I think I've now crested whatever magical age Hollywood aims for, in that very few trailers EVER make a movie look compelling to me even if the movie turns out to be pretty good. My fear was that Tangled was going to be Disney's take on a "Shrek" style movie and it was (thankfully) not that.

And that about covers my thoughts on the animated movies "post-Beauty & the Beast". (For the record, I love the songs in Little Mermaid, but since I was never a teenage girl, there's only so much I get out of the story. And I loved Beauty & the Beast back in the day, and even went to the "World Premiere" of the stage musical in Houston (lived there at the time) when it began)

[davemerrill]

There's this sequence in Princess & The Frog that's designed in this great flat 50s Jim Flora style, and boy, if the whole movie had been animated in that style it would have knocked everybody's socks off. However, it wasn't, and it didn't.

So many of those later period Disney movies I've taken a big old pass on (I don't have kids or any nearby relatives with kids). Most of the ones I did see are tolerable at best. Atlantis was an amazing train wreck of a picture. I liked Tangled OK, but it felt like the minute the story was just about to get going, bam, the end.

We bought the BD of Sleeping Beauty; that's one gorgeous motion picture. Disney needs to get out of their safety zone and start pushing the aesthetic envelope again. Not that that's likely.

[greg]

I have a friend who goes to Disneyland several times a year on an annual pass. It's like Mecca to him. He isn't really a fan of Disney characters or movies, even. He just goes there for the experience. I don't like Mickey, and Donald Duck is such a stupid, incoherent character. Apparently, you can go to Disneyland without even caring about Disney characters and still have a good time. He loves the history behind it, too, and has DVDs of past rides and such. It's unfortunate that the Pirates attraction is now modeled after the movie instead of the other way around. The only theme park I've been to is Universal Studios Hollywood, twice, before they got rid of their Terminator 2 and Back to the Future rides.

My favorite period was the "dark years" of Disney after Walt died, when they were really not afraid of pushing the edge. I grew up with the Disney Channel and loved watching movies like The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes, Freaky Friday, Condorman, TRON, THE BLACK HOLE, and stuff like that. I loved The Fox & The Hound, too. Disney tread into dark territory with The Black Cauldron (too bad they censored the death scenes) and Something Wicked This Way Comes. I think they also did the Witch Mountain movies during this time, too.

The company has been terrible ever since Michael Eisner became president (and it hasn't improved since he left). If it wasn't for Pixar's success, Disney would be nothing. Plus, the way they handle Studio Ghibli movies is horrible. They recycle some aluminum cans and use the money from that as their advertising budget for Ghibli movies. So with nobody knowing about it, the movie will be released in a very few theaters and suddenly disappear because nobody goes to see it. Then Disney makes up for it by releasing a high-quality DVD release. I swear, Disney sucks.

And I cannot forgive Disney for their blatant plagiarism of Tezuka's work when they made The Lion King. Ugh. (I do admit it was a decent movie.) Disney became way too tame since the Eisner days. Let's give a happy ending to The Little Mermaid! Let's make a depressing book like The Hunchback of Notre Dame lively and fun! Then when they ran out of good ideas for movies, it was sequel-itis: Bambi 2, Cindarella 2, Snow White 2, Beauty and the Beast 2, Alladin 2, ad nauseam. If it wasn't for Pixar saving their butt...

I put Pixar into a totally separate class of its own. Their movies are great, and I was surprised that I even liked Cars, which was pretty weak. I haven't seen all of them, but the best by far was The Incredibles. (The guy behind The Iron Giant was responsible for that one! Pixar just animated it.) Disney tried to emulate Pixar with stuff like Chicken Little, but it just turned out to be just like any other CG animated fluff out these days (countless movies about dancing penguins, surfing penguins, penguins at the zoo, etc). Those movies just date themselves with dumb pop culture references and dumb gags, while Pixar's movies are timeless. I can't think of any examples of when a Pixar movie stooped to the level of the other CG animated movies.

The bad side to this is that traditional animation is dead. Titan A.E. was a great film, but it could have been so much better. I actually met a guy who had worked on the film, as he had on a Titan A.E. crew jacket at the fish & chips joint I went to with my friend. (The film was made at the short-lived Dreamworks animation studio in Phoenix, AZ). He said that Bluth was pushed around by the execs to make it cuter, less dark, and less violent. With its flop, Bluth gave up on animation, as CG had taken over everything. Disney gave up on it, too (although their efforts were largely weaker than Titan A.E.). (Lilo and Stich is very popular here in Japan, which is amusing since it apparently flopped in America.) Anyhow, Bluth became big by pushing the darkness boundary in animation. Making everything syrupy sweet, Disney-style, is what made traditional animation bland.

The new buzz here in Japan is a new Disney (Pixar?) movie called Sugar Rush. I'm not sure what the American title of the movie is, but I think it's being released either this Friday or next. I don't know anything about the movie or what it's about, but I think it might have an AKB48 song in it?

Disney made me VERY happy with Tron Legacy. I am really looking forward to another movie, and especially the very cool-looking animated TV series. They seriously need to reboot The Black Hole though. Since Hollywood is so keen on rehashing stuff (and typically making it worse), I think The Black Hole has super potential of making a somewhat cheesy movie into something spectacular. I still love that movie, and I was very excited to see a Black Hole movie poster in the kid's room in the Tron sequel. An exploration ship discovers a ghost ship that went missing long ago, only to discover that the captain lived, and the entire crew were made into lifeless android zombies. They must escape the ship before the madman captain drives it into a black hole. How is that premise NOT awesome?

[usamimi]

"Sugar Rush" is the Japanese title of "Wreck-it-Ralph". Sugar Rush is the name of one of the video games in the movie, and yeah AKB48 did a song for it (guess what it's called?! SUGAR RUSH!)

I loved the darker aspects of Bluth films. "The Secret of NIMH" was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and I didn't even realize it until much later that it's pretty grim for a kid's film. (For something that was rated "G", there sure was a lot of blood and swearing.) I'm honestly amazed that so many things I enjoyed as a kid would probably...not be acceptable kids movies if released now. XD