#I say range in quotes because even though they're big name people I feel like at the end of the day they're putting on the same voice

[dix-rose]

voice acting is such an underrated form of art like I know a lot of people focus on like the big names like Strong, DeLisle, Kenny, just to name a few because they have "range" but thinking about the actual WORK that goes into it?? Incredible.

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Here's a great quote from long-time animation veteran John Sanford, who - in 2018 - spoke of his experiences directing the Disney Animation feature HOME ON THE RANGE on the Look Back Machine podcast:

"I remember arguing vehemently that Disney had kinda lost touch with the culture at large... There was a thing that Disney at the time did, and they finally got past it. Disney had a problem at the time, thinking only in terms of 'Disney'. Like, when we were making ATLANTIS, 'This is Disney's big action movie!' When they made TREASURE PLANET, 'This is our science fiction movie!' And they didn't seem to understand that, outside the walls of the studio, people were making action movies and science fiction movies that were like far more daring, far more interesting... HERCULES came out, and it was the very same weekend MEN IN BLACK came out. And I think it was Ed Gombert that said 'You know what? MEN IN BLACK should've been the movie we made. Because it was interesting, it was dynamic, it captured the minds of the public, it was a way of seeing the world that they weren't used to. Whereas HERCULES? Was, oh, it's another one of those. Another one of those Disney musicals. You know. And there's 5 songs, and, who gives a shit?"

I feel that's often a cyclical thing with the larger Disney enterprise...

Maybe that's what they're going through right now, if you ex out just how expensive the movies cost to make and how expensive it see to get your group together to see a movie...

A mainline Disney feature film, be it a Walt Disney Pictures "live-action" movie (or tech demo, in JUNGLE BOOK/LION KING's case) or a Disney-released animated feature from WDAS, Pixar, et al., hasn't been a profitable box office success. Exceptions were made for two 2021 releases, CRUELLA and JUNGLE CRUISE, because things weren't as back to normal as they were in 2022. If released in 2022, and they made the amount of money they made in 2021? They'd be considered big flops.

2022 only saw two "Disney" theatrical releases that weren't Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, or Searchlight... Those were the Pixar spin-off LIGHTYEAR and the WDAS picture STRANGE WORLD. Both lost money. Other films went straight to Disney+, such as HOCUS POCUS 2 and DISENCHANTED. Both of those, I reckon, could've been actual box office successes for them. The former especially... With the kind of cult following HOCUS POCUS accumulated since its ill-fated summer 1993 debut? How it plays every damn year on Freeform, Disney Channel, etc.?? I'll never understand why they didn't try that one in theaters in fall 2022...

This year... We're at... THE LITTLE MERMAID, which cost $250m to make but looks to top off at $570m... Not 2 1/2x the cost despite making nice sums for itself... Pixar's ELEMENTAL is Little Engine That Could'ing it after a dismal opening gross, it may just be their first genuine success since... FROZEN II... All the way back in 2019... Then there's HAUNTED MANSION, which posted a disastrous opening, and it will not land anywhere near doubling its inexplicably high budget...

Next up are, should the studios actually pay their writers/actors and those movies stay on schedule...

WISH: Disney Animation's new film, which likely cost over $150m. Maybe even more so because it's using technology similar to that of PAPERMAN, tech they didn't pursue for a feature because it allegedly would've cost way too much...

ELIO: New Pixar, likely to cost over $175m, par for the course for that studio.

SNOW WHITE: If it's smaller scale, it shouldn't have a problem, but Disney usually overdoes it on these remakes.

INSIDE OUT 2: Pixar sequel to one of their megahits.

MUFASA: THE LION KING: Name says it all, likely cost around the same amount as the 2019 LION KING.

WISH and ELIO are the only genuine originals on here, though Disney's marketing machine seems to think that WISH is some mighty origin story to all the animated classics, when I hear it's otherwise an original story that just happens to be about wishing stars... A wishing star only shows up in PINOCCHIO and THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, **two** Disney animated movies. You could possibly count THE RESCUERS as well, for the 'Faith is a Bluebird' scene, but... It's a stretch. ELIO is definitely more original on the surface.

SNOW WHITE's a remake of the whole enterprise's first ever feature film, and the early buzz for that one is... Going well to say the least, what with lead actress Rachel Zegler constantly reiterating that this new Snow White is a girlboss and regurgitating talking points that seemed to have been written by people who haven't actually watched SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS since they were 2 years old. Aside from that nonsense, who really wants to see a new live-action SNOW WHITE anyways? Especially since we already got two fairly recent live-action interpretations? (MIRROR, MIRROR and SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN, the latter of which spawned a flop spin-off prequel about The Huntsman.) I'm thinking, at best, it performs similarly to the live-action DUMBO that Tim Burton directed. Not the re-dos of the Renaissance faves that people my age are nostalgic for.

Similarly, who the heck wants to see a LION KING half-prequel/half-sequel? Especially since this is an all-new story and not following any previous ground. I have a feeling LION KING 2 or is it 0.5 performs similar to the live-action ALICE IN WONDERLAND sequel that Disney put out in 2016 to muted turnout.

INSIDE OUT 2 is a guaranteed smash. Most Pixar sequels are, despite how much the Internet insists they largely stink. The only one to not perform too well was CARS 3, and spin-off LIGHTYEAR - as said earlier - lost money...

But yeah... Everything's either a pricey original animated movie, or a sequel/franchise extension of some sorts. Right down to HAUNTED MANSION, a theme park attraction-based movie.

And in the recent pre-COVID years, Disney did have trouble launching live-action/CG-laden spectacles that *weren't* PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN... Movies like... Let's see... G-FORCE, PRINCE OF PERSIA, JOHN CARTER OF MARS, THE LONE RANGER, TOMORROWLAND. Franchise non-starters, too, like THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA and a 28-years-later TRON sequel... They slowly gave up on smaller movies, too, like THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN and QUEEN OF KATWE. Those were relegated to Disney+ status... Only for them to be thrown into the Shadow Realm, unavailable to view, anywhere. R.I.P., movies like CRATER...

Funny thing is, movies like CRATER could've been released theatrically and they could've done okay for themselves. Disney used to do that sort of thing with live-action movies. A few comedies, a few small movies, next to the occasional spectacle movie. Like during the 20th century, for every 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA behemoth or every MARY POPPINS-type "event", there were like maybe 3-4 SHAGGY DOG and THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA-type movies.

But I go back to Sanford's statement... It sometimes feels like Disney, across most of their divisions, are trying too hard to give the public "Disney movies". Just the way you like 'em...

But maybe the public doesn't want that all the time.

Look at the first PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movie from way back in 2003. Twenty years ago, WOW! Big budget pirate movie based on a Disney theme parks attraction. Pirate movies were deemed "box office poison" back then, the aftermath of CUTTHROAT ISLAND being a massive box office flop, and similarly watery movies like WATERWORLD being huge flops... And, the two previous theatrical Disney theme park movies - MISSION TO MARS and THE COUNTRY BEARS - flopped at the box office... So, you have a pirate movie based on a Disney theme park attraction... Get a weirdo auteur director like Gore Verbinski to helm the thing and do it his weirdo wacky way... and shoot for a PG-13 rating, which has never been given to a non-Touchstone/Hollywood Pictures Disney movie up unto that point... and... This seemed like a terrible idea on paper! But they went through with it, they didn't make a "Disney pirate action movie"... We got Gore Verbinski's PG-13 rated PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN... And people flocked to it. Then it became a gift that kept on giving: Four sequels, tons of merch, tons of other stuff, a reboot in some form of development...

And that would not have happened if Disney didn't take such a big swing and didn't just make a cool movie that seemed very "un-Disney"... PIRATES, Jack Sparrow, Davy Jones, all of it, is synonymous with the Disney name. More so than the iconic ride itself, which first opened in Disneyland in 1967, ever was...

I feel that one's in the same field as movies like 20,000 LEAGUES, MARY POPPINS, TRON, etc. Movies that didn't do the "Disney movie" thing, but rather movies that either tried new things or told stories that really appealed to people. Sometimes the batting average wasn't great because of outside circumstances. For example, a film like THE JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN was given good critical marks, but the film failed to find an audience in the fall of 1985. On the other side of the coin were movies like THE BLACK HOLE, films that tried to do something cool and different, but ultimately suffered in some way or another.

Universal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. don't have this problem. No new movie from them is a definite "Universal movie" or a definite "Warner Bros. movie". This allowed them to make all kinds of movies, while Disney - in a post-MPAA age - fumbled about throughout the 1970s making nothing but low-budget G-rated family films while the cinema landscape expanded and filmmakers were given newfound freedom. When they catch up, sometimes interesting experiments come out and films that deserve another look... but sometimes, even with so many tools at their disposal, they fall back on the "Disney movie" thing again.

And this applies to their animated movies as well, WDAS more so than Pixar. I feel like WDAS should try out more lower-budget, quirkier features like the defunct Orlando unit used to make, like LILO & STITCH. Not a visual rehash of TANGLED or a story/script that recalls the beats of the 2010s films. Something new, ya know? Not that what they've been making recently is bad or anything, but things are feeling a little samey, you know? Pixar, on the other hand, is in a director-driven era that's making anal-retentive pundits on the internet angry... But I like the variety and the experimenting, and so do the millions of people who had been streaming LUCA and TURNING RED. ELEMENTAL's legs say more to me on what audiences are thinking... than the hordes of people on twitter declaring it some "mid" movie that's an indicator of why Pixar has sucked for a while. (You wouldn't last 2 seconds in a studio with that attitude.)

But, yeah... Lower the budgets, find a better way to market movies than with your current "here's the thing... please clap" strategy, and... Maybe take a chance... Like Walt did...