Is it just me or are the disney movies getting better?

[DisOrBust]

The live action that is. Nainia, Eight Below and forgive me I forgot the title the Basketball movie have gotten positive reviews and seem to be making money relatively speaking. I hate to admit this but these were under Eisner's era please reassure me he had nothing to do with there sucess!

 

[dbm20th]

There have ben a few good ones in recent years...

The Rookie (2002??)
Remeber the Titans (2001???)
Pirates (2003)
Miracle (2004)
National Treasure (2004)

There have been some clunkers too, but what studio can't say that?

 

[Another Voice]

Disney has always done well in the small to mid-budget live action features. In addition to ones listed, you could also through in The Princess Diaries, The Parent Trap and several others that did well. But you could also throw in mid-budget films like The Sixth Sense and Signs to Three Men and a Baby and Ruthless People that were monster hits at the box office. The entire resurgence of Disney Studios was based on moderate movies making good to great box office totals.

The problem was that a certain CEO was more interested in showing how big a man he was around Hollywood - and that meant playing with big budget, tentpole movies. And there Disney's record is horrible - Pearl Harbor, The Alamo, Dick Tracy and the like. The only big movie that was actually a hit was Pirates. But now Disney has poured every single penny of profit (and a few million more dollars) into making two sequels. It might be a good strategy - but ask the (former) executives at Warner Brothers how The Matrix did with the exact same strategy.

Hollywood is like a casino. It's best to go for the small but steady wins rather than hoping for the megamillions jackpot every time.

 

[DisneyBaby!]

I would agree that the movies that Disney is putting out there are getting better in the past few years. Bambi II is not bad and the animation is very good, the backgrounds are some of the best I have seen in years. Chicken Little was good. I think that the Live action films are as good, if not better than anything they have made, and if you look at the themes and the lessons, they are Disney to the core, and they have been good films. I'm not talking box office returns, but the quality of the films. You can not guage a films quality by its return, if that was the case than Meet the Fockers was a better film than The Incredibles.

I am not sure if 198 Mil is a failure, but this is not just a problem with Disney, but Hollywood in general, King Kong did 216 mil so far and it was this big dissapointment at the box office. People in Hollywood have had this blockbuster mentality for a long time, pumping tons of cash into pictures that go nowhere, anyone remember Waterworld? Now that is a flop.

There is a place for the big budget blockbuster films, they move the art and science of film making forward. Sometimes they don't do so well, but if they are quality, they will stand the test of time, will survive on video which is not a failure.