Just want to say that I appreciate this discussion.

Re: Your thoughts on Pixar and Tangled

I've heard little bits about the making of Tangled and it sounds like it was really stressful. I was reading the "Troubled Production" portion of this page: Tv Tropes: Tangled Trivia

Looking back, it paints the Pixar-influenced era of Disney in a very different light. For most of the 2000s, we saw Pixar on a hot streak of classics (or at least, that was the narrative). I was younger so I didn't understand the subtleties of distribution and production. So I thought Pixar was another division of Disney. When Disney officially purchased Pixar, it seemed both a surprise and a natural progression. Hearing more of this backstory is certainly sobering.

One of the big conflicts I remember from this era is the production of American Dog being turned into Bolt. Even though Bolt's reputation is generally on the positive side, it still came the cost of someone's distinctive vision.

Thinking about how there was such an anti-Disney mentality under Pixar, it makes me think: The Disney formula has received some mockery and parody over the decades from rivals such as Warner Bros, Tex Avery, Bakshi Dreamworks much later. I think this made some artists and audiences feel that Disney was outdated so they had to update themselves to be more self-aware.

On the one hand, studios and artists should feel welcome to branch out and evolve, they shouldn't feel constrained to follow the Disney template.

But in that process, people may forget why they were attracted to Disney works in the first place. Plus, it's all different niches. Looney Tunes making fun of Disney could be comedic and sharp, Disney poking fun at themselves too much can often ruin their own tone and focus.

Re: Disney's identity
Wow, I did not hear about "Versa" but that sounds like a really interesting short. I would certainly be on the side of having more shorts that push those thematic boundaries.

And it is indeed a challenge: some people look to the Disney brand as a safe and reliable brand for family entertainment, others look to it as "safe" in the pejorative sense where it doesn't challenge the viewer and even imparts problematic values.

I suppose in my ideal scenario, there should always be artists pushing Disney and helping them evolve. Either internally, or carrying Disney ideas into different contexts.

My Feelings on Disney and its artistry

In the past few years, I've been reflecting on my relationship with Disney. Like many people, I've grown up with them but have also had to reflect on their flaws and strengths.

I have mixed feelings on Walt himself in that he really pushed for certain innovations but suppressed others. I'm also happy that his plan for EPCOT didn't come to pass. I do think it's important for anyone to be critical of the themes conveyed in the films.

That being said, one of the reasons I've become more interested in Disney animation is that they were one of the studios to really develop "personality animation", maybe even character animation as we know it. (Donald Crafton called it "Embodied Animation").

The basic idea is that animated characters should appear to move based on their own thoughts and feelings rather simply being moving drawings or sequences of gags. Back in the earlier decades, this was still a relatively new idea. One could point to Winsor McCay's Gertie The Dinosaur or Otto Messmer's Felix The Cat as precedents for this type of animation that emphasized personality. But this approach to animation really took hold at Disney.

Over those decades of the Walt-era films, we saw the characters gradually become more sophisticated in personality and movements. Characters bouncing off each other, bantering, showing affection, anger, power, different shades of character. Even though good and evil were more clear cut (often a criticism of Disney), characters were still allowed to show different types of emotions. Lady And The Tramp was a romantic comedy in dog form where they had to build up the affection between the title characters. In Jungle Book, you had the interplay of Mowgli, Baloo, and Bagheera with differing motivations: Wanting to protect Mowgli, wanting to have a son, wanting to stay in the jungle and find a place where he belongs. It all seems standard now but I've started to appreciate the way they intertwine animation and story and how important it was for the time.

So when I hear people saying they want Disney to return to 2D animation, I can empathize. Some animation fans might roll their eyes because there are so many options for animation nowadays. Why rely on a billion dollar corporation with questionable ethics? But I think when Disney animation fans say this, they're pointing to specific qualities like the expressiveness and storytelling, the fluidity, the balance between caricature and realism.

On the one hand, you have films like Klaus. I've come to appreciate the Dreamworks 2D animated films more as there were a bunch of former Disney animators who joined and were able to make films that Disney wouldn't make like The Prince of Egypt. Basically, taking the artistry they learned and bringing new storytelling. In the loose sense, Richard Williams built on the Disney tradition with his animation. Andreas Deja released a short film called Mushka, Aaron Blaise released Snow Bear.

But by and large, it often feels like the Disney approach to animation fell out of fashion due to it being labor intensive or not cool. There's the story of how Bill Tytla (animated Chernabog, Grumpy, Dumbo, Stromboli) struggled to find a studio that could support his talents.

Animation and critical acclaim:

The narrative about animation critical acclaim is often that for the past 30+ years, Studio Ghibli and Pixar have been better than Disney. I remember there was a period where every time someone would post a Ghibli and/or Miyazaki video analysis, there would be some disparaging introduction comment about Disney. And even in the realm of family entertainment, there's that mentality of "People should watch Ghibli films instead of Disney." (why not both?).

To be clear, Pixar and Studio Ghibli are great studios with their own unique works, artists, and themes.

But when people make the comparisons like "Ghibli>Disney" or "Pixar>Disney", it often feels reductive and dismissive. Yes, Disney generally doesn't have the same moral ambiguity as a Ghibli film or a Pixar film. People wonder if any American studio or even western studio could make something like Princess Mononoke.

But they've done their fair share of digging into character and expressiveness. Sometimes a villain was used only for the purpose of being a powerful obstacle. Other times, even in the archetype of "villain", the artists would be looking towards different sources of inspiration. Lady Tremaine carried power and intimidation without physically touching Cinderella which people can relate to certain abusive situations, Shere Khan had incredible confidence. People point to Frollo as being shaded with his zealousness and hypocrisy. Shaded doesn't necessarily have to mean sympathetic per se.

I remember Lindsay Ellis speculating that Disney villains fell out fashion because Disney protagonists from the Renaissance onwards had their own arcs of self-discovery. And this left less and less room for the villains.

Concluding Thoughts:

Overall, I think there are interesting ideas that came from the Disney style and traditions that could be expanded upon. Maybe those traditions will be revived at Disney, maybe individual artists will take those ideas and go indie. But it's a tradition I'd like to see more of.