Soundwave said:
JWeinCom said:
Disney's rennaisance didn't really have much to do with using new IPs. They'd been doing that since pretty much day one, in terms of feature films. They didn't start doing sequels till after the Little Mermaid, when they created a direct to DVD division to capitalize on their recent success. The last movies featuring Mickey or Donald were from the 50's or so.
Their rebirth was actually a result of deliberately looking to their past. Little Mermaid was a project that started development right after Snow White. It was a throwback to the princess musicals that made them successful in the first place.
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I don't really see it that way, those films were successful because they were more contemporary and had more 90s-styled humor ... like imagine Robin Williams in Snow White? Yeah I don't think so.
Those movies were more modernized for modern audiences, I remember this because I was basically the target audience, in the 80s, Disney had become "uncool". Little Mermaid began to change that especially with the Sebastian character, and Aladdin really did it with the Genie character.
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Of course a character from the 90's isn't going to fit in literally the first animated feature movie ever made. But it isn't like Disney was still making films like that in the late 70's and early to mid 80's.
Disney's movies in the 70s and 80s were things like the Fox and the Hound, Black Cauldron, who framed Roger Rabbit (in which the genie would fit perfectly fine), the Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver Twist. In general, they were straying away from princess stories and fairy tales in general. They were also straying away from musicals. With the exception of Oliver Twist (which took place in 1980's New York in a deliberate effort at modernization), music was deemphasized. Black Cauldron featured no songs, Roger Rabbit and Fox and the Hound rather few, and in general their characters didn't sing themselves, leaving the singing to offscreen narrators.
The Little Mermaid and the films released around that time went back to fairy tale settings, put a greater emphasis on female leads especially princesses, love stories, and were full on musicals again. Of course you can point to some elements that had changed since the 40s and 50s, but is The Little Mermaid more similar to Snow White, Cinerella, Pinnochio and Sleeping Beauty, or more similar to Winnie the Pooh, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Oliver Twist, Black Cauldron, and the Fox and the Hound?