The Journal of Wall Street speculates where the House of Mouse goes from here:
Whoever takes over as head of Walt Disney Co.'s movie studio following the abrupt departure of Chairman Dick Cook last week will be tasked with making the struggling film division stand out among a growing number of corporate siblings ...
Disney Studios today is just one of several high-profile film labels owned by the Burbank, Calif., media giant ... In some ways the new units have eclipsed Disney Studios proper. Pixar has surpassed Disney as the preeminent animated-feature company ... "Up," grossing more than $415 million world-wide ... Disney's "G-Force" ... has taken in less than $170 million.
This is all quite silly, of course. "Disney's G-Force is in fact a Jerry Bruckheimer's G-Force since Jerry is the guy calling the shots. Just as "Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean" is in actual fact a Jerry Bruckheimer production.
And so on and so forth.
To shake your head and say: "What a shame, Disney is being eclipsed by Marvel and Pixar" or whatever, is to skip around the central point: Disney is a corporate brand. Period. And the corporate brand is whatever the Disney corporate overlords choose to make it. Pixar is now Disney and Disney is Pixar.
But Disney as a "creative force"? As some kind of philosophical statement about entertainment? Please. That ended when Walt breathed his last at the hospital across the street from the studio in December, 1966. Before that time, Walt Disney Productions had a point of view because Walt himself ran the place with a certain approach and style. But afterwards? Well, as Ward Kimball so piquantly phrased it:
"Walt's dead and you missed it."
Disney today is much the same as Time-Warner ... or Viacom ... or Sony. It's an entertainment conglomerate that's the sum of its moving parts, rapidly becoming a transnational corporation that has as much to do with Uncle Walt as Time-Warner has with Jack L. Warner.
Which is to say, very little. Time and history march on. Deal with it.
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11 comments:
Precisely. Disney is no different than any other mega-conglomerate. Buying Pixar and Marvel was only lame attempts at burnishing their brand. At least with Pixar, they bought something worth the money--creatives that will generate new, ORIGINAL characters and stories for the Disney machine to exploit. For anyone hoping "2d" animation will make a difference---forget it. I hope Princess and Frog is a success, but to Disney, it's JUST ANOTHER MOVIE. By the time it comes out, they're going to already be looking to make the NEXT film for less money, with less people, in less time.
Disney, as a corporation, has little patience for the craft of animation, and has a very short term memory. No amount of Catmull and Lasseter can change this--Hollywood is a lot larger than them. Catmull must be nearing retirement age, and Lasseter, according to many, is spread very thin. I wonder how they're planning succession.
The future will be producers like Bruckheimer, Guillermo Del Toro, Burton and the like producing their own animated features for release through Disney. They might be cool movies--but how will Disney figure these into their family brand?
This is frightening and sad. If Disney strays any further from Walt's legacy, it will cease to be Disney. It's already lost a certain amount of its glamour already; that might be one reason D23's crowds were so small. For my part, I will always be a fan of "Uncle Walt"; but the Disney Corporation? I'm not even sure who and what it stands for anymore...IMO, Disney's recent dumping of the Narnia franchise was a big mistake. That franchise could have connected to middle America in a way that might have re-established the Disney brand in the hearts and minds of its core audience. The first Narnia film succeeded at that to some degree (despite its flaws), but the second film went off the tracks altogether because, instead of making it a Disney film based on the Narnia books, the producers tried to make it an imitation Lord of the Rings as interpreted by New Line. It's a stark illustration of the Disney company's lack of identity when it comes to product. When it leaves behind the middle-class small-town values Walt shaped the company with, it ceases to differentiate itself from Fox, Dreamworks, Universal etc. "Walt's dead and you missed it." Indeed...
D23 provided hope that Disney was showing us that it respected its legacy.
Sadly, I'm afraid that was simply another con job by the powers that be.
I think you're probably right , Floyd.
They roll out that slick "respect for the Legacy Of Walt Disney™" schtick whenever it helps them sell some stuff.
I think the 1st Anonymous poster above nailed it:
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"Disney, as a corporation, has little patience for the craft of animation, and has a very short term memory.
No amount of Catmull and Lasseter can change this--Hollywood is a lot larger than them. Catmull must be nearing retirement age, and Lasseter, according to many, is spread very thin. I wonder how they're planning succession."
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The Disney studio that existed in the 50's and 60's when artists like Floyd Norman started working there is long gone. The last remnants of that culture in the transitional 70's and 80's is gone. Even the Disney Feature Animation that I worked at in the 80's and 90's is gone now. Hand-drawn Animation may be "back" (in a sense) now at Disney, but hand-drawn animators are not back (except temporarily on a picture-to-picture as needed basis) . It is true that present-day Disney, as a corporation, has little patience for the craft of animation, and has a very short term memory.
Oh for god's sake, everyone here (and yes, I mean everyone) needs to take the rose-colored glasses off and realize that, if anything, things are MUCH better at Disney now than they were back in 50's and 60's.
Far more artists are employed at Disney now than then. More movies are being produced, each taking at least 4 to 5 years, with a new one coming out every 18 months or less. Compare that to the 60's. How many animated movies were there in the entire decade?
If you weren't one of the Nine Old Men, you weren't paid particularly well. Nor could you count on staying on after each movie was completed. There were huge layoffs after Sleeping Beauty, and 101 Dalmations was done with a very small crew. Same with Jungle Book, etc.
The more you actually read up on that era, rather than fantasize about a completely ficticious Disney Studios that never was, the more you'll realize that today is a MUCH better time. Plus, if you're a woman, you won't be completely shut out of an artistic job simply because of your gender.
Best of all, you won't have to breathe other people's cigarette smoke all day.
In reply to the comment "if you're a woman"
What if you're an male animator that desires to be a woman? Do their benefits cover trans surgery.
You bet. We change genders every three weeks, on Thursdays.
**There were huge layoffs after Sleeping Beauty, and 101 Dalmations was done with a very small crew. Same with Jungle Book, etc.**
Didn't those layoffs have to do with the Ink and Paint dept. being replaced by Xerox machines? I know that Walt hated doing that. He purportedly didn't like the look of the pencil lines on the animated characters as opposed to the beautiful paint strokes that so enriched Sleeping Beauty and other Disney features.
As for things being better at Disney now than in the the '60's...hmmm...interesting. Is the company being bold and innovative or merely buying up properties to shore up its limited and tired creative output? I don't remember THAT happening in the 60's...
Didn't those layoffs have to do with the Ink and Paint dept. being replaced by Xerox machines?
No. In addition to much of the Ink and Paint department, many animators, inbetweeners, assistants, background painters, and layout artists were laid off after Sleeping Beauty. They were not replaced, until the beginnings of the new Cal Arts trainees of the mid 1970's. Disney Animation Studios was a virtual ghost town then, as compared to now.
I hardly think 'Aristicats', 'Bedknobs & Broomsticks,' 'Robin Hood,' and most of the stuff made in the 60's can be described as creatively innovative. 101 Dalmations being an exception, most of the things they worked on were tired retreads, and shadows of past glory. Most everyone agrees this was a time of creative doldrums.
After all is said and done, Disney is a far better place to work now, than in the 60's.
>>Is the company being bold and innovative or merely buying up properties to shore up its limited and tired creative output?
No, they're not even buying up crap they can't make themselves.
The great gurus of reality television, interactive entertainment and social networking have for at least the last ten years been relying upon their audiences to create the crap themselves, and so far there seems to be entire legions of complete morons more than happy to help them do it. Entire populations of countries are creating worlds all by themselves, AND they pay a monthly fee to do it. Entertainment conglomerates literally have to spend only pennies to make a profit. That is a fact. Everything else to an entertainment company is simply window dressing, a tip of the hat to the history books to retain their sense of legitimacy as a 'creator' of original content. They are patronizing the art of the past, but by no means whatsoever do any of the CEO's of any of the major media corporations believe the lions share of future shareholder profits are going to be made in traditional film and television. That ship has sailed.
After all is said and done, Disney is a far better place to work now, than in the 60's."
Hear what you're saying but disagree.
IF you were one of the people working at Disney's in 1970 it was FAR preferable to now. No, there wasn't "creative innovation", but please: despite some excellent artists, where are the risks and the stretching and the new ideas and new techniques being tried today? They're happening, sure-in Emeryville. "Disney" isn't taking any chances with Burbank. Fairy tales and Pooh: innovation?
If you were at Disney from Walt's death through the early 80s it was fairly quiet but the deadlines weren't insane, the animation department had pride of place on the lot, the best building, respect, and some say so in what they were doing. Robin Hood and Aristocats for all their lack of innovation have excellent one of a kind animation and artistry in them and are actually more watchable than some of the 90s films. The proof is how well known and loved they still are 30+ years later vs., say, Atlantis.
Today? Morale isn't good. Virtually no one there can be sure of being employed beyond next week. There are no stock options. There is little attention and little sense of real respect or even a sense that the Company knows who many of them are.
Any more "innovations" and they'll be right out of that awful building and into Canada, Flower St. or nonexistence.
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