I generally avoid linking to other animation think pieces, but this makes my teeth itch:
I think ... Disney ha[s] come up with one of Mencken's easy, neat, plausible, and wrong answers. While aiming to make movies for a wide audience is an admirable goal, I don't think it's strictly necessary for box office success ....
Look. There's only one factor that (almost) guarantees box office success.
You have to make a compelling movie, one that people get off their duffs to go see. Disney hasn't been "wrong" in making or avoiding "Princess" type features. It hasn't been wrong making musicals, or making adventure films, or CGI extravaganzas.
It's only been wrong insofar as it hasn't, over the past few years, made animated features that yank people into theaters. Here's what I mean: Does anybody think that The Princess and the Frog is more riveting and compelling than Aladdin? The former has fine sequences, fine animation, bouncy music, but does it come together like the Arabian tale from the early nineties?
Nope.
When people get asked what they think of TP&TF, they smile and say "Oh, it's nice." Back in the day, when people got asked what they thought of Aladdin, the answer was: "It's great! You gotta go see it!"
Now I've heard a few malcontents mention that it was the characters populating TP&TF that put a dent in its grosses. But consider Aladdin for a moment. It had brown-skinned people. It had a setting that worried Disney at the time. (We were in the midst of Gulf War Uno and the name of Aladdin's hometown -- Baghdad -- was hurriedly changed.) It was the third Disney animated musical in four years.
But when the picture came out, nobody cared, because the music, plot and spirited trajectory of the piece grabbed audiences by their shirt fronts and got them talking it up to their friends and neighbors, and getting them to go see it.
So let's fast-forward eighteen years. The last three Disney features -- Bolt, Meet the Robinsons, and The Princess and the Frog -- have generally been considered under-performers. Most people admit to being mildly charmed by the movies, but nobody rushed through dinner and bee-lined to the local AMC to watch them.
My take is, if Rapunzel/Tangled turns out to be a wowser, audiences will flock to view it. And then they'll tell other people it's really, really worth seeing, and the Mouse will have a major hit on its hands. The feature could be called Long Blonde Hair or Flynn's Night Out or anything else, and the grosses will be up there.
But the movie has to motivate people to go to the multiplex. It has to be buzz-worthy, a quality that's often elusive but usually recognizable when it's in place. (Toy Story and Snow White had it, likewise The Lion King.) If the next feature out of the box doesn't have that "gotta see it" ingredient, Diz Co. will likely have another disappointment staring it in the face. (And please don't think I believe creating a movie to which everyone flocks is easy. I don't. But creating a riveting feature is the goal. Making product designed to sell "the brand" or a lot of rubber toys won't cut it.)
So, is Walt Disney Animation Studios making a mistake by shooting for the widest demographic? Don't think so. Its main errors, I think, are making advertisements for merchandise and over-thinking the specific audience for which it is building this or that entertainment. The only thing that ultimately matters is making compelling films.
When that goal is reached, the soggy box office will disappear. And "synergy" will blossom.
Posts
31 comments:
Well said.
What makes a movie a "gotta see" movie? Is it the movie itself? I really don't think so. Alice in Wonderland is a "gotta see" movie and in my opinion it is a bad movie. I tell my friends that it is a bad movie but they go see it anyway and the come home and say, "you're right, it was a bad movie". The Princess and the Frog could be a great movie, but it was not a "gotta see" movie. People who saw it loved it and told their friends to go see it, but their friends did not go see it because it was not a "gotta see" movie.
So what makes a movie "gotta see"? In the case of Alice obviously it is Johnny Depp pairing up with Tim Burton to create a wacky tale with cool visuals. So why was The Princess and the Frog not a "gotta see" movie?
Like Tim said, well said.
I agree with this post, Disney really didn't do anything wrong rather they're overthinking everything. I think we can all agree the reasoning behind the title change for Rapunzel to be rather ridiculious and might I say paranoid.
the problem isnt the movies its the movie going experience itself.
going to the actual theater for movies sucks big time, tickets are expensive, nasty movie snacks are even more expensive.
And who wants to be around smelly people and their winy brats.
Its much easier nowadays to just download the movies from the comfort of my own home.
"the problem isnt the movies its the movie going experience itself."
Psst...other movies are doing good Box Office...your theory doesn't hold water.
Steve is right.
I'm tired of explaining that PATF cut its own throat opening in December.
I'm tired of explaining that Ponyo had a largely indie-arthouse run, how much money did they expect it to make?
And your teeth aren't itching half as much as mine are when I have to be reminded what happened when Bolt opened one week before the Pubescent Fangirl Vampire Movie. (The first one.)
I feel as if I'm alone in the wilderness...Doesn't ANYONE in the other 49 states look at box-office scheduling and releases as a factor anymore?
And as for "what happened to the Aladdins", as one working his way up in Story, that's been one of my defenses for the 90's that has nothing to do with "the Katzenberg days":
The first three to come out of the Renaissance--Mermaid, B&B and Aladdin--were GREAT stories. They were cool when you heard them at bedtime, thirty years before anyone made a movie of them...In fact, you could hear the title and get excited that Disney was "legitimizing" them with a movie at ALL. Back in the 80's Shelley Duvall did first-dibs cable versions of all three of the stories ten years before Disney got its hands on them (it's possible to see a few licks that Disney borrowed, in Mermaid and Aladdin's cases), and they were fantastic even on an 80's cable micro-budget.
What happened is that we need another Great Story out of the old bedtime days.
FTR, Shelley's cable series also did one of the Snow Queen. Dang, it was good. :)
I feel as if I'm alone in the wilderness...Doesn't ANYONE in the other 49 states look at box-office scheduling and releases as a factor anymore?
This logic ignores the fact that virtually every desirable weekend of the year has a couple of major movies opening that Friday, with a couple of big movies having opened the weekend before, and a couple more coming the next weekend.
People want to cherry pick the data. Right now, people are saying that How to Train Your Dragon will get run over by Clash of the Titans a week later. Let's see what actually happens. I think it'll be the other way around, because for my money HtTYD looks compelling, and Clash doesn't.
There are PLENTY of instances of 4 movies opening to HUGE numbers all in the same month, and ALL going on to have long, profitable runs. And there are plenty of examples of heavily marketed, big budget movies dying all on their own, regardless of how weak the competition was.
Bolt and PatF were nice movies, well made, with decent stories yielding decent entertainment. But, despite the wishes of the hard-core fans, they weren't special enough to become major hits.
And your teeth aren't itching half as much as mine are when I have to be reminded what happened when Bolt opened one week before the Pubescent Fangirl Vampire Movie.
As a matter of fact, it opened the same day.
A really stupid marketing/distribution move.
Steve, your dismissal notwithstanding, the fact is that PATF, in addition to looking rather bland, was also dismissed by middle America as "the black animated movie." No virulent racism in that dismissal, just the subtle, subconcious nudge of suburban soccer moms who didn't quite think it was the right movie for that weekend. The subtle racism of being more than happy not to see the movie.
There's a reason why no white family I know has ever watched "Bebe's Kids." There IS an indisputable tribal nature to our cultural habits, and PATF didn't fit into Middle America's. It is sad, but it is nonetheless true.
Bringing up "Aladdin" is erroneous. For many white, suburban Americans, black culture is more alien and uncomfortable than a mythical fairytale Arabia. Aladdin's storybook setting was more abstract, and therefore more palatable. There's nothing abstract or fairytale about black culture in New Orleans, to take the edge off the fears of latent-racist middle America. It's too close to home, too close to our awkward racial fears.
If you don't wish to believe this uncomfortable truth, that's fine. Most people don't. But one only has to see the signs people have been holding up at teabagger rallies, or the anti-Obama images being generated en masse, to see that there remains a very pervasive, deep latent (and not-so-latent) racism that affects people's perceptions--and certainly what they would encourage their precious snowflakes to watch at the theater.
AMEN! You speak the truth, my faithful Indian companion!
The only thing that matters in this town is that no one knows anything, no matter how much prognosticating or posting you do. A great film is a great film is a great film, and truthfully, no one knows why they happen or when or if or anything else. They sometimes happen, they most of the time don't. Picking apart the how's, why's, and what for's are for studio executives and those who enjoy over-analyzing the pieces of some mythical puzzle that never existed in the first place. An exercise for pundits, fools, and people who watch movies but who have forgotten how to enjoy them.
A great film is a great film is a great film, and truthfully, no one knows why they happen or when or if or anything else.
Oh, yeah, nobody knows nuthin', so stop hurting my brain with your fancy-pants arguments!
Yet somehow, great directors, and studios like Pixar, consistently beat the odds and make compelling movies. Are we to believe it's just dumb luck that certain filmmakers are consistently successful? Is it just as much luck that some writers turn out compelling, golden prose, and others so much dreck and twaddle?
And the argument that we shouldn't analyze or question what makes film tick can be applied to animation and even art itself. Why study composition, color theory, technique, etc. It's just dumb luck if a bit of animation makes you smile, or a painting makes you want to keep staring at it. Cuz' nobody knows nuthin', and trying to figure out what works is for dorks.
People want to cherry pick the data. Right now, people are saying that How to Train Your Dragon will get run over by Clash of the Titans a week later. Let's see what actually happens. I think it'll be the other way around, because for my money HtTYD looks compelling, and Clash doesn't.
Okay. You think that.
Meanwhile, I'll pick the other half of the "Nobody knows anything" 50-50, and say, what if it DOES get run over?--You take heads, I'll take tails.
It could be a beautiful movie, it could be Chris Sanders' life work, it could be Dreamworks greatest stab at immortality, it could change Three Dee as we know it for seven days, and it could STILL be buffalo-stampeded by several million X-Box crazed slackers one week later. Such things do happen, in our cruel imperfect world.
...THEN will you be happy to admit that maybe, sometimes, some movies just can't get a decent break for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? It would be such a refreshing change to hear.
I'm not going to indulge either an incognito fanboy or raving Balloonatic in what he thinks is a "bar bet"--I'm just asking what will it take, to make a few in the industry start realizing that sometimes, Competition Does Damage. Even to those well-meaning works that might not in the ideal scenario deserve it.
The Panic & Superstition mode we've got now is nothing compared to what we had in '02-'03 before Eisner shut down the studios--But it's coming from just as many blind men examining just as big a herd of elephants, and making just as many wrong guesses on one selectively extrapolated bit of evidence.
Bringing up "Aladdin" is erroneous. For many white, suburban Americans, black culture is more alien and uncomfortable than a mythical fairytale Arabia. Aladdin's storybook setting was more abstract, and therefore more palatable.
Leaving aside the fact that Jasmine was one of the most "ethnic"-looking princesses up to that time, before Mulan. And it hadn't seem to have hurt her popularity any with the core audience, that I could see.
The "PATF was racially divisive" issue is so old it's quaint, and so clueless it could only come from press columns. (And people who read them when they can't think up their own ideas.) This was Disney, who couldn't even make black look black, and treated it with the most kissup of reverence when they tried to.
There was marketing, there was a slightly anemic story (practically an original, compared to how much of Baker's book they threw in the trashcan), there were unmemorable songs, there were the mysteries of December, and there were the damn chipmunks. But anyone still claiming Fears of a Black Toon Character has by now become the mark of anyone who just hadn't seen the darn movie. Give it a rent, for cryin' out loud, it's on disk by now.
I'm getting a strong whiff from the original post and some of the comments that I should assume that mainstream america is racist in that viewing anything other than white characters is a hard sell?
#1. Thats complete BS. There are multitudes of examples of America being open to a wide array of races in media. Aladdin was released on the heels of the Cosby SAhow running for EIGHT years on NBS ans single handedly reviving sitcoms on tv. From my scorecard hollywood is slow and reluctant to release films and television shows that have a more varied racial makeup. Does this make hollywood racist? You tell me.
#2. Racist in relation to whom? Been to any other nations lately? European nations? Australia? Ireland & England? Their television and film releases are about a tenth as varied and accepting as ours.
Racist in relation to whom? Been to any other nations lately? European nations? Australia? Ireland & England? Their television and film releases are about a tenth as varied and accepting as ours.
Human beings often have a fear of "the other." But I'm not talking about racism, per se. So sniff all you want, but you're wrong.
With Aladdin, I'm pointing out company fears at the time it was made. (Told to me by an exec.)
Disney changed the name of Baghdad in the feature because they thought it was a little ... uh ... touchy, given current events. Yet despite that, the film was a HUGE hit, the highest grossing animated feature to 1992..
The reason? All of its moving parts worked like gangbusters.
I think Disney generally damaged itself after showing Chicken Little, check the box office record and you will see that Chicken Little actually had a pretty successful box office hit, but ever since then they just lost their audience's confidence and Disney need to pull themselves together to make series of good movies again. And unlike DreamWorks, while some of their movies are weak, they have some strong ones to balance their reputation up.
Another thing that I feel Disney is forgetting what made them successful in the past, is the drive to constantly try new things. Walt Disney never stopped at animated short films, he pushed from monotone colors to animation with musics, then voices, later on colored, and then characterization, feature film and lastly his theme park. But what I see now is that the Disney company has froze for a long time already. Probably because their managements are just too afraid to do new things and want to do things the 'safe way'.
If it wasn't the fact they fired John Lasseter and allowed him to try new things with the 3D, Disney would be where Pixar is today. Now they are paying the price of being too conserved.
Bolt might be a nice movie, so was PatF, but none of them seems refreshingly new to me and the character designs seems pretty bland. I wish I could have saw Chris Sander's version of American Dog, since that one has a more interesting design and take in my opinion. Just look at how Stitch is so popular in the Asian market, you see the merchandise of them everywhere.
Just my 2 cents.
If it wasn't the fact they fired John Lasseter and allowed him to try new things with the 3D, Disney would be where Pixar is today.
This just proves that you can learn something new through the internet, but then again the whole don't believe what you read thing is going off like a siren. Anyway here's my two cents on the whole situation...
Yes, Disney pratically shot themselves in the foot with movies like, Chicken Little. But now they're trying to reclaim their "glory" and "success" from the 90s which is a good idea but total BS. They're looking to the past for ideas which will make them seem too repetitive and formulaic (this was the main criticism for Froggy.) They shouldn't rely on Alan Menken or Trousdale and Wise or anyone. They should just be open to new fresh ideas (don't worry Chris Sanders will come up). Not rely on the same thing over and over. I agree with the above poster that Disney needs to stop playing it "safe", and be different with each film. Would kill them, maybe, but at least it will be something different. And I also agree that if Lasseter was there longer Disney would probably have as much success as Pixar.
I wish I could have saw Chris Sander's version of American Dog, since that one has a more interesting design and take in my opinion.
I agree, juding Sander's concept art his vision of the film was more creative and "out-there". While Bolt, was safe, dull, and lack exuberance that the film needed. And in no way was that exuberance Miley Cyrus. I like Sanders designs for the cute and strange characters he creates. Hell look at Stitch and Toothless...
I saw the American Dog story reels. It was terrible. I mean REALLY bad. And everyone (not just Lasseter and Catmull) knew it. I don't entirely blame Sanders--he had no real support under Stainton--and worse yet, no structure. LEft to his own devices, Sanders' work is a well meaning but confused and confusing mess. Don't let the fantasy of what you might imagine it to be fool you. It really was that bad. Some of the art was nice, but not all of it.
I didnt' care much for Bolt, but it was miles better than the final version of American Dog. Too bad Sanders couldn't stand the heat and quit.
And thank goodness he's got Dean DuBlois to provide some story structure on Dragon. It really looks like a cute kids cartoon!
Hide under your desks, guys.
The "bad" film maker is about to kick your butts.
Dragon is not a kids cartoon. Its way, way better.
I agree with Floyd. You guys aint seen nothin yet.
He didn't say Chris Sanders was a bad filmmaker, he said that American Dog was a bad film, which it was. Chris Sanders is a talented and very creative artist, but American Dog had no direction or cohesion. I think teaming up with Dean DuBlois is a great move on Sander's part because Dean provides the perfect complement to Chris' wild and crazy ideas.
BINGO!
And what's wrong with kid's cartoons? That's what dragon is, and the moment it pretends to be anything more it smacks of pretentious crap.
PATF, where we started this discussion, was nearly death by a thousand cuts, scheduling, following a lousy lead (A Christmas Carol) and so on.
The one thing I feel that damaged its box office potential more than anything else was the Mouse's targeting the film at the cooey, gooey, "Disney Princess" market. A money making juggernaut to be sure but one with a built in backlash. Dads, sons, boys and men in general get all the crinkly, crinoline, wand waving they can stand at home. As with most all Disney Princess events it's almost exclusively a mommy daughter thing.
>> Are we to believe it's just dumb luck that certain filmmakers are consistently successful?
Yes. Be especially suspicious of consistent success.
>> Is it just as much luck that some writers turn out compelling, golden prose, and others so much dreck and twaddle?
Yes and yes. Today's dreck and twaddle is tomorrow's genius.
>>Why study composition, color theory, technique, etc. It's just dumb luck if a bit of animation makes you smile, or a painting makes you want to keep staring at it.
And yes. Enjoy and move on. Your children will love you more when you just admit that you don't know what you don't know. The more you know, the less you really know.
Any prolific director, writer, or artist will all tell you the same thing - at the end of the day, they have no idea what they are doing, and thank god. That's the entire point of being an artist, isn't it?
So stop harshing on their mellow.
Okay, thanks for confirming that you're not actually in the industry, and that your celebration of ignorance is something you need to do to make yourself feel better.
Now, why don't you take your own advice and stop trying to control a conversation that you admit you don't understand?
And what's wrong with kid's cartoons?
Well, I hear "kids cartoons" and I think Dora the Explorer. Everyone has their own definition...
Maybe should change to "it looks like a cute cartoon."
Kids aren't excluded.
You are welcome. And thank you for confirming that you are a studio executive, one I believe I have met many times before.
Hey, dragon is getting pretty good reviews so far. Nice.
**The one thing I feel that damaged its box office potential more than anything else was the Mouse's targeting the film at the cooey, gooey, "Disney Princess" market.**
Makes you wonder how that Fantasyland expansion is gonna go over, then. If Disney thinks it's going to be any competition for Universal's Harry Potter update it's dead wrong - AGAIN.
Post a Comment