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KharBevNor:

--- Quote from: Siibillam-Law on 09 Apr 2009, 10:40 ---Their 2D films were just getting horrendous, save for Hercules and Basil of Baker Street (Great Mouse Detective?)

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I'm not sure if you've just got your chronology wrong or something, but between producing Basil the Great Mouse Detective in 1986 and Hercules in 1997, Disneys output of 2D animation includes, among others, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, neither of which, with any amount of wrangling or taking of contrary positions, could honestly be described as 'horrendous'.

Why Disney films have got so bad I'm not sure. I personally think it relates to the softening of the villains. Ironically, Disney films worked much better when the villains were just satanically evil for no apparent reason, and hardly at all funny. If you're going to create a fairy tale world full of talking animals you can't just have the villain doing slapstick routines with his henchmen. There's no dramatic tension. You can't set up a clear hero/villain dynamic (possessed by most Disney films) and then have both of them be idiots. I don't know whether Disney think that having real villains would traumatise children (I don't remember shitting myself when I was six and saw Maleficent or Chernobog. It is only a fucking cartoon after all) or whether they're cleverly injecting believability and moral greyness into the stories. The actual way to do that would of course not to have any real villains (see Princess Mononoke). Even the better Disney villains of recent years, such as Scar, were buffoons. It's hard to even condemn a lot of the early Disney films as being particularly sugar-coated (and they almost all were when compared to the originals) when you look at what they're coming up with these days.

Siibillam-Law:
Oh bollocks. Somehow The Little Mermaid/Beauty and the Beast (I hesitate putting Lion King in there, merely out of personal opinion) completely skipped my mind. Forgot the Great Mouse Detective was done so damn early

Oh well, idiocy proved

Alex C:

--- Quote from: jimbunny on 09 Apr 2009, 17:36 ---While My Neighbor Totoro is probably his best children's movie (haven't seen KDS in too long to remember), Nausicaa manages, in my opinion, to just be a great movie, period. A rich story (more of a plot than any of his other movies), his fullest exploration of "nature vs. civilization" as a theme, a cast of well-developed characters. Most of Miyazaki's movies specialize in nostalgic reverie and imaginative settings - which are great, and what he manages to achieve is excellent - but Nausicaa builds on top of that to get at something with a much broader and deeper impact.

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Yeah, see, I guess I've never seen how environmental themes are supposed to have a broader and deeper impact than stories that focus more on relationships and a sense of wonder; I guess all those Captain Planet episodes didn't take, because I just don't give a shit. It's also one of the reasons I found Wall-E kind of boring; out of the whole movie, there were two semi-memorable characters; the rest were just fat identical caricatures used to hammer home the movie's platform. I can appreciate subtext and all, it just rarely moves me.

KharBevNor:
Wait, what do you mean Nausicaa has more of a plot than any of his other movies?

I hate to be a one pipe organ here but PRINCESSMONONOKE

Alex C:

--- Quote from: KharBevNor on 10 Apr 2009, 01:12 ---Ironically, Disney films worked much better when the villains were just satanically evil for no apparent reason, and hardly at all funny.

--- End quote ---

Yeah, it's entirely possible for a character to be entertaining but to rob the movie of overall power. For example, of all the Disney films, Pinnochio probably freaked my me and my siblings out the most when we were little due to the simple fact that Monstro the whale is never presented as anything but a raw force of nature that does its level best to destroy the characters at the end of the film. Hell, even Stromboli comes across mostly as creepy and manipulative rather than just outright buffoonish; maybe he's an unbelievable caricature, but he's so obviously unpleasant that he kinda made my skin crawl. Maybe Stromboli wasn't some kind of villainous mastermind, but he wasn't funny and he didn't make me laugh. The end result is a movie universe that feels like bad things could happen in it even if everything does end up turning out OK at the end. I can't say I ever felt the same way about a character like Hades.

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