DISNEY IS NOT EVIL

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DISNEY IS NOT EVIL

Post by little Blue Lucy »

Listen, damnit! I don't know why the hell all you people think it's so cool to knock Disney characters, but it's really unfair. If you want to hate on something having to do with the Disney company, hate on Eisner. He's the ass-hole, not the beloved characters I grew up with, that my parents grew up with.
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Post by Tracker »

Right on. Unfortunately, the Disney Co. is being run by people who can't see past the next dollar sign. Don't blame the creators and their characters for the money-grubbing antics of their bosses.

Hint: Why do you think Pixar isn't renewing their contract?
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DISNEY IS NOT EVIL

Post by Singe »

...huh?

What prompted this?
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Post by Bamfette »

I'm sure Lucy just saw something, somewhere...

Pixar - as i heard it, and my friends on the 'inside' confirm, Disney signed Pixar to a... 5? picture deal. Pixar worked on Toy Story 2 thinking it counted towards the deal. when Disney announced later, after it was done, that because it was a sequel, no, it did not count. basically adding another picture and another year or so to the deal. Pixar refused to re-sign with Disney after that. that wasn't the WHOLE reason, but it was a major part. and is now opening a traditional (drawn) animation studio to openly compete with Disney, and talking to other studios to act as distributors as their films. not that there will be any competition, anymore, seeing as Disney shut down it's entire animation department recently. which, of course, is where Pixar is drawing most of it's new talent. ;)

but as said, it is nothing to do with the characters, the creative talent, or anything. most of the decisions are merely because Disney, like any company, must make sometimes unpopular business decisions. however. many of the decisions, mainly those made by Eisner in recent years, some, namely Roy Disney, are saying is infact detremental to the company. and, frankly, i would tend to agree.


I love Disney. it's history, it's characters, an artform they helped revolutionize, back in the day. however, i do not like who is holding the reins. I think he has done more to harm Disney, both creatively and financially, than help it.

http://www.savedisney.org
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Post by CurlyyHairGirl »

I have nothing against all the classic characters and classic movie by Disney, they rock! But all the new original movies like Zenon or whatever it is called and some of the others that are just for the channel seem that they just put no effort in them at all, and it saddens me.:cry

LONG LIVE WALT!!!
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Post by Northstars Love »

Disney has for sometime now moved away from the original vision Walt himself had started and become the unpopular monster that some people dislike today. The very reason why Roy Disney is upset. He would like nothing more then re-establish his uncle's and father's vision of what Disney was and should be. But I fear that is too late. It has become a make a quick buck business like so many older business have become.

I wouldn't say they are evil. Just mismanaged.
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Post by Nighton »

I llike most of Disney's own stuff. But when they take someone else's characters and make their own stories, like they did with Winnie the Pooh, it makes me sick.
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Post by Winged Outlaw »

Wait... long LIVE Walt? Dude... he's dead.

The only thing I've liked outta Disney recently was Kingdom Hearts. Other than that, the company practically doesn't even exist to me...
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Post by CurlyyHairGirl »

Originally posted by Winged Outlaw
Wait... long LIVE Walt? Dude... he's dead.
I meant it as in the memory of Walt and everything that he has brought to us.

Who did Winnie the Pooh belong to anyway?
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Post by Entropy »

Have you heard? Marvel is sueing disney. It relates to the Spiderman and other animation that is shown on Disney's abc family channel.

For more detailed accounts check out newsarama.
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Post by Maelstrom »

Disney is popular to bash on now, and it seems to me that there are several reasons.

1) They're a big, rich, multinational corporation. That automatically makes it "evil" for some people.

2) Thanks to Eisner, there has been a LOT of dirty laundry aired lately. Mind you, there's nothing new about this. In the 50s, during the McCarthy "commie scare", Walt was having trouble with his animating staff, and claimed that communists had infiltrated it. In the 70s, Don Bluth got pissed off with how the animation staff was being treated and left to form his own company. (Which, sadly, only had one really big hit, their first movie: Secret of Nihm. All Dogs Go to Heaven was their second hit, but took years to bring out, and neither made as much money nor had such critical acclaim.) Most recently, there's that whole Farenheight 911 thing....

3) There's been a string of substandard movies being churned out by Disney. Remember Brother Bear? You're not alone. The animation looked intriguing, but the teasers told me that this was going to be plotless. In my opinion, there hasn't been a really good, traditionally animated flick from disney since Atlantis, and that one got mixed reviews (even if I loved it). Pixar has been making their best stuff, and now they've gone.

4) Disney stands for "family values", and that can be politically unpopular. Why? Because what springs to mind for lots of people when you say "family values" is "white, conservative, Baptist, mom-stays-home, dad has a real job, and uncomfortable things like minorities, gays, descrimination, and foreign cultures don't exist". Thank the Religious Right for that one. Althought Disney has been "less than sensitive" about minorities before *coughsongofhtesouthcough*, recently they've actually been careful not to perpetrate stereotypes in their media and their park, so this isn't a very fair comparison. (Hell, they pissed off the Baptist coalition by extending domestic partner benefits to their employees. ;) )But since they aren't "dark and edgy", they're poo-poohed (pardon the pun) as pollyana.

5) For perhaps the first tiime, they have meaningful competition from Dreamworks, which has a very different style and vision. Ironically, to me Dreamworks has the same "hit or miss" problem Disney has: for every Shrek and The Prince of Egypt they make, there's two sleepers like Road to Eldorado, SInbad, and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron being made as filler. But since we don't have the same expectations of Dreamworks, we're more willing to cut them some slack. Especiall because there's some "Disney refugees" on the team. (See point 2.)

6) Finally, Disney IS America. For better or for ill, it's inextricably linked with America, its culture, its values, its people. If you have a problem with the current American government, American policy, American culture, or anything American, Disney is automatically gonna get some slopover. I've heard people complain bitterly about the "sanitized history" they show in Disneyland's Main Square and Frontierland: all white, clean, and utterly free of the racism and descriminatory practices of the era. But would ANYONE want to see that in an amusement park??? There are plenty of museums and learning insitutions that show the totality of American History, warts and all. You go to a park to forget for a little while, not have humanity's injustice constantly in your face.


I fear that Disney works in cycles, like the Semiconductor Industry I work for. They have highs and lows. They were on top of the world in the 30s-50s, started sliding in the 60s, hit rock bottom in 70s-early 80s, then sprang up again with the release of The Little Mermaid in '89. But after ten years of riding the crest of the wave, they're falling again, with a run of substandard, not always creative films. Yes, Lilo and Stitch was somewhat edgy, but to me it seemed like a forced, "Hey! I'm an iconoclast! Aren't I cool?" kind of edgy. Increasingly, it seems management is more concerned with churning out money from their ancillary merchandise than keeping their creativity up. They're falling back on DVD only sequels to established stories and characters, and not putting anything into new blood.

I wish that Eisner would take a page from the flagship of Disney's fleet: Disneyland. Disney himself said that it would never be complete, that there would always be a new ride, new land, new attraction coming in. He knew that a park that was static would inevitably decay and collapse from the inside. If Eisner doesn't give his people creative room to breath, allow them to take chances and create, instead of just design for bland max appeal, Disney's animation will suffer that sad fate. :(
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Forgive this double post....

Post by Maelstrom »

I dont generally do this, but after I posted, I saw Entropy had posted while I was working on mine. For those who are interested, heres the clipping from Newsarama:

---------------------------------

MARVEL SUES DISNEY

According to today’s Variety, Marvel has filed suit against Disney and the ABC Family channel, claiming that the company is owed at least $16 million for the cartoons which it licensed to the channel when it was Fox Family. Disney acquired the channel in 2001 for $5.2 billion.

Variety: According to Marvels suit, filed Thursday in L.A. Superior Court, Disney has harmed Marvel in two ways -- by failing to account properly for profits from animated television series "The Incredible Hulk," "X-Men" and "Spider-Man" and failing to promote them. According to the complaint, Disney claims the cartoons are a money-losing proposition but refuses to provide a proper accounting.

Marvel also alleges that Disney overpaid when it acquired the channel which left it no money to develop the Marvel properties – allowing the Marvel properties to languish while Disney and ABC Family promoted their own programming.

Fox held the rights to the Marvel cartoons thanks to a 1996 deal between Fox and Saban, which produced the various series. Disney acquired the distribution rights when it bought the channel, and Marvel alleges, has since failed to live up to the agreement of the original deal.

Variety: Among its claims, Marvel says Disney has refused to allow Marvel to audit recent records in order to conceal handsome profits made when it repackaged and re-released "Spider-Man" videos to coincide with Sonys "Spider-Man" feature film release in 2002.

The final part dates back to Marvels previous tussle with Disney in early 2002, when it sued Disneys Buena Vista home entertainment unit, claiming that it was using artwork without permission to promote BVs repackaging and sale of DVD editions of episodes of the animated Spider-Man series.

At the time, Reuters reproted: "Marvel said Buena Vista had sought its permission to release the cartoon series but had not been given authorization to use the companys Spider-Man artwork for use in its advertising and promotion materials. It said advertisements appeared in such newspapers as The Daily News and Newsday in New York City and in Toys R Us and Wal-Mart stores in different parts of the United States.

"Buena Vista is advertising and promoting its exploitation of the series through the use of artwork that is directly copied from the Marvel Spider-Man artwork," Marvel said in its suit. "Marvel has not consented to or approved of such usage."

---------------------------------

And I think I see where the DISNEY IS EVIL came from: a poster called tralfaz came out and said:
I hate Disney
Disney is the devil

go Marvel!
:rolleyes Way to make yourself look informed, there, buddy....
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Post by Singe »

I think there isn't any doubt that artistically Disney will rise again like they did in the early nineties. They go through waves, and it's only a matter of time before they figure out the way they're going to go with that (and most likely it won't include Eisner). What kind of saddens me is that it won't be with traditional animation, but more likely CG (and they're starting with Chicken Little? WTF?) When I heard that they were jumping ship after Home on the Range (???) my initial thought was that it was only going to be a matter of time before they picked up traditional animation again... until someone pointed out a correlation between black and white animation giving way to color animation. I think what we're seeing is the second coming of that. :( In a matter of years the only traditionally animated films are probably going to be artsy films like The Triplettes of Belleville, since it's being made abundantly clear that the major companies aren't going to shell out for traditional animation if it isn't going to make the big bucksthat Pixar and Dreamworks are with their cg made movies. Television will be the last mainstream safehouse for it, though animated TV shows by and large are pretty crappy anyway. This is the end of an era, and I'm a little bit saddened by it.
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Post by Bamfette »

black and white to colour animation is a poor comparison. especially when you consider that Pixar, a computer animation company that is founded on very technical roots (most shorts in the early days were more a way to expand technology than anything. Lasseter just also happens to have a real knack for storytelling) is opening a traditional animation studio, and Dreamworks is not about to be closing the doors on it's traditional studios. i think Disney's thinking on this is very bassackwards. they see Pixar's films succeeding where they are failing, and they think it's that they are CG?? hello? no, it couldn't have anything to do that Pixar's films have more engaging stories...

black and white to colour is more comparable to, like with the post-Little Mermaid films, the introduction of digital colouring instead of using cels, or the CAPS system. an enhancement, not a replacement.

the only reason Dreamworks isn't coming out with a yearly animated film like Disney is they don't have the manpower or internal structure to do that. it takes about 5 years to make a traditionally animated film with the level of staff that Disney had. or a computer animated one. it's about the same, manpower and cost, actually. what Disney did was have 5 stages of production that they devoted a year to each, so they could have one in the final stage of production at all times, ensuring a yearly release. Dreamworks just isn't quite up to speed on that just yet.

and it isn't exactly the same for Computer animation, it does probably take somewhat less people, but it can still be staggered in stages so that you are working on several movies at once. first stages are identical. initial concept work, storyboard, then character and production design are steps one and two, which somewhat overlap they devote a year to each, no matter if it is CG or traditional (have you SEEN some of Pixar's design work? it's gorgeous, and mostly traditional, pastels and stuff) then they get mixed up in steps.... CG needs an extra step inserted for modeling. which could be comparable to the layout and background painting stage in traditional. another year, step 3. then you have the actual animation. another year, step 4. then you have for traditional cleanup animation and colouring, for CG, the TD's step in to light the scenes and make em purdy, do stuff like tweak the hair, clothing and particle dynamics stuff, (tho some of that would have come during modeling) and render them. step 5. near the beginning for both, you have the voice actors record their lines, but that does not take that long, so i am sticking it at the end with the rest of the music, foley and whatever. and it's done :p obvioulsy it never follows a path quite as linear as that. Pixar has more overlap on a single project than Disney has, doing TD stuff and modeling and whatever else on a project at one time, allowing them to technically make the movie faster. technically. but if they had a system similar to Disney's where the storyboard team is qorking on project A, the design team is working on project B, the animation team on project C etc. it would be about the same.

when Florida really got rolling, they could do more. but there were internal politics involed with Florida which caused it to be closed. BECAUSE it was making the most successful traditional animated movies coming out of Disney (Lilo and Stitch, Brother Bear) :rolleyes
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Post by NightPoofer »

I hate Disney
Disney is the devil

go Marvel!

:LOL A statement like that surely can get some weak willed minds to think that way... :LOL!

I know that Disney has been getting a lot of bad rep lately, but I still want to support them unconditionally. I grew up with those movies, and hearing bad things about them makes me mad in a sort of way. The things they've done of course... may not be excused for, but who of us has never done something bad every once in a while to better suit us???

I still hear good things about Disney. The movies they're thinking about are The Magic Paintbrush, which I also grew up with. A great Chinese Fairytale, but sadly, they decided to cancelled it due to reasons I don't know about.
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Post by Singe »

Originally posted by Bamfette
black and white to colour animation is a poor comparison. especially when you consider that Pixar, a computer animation company that is founded on very technical roots (most shorts in the early days were more a way to expand technology than anything. Lasseter just also happens to have a real knack for storytelling) is opening a traditional animation studio, and Dreamworks is not about to be closing the doors on it's traditional studios. i think Disney's thinking on this is very bassackwards. they see Pixar's films succeeding where they are failing, and they think it's that they are CG?? hello? no, it couldn't have anything to do that Pixar's films have more engaging stories...
I totally agree on that account. Disney doesn't seem to realize that Pixar's success is grounded as much in engaging, enjoyable stories as much as it is incredible visuals (which, lets face it, lend a whole lot to their success as well, especiall as is the case with Finding Nemo). But with the ring leader like Disney jumping ship on TD altogether there's no way TD is going to have the same place in cinema that it used to have. I don't think it will ever dissapear completely- but as far as Disney and the big boys go this is easily the beginning of the end. Disney (Eisner) thinking their recent lack of success is due to the kids flocking to CG movies and not wanting to see TD anymore just irks me to no end. Couldn't have anything to do with Pixar and Dreamworks making innovative and enjoyable, not-quite-so-formulaic movies could it? Is Disney really so strapped for ideas that it's going to make a movie about cows in the old west and expect it to do well? I totally put the recent lull on sub-par movies. It's been going downhill since the mid-nineties, as far as I'm concerned. A change in writing tactics wouldn't help. Nah, let's make an incredibly creative story about savin' the old homestead and star Roseanne as a cow. And then wonder why nobody saw the damn thing. Clearly it would have done better if it had been CG. :mad irritating.
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