That '70s Disney!

"As I listened to those Disco Mouseketeers, the sights and sounds and smells of the '70s came flooding. Sadly, the song seemed not just a distant memory, but a soundtrack for today's Disney Company."

Merlin Jones rips a file at savedisney.com.

http://savedisney.com/news/features/fe030905.1.asp

Thanks, Merlin!

I am your devoted fan.

Interesting article. You make some good points, even though I don't agree with them all (I, personally, like Pete's Dragon, so I didn't agree with your assessment of that film).

Disney pretty much has the same problem now that they did in the 70s, except that the bigger they are, the harder (and farther) they fall. The main difference is that then, they were trying to recapture the past, but now they rebel against it vehemently, as if it were an albatross around their neck. The trend reversed before, but who knows if it can reverse again.

>>The main difference is that then, they were trying to recapture the past, but now they rebel against it vehemently, as if it were an albatross around their neck. <<

Excellent point - - balance is everything.

It was a good article, but I too thought Pete's Dragon was wonderful.

Funny, I was a kid in the '70's, I look upon that era of Disney with fondness. As a kid I had no idea that it was stagnant Disney.

Compared to today's rubbish, ie: Bambi 2, that era was far superior, IMHO.

Of course, Piglet looks at today's films more fondly than I do. Kids don't see the flaws that we adults see, they are just happy with another cartoon. So it seems to work the same way as it did with us in the '70's.

Geez, I reread that and I am not sure I made any sense with that post! :rolleyes:

Funny, I was a kid in the '70's, I look upon that era of Disney with fondness. As a kid I had no idea that it was stagnant Disney.

Yeah. I know what you mean. I've got friends or family that grew up during the same period that actually liked a lot of the product Disney was churning out at that time. But I think at that point in their lives they had nothing to compare it to. Today, some of these folks enjoy mainly "fond memories" of association with their childhoods that these products retain, rather than any objective critical analysis or comparison. IMHO.

Personally, I agree with Merlin that the product produced during that time was not only inferior to what the Company had produced prior, but what was worse...was inferior to what the Company was still capable of producing at that time. :( Walt was always about improving his product's quality. Not cutting them to the bone.

So much of it was Sea-Arr-Ey...you get my Point? Anybody I know that experienced much of the product of this era with a more or less adult perspective, or worked for the Mouse during that period...considers it and the output of those days as Disney's darkest hours.

And more than a few of the folks running the Company right now could sure use a flashlight or two!

IMHO.

--Walt was always about improving his product's quality. Not cutting them to the bone.--

Agreed. To clarify, I agree with the main crux of the article. There was one film I bought on a used VHS from 1976, "The Treasure of Matecumbe," that I was hoping would rise above its era. Sadly, such was not the case. The plot was too episodic, the performances vary in quality (Peter Ustinov is OK, but Joan Hackett's attempt at a Southern accent is so bad it undermines her whole performance), and there is some horrible blue-screen work. A much tighter film, narratively, and it would have worked. I was deeply disappointed in this film.

And speaking of cutting, the studio seems to have been fond of making constant wholesale edits to films for odd reasons. We know about the wild fluctuations in length between versions of Bedknobs & Broomsticks by now (a variance of about 40 minutes from shortest to longest), but do we know about the cuts to Treasure Island from the 1975 reissue? This came about because the MPAA gave it a PG rating, so violence came out to get a G. The DVD is PG and uncut.

Then 1966's Follow Me Boys got cut the following year from 133 to 123 minutes. The DVD restores the complete version.

Pete's Dragon has been back and forth between the cutting room almost as many times as Bedknobs. The soundtrack has some song material not in the film, and there is a particularly bad edit about an hour into the film we know today (which stands at 6 minutes shorter than the LA premiere version, but 7 minutes longer than the general release cut).

The Watcher in the Woods was supposed to be about 20 minutes longer. There was a good article about Anchor Bay wanting to restore the originally intended version, but Disney stonewalled and only allowed the theatrical cut on DVD.

As for the anthology TV series, it continued to have some serviceable, if not earth-shattering, entries. But then rerun fever set in. Look at Bill Cotter's episode guide, and note the ratio of reruns to new material as the show goes on. The final season before it was cancelled had ONE new entry (EPCOT's opening) that was not a theatrical film or a cartoon compilation.

I suppose the DVD extras and books that have come out since do provide a much better context for the studio's history.

Speaking of context, I was born in 1983. I didn't get to experience the decline first-hand. I did get to see the studio's rebirth in terms of popularity and quality. I think it's a little different today than in the 70s. Today it seems deliberately calculated to divorce the studio from its roots.

I suppose to truly appreciate the decline you would have had to experience the problems first hand. And the deep but underpublicized rivalries between "Walt men" and "Roy men" helped no one.

But now, it's even worse. It was through the relative inaction and lack of direction of the studio that caused the problems. They asked "What would Walt do," and though they didn't do what Walt would do (running ideas into the ground and cutting films heavily would not be on that list), at least they acknowledged that Walt had the right basic ideas.

Eisner's 1st decade seemed like a golden age in comparison. To go from "The Black Cauldron" to "The Little Mermaid" in 4 years was amazing (Although the Touchstone films could have been made at any other studio). But then consenting to a sequel to "The Rescuers" was one strike against tradition. The original may not have been the second coming of Fantasia, but the principal of not topping pigs with pigs was the same, even if the pigs were mice. It didn't seem so bad at the time, but then came the DTVs. The writing was on the wall, and it said "Up yours, Walt! Sincerely, Michael D. Eisner."

By the way, The Little Mermaid grossed $84,000,000 in its original run. The Rescuers Down Under grossed just under $28,000,000. This was less than the 1990 reissue of The Jungle Book ($41 million), and less than the collective box office run of the two reissues of the first two.

Now there is no Feature Animation. There is a division set up to make Pixar-less sequels to Pixar films (similar to Universal's cartoon division which seems to make only Land Before Time sequels). But the new generation was sacked or driven away.