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Disney's crimes against animation.

There's an excellent article up at MousePlanet (found via BoingBoing) that chronicles the latest chaos at Disney's traditional animation department. The article covers all the bases, and it touches on a pretty clear thing that nobody at Disney has realized: the reason their 2D movies have bombed isn't because they're 2D, but because they sucked. Does anyone really think that Treasure Planet would have made more money if it were in 3D?

Pixar's movies make tons of money because they're great movies, not because of the style of their animation. Pixar themselves has always admitted this from day one! Their movies go through intense screenwriting revisions before full-scale animation gets underway, and then it's continually revised as they go along. The people at Pixar make great movies. The animation (good as it may be) comes second.

The erosion of 2D animation in cinema is a crime against filmgoers. 3D is good, yes. But it's a style, and nothing more, and shouldn't be looked at as being the future of animation in cinema. In the article linked above, it's mentioned that Michael Eisner has toyed with the idea of remaking classic Disney movies in CGI. No idea could possibly be more offensive to anyone who appreciates the work of the great Disney animators from the days of Walt. A CGI Snow White would be as offensive as the colorization of black and white movies during the 80's, if not more so.

I really hope all of this is cyclical. It would only take one huge, Lion King size success to turn this whole thing around. The only problem is where is it going to come from if the major studios no longer want to make 2D animated movies?

Posted by jason at August 28, 2003 11:54 AM | TrackBack | Read more: Movies