Inkstone

Disney making lazy sequels to their flagships is nothing new, and I don’t think a lack of success for those sequels portends a loss of control on Disney’s part. The sequels aren’t supposed to be huge moneymakers, thats the job of the next flagship. Agree with you on the subject of the article, as well: this was massively well researched. kudos.

Of two minds about this movie. On one hand I think it’s way too clumsily done to be the kind of cult classic you are describing here – there are huge amounts of unnecessary, hackneyed characters, scenes and gags cluttering the movie to the point that they both distract attention from the central story and take up time that should have been spend developing central points. On the other, I think you are right. The central story between the Protagonist and the Bog King is spectacularly solid, both characters are developed well well (given how much time there is for development) and events actually get quite compelling, especially once the story starts moving into the climax. The problem is there’s not enough of it – it’s barely a skeleton of a good story, and even that you have to pick from about an hour of filler. In the end I think it’s just another tragic reminder of what happens to George Lucas when he doesn’t have someone to direct his creativity and help him with his pacing problems. There’s plenty worth seeing in this movie, same as with any Lucas film. You will just have to be prepared to pick your way through a lot of uninspired trash to find it.

I agree entirely with what’s being said here – between Disney’s animated films cornering the family market for so long and competing companies’ botched attempts at skewing the medium towards older audiences,forms of animated film have been unfairly pidgeonholed as children’s media. Animation, like anything else, is merely a means of telling a story – that story, like any, can appeal to any audience the creators make it for. Marginalizing an entire form of expression in that way is limiting, and unfortunate for animated film in general.

Thumbelina, not Tom Thumb. Woops.

Glad to hear these written about! I’m a fan of Don Bluth, and have always thought Prince of Egypt was a diamond in the rough as well.

Though all of these films certainly have the Disney feel to them, it’s interesting to note where the base stories come from – The Swan Princess is based off of a 19th-century ballet, Prince of Egypt is a section of a major religious text, Anastasia is based off of a popular myth surrounding actual, fairly recent historical events and Ferngully is an entirely original story. Tom Thumb’s only one of these that’s a classic folktale in the old Disney musical style (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin). While Disney’s certainly found a niche that works, the fact that it tends to stay within said niche seems to encourage its competitors to branch out, stretching the standard fomula by applying it to the kinds of stories it was not originally designed for. Imo this is the best kind of serendipity.