Disney Movie Eras: Live Action Films Thru 1989
This month continues a new series of blogs for fans of popular culture. Whereas in the past explorations of Walt Disney films we highlighted individual works, we will now be talking about the larger groupings of movies, and the various artistic and commercial visions sought for and achieved from said movies.
A quick run though of the eras:
The Golden Age: 1937-1941
Wartime: 1942-1949
The Silver Age: 1950-1967
The Bronze Age: 1968-1988
The Renaissance: 1989-1999
Post-Renaissance: 2000-2009
Revival: 2010-Present
As you can see, the various eras are inspired by historical art movements over the year, as well as comic books. You can draw the parallel, for instance, between the Italian Renaissance, or between the iterated variations of popular superheroes like Batman and Superman.
We will also be covering Disney live action films. The list of films owned by the Walt Disney Corporation is quite expansive because it includes multiple studios and production companies, such as Touchstone Pictures, Pixar, and more. And for good measure, we will also cover animated films that released without the official Walt Disney Pictures branding, as well as films that only released via television or Disney +.
So buckle up everyone as we retread the Disney films of years passed:
The 1980s continued with the depressed years of Disney's animated films, but the horizon appeared somewhat brighter with live action films. Out of 24 films, we are only going to highlight four of them.
Starting off our line-up is Disney's most successful film of the decade: Tron.
In the mid-1970s, Pac-Man Fever swept through America, and the birth of the video game industry inspired very many people, including Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird, who wrote this film. A young computer programmer Flynn (Jeff Bridges) must fight corporate theft and espionage by entering the world of ENCOM's gaming grid, where he must compete in digital games against the corporate's AI computer system. The film was quite notable for its elaborate use of computer-generated special effects, the most in any film to date, at over fifteen minutes.
Against a budget of $15 million, the film found a tepid reception to general audiences, and most success financially. Eventually, the film would get a sequel in 2010 and an animated television series. More importantly, Tron was instrumental in the direction of film in the coming decades. The film was disqualified from earning an Academy Award for its graphics, but the production team that had been scorned in Disney found a second life in Lucasfilm, and then was bought out by Steve Jobs to form the foundation of what would become Pixar. We'll hear a LOT more about them in the future.
In modern times, the Walt Disney Corporation has quite the reputation for purchasing companies and media to fill their catalog. One of the very first acquisitions, made years and years ago, was the catalog of Frank Baum's Oz books. The company struggled for years to produce a film, but finally found success in 1985's Return to Oz. Following the books more closely than the 1939 film by MGM, Return to Oz has Dorothy of Kansas venturing once more to the mystical land, where she must right evil and restore the rule of Princess Ozma.
Critics largely appreciated the closeness the producers brought the film to the darker material of the books, relatively speaking, compared to the much more whimsical The Wizard of Oz. Audiences largely disagreed, and mostly found the film glum and a bit creepy in some places. It did not stop the film from developing into a cult classic, and it remains a beloved entry in the franchise, particularly by Neil Gaiman.
Flight of the Navigator may well be another film more known in later years for its technical achievements, rather than its actual popularity or box office performance. Released in 1986, Flight of the Navigator tells the story of a 12-year old boy who goes on a journey across space and time, before returning to his native 1974. Nothing particularly fancy plot-wise, however the film was another really early use of extensive CGI in film. It was also the first film to use reflection mapping, a graphics technique to show reflections on chrome surfaces, and which would be widely used in the Terminator films in a few years, before being widely adopted. It was also one of the first films to feature an entirely electronic soundtrack. Composed by Alan Silvestri, all of the music was composed on a Synclavier, an early model that could reproduce various sounds and instruments, later found on electronic keyboards throughout the world.
I will start off by making an asterisk of sorts. Earlier I claimed that Tron was Disney's most successful film of the decade. Overall, I still stand by that assertion, on the grounds of looking at the technical achievements and the long term impacts the film had on the industry. In terms of critical and audience reception though, there is an even more clear winner, in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Far and away, this was Disney's biggest film of the decade, and their most successful live-action film ever up to this point, grossing over $222 million against a paltry budget of $18 million.
The film stars Rick Moranis, the lovable nerd of 80s cinema, as a wayward inventor whose shrink ray machine accidentally turns his and the neighbors' children into tiny versions of themselves. The kids find themselves lost in the backyard, forced to contend with various surprising challenges as they make their way back inside and try to reverse their misfortune. The film proved so successful, it earned a cartoon series, a sequel movie, and several theme park attractions! It would also go on to provide the inspiration for numerous video games, including the recent Grounded, opens a new window.
That wraps up our brief tour of the 1980's in Disney's cinematic library. Stay tuned as we next dive deep into the Disney Renaissance.
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