Disney Movie Eras: The Post-Renaissance
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: 2010-2019
Streaming: 2020-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 +.
I've also taken the liberty of demarking a new era. It's my opinion that the films released since 2020 represent a distinct shift in animation, production, and marketing for the company. We're in the Streaming era now, for better or worse!
So buckle up everyone as we retread the Disney films of years passed:
We are now into the Post-Renaissance. There were eleven titles released during this era, which popularly ends in 2012: Fantasia 2000, Dinosaur, The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Lilo and Stitch, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Bolt.
In the late 1990s, Disney animation seemed to be on top. The films were doing better than ever, and even the 'misses' like Pocahontas and Hunchback were still generally successful.
That all changed with the rift between Jeffrey Katzenberger and the rest of Disney. Unhappy with how he was treated by the company, the executive decided to form his own company, DreamWorks. DreamWorks tackled both Disney and Pixar, and believe it or not, they found success. The emergence of a new rival meant things had to change at Disney, in order to combat the new competition. In a contradictory manner, that meant being both revolutionary and doubling down on established practices. This strategy found mixed success with execs and audiences, and the result was a confusing wave of films that, in many ways, pushed animation further and further along, but still struggled to find success.
Fantasia has a bit of a tragic story, as far as Disney productions go. The original film was a passion project of Walt, who wanted to bring classical music to the masses, combined with revolutionary animation. There had been no film quite like it at the time, and arguably, no film since. The timing for release, however, could not have been worse. By the time production began in earnest, bullets were already flying across Europe, almost completely cutting off that market. By the time the film was ready for release, even America was involved, so the inevitable release of the film was barely noticed by the public. It, and several of Disney's other works, got rereleased after the was was over, but even then, audiences and critics but largely gave a collective 'meh' to Fantasia.
That did not stop the creatives at the company from working on a follow-up. A few projects emerged over the years, but never saw much progress. It was not until after 1984 when Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew, suggested a true sequel to Fantasia. Eisner, then the new CEO, was on board with the idea, but the company was hesitant and unsure of how profitable it would be. Before they would go forward with a new film, the company decided to release Fantasia on VHS first and see how it did. This being the first release of the film for home consumption, it sold rather well, so in 1991 Eisner approved production.
Development of Fantasia 2000 took several years. Disney had to secure several art teams to work on new animated segments, and each one needed to feel and look distinct from the others. In addition, they also needed a bunch of new music. Originally, the execs could not decide on how much involvement to put toward new content: some were willing to rerelease half of the original segments from the first film, while others wanted entirely new productions. In the end, there was a compromise, with Disney agreeing to rerelease two of the original segments and have the rest be new; indeed, the company had more works than anticipated and dropped one of the rereleases for their final, and arguably most popular segment, Rhapsody in Blues.
The film was not quite a huge success commercially, but it still earned a profit. Critics enjoyed the film as well, but the general consensus was that the final film was not quite up to the high benchmark of the original. Fantasia 2000 was the first Disney film released in IMAX theaters, bringing the visuals to the forefront, at the cost of only reaching a select few screens. After an initial four months in IMAX, it received a wide release but by the summer audiences just weren't quite as interested.
Dinosaur is a complicated film. The original pitch dates back to 1986, but no work was done at all until 1994. The film itself is a mixture of real life scenery and computer generated dinosaurs. Of course, in 1994, CGI was relatively primitive, so a lot of work needed to be done. In the intervening years, another film released under a competitor's studio: Universal Pictures' The Land Before Time. Keep that in mind.
Disney involved nearly $150 million in production of the film, making it the most expensive animated film at the time, and one of the most expensive films ever. By 1999, advancements in computer technology improved drastically, allowing for the 'photo realistic' dinosaurs of the film. Even 26 years later, the actual dinosaurs hold up pretty well, which is a pretty good testament to the animation team.
Watchers might question if all that investment was worth it in the end. The scenery might be all real life, but the Sunset Boulevard is painfully obvious at one point. A lot of the scenery used for the travelling dinosaurs is uniform brownish grey. Guess what color most of the dinosaurs are! Brownish grey! Realistic or not, many viewers criticized the art direction of the film. A more troublesome point was the overall story - a herd of dinosaurs travelling a desolate waste to reach the fertile Promised Land- . The age and number of the characters involved might be drastically different, but the plot is basically just The Land Before Time. If you haven't seen the film, maybe you should take a look and judge it for yourself!
Development of the film coincided with the development of Disney's newest theme park, Disney's Animal Kingdom. A planned prehistoric ride was changed at the last minute to feature the film, including the character Aladar. Dinosaur: Countdown to Extinction is due to be retired in 2026.
Boom baby! Originally titled Kingdom of the Sun, this film dates back to 1994 and its production began shortly after the release of The Lion King. Disney animators wanted more variety in the films they released, and decided on a film set in ancient Pre-Columbian Peru. The film initially followed more of an epic theme and featured a ton of nods to Incan history, culture, and religion. Halfway through production, and after most of the original dialogue was already done, half the film was rewritten. The result? A vastly different buddy adventure that reportedly did not even have a final script.
On paper, this sounds like the recipe for a disaster. In actuality, The Emperor's New Groove was a sleeper hit, showcasing the talents of David Spade, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, and Patrick Warburton with their incredible comedy. The film was meta before meta was even a thing! In many ways, it was more of a cartoon than any Disney film had been in fifty years, going back to when most of the cartoon shorts released by Disney and other companies were released in theaters.
The film was a success in theaters, but moreso on home video. As far as legacy goes, the film earned a sequel, Kronk's New Groove, as well as a television series, the Emperor's New School. We'll discuss those in detail later.
The Post-Renaissance was quickly developing a reputation for quirky, non-traditional films. What does traditional even imply? When one thinks of Disney films, usually the viewer imagines storybook fairy tales and princesses, or popular children's storybooks. The films released since 1999, however, have a decidedly art-house feel to them, as if the Disney producers were determined to explore wildly new ideas and technology.
No film quite embodies this direction like Atlantis: The Lost Empire. While the mythology remains questionable and debated today, the production of the film firmly dates itself to 1996. Fresh off the release of Hunchback, almost the entire production team moved directly into a new work. They wanted to do another film with a masculine lead, set in the works of Jules Verne. Mike Mignola, famed comic artist, was brought on as production designer (Mignola would also play a role in Bambi 2, Brave, and the previously discussed Blade 2). The film's star was unquestionably Michael J. Fox, playing Milo J. Thatch.
The most impressive production trivia? The producers wanted to really sell how authentic the Atlantean culture was in the film. To accomplish this, Disney hired Mark Okrand, the well-respected linguist responsible for the Klingon language in Star Trek, along with fleshing out Vulcan and Romulan. Okrand came up with Atlantean as a proto-Indo European root language, borrowing elements from a variety of cultures; not just Greek, but Indian and Olmec too, to name a few.
There was a planned television series, somewhat in the vein of The X-Files, with Milo and the team hunting mythological creatures, but that got scrapped in favor of a direct-to-video movie.
Disney struck gold when they came up with Lilo and Stitch. The 2002 film was by far the most successful of the Post-Renaissance works.
Production started in Florida after 1998 the Orlando studio finished work on Mulan. Looking for a new original film idea, executive vice president Thomas Schumacher asked story boarder Chris Sanders what he wanted to work on. Sanders pitched his idea of a misfit creature who wanted to fit in. As Sanders worked on his story, the company pitched a retreat to Hawaii, and suggested the film might benefit more if the monster-like Stitch interacted with a young girl. Thus, the film was born.
Disney could have stopped there and just made a cute film, but they had a new trick up their sleeve. To build hype for the film, Disney turned to its existing catalog of films, and designed some new commercials, opens a new window. Stitch, a little blue trouble maker, would crash into previous, beloved films, ruining iconic moments. It was fun, new, and meta. It also gave Disney the chance to treat their characters as actual actors, performing on movie sets, miffed at the ruined performances thanks to Stitch. The marketing was iconic and genius!
The film was an unmitigated hit. Unlike many other films, Disney followed through on plans for more sequels, as well as actually putting out a television series. We'll talk more about them later, but Lilo and Stitch earned its place in Disney's Circle of Life.
Treasure Planet is a timeless action adventure story... or so you'd believe. Based on Treasure Island, the film seemed a sure hit. History however tells us it wasn't, failing to make back it's $140 million budget. It was the first loss of a major Disney film since The Black Cauldron. What happened?
The film dates back to 1985, at the same pitch meeting that also birthed The Little Mermaid. The film was pitched simply as Treasure Island in Space. The film did not get selected for production, but Roy E. Disney liked the idea and backed Clements. By 1995, the studio enjoyed enough success they felt ready to push ahead with production. Within 5 years, they had a story, cast, and a studio set aside with over 300 animators. Over the next two years, they continued working on the film, pushing up the staff to, allegedly, over 2,000 people involved before release. The film was a bit of a technical marvel, expanding the Deep Canvas software used in Tarzan and pushing it to new levels. The final film combined traditional 2D animation with animated 3D nearly seamlessly.
The film's budget reached massive heights, but in the end, everything depended on how much money the film made at the box office. On release, Treasure Planet had to contest with The Santa Clause 2 (another Disney film), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and the latest James Bond film. With such a crowded market, Treasure Planet was doomed as soon as it set sail. It made only $109 million in the end, well shy of the budget and marketing costs. Even DVD sales could not make up for the lost revenue. The film has a fervent cult icon status, but all plans for sequels and television shows were cancelled.
Shortly after 1994, the Disney animation team wanted to do another musical animal film involving animals. Instead of focusing on lions, they decided to try their hand at bears. To be sure, this was not the first time Disney had animated bears before; in Fun and Fancy Free there was Bongo the Bear, not to mention the monstrous bear from The Fox and the Hound. The crew took a trip to Alaska for inspiration, where they settled on names for their characters, and a story. Growing up, I was convinced the film took place in Canada, because there used to be a Grizzly Bear statue at the Canada Pavilion at Epcot, but apparently that was never the case, despite random visits by characters Kenai, Koda, Pocahontas, and Meeko... for some reason.
One of the hallmarks of the film was the inclusion of Phil Collins once again. Collins was fully prepared to score the film and release an entire soundtrack in partnership with Disney. However, the final film only included two big numbers where he got to sing, out of the nine he's credited for. This was the final film he worked on with Disney.
Luckily, Brother Bear was a much larger success for Disney compared to previous films, making over $250 million at the box office. In fact, the film wound up releasing early, taking the 2003 spot that originally belonged to the next film on our list. Plans for a television series were cancelled however when the company opted for a direct to video sequel.
Home on the Range struggled a bit in its production. The first pitch originated in the early 1990s, from Mike Gabriel, director of Pocahontas. He originally suggested adapting Old West Folklore, such as Annie Oakley and Pecos Bill. There was a problem however, because Disney had already done that before, with Pecos Bill in the film Melody Time, released back in 1948. Gabriel needed a new idea, so the film languished until 2000.
The film is probably most notable for its villain, Alameda Slim, a yodeling cattle rustler who moonlights as a banker. Slim was ultimately a creation of Alan Menken, who helped reconceive of the villain and provided his musical concept. The film's big animation point is tied to Slim, featuring a wacky, hypnosis-induced yodeling fever dance. Our three heroines are all cattle from a small farm, who decide to go out and stop the cattle rustler and prevent their home from being bought out at auction.
Unfortunately for the film, the production delay shifted it to take Brother Bear's 2004 window. When it finally did release, audience and critic reactions were rather tepid. The film made $145 million against it's $110 million budget, but marketing costs resulted in the film falling well short of its goal: most films released need to make about double the cost of their budget to be profitable.
Chicken Little also suffered somewhat in its production. The original plan was for a much more straight-forward retelling of the titular story, based on the popular children's story, the main character traditionally named Henny Penny, or in the States, Chicken Little. Thus, Chicken Little was originally a female, voiced by Holly Hunter. After several rewrites, cut scenes, and a few executive mandates, the story was scrimped down significantly and recast as a male. Jury's out on the exact reasoning behind the recast, so we'll leave it to watchers to form their own conclusions.
The finished story was notable for two more big changes: the introduction of an alien invasion subplot, and the musical score being largely replaced by on-the-nose pop music. The film is filled with pop culture references and meta humor, and this feels very on-brand, considering the production team is led by the director from Emperor's New Groove. It's pretty evident at this point to remind you guys that Disney had multiple different teams, all working on movies at the same time. This was necessary, of course, in order for Disney to meet its own schedule of putting films in theaters, anywhere between four and a dozen owned by the whole corporation in a single calendar year (don't forget to count the live action films!). While Chicken Little was under production from 2000 to 2005, other teams were hard at work on Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range, and the many direct-to-video films that came out during the decade.
One of the big mandates of course also came from executives. By the time 2004 was coming to a close, pundits were convinced that 2D animation had become faux pas and too expensive. Audiences just weren't interested in 'old fashioned animation', or so the logic held. Chicken Little would therefore become the first entirely 3D animated Disney film. This was doubly important because the end of Disney's contract with Pixar approached in 2006, with the release of Cars. If Chicken Little was successful, Disney would have a better negotiating advantage with the other company.
In the end, Disney was fortunate. Faced with slim competition, Chicken Little was able to gross $314 million. Disney's downward slump seemed to have been a false alarm.
Meet the Robinsons, opens a new window is based on a children's book released in 1990 by William Joyce. It's a wacky film involving time travel and found family. It feels very Disney-ish in a classical way that evokes the 1950s-inspired Tomorrowland, with a retro animation style and sci-fi aesthetics. Moreso, it's the second film in a row to also be 3D animated. 3D animation was on its way to becoming the dominant animation standard at Disney. While this film was not particularly lucrative or popular with film viewers, it did help demonstrate the growing versatility and variety now possible with the animation, particular with human characters.
In 2006, the abrupt fallout of the Disney-Pixar negotiations collapsed and led to the latter company's acquisition by Disney. No longer threatened by the idea of an independent, competitive animation studio, Disney now had full control. Pixar was left intact and fully operational, but John Lasseter was brought on and made head of Disney animation, over both studios. The company's shift was now cemented, but the cost was leveled on Meet the Robinsons itself, which led to more than half the film being completed gutted, rewritten and reanimated. This of course drove up the budget, so that even though it technically cleared its 2007 release with $170 million in the end, it wasn't quite enough to justify all the work that went into it.
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Now, it's worth pointing out that 2006 was a big year for Disney. Frustrated with their current trajectory, the company attempted to reorient the metaphorical ship. To achieve this course correction, the team rehired numerous animators and production team who had left over the previous four years, including Ron Clements and Jon Musker. The duo were given a zero mandate: they could make whatever film they wanted, and even choose what animation style they wanted, ignoring the earlier mandate of 3D films only. The duo decided to adapt The Frog Prince, and this was the start of what would become The Revival Era.
But in the meantime, Disney had one more film to release.
When demarking the end of this particular era, a lot of Disney fans argue whether the Frog Prince adaptation or Bolt here is the start. I am in the latter camp. While the general success of this film cannot be gainsaid, it is quite mediocre compared to the popular Disney hits. Thematically, it strikes a lot closer to the other Post-Renaissance films, which often get referred to as 'Disney's experimental phase.' This term insinuates that all Disney films before, and since, were incredibly formulaic and indistinguishable, and that there were no distinct differences between releases. As we have seen through this retrospective so far, that is patently untrue.
If anything, Bolt bears the most similarities with a Pixar film, particularly a certain character, Buzz Lightyear. Buzz Lightyear, from Toy Story, is a toy that is convinced he really is a space ranger. It is a running gag throughout the film series that Pixar gets a lot of mileage out of. After realizing he is a toy in the first film, he meets many other Buzz figures in the second movie, then gets himself accidentally reset in the third film. Bolt underwent some significant changes during its production, but changing the mannerisms of the title character was actually not one of them. Our hero, Bolt, is a small dog who is an action hero on TV in the vein of Thunder from 101 Dalmatians, or Lassie or Rin-tin-tin. In his show, Bolt has super powers, and offset, is convinced he really does have these powers, and that his owner is in constant danger. Travolta plays Bolt wonderfully, capturing his dedication to the part, his anxiety, and his growing acceptance of life. It's a silly Disney film, but one that's well acted, and it just has a certain something that makes you appreciate it. If I have a complaint at all, it's with the poster, and the implication that teenage superstar Miley Cyrus plays one of the animal characters shown; nope, she's playing Bolt's human owner, Penny.
That wraps up our discussion. Stay tuned next time, when we cover the Live Action films of the 2000s.
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