Eisner Vs Iger

who would you vote for if that were up to us

  • Bob Iger

    Votes: 25 27.8%

  • Michael Eisner

    Votes: 65 72.2%
  • Total voters
    90
rodserling27

rodserling27

Well-Known Member
Michael Eisner destroyed the heart, soul, charm, wit, beauty, and true magic of the Magic Kingdom. Then he spread this disease like a cancer across the entire company. We are still feeling the effects of it today. Nothing Bob-o has done or could do will ever come close to that.
 
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JIMINYCR

JIMINYCR

Well-Known Member
Siren said:
Iger deserves some credit for transforming Disney into one the most powerful brands in the world.
I totally respect Eisner, too. He is the reason WDW has FOUR theme parks, he laid the foundation to grow and expand.
I have nothing bad to say about either one. They're just different, both have pluses and minuses under their tenure.
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Ahhhh again the Eisner vs Iger conversation.... I'm an Iger guy buuuut,....
Yes, they both have had their moments of success and failure, they both had strengths and weaknesses, they each made moves in their time thats brought Disney towards what we have now. No matter who leads a corporation, there will be second guessing and unfavorable reactions to moves that are made. I don't think there would be anyone anywhere that we could say we agree totally with every decision made within their time. At the moment Disney is strong, moving forward and still stable enough to be here for us. If and when Iger leaves we will be having the same conversation over the capabilities and failures of the new head of Disney.
 
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thomas998

Well-Known Member
PanchitoFan101 said:
But hey, look on the bright side of things. At least the company as a whole has not been driven into the ground. We've seen Disney winning major film industry awards ALMOST every year under Iger.
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Winning awards doesn't do much except cause the people that worked on the film to demand more money, but aside from maybe a 2 or 3 week boost in ticket sales after the awards show they don't do much long-term... in fact winning an award doesn't even mean you've made a profitable movie... Disney taking over Pixar is probably the worst thing to ever happen to Disney, if for no other reason than it shifted the animation out of Disney into a often times less than Disneylike studio.
 
Chef Mickey

Chef Mickey

Well-Known Member
The only positive Iger has contributed for WDW is a few nice acquisitions that set the parks up for great attractions and lands for a CEO who will actuaully invest in park attractions in Orlando.

Eisner is the undisputed king of WDW expansion. Some of the greatest attractions were built on his watch. We got Animal Kingdom too. Eisner had his issues, but he was phenomenal for Parks and is THE REASON Iger has been able to ignore WDW as much as he has. Iger is standing on Eisner's shoulders of great WDW expansion...Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror, Animal Kingdom, Test Track...the list goes on.

Without Eisner's epic expansion of WDW, Iger would not have been able to be a margin extractor, acquisition maker, and TV/Movie CEO.
 
L.C. Clench

L.C. Clench

Well-Known Member
rodserling27 said:
Michael Eisner destroyed the heart, soul, charm, wit, beauty, and true magic of the Magic Kingdom. Then he spread this disease like a cancer across the entire company. We are still feeling the effects of it today. Nothing Bob-o has done or could do will ever come close to that.
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Care to elaborate on that? Under Eisner there were additions in attractions and customer service was king. Under Iger more things have closed than opened and I'd say butchering the hub and dropping the night time parade is far worse than anything done before.
 
L.C. Clench

L.C. Clench

Well-Known Member
The Empress Lilly said:
I'm going to be evasive and a bit cliché:

1 Eisner's first decade
2 Iger
3 Eisner's second decade

That goes for both animation and parks. I don't care about the other TWDC segments. ESPN, ABC, Marvel are alien entities to me, which I suspect of undermining rather than strengthening the Disney I am interested in.
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Which begs the question of should it be a three option poll of just Eisner, Iger or Eisner/Wells.
 
Dead2009

Dead2009

Horror Movie Guru
thomas998 said:
Winning awards doesn't o much except cause the people that worked on the film to demand more money, but aside from maybe a 2 or 3 week boost in ticket sales after the awards show they don't do much long-term... in fact winning an award doesn't even mean you've made a profitable movie... Disney taking over Pixar is probably the worst thing to ever happen to Disney, if for no other reason than it shifted the animation out of Disney into a often times less than Disneylike studio.
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Are you trying to say DIsney hasnt made as many animated movies due to Pixar being under their brand? Because if so...

Disney Animation Studios
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films

Pixar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pixar_films

They roughly make a film per year.
 
HMF

HMF

Well-Known Member
T

thomas998

Well-Known Member
HMF said:
I will say that one of the downsides of the Pixar acquisition is that WDAS has for all intents and purposes become Pixar South.
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It has... the they are both basically CGI studios. Not saying they don't sometimes have a very good story, but I just can't embrace computer generated animation it just looks too sterile and perfect for my taste... like listening to a MP4 song verse the same song played on a good record player... It may be the same song but one of them lack any warmth.
 
HMF

HMF

Well-Known Member
thomas998 said:
It has... the they are both basically CGI studios. Not saying they don't sometimes have a very good story, but I just can't embrace computer generated animation it just looks too sterile and perfect for my taste... like listening to a MP4 song verse the same song played on a good record player... It may be the same song but one of them lack any warmth.
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Pixar more or less invented the CG Animated film so they should stay in that business WDAS should have continued what it did best which was Traditional Animation which is why I am mad at Eisner for killing it and Iger for killing it again.
 
Tom P.

Tom P.

Well-Known Member
These debates are always going to come down to which yardstick you are using to measure who is "better." Are we talking about the theme parks, which I suspect is what is most important to a majority of the posters here? Are we talking about animation? Are we talking about Disney as a whole? Are we just looking at profitability, are we judging solely on what we consider good creatively, or are we talking about both?

Personally, I tend to think that Eisner was overall better for the company than Iger has been based upon the metrics that I personally use to judge. Eisner oversaw the "Disney Renaissance" era of the animated films, which I consider to be the greatest era for Disney animation -- yes, even greater than Walt's era, sacrilege as I know that may be. And he gave a lot of love to the theme parks, adding two new parks to Walt Disney World during his tenure. (Also, as a Star Trek fan, I have a soft spot for Eisner, as he helped usher in Star Trek's rebirth in the 70's and 80's when he was at Paramount, but I digress.)

But those are my own personal criteria, and others may disagree. I would much rather have a traditionally animated film than a CGI one. I'm much more concerned about what happens in the theme parks than what ESPN is doing. Others will have different priorities. There's simply no "right" answer as to which one is better. I think about the only thing you'll likely get consensus on is that the best people who ran the company were Walt and Roy.
 
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thomas998

Well-Known Member
Eisner did some good things... but he also made some decisions that generated substantial short term returns at the expense of the long term. A perfect example was Eisners push to get the put Disney animated films out to the home video market. Prior to that decision Disney had a very viable business where they rotated into theaters animated films on about a 7 to 10 year cycle so that each new generation of kids would experience the same magic of that movie in a theater as it was intended to be seen. He killed that business just so he could generate some quick revenue up front. It has only been because of technology continuing to improve home video media that they were able to milk those film as long as they have, Eisner had no idea that DVD and then Blu-rays would ever pop up and fully expected that when he poured the vaults into VHS that it was likely a one shot deal.

Those decisions that gave short-term results at the expense of the long-term are the things that annoyed me with Eisner.
 
Tom P.

Tom P.

Well-Known Member
thomas998 said:
Eisner did some good things... but he also made some decisions that generated substantial short term returns at the expense of the long term. A perfect example was Eisners push to get the put Disney animated films out to the home video market. Prior to that decision Disney had a very viable business where they rotated into theaters animated films on about a 7 to 10 year cycle so that each new generation of kids would experience the same magic of that movie in a theater as it was intended to be seen. He killed that business just so he could generate some quick revenue up front. It has only been because of technology continuing to improve home video media that they were able to milk those film as long as they have, Eisner had no idea that DVD and then Blu-rays would ever pop up and fully expected that when he poured the vaults into VHS that it was likely a one shot deal.

Those decisions that gave short-term results at the expense of the long-term are the things that annoyed me with Eisner.
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That is true, but in the example you cite, I think that was more the movement of the industry as a whole than a specific thing that Disney did.

Prior to the late 1980's, when home video became so ubiquitous, everybody re-released films. Until the average Joe had a VCR in his house, the only way you could see a movie you loved was if it aired on TV or they re-released it into theaters. Star Wars, for example, was re-released in 1978, 1979, 1981, and 1982 (referring, of course, to 'original' re-releases and not the super-duper-new-whizbang-definitive releases that came later).

Companies re-released films all the time. But once home video became dominant, the entire market shifted toward an initial theatrical run and then home video releases after that. Even the market for showing movies on TV is much, much more limited than it used to be (not counting on-demand/pay-per-view type services).
 
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thomas998

Well-Known Member
Tom P. said:
That is true, but in the example you cite, I think that was more the movement of the industry as a whole than a specific thing that Disney did.

Prior to the late 1980's, when home video became so ubiquitous, everybody re-released films. Until the average Joe had a VCR in his house, the only way you could see a movie you loved was if it aired on TV or they re-released it into theaters. Star Wars, for example, was re-released in 1978, 1979, 1981, and 1982 (referring, of course, to 'original' re-releases and not the super-duper-new-whizbang-definitive releases that came later).

Companies re-released films all the time. But once home video became dominant, the entire market shifted toward an initial theatrical run and then home video releases after that. Even the market for showing movies on TV is much, much more limited than it used to be (not counting on-demand/pay-per-view type services).
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That is true.... But Disney had not jumped on that bandwagon with their animated movies which unlike a movie such as Super Dad or Snowball Express were more timeless and could have simply hit the movie circuit for decades without showing their age. Non animated movies usually have a limited shelf life unless they are period pieces because they don't age well... which is why a movie like Star Wars could be re-released over and over while a movie like The French Connection would look ridiculous if shown 20 years after the fact simply because the cars, clothes and hairstyles would be very dated.
 
HMF

HMF

Well-Known Member
Tom P. said:
That is true, but in the example you cite, I think that was more the movement of the industry as a whole than a specific thing that Disney did.

Prior to the late 1980's, when home video became so ubiquitous, everybody re-released films. Until the average Joe had a VCR in his house, the only way you could see a movie you loved was if it aired on TV or they re-released it into theaters. Star Wars, for example, was re-released in 1978, 1979, 1981, and 1982 (referring, of course, to 'original' re-releases and not the super-duper-new-whizbang-definitive releases that came later).

Companies re-released films all the time. But once home video became dominant, the entire market shifted toward an initial theatrical run and then home video releases after that. Even the market for showing movies on TV is much, much more limited than it used to be (not counting on-demand/pay-per-view type services).
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At least in the 90s it took a year for a film to go from theatres to video. Now it's like 4 months minimum.
 
Polydweller

Polydweller

Well-Known Member
Lands of Wonder said:
I was all for Michael Eisner getting the boot back in the day but now i miss him like he was my grandpa, besides the dumb down of two attractions in Epcot whats happening now is murder. I no respect for tiger, he's corrupt and the parks have only gone downhill, attractions are disappearing or being taken over by franchise and prices are going up.
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You obviously have strong feelings and that's ok. But you've one very strong word that seems inappropriate and that's "corrupt". That's not a minor accusation of Iger and not one I've seen supported anywhere. I think that you need to back up that statement.

Eisner basically rescued the company at a time it was a takeover target but he ran afoul of a Disney family member. He was a creative force but not always true to the Disney brand, ie see DHS which was a rushed attempt to beat Universal Studios to the movie theme.

Iger has focussed more on the total business of Disney and not as much on theme parks which makes the theme park fans unhappy.. The theme parks are just one part of the company and the board and major investors wanted the company to reduce theme park costs which they saw as excessive compared to the rest of the company and as much as ordered that refocusing a few years ago.
 

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