A Spirited 15 Rounds ...

[180º]

The Jungle Book wasn't good either.

+1. I didn’t like it either. I think the animated film is much more poignant, artful, and aesthetically appealing.

 

[Californian Elitist]

Jungle Book was a really solid complimentary experience to the original film that had an admirable goal of trying to get some of that original Kipling feel back into the story structure that Disney created for the 60s film. Like the characters may still mostly be their animated selves, but there's a little more of the book in that film's plot.

Most of the other remakes are focused on just being a pure 1:1 of the original with ugly Uncanny Valley aesthetics (Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast) or actively tearing apart their source material and creating garbage with said Uncanny Valley aesthetics (Maleficent, the Burtonland movies, Pete's Dragon). Yeah, Jungle Book's just as guilty in that "We gotta make it all look photoreal" aesthetics department, but since the film called for recreating nature instead of taking us to that same ugly fantasy movie CG backlot they've been using since Alice, it's not as garish, plus we got the solid writing and acting.

The Jungle Book did nothing for me. It was a one and done. I agree about the acting, however i just couldn't connect with the film. The overload of CGI didn't help at all, and in my opinion, Beauty and the Beast did a much better job in that department, with the exception of Beast, who looked pretty awful.

I'm not excited for any upcoming live-action Disney films, let alone the animated-to-live-action ones. They've lost their touch in that department.

Except it actually was.

Except it actually wasn't. Not in my opinion.

 

[Californian Elitist]

+1. I didn’t like it either. I think the animated film is much more poignant, artful, and aesthetically appealing.

Same. The movie wasn't bad, by any means, unlike Maleficent, but it wasn't good either.

 

[ford91exploder]

No, the article was unfair because it only focused on just one prong of the product that Disney offers. And only one end of that prong, because it basically focuses on the "classic" style Disney films, which yes, are where the Princesses reign in their musical extravaganzas.

It irritates me to have to "defend" them from this idea, because I *do* think there is a half of a good point buried in there - it's that he is picking the wrong subject to apply it to. It's a story in search of a subject, and he went with a daft choice because...Disney brings the clicks, of course.

This notion that I keep seeing pushed (even by some here) that Disney has nothing for "boys" is laughable as all hell. Especially the angle of "my boys have nothing to watch!" which, I have to say, makes their opinion just meaningless because they demonstrably have no idea what they are talking about and know nothing about the product Disney offers (and notice, I rarely hear fathers complain, it's grandfathers...).

Clearly, Pixar is the counterpart, who's films almost exclusively feature male lead characters with female characters in sparse supporting roles (Brave and Finding Dory being exceptions). That's why in a toy store, there is a section with mostly Pixar properties with action figures and toy cars and such, and the "girls" section has all the Princess stuff. (Gee, and to think a few years ago, I was starting to hope we were erasing that line between those toys, but both the right and the left seem hell bent on labeling things either "boy" or "girl" lately.)

And of course that is not to mention...Star Wars and Marvel. They offer both animated product for the younger kids, and live-action product for the older kids, and both are heavily "boy" based. With Marvel, it's just inarguable, and don't believe that nonsense about SW not still being "for boys" mostly - yes, they included two prominent female characters in two movies, but they still introduced far more male characters (and in Rogue One, which really seemed to get undies in a knot with those folks, they clearly didn't see it because it was largely a sausage fest). That's just it - these people are making opinions on trailers and what they see in fleeting glimpses, they have no idea what they are talking about.

This becoming a "conservative" viewpoint making the rounds is as silly as the "cultural appropriation" nonsense coming from the left. Everyone in the middle who doesn't live in either reality is starting to look at both sides like they are on crack, because both sides are using the same tricks to try to make a story or issue out of something just to further the narrative they want the world to believe.

With the sole exception of the purchased IP of SW and MARVEL Disney has virtually zero mindshare for boys over the age of 8 or so. The MK and Movies are seen as targeted to small children and up to tween girls.

Thst's the point the article was making

 

[ford91exploder]

Again, Disney XD and a multitude of other films disproves this idiotic "theory" Do you have a daily quota of lies you have to fulfill?

You can drop the Ad Hominem BS.

Disney XD has SW Rebels in which the most developed characters with any complexity are Hera and Sabine, Ezra and Kanan are aggregations of all bad Jedi stereotypes.

The rest of the dreck on XD well it certainly is not meant for any sentient lifeforms.


Now it USED to have stuff like Gravity Falls and Phineas and Ferb both of which appeal to boys, occasionally Disney throws some MARVEL stuff on there

 

[The Empress Lilly]

With the sole exception of the purchased IP of SW and MARVEL Disney has virtually zero mindshare for boys over the age of 8 or so. The MK and Movies are seen as targeted to small children and up to tween girls.

Thst's the point the article was making

One of my overriding thoughts during Moana was, 'this should've been a male lead'!

It is much more difficult to develop a palatable male than female Disney lead. When the Disney guy is too soft, he lacks street credibility. When he is a bit less polished, the character feels easily forced, or reeks of Disney trying too hard.

Moana is fine, but also just Merida with black curls. Instead I could totally see a Polynesian surfer guy, slightly inept but one with the waves, with tribal tattoos (the one occasion Disney can get away with a bare chested tattooed male lead!), rebellious, a natural born rugby player (rugby, not Tiki or gods or surfing is the South Seas' religion), doing a mean haka. That is more useful than princess 'filling in the blank demographic spots' #127.

 

[HauntedMansionFLA]

The Jungle Book did nothing for me. It was a one and done. I agree about the acting, however i just couldn't connect with the film. The overload of CGI didn't help at all, and in my opinion, Beauty and the Beast did a much better job in that department, with the exception of Beast, who looked pretty awful.

I'm not excited for any upcoming live-action Disney films, let alone the animated-to-live-action ones. They've lost their touch in that department.



Except it actually wasn't. Not in my opinion.

Just wait till Tim Burton's Dumbo comes out

 

[FigmentJedi]

The RetroWDW Podcast's Epcot event had a hell of an opening. Classier then anything Disney's gonna do tomorrow.

 

[MotherOfBirds]

The comment about the need for a male Moana is hilarious. Indeed, if only there were more movies, books, and tv shows with male leads! They have been so horribly underrepresented this past century!

And Disney didn't start the hardcore princess marketing until the mid to late 90's, and even then the assertion that Disney doesn't make things for boys is laughable. When fiction has a male lead, it's for everyone but when it has a female lead it's suddenly only for girls? The idea is completely absurd but annoyingly present. Disney has pushed some girl-centered marketing for a handful of movies because it found a profitable niche to fill. And as you may have noticed, girls are not the only ones lining up to see Anna and Elsa. It's almost as if movies are complex multifaceted products that appeal to different people in different ways and for different reasons beyond something as reductive as gender.

 

[FigmentForver96]

The RetroWDW Podcast's Epcot event had a hell of an opening. Classier then anything Disney's gonna do tomorrow.

That gave me chills. Just how amazing EPCOT Center was to all across the world. What people once thought was impossible became possible on that day in 1982. When mankind took the hand of his neighbor and imagined a world of peace of unity. An insparation, an idea that the future was indeed ours to mold together. That the only thing stopping us from reaching the furthest reaches of space or the sea was ourselves. That all people from around the world were one, and that we all can stand together to embrace the future. How a little imagination can lead to new horizons, and energy makes our world one of motion. How we're connected to the land and sea and that the future laid in our hands. It inspired us but now it is just another theme park, slowly dying. The same sphere that waited as people came from all over to see the greatness of EPCOT Center, is watching as pavilions fall one by one. As insparation is replaced with thrills and the wonder of the unknown replaced with the comfort of the familiar.

 

[TiggerDad]

Interesting thoughts on Moana. I went to the new Disney on Ice last night and it was the centerpiece of the show. There were almost as many people singing along to the Moana songs as in the obligatory Frozen segment. Interestingly I think there may have been more Belle costumes worn by the little girls in the audience than any other character though.

The Rapunzel segment was by far the best, with some incredible acrobatics. But lots of love for Moana from the people deciding on the content.

In the finale, Mickey and Minnie got the biggest ovation, not any of the newer characters.

 

[brb1006]

You can drop the Ad Hominem BS.

Disney XD has SW Rebels in which the most developed characters with any complexity are Hera and Sabine, Ezra and Kanan are aggregations of all bad Jedi stereotypes.

The rest of the dreck on XD well it certainly is not meant for any sentient lifeforms.


Now it USED to have stuff like Gravity Falls and Phineas and Ferb both of which appeal to boys, occasionally Disney throws some MARVEL stuff on there

Are you forgetting about the Ducktales reboot you negative nancy.

 

[brb1006]

The RetroWDW Podcast's Epcot event had a hell of an opening. Classier then anything Disney's gonna do tomorrow.

This actually felt like something old school Disney would do.

 

[MisterPenguin]

You can drop the Ad Hominem BS.

Disney XD has SW Rebels in which the most developed characters with any complexity are Hera and Sabine, Ezra and Kanan are aggregations of all bad Jedi stereotypes.

The rest of the dreck on XD well it certainly is not meant for any sentient lifeforms.

You wanna play with fallacies, Scarecrow?

How about this one: Moving the goalposts. You say there is no Disney content for boys. Someone points out a whole channel of content for boys. You then dismiss the whole channel except one show based on a new criteria of quality.

So, when presented with overwhelming evidence you are wrong, you find a way to discredit the evidence. That's moving the goal post.

BTW, if you want to know why the original ad hominem toward you, it's because of the ridiculous lengths you go through to cherry pick data to conform to your argument and ignore anything contradictory. That is a fault that lies within you.

 

[The Empress Lilly]

The RetroWDW Podcast's Epcot event had a hell of an opening. Classier then anything Disney's gonna do tomorrow.

What a brilliant little video. Just right in so many ways. This is the tone they should strike with EPCOT.

So much classier than a cupcake and a button.

 

[The Empress Lilly]

The comment about the need for a male Moana is hilarious. Indeed, if only there were more movies, books, and tv shows with male leads! They have been so horribly underrepresented this past century!

And Disney didn't start the hardcore princess marketing until the mid to late 90's, and even then the assertion that Disney doesn't make things for boys is laughable. When fiction has a male lead, it's for everyone but when it has a female lead it's suddenly only for girls? The idea is completely absurd but annoyingly present. Disney has pushed some girl-centered marketing for a handful of movies because it found a profitable niche to fill. And as you may have noticed, girls are not the only ones lining up to see Anna and Elsa. It's almost as if movies are complex multifaceted products that appeal to different people in different ways and for different reasons beyond something as reductive as gender.

No you don't find any (entirely imaginary) comment about a need for a male Moana hilarious. You took offensive because you misread context and intention and got triggered into a somewhat confused gender film studies 101 rant fighting windmills with little anybody here would disagree with.

 

[the.dreamfinder]

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/1/...oyager-probes-aliens-planet-earth-kickstarter
This feels like the right kind of article to share on EPCOT Center's 35th anniversary.

"Who are we?", was the kind of question that EPCOT Center asked. Alongside the hope that we could share generations of knowledge and culture.

 

[AEfx]

With the sole exception of the purchased IP of SW and MARVEL Disney has virtually zero mindshare for boys over the age of 8 or so. The MK and Movies are seen as targeted to small children and up to tween girls.

Thst's the point the article was making

No, the article was a sexist dog whistle disguised as "oh these poor boys with nothing to watch!"

Come on, the title is "Disney Hates Boys".

Calling Star Wars and Marvel, two massive properties, a "sole exception" is just...insane.

The author completely dismisses Pixar properties because they are anthropomorphic - which again is laughable when you look at Disney history.

Basically, the "complaint" is that Disney's animated Princess musical extravaganzas aren't appealing enough to boys - because we know 8-year old boys, right, they just clamor for animated musical extravaganzas...

Not only was that one in particular poorly written and made terrible arguments, but articles like that are awful because they really muddy the waters when people are trying to actually get to a reasonable place on issues like this. The article makes it sound so unreasonable, and picked such a terrible topic, that when there are real things to object to - everyone who doesn't think slapping characters of certain races or genders into roles just because..."diversity" gets associated with the really crazy crap like that.

If you really get into the depths of it, even forgetting all the other swaths of product Disney offers boys, yeah, we all think the classic Disney films are as close to gospel as culture gets. But you notice she gives all kinds of "bad" examples from newer films and goes into great detail, movie by movie, but she doesn't spend any time getting nearly as specific (or giving examples) of comparing them to this thing we've "lost" in those classic films. That's because, when you get down to it, they don't exist. Disney films have always been like this.

The only difference between "Snow White", "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", etc. and the newer films like "Frozen" or "Moana" are not the fact that the human male characters are there less, or are more one-dimensional (in fact, her individual rants made the newer human males seem like full, real characters, not cut-outs like most Disney Princes) - it's that they don't magically show up at the last minute to save the damsel in distress with a kiss. Often times literally in these classic films of yore that used to teach boys all these valuable lessons. That's a bad trope and overused to the point of nausea to begin with, but aside from that it's not a good message for boys OR girls. It makes girls think that the only way to be rescued is to wait for a man to show you affection, and for the boys it teaches them their value is just in saving the day at the end (along with a host of other issues, as most Disney Prince characters have always been ridiculously good looking, wealthy, and so on which are unrealistic goals).

Where are the examples of all these types of characters that are missing? She didn't give any. Do you have some? When you look through the list of classic Disney animated features, as I said, all of them have been pretty much the same as the newer films, except for the "damsel rescued at the last minute by a kiss" stuff - UNLESS they were anthropomorphic - which the author of that piece automatically uses to dismiss Pixar.

Again, completely against her own point, she demonstrated exactly why Pixar exists - to be the counter to those animated Princess musical extravaganzas that are the most successful and classic Disney films. When you look at films led by males, they were almost always animals - Dumbo, Robin Hood, Fox and the Hound. Pixar does cars and planes and animated toys instead of just animals. All that has happened is that Disney develops them under a different label.

I mean, I guess Peter Pan? The boy who never grew up? Or Sword in the Stone, where he's magically predestined to win from birth? I'm not sure either of those are exactly these wonderful role models for boys. I mean, she even disses Aladdin because he was a thief at the beginning and - dirty. (She really was preoccupied with "dirty" in several of the films she "analyzed" - it was clear she was reaching or signaling with that repitition). So when you look at all these old films that she says these new films aren't like, and she gives so few examples, it's difficult to realize what in hell she is talking about, except for wanting "clean male humans that come in and save the day with their model looks and a kiss", which just hasn't flown for decades now with anyone reasonable.

 

[The Empress Lilly]

No, the article was a sexist dog whistle disguised as "oh these poor boys with nothing to watch!"

Come on, the title is "Disney Hates Boys".

Calling Star Wars and Marvel, two massive properties, a "sole exception" is just...insane.

The author completely dismisses Pixar properties because they are anthropomorphic - which again is laughable when you look at Disney history.

Basically, the "complaint" is that Disney's animated Princess musical extravaganzas aren't appealing enough to boys - because we know 8-year old boys, right, they just clamor for animated musical extravaganzas...

Not only was that one in particular poorly written and made terrible arguments, but articles like that are awful because they really muddy the waters when people are trying to actually get to a reasonable place on issues like this. The article makes it sound so unreasonable, and picked such a terrible topic, that when there are real things to object to - everyone who doesn't think slapping characters of certain races or genders into roles just because..."diversity" gets associated with the really crazy crap like that.

If you really get into the depths of it, even forgetting all the other swaths of product Disney offers boys, yeah, we all think the classic Disney films are as close to gospel as culture gets. But you notice she gives all kinds of "bad" examples from newer films and goes into great detail, movie by movie, but she doesn't spend any time getting nearly as specific (or giving examples) of comparing them to this thing we've "lost" in those classic films. That's because, when you get down to it, they don't exist. Disney films have always been like this.

The only difference between "Snow White", "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", etc. and the newer films like "Frozen" or "Moana" are not the fact that the human male characters are there less, or are more one-dimensional (in fact, her individual rants made the newer human males seem like full, real characters, not cut-outs like most Disney Princes) - it's that they don't magically show up at the last minute to save the damsel in distress with a kiss. Often times literally in these classic films of yore that used to teach boys all these valuable lessons. That's a bad trope and overused to the point of nausea to begin with, but aside from that it's not a good message for boys OR girls. It makes girls think that the only way to be rescued is to wait for a man to show you affection, and for the boys it teaches them their value is just in saving the day at the end (along with a host of other issues, as most Disney Prince characters have always been ridiculously good looking, wealthy, and so on which are unrealistic goals).

Where are the examples of all these types of characters that are missing? She didn't give any. Do you have some? When you look through the list of classic Disney animated features, as I said, all of them have been pretty much the same as the newer films, except for the "damsel rescued at the last minute by a kiss" stuff - UNLESS they were anthropomorphic - which the author of that piece automatically uses to dismiss Pixar.

Again, completely against her own point, she demonstrated exactly why Pixar exists - to be the counter to those animated Princess musical extravaganzas that are the most successful and classic Disney films. When you look at films led by males, they were almost always animals - Dumbo, Robin Hood, Fox and the Hound. Pixar does cars and planes and animated toys instead of just animals. All that has happened is that Disney develops them under a different label.

I mean, I guess Peter Pan? The boy who never grew up? Or Sword in the Stone, where he's magically predestined to win from birth? I'm not sure either of those are exactly these wonderful role models for boys. I mean, she even disses Aladdin because he was a thief at the beginning and - dirty. (She really was preoccupied with "dirty" in several of the films she "analyzed" - it was clear she was reaching or signaling with that repitition). So when you look at all these old films that she says these new films aren't like, and she gives so few examples, it's difficult to realize what in hell she is talking about, except for wanting "clean male humans that come in and save the day with their model looks and a kiss", which just hasn't flown for decades now with anyone reasonable.

While the article was rubbish, you do repeat a same supposition the author does, which surprises me, considering your more modern views. Why would Snow only be a female rolemodel?

When a man watches Cinderella, or a woman watches Indiana Jones, surely they both identify with the lead, not with a blank nameless prince or whatever woman happens to walk into the screen in Indy simply because they are of similar gender?

 

[Animaniac93-98]

"Classic" Disney also included Davy Crockett, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Old Yeller, Treasure Island, The Love Bug, Swiss Family Robinson, Johnny Tremain, The Sh@ggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor and other stories with male leads and/or mostly male casts.

As much as I love those three movies, whittling down ALL of classic Disney to JUST Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, for whatever reason (political, convenience, ignorance etc), is a major pet peeve of mine and many self-identified Disney fans are as guilty of this as anyone else.