Happily Never After: The Beginning of the End (Part 2)

Image Source: jctunesmusic.wordpress.com

As the smoke clears and the sun sets on this look back through a more shameless age of Disney, the inevitable question of what the point of all of this was has reared its head.

Anybody that has read my regular film reviews can probably glean that generally speaking, I’m more supportive than critical of the current course of Disney as a business with regard to the quality of product that they are putting out.

There are certain exceptions that crop up here and there; the one off films such as “Tomorrow Land” and “A Wrinkle in Time” are admirably ambitious but in desperate need of tighter oversight, the animation divisions post-2016 choices in projects seem questionable at best, “Star Wars” is in need of a jolt of fresh perspective that won’t stagnate its fiction, etc.

Overall however, the shift from quantity to high stakes quality was an admirable one that saved the mud that their name was being dragged through at the turn of the millennium.

While I can understand the lack of pride brought up by the very thought of these direct to video sequels however, I do think that they should very much be remembered. If Disney wants to sit at the top of the entertainment industry, it should be held accountable for its major screw ups, both present and past, and were these films ever major screw ups.

Not simply because the majority of them were bad but because as ill conceived as many of them were, they really didn’t need to be. Many of these stories may be born from the notion of “they lived happily ever after,” which inherently contradicts the notion of making sequels but I’m not naive to the reality that a company like Disney doesn’t come within spitting distance of a century in age without doing a little bit of selling out.

Franchising and merchandising are the keys to monetary success in business. I understand the decision making on display with green lighting this entire debacle but it really didn’t have to get even half as trashy as it ultimately got.

Bear in mind that I skipped 2 sequels for coverage, “The Jungle Book 2” and “Return to Neverland,” on the basis that they were theatrically released as opposed to all of the films that I did cover. One would think the quality was probably higher but that is far from the truth. They are in fact, worse than some of the bad movies that were released straight to video.

There’s nothing innately wrong with franchising but the lack of quality control on display here that damages a studio built on sincerity in storytelling and cashes in on many films considered in the modern day to be classics of cinema and animation is kind of gross.

The franchising of their animated classics has never ended but when you look at current attempts like “Tangled: The Series” or “The Lion Guard,” the creators manage to at least create cute and constructive additions to their cannon that build on their source material’s primary appeal. While I’m not convinced any sequel to “The Fox and the Hound” would have been considered good, how many mental gymnastics did you have to perform to okay one in which Copper joins a country band while Todd succumbs to jealousy antics?

That’s is all in the name of a sequel to a movie that’s held in B-list regard at best compared to the rest of the Disney Animated Cannon (however close it may be to my heart personally).

The corporate moves of Michael Eisner, both good and ill, aside, I find that these films were a substantial force behind changing the perception of Disney into something far more cynical; a perception that it will probably carry for the remainder of its life span on this Earth.

Fortunately, they’re behind us now but if Disney insists on revisiting their cannon for extra dollars, given the trend of these live action remakes, they also need to be reminded of the damage that level of cynicism may have brought them in the long term.

That said, let’s bring this to a close on a lighter note this Monday, by looking at some of the best and worst the line had to offer, on top of looking at a few that may be ripe for the picking (not to give Disney any bad ideas).