Munir’s Disney Retrospective - Animated Classic #43: Treasure Planet (2002)

Last Week’s: Munir’s Disney Retrospective - Animated Classic #42: Lilo & Stitch (2002).

2002 arrived with a ray of hope for Disney Animation. Lilo & Stitch was released in the summer to great acclaim and box office success, something the studio hadn't achieved since the beginning of the decade, and the second film to be released that year looked to be a promising endeavour. After all, Treasure Planet was directed by two of the top people at the studio, John Musker and Ron Clements, who practically launched the Disney Renaissance a decade earlier with beloved films like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. Also, Treasure Planet was a dream project for the directors, something they'd been wanting to do for a long time. Finally they were granted the chance to adapt Robert Louis Stevenson’s beloved novel, Treasure Island, but in a sci-fi setting. Unfortunately, when the film arrived in the Fall of 2002, it bombed at the box office and now remains one of the most obscure films from the canon.

Munir's Disney Retrospective - Second Dark Era (2000-2005) Introduction

Last Week's: Munir's Disney Retrospective - Animated Classic #37: Tarzan (1999)

After a very productive and expansive decade, the Disney studios got lost yet again in the dawn of the new century. No longer the only king of animation, the first half of the 2000s were not kind for the studio or their audience. With heavy competition from other studios like Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky, and with the rapid growth and adoption of CG animation, the studio fell behind both artistically and creatively, making serious missteps that resulted in lacklustre films that were not well received by the public and critics. Even worse, most of the films released in this period were box office bombs that resulted on staff reductions and the complete shift from hand-drawn to CG animation. What the studio executives didn't understand, was the fact that the technique didn't matter if they didn't have good stories to tell and, while there are some bright spots here and there, most of this period is filled with disappointing projects that vary from mediocre to absolute disasters. Never in the history of the studio (not even in the 80s) were they in such crisis, to the extent that almost every other studio was better than them. Fortunately, they now seem to be on the right path again, and let's hope that this dark era will never be repeated again.

Tomorrow - Animated Classic #38 Review: Fantasia 2000 (2000).