Pajiba

He's the "chief technical officer" (whatever the fuck that is). What do you expect him to say?

He's the type of guy who thinks that "special" effects (which are usually not special) and 3-D are integral to moviemaking. Throw in some of that cruddy motion capture everybody's wetting themselves over right now and you've got the perfect craptacular movie. At least he doesn't pretend to have respect for the audience. He works for Disney. It's probably easier not to have any respect for them.

“The story isn’t very good, but visual spectacle brought people in droves."

Yeah, and then what happened? No one went back to see it again and again. No one bought the DVD. No one is clamoring for a sequel. Alice in Wonderland 3D succeeded in the only metric that matters to morons like Mr. Hendrickson: "Opening weekend numbers."

Keep making fuckinine decisions like that and we'll see how long he's employed by the Mouse. Mickey wants his money like a pimp wants his money.

Oh Joanna, how I love you! Robin Hood is still one of my favorites and my go-to hangover movie. And yes, when I was a little girl I wanted to marry that fox, species-conflicts be damned. And incidentally, the first film I ever remember seeing in the theatre was the Aristocats with my mother and seeing it today still brings me back to that magical day...just me and her, gorging ourselves on popcorn and milk duds (mixed together, of course.)

You're nicer than Dustin. He's the worst today.

Reminds of when Bruce Willis said that dialogue in a movie was overrated.

G.R.O.S.S (Get Rid Of Smelly girlS)

That's not what Hitchcock said.

And I'm not disgusted. I'm a little confused because, like I said earlier, the "Magic Kingdom" press release sounded more like it was describing Disneyland. That would be wrong and that would definitely get on my nerves.

"Some Mouse version of the Human Centipede."

Joanna, you made my entire damned day with that one sentence. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Robin Hood and The Secret of NIMH came out when I was a teenager, but I still watched them, and still love them. NIMH was so visually lush and arresting, with artfully drawn characters and excellent expressions.

I'm really excited for Disney/Pixar's Brave. I think that merger has a lot to do with keeping the Disney legacy alive. I guess Disney said they were done with the princess/musical model after Tangled. And that's cool, I think we've had enough princesses for awhile. I'm ready for a feisty warrior girl thing.

This goes right along with George M-Fing Lucas being quoted (before Eps 1-3 came out) as saying that he doesn't really care about the writing, since it's his worldbuilding and vision that he is into.

As a result? Jar-Jar Binks. And three awful, awful stories that were nothing but excuses to show Yoda flipping around with a lightsaber (that was freaking cool, mind you, but still).

Please, Pixar, save us all. You're our only hope.

"You had a crush on Tod the fox? Aw." I thought to myself.

Then I scrolled down to see the Robin Hood picture. At least fox Robin Hood is bipedal, I guess.

I differ on the emptiness of Avatar, but other than that, all well said. The dollars might come in the short term for the studios, but the movies that stand the test of time and resonate with our culture through the years will always have at their core a good story.

It's OK, Tracy. It really is. You're not alone. I, too, had a crush on both Robin Hood and Justin from Secret of NIMH.

Someone should tell this fucktard that about Toy Story.

It's got it's success right in the damn title.

Or Lion King. Shakespeare re-wrought for our kids (and us)? I suppose the Globe made it's money by having actors run across the stage shouting incoherently.

The thing that always got me about Disney, from childhood to adult life, was that attention to detail, including story. It specifically wasn't a flash-bomb of nothing. No regurgitated rail car through mines, space ship through asteroids, jet through canyons, car through warehouses, planes through hangers, outrunning explosions, running through collapsing houses, leaping off 90 foot buildings to catch yourself at the last moment by your fingertips BULLSHIT!

They actually had the artists study animals to get their movements and expressions right. They actually researched history to include little nuggets in the story! They took the time to include iconic elements in their artwork, like the Chinese print-esque clouds of dust that drifted through the backdrops in Mulan. They actually took the time to give a shit about the characters because they knew that when they cared, it translated to the screen and to US caring! Us caring is what makes the difference between worrying that Copper was going to betray Tod or giving a shit if Legolas saved his dad from Davy Jones' butt-locker.

I suppose we should cut the moron some slack. Or we should if he weren't making an assload of money flinging poo against the screen. He's the reason why Netflix instaqueue and Cable movie channels are full of drek no one ever wants to see.

As I count Disney's Robin Hood, The Love Bug and (as you mentioned Tim Burton's AWOL storytelling gift) Ed Wood among my absolute favourite movies, I'm wholly appreciative of this article.

(And FWIW, the first film I saw at the cinema was The Jungle Book.)

SIGGRAPH is not where you go to hear about story. It's where the people who make the computerized pretty hang out. Many of them still believe the Pixar lamp is the greatest technological breakthrough of our time.

My ex went to SIGGRAPH a lot, back in the days when he worked on graphics for flight simulators. That should tell you the audience....

Well based on Avatar he may not be wrong.

First movie I remember seeing in a theater?

The Doberman Gang

Bank robbing Doberman Pinschers? Hell yeah!

Maybe it’s weird that my childhood crush was a cartoon fox.

And thus began my life long obsession with men and/or cartoon characters who speak with a UK accent.
I so wanted to be Maid Marian.

It has to do with creativity, or lack thereof. The people who bring you the 5 millionth action hero sliding down a glass window or the 10 billionth "oh em gee, he fell off the cliff! No!1! He's still hanging on by his fingertips!!" These are the mental midgets (little people?) who think that story doesn't matter. These are the people who think they can solve any plot issue with an explosion. The ones who think 3D is the greatest thing since Marmite. The ones who have no creativity and find it easier to tell some studio to make some million dollar bells and whistles.

I also think that there is an inherent disdain for writers among many on Hollywood as well as television. Whether that's brought on by the aftermath of the writer's strike, where it was proven, due to the market's acceptance of really really terrible reality shows, which need no writing, or worse, get by perfectly fine with terrible writing, I don't know.

Just look at all these lists of big money-making movies. The ones in recent years have not been hurt by bad writing. Transformers is a perfect example.

I did own every single giant, white-boxed Disney home-video, which were proudly displayed on a seperate shelf from everything else. You know the ones.

I do, DocDoom1! As a matter of fact, I think they're still at my parents' house. I might need to borrow them and do an old school Disney marathon one of these weekends.

Don't worry guys, we still got Dan Fogelman, writing great scripts for Disney films like Bolt and Tangled!

My take: the same kind of people who think story doesn't matter in a movie are the same people who think brains don't matter or knowledge doesn't matter, that all you need is salesmanship or appearances. They're the same kind of people who gave mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, the same kind who sold the shitty mortgages as investments to other people. They're the anti-science types, too, who think that religion is a suitable replacement for actual knowledge.

Basically, being smart is hard. Being stupid is easy, so do the easy thing, and if enough people buy the stupid, you're golden. And hopefully, by the time people catch on that the stupid isn't good enough, you've already made enough money off of it, you can cut yourself loose and live off the profit. You already got yours and screw everyone else. They're left holding the bag, not you.

Admittedly, crappy movies aren't the same as the mortgage and banking clusterfucks, but I think that same fucked-up thinking is responsible for all of them. Short-term greed and corner-cutting vs. long-term value.

"How many times did we go back and forth from Isengard?"

Joanna, Joanna, Joanna... I was right there with you, until you dropped that, out of nowhere, right in between us. That was wholly out of place in this otherwise excellent article.

The "Lord of the Rings" films came from New Line, which was at the time a subsidiary of WB. And we see Isengard twice in all, once in the second movie and once in the third. Nobody was going back and forth. The treants came and wrecked the place in the second movie, and in the third movie, Gandalf and company showed up to talk to Saruman.

More to the point though, are you really suggesting that the Lord of the Rings was about spectacle more than story? I'd have to disagree strongly; while there was undoubtedly a lot of spectacle to the films (moreso than the books), the narrative is strong, the character arcs are meaningful, and the little moments really counted.

But anyhow... I, too, grew up with Disney films. Disney has always had better writing in their animated movies than their live-action films overall, in my view. Sure, there are exceptions: we have the Love Bugs, Darby O'Gill, the Parent Trap... and there are the mixed-media ventures like Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks... but the vast majority of Disney's live action films have been utter dreck like "The Gnome-mobile" or "The Boy who Talked to Badgers".

(Will the truth hurt more? It might. I was trying to make a Thor reference but my nerd wires got crossed so I failed on MANY nerd levels--comic book, film, Norse mythology, Tolkein--horrid. Now that I look, I don't even know quite what I meant. I guess I meant Jotunheim. But that's not even remotely similar, so, um, you've got me. But know this, I will never, not once, say a bad things about Lord of the Rings. I'm an uber wait-in-line-at-midnight fan. Rowles and his hate can suck it.--JR)

Disney went from a creative enterprise with a POV to a brand & generic media company. Same thing happened to Sony, which used to have a particular ethic and essence, really driven by the values of its founder. This was back when they made actual stuff. Now, not so much.

Once the visionary dies, soulless money-gnomes make TPC (Check out The President's Analyst if you don't get that one. They're the bad guys.) out of stuff with a point of view.

Heh, fair enough Joanna.

The trip between Asgard and Jotunheim in "Thor" was a bit overplayed as I recall. And while I enjoyed that movie a great deal for what it was, what it was... was not strong on story. The character arc for Thor felt terribly rushed, and there was a lot of emphasis on the set-pieces.

So, ok, I'm back there with ya. ;)

I'm glad someone hit the Isengard comment before me. I won't argue the films, as I do feel like they shorthanded a lot of the journey and bounced the viewer from locale to locale with little preamble. I suppose that's the nature of film more than anything though.

You hit on what many who don't like the books complain about with The Lord of the Rings. The difference is that it is essentially a quest story and to not have a journey kinda goes against the point.

The problem with most criticisms of the story is that the journey is almost a character in the book. The landscape, the difficulties with the journey, the actual elements of the landscape working against you. Unlike many books and films, where the travelers are merely wandering through visuals for visuals sake, Tolkien took pains to show that no, you don't just walk into Mordor. It's leagues upon leagues, and to simply have a chapter describing them leaving and then a chapter where they are suddenly there is shorthanding the Hero's Journey. It's the same argument against the "why didn't they just fly the damn Eagles?" question. Aside from the obvious, "there's be no story", there would be no journey, no conflict, no character growth.

In films like Transformers, we're supposed to believe that somehow Sam Limpdicky is inherently brave and charismatic and acrobatic and friggin immortal just because he's Sam, or because he's his grandfather's spawn. There is no journey, there is no test of his bravery where he fails and learns, he just simply is. He's always right and the adults, or Uber-adults - the government - are always wrong and it's up to him to save the world. That's the shorthand that plays the viewer like patsies. He gets the girl because he tries. He gets the aliens because he's there, he saves the world because he's... a teenager. Which is essentially the plot of most films and many novels lately. In order to garner that teen market, the hero must be a teenager, must be so much more than he appears, must win without ever really losing or learning. There is no journey, there is no growth. It's all instant gratification, which is all that market ever really wanted.

Joanna, this one's for you: http://animated-disney-gifs.tumblr.com/post/8789662434