The man who started it all, Walt Disney
image taken from wikipedia.com
This week, I will be dedicating my two posts solely to Disney films of the 1990s, including both cartoons/animations and then live-action films. Maybe I’m biased (probably am), but I think that the 90s delivered some of the best animation films that exist to this day. Part of me just feels like the Disney animations that come out nowadays just are not what they used to be!
But there’s actually some really interesting history behind what prompted some of the most successful Disney animations to hit the big screen. After Walt Disney and his brother Roy Disney passed away in the 1960s and 1970s, the empire which Walt Disney had created was in serious jeopardy. The films being released were simply not appealing to audiences, and their creative power was slowly but surely beginning to crumble. Don Bluth, an animator who once worked for Disney, ended up leaving the crew to start his own studio which would later be called Don Bluth Productions. With him, he took 17% of Disney’s animators. Don Bluth Productions became Disney’s main competitor throughout the eighties and into the early nineties. When Disney released The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Bluth responded with his film, An American Tail (1986), which found more success than Disney’s film.
An American Tail released by Bluth Studios.
image taken from wikipedia.com
Disney released Oliver and Company (1988), and on the same weekend Bluth came out with The Land Before Time (1988) with Time becoming the highest grossing animated film during that time period. I’m very familiar with all of the films mentioned so far. Who knew that as myself and so many others were enjoying these films, our attention was being so competitively fought over by these two opposing studios?!
In 1988 (I know this is 80s, but it’s relevant to the 90s!), Disney finally got a break when Steven Spielberg collaborated with the company to help produce Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which gave the company the surge it needed to produce its next blockbuster animation which would go on to become
one of the most successful Disney films of all time, The Little Mermaid (1989). Bluth’s All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989) could not even compete with the
The Great Mouse Detective released by Disney Studios. image taken from wikipedia.com
overwhelming wave of infatuation which people felt for The Little Mermaid. In the early nineties years which followed, Disney Studios delivered hit after hit. With the release of Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Mulan (1998), and Tarzan (1999), it’s difficult to fathom just how much success this company found in a span of ten years. These films not only brought in record-shattering revenues at the box office, but they also became highly respected works of art in the film industry as a whole, with several of the movies listed above winning academy awards for best song, best sound, and even receiving nominations for best picture. Other animation studios began attempting to mimic Disney by making their films musical-based. However, most of their attempts to climb their way up to Disney’s level failed, with the only notable exceptions being Fox’s Anastasia from 1997 and DreamWorks’s The Prince of Egypt in 1998. These years where Disney Studios rose from the ashes and reclaimed its leading role as legendary animators is known today as “The Disney Renaissance.” It was a complete revival of everything
One of Disney’s many major success films of the 1990s, The Lion King. image taken from wikipedia.com
that Disney once represented coming back in a larger-than-life kind of way. And for any kid growing up in the 90s, they entered the world just in time for these enduring classics!
Blast From the 90s Past 