On Frozen and the Third Disney Golden Era (Conclusion)

Over the past several months I have been writing a series of blogs about the recent Disney hit, Frozen. Tonight marks a special night for the film and for Disney Animation as a whole so I thought it would be a good time to conclude this series of blogs.

First off, for anyone who missed my previous efforts, the first part of this blog series was about the history of Disney animation. You can read it here.

The second blog was a combination of a review of sorts of Frozen itself, and a look at the upcoming lineup of Disney films starting with this year's Big Hero Six and ending with 2018's Moana. You can read it here.

To those who don't have the time to read three lengthy blogs in a row, I'll summarize the gist of my argument as best I can. Disney animation has had its ups and downs over the past 80+ years. While virtually all of its early work is considered classic now, many of Disney's films were both critically and commercially unsuccessful upon release. The films released after Walt's death were unsuccessful in their time and remain unsuccessful to this day. Films like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron nearly bankrupted the company and the animation division was almost shut down entirely before The Little Mermaid caused the second Disney Golden Age. This era, from the late 80's to the late 90's but mainly consisting of the period between The Little Mermaid in 1989 and The Lion King in 1994, saw Disney's animation division at its most successful. But the decade that followed was decidedly less so. The animation department was once more nearly shut down until Disney came to a deal with Steve Jobs, owner of Pixar. Jobs agreed to sell the company to Disney as long as Pixar chief John Lassetter would be put in charge of all Disney Animation. John would have full greenlighting abilities, and would not have to answer to any executive at the company. He reported directly to the CEO and his decisions were to be final regardless of the financial ramifications or objections by the Board of Directors of film division executives. Jobs also was given a 7% stake in the company, that when combined with the stocks of Roy Disney allowed Lassetter to have greater control of the animation division than anyone since Walt himself.

After his takeover, Lassetter made numerous changes. He stopped production of all DisneyToon sequels, cancelled a handful of planned theatrical features, and started work on a new 2D animated film, the first in several years. His first effort, Princess and the Frog started a trend of rising quality that continued through Tangled, Wreck it Ralph, and Frozen. Today marked the final feather in Lassetter's cap as Frozen became the first Disney film to take home the Oscar for best animated feature, and the first to win best song since Tarzan nearly 15 years ago. This comes after a handful of other major achievements. Frozen won Disney a ton of Annies, a win at The Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, and the soundtrack has become Disney's most successful since The Lion King. In fact it is arguably the most successful film soundtrack since Titanic came out in 1998. Disney now plans to make a stage musical based on the film. Frozen also recently overcame The Lion King as Disney's most commercially successful film, with a box office gross that broke the $1 billion mark this weekend. By the end of the month the film will overcome Toy Story 3 to become the highest grossing animated film of all time and the highest grossing non-sequel of all time not directed by James Cameron.

With that level of success you would think that the executives at Disney would be overjoyed with Lassetter, but that is in fact not the case. The reason stems from the cost of Disney films. With a budget of $150 million Frozen is one of Disney's more expensive productions. It followed the $165 million Wreck-It-Ralph, and Tangled, which at $260 million has the largest official production budget in movie history. All of these films made money. In absolute terms they made more money than any Disney film since The Lion King. The issue is that The Lion King was made for only $45 million. What's more important, though, is that companies like Illumination (the folks behind Despicable Me among others) and films like The Lego Movie are able to earn just as much if not more money on budgets less than half of what Lassetter is giving. Even worse, though, are films like The Nut Job and Free Birds. These films might have much lower quality animation than the films by Disney, Dreamworks, or Illumination, but their budgets are often well under $50 million. While none of these films have been billion dollar grossers up to this point, there is a compelling argument that three mediocre $50 million movies will be much more profitable as a whole than one great $150 movie. Disney is suffering from something unique in animation history - competition. And while Dreamworks has been around for over a decade, and its predecessor Amblin Animation several decades before that, those studios focused on making films that were better than Disney's. They hired away many of Disney's top animators and their films cost as much, if not more, than what Disney's costs.

But today, with more powerful computers and easy to use programs, the barrier to entry is much lower for feature animation. Even a low budget, relatively poorly animated film like The Nut Job looks better than what Dreamworks and Pixar were doing 10 or in some cases even 5 years ago. We've reached a point where good is good enough for most people. And that puts Disney in a position where it has to either sacrifice quality or admit that it will be losing potential profits as it attempts to keep quality high. For many executives the choice is obvious. Luckily the deals put in place by Steve Jobs mean that those executives can do little to stop Lassetter's push for quality. As a relatively young man as far as studio heads go, I hope Lassetter remains in charge in the decades ahead and that Disney's upcoming lineup is able to equal, or even exceed the works of the early 90's (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King), the original five (Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, Fantasia), and the post-war resurgence (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians).

And with that I end my blog series on Frozen. I want to conclude by congratulating Jennifer Lee on becoming the second woman in a row to win the Oscar for best animated film, and to Robert Lopez, for becoming one of only a handful of people to win the EGOT (an Emmy, Tony, Grammy, and Oscar) and giving a thank you speech in poem form with his wife and writing partner.

Dude, for some reason your blogs are the only ones I get notifications for. That's not to say that's a bad thing, I enjoy reading these even as I nod my head and say "I have not seen Frozen and am not as enthusiastic about Disney movies as some girls I know whose tastes in movies never really matured past the age of 14", but these are some fascinating write-ups.

Also I'll probably end up seeing Frozen at this point, given that it managed to win Best Animated Picture... and also the aforementioned peer group seemingly obsessed with it.

@arbitrarywater: Well let me put it this way. The last Disney film I would recommend seeing without reservation would probably be Tarzan which came out nearly 15 years ago. Up until now all of Disney's films this century have varied from mediocre to downright terrible. Tangled and Princess and the Frog were both decent but were missing some of the spark of classic Disney films, while Wreck It Ralph was super enjoyable for me but I am aware that this is partially due to my fondness for the subject matter. Frozen, though, I would put on par with The Lion King or Beauty and The Beast as far as the 90's era was concerned. Outside of The Lion King I don't think any animated film from any source has eclipsed the best work of Walt himself but Frozen is probably the closest I have seen a CGI Disney movie come.

I thought Frozen was bad and I cannot understand why people, mainly men, enjoy that movie. Seemed like a movie made for only children and women.

Beautifully animated but I can say that about all of disney's big hollywood animations. Lion King is way better too IMO.

hmmmmmm

still haven't seen it, the reused assets bothered me.... no I'm sympathetic to be honest. I'm a hardcore disney fan and I saw a lot of the Tangle designs 10 years before it's release when they wanted to make it into a shriek clone. Frozen looks like an attempt to appeal to the 90s era disney but then again I kinda don't care too much about that era, I prefer 101 Dalmatian and Sword in the Stone era of Milt Kahn. Man, Tangle took forever, so it's good frozen never got as difficult to finish as tangle did, hehe they even kept the jack black model.

Really the downfall of Disney was the big chase to catch up after Lion King..... so far I don't see that happening, so long as they keep managing projects better. I prefer Gravity Falls, they have a lot of artists from Wreck it Ralph and Tangled working on that show. But I'd love to see something on par with Dumbo that's a cartoon ass cartoon it's not trying to pretend it's something it's not.

@crithon: Frozen actually took just as long but the development was less well publicized. They actually animated it in 2D first but the story wasn't working so they canned the project. Without Jennifer Lee the film would likely never have seen the light of day. They actually animated most of the film in only a year, so it was really a super troubled development that was saved by a visionary leader. If you are a Disney fan I would highly recommend this film. It plays with your expectations for Disney movies in really clever ways. It manages to both honor the classics of the past and also modernize the formula in a way that felt super clever and really compelling. Plus the animation is probably the best CG work I have ever seen, the songs are fantastic, and Olaf is a truly funny Disney sidekick.

Also, I am always surprised by the number of very talented animators I know who list 101 Dalmatians as their top Disney film. I think for fans of really great character design and animation 101 Dalmatians is really the top of the pack. One animator who I highly respect called it the Nine Old Men at the peak of their skills. Funny how a format designed solely to lower cost actually in the minds of many people gave that era of Disney films such a great look.

@gnatsol: Well it was about female characters and about sisterly love so yea it was meant to appeal to women, but I actually thought the message of female empowerment was maybe the best part of the film, mainly how they managed to play with expectations. Unlike Brave last year, Frozen's story benefited from the female focus because it allowed the film to have twists solely because things happened not like how they normally happen in a normal Disney movie. I thought that was really clever and it's what I most enjoyed along with the truly fantastic animation and Olaf who I thought was hilarious.

Saying it was mad only for children and women is a bit of a stretch, It's an enjoyable film. I had an ok time with it.

Though yeah, I have a hard time seeing what makes this such a big deal. It tries to subvert cliches but then also use them a lot. And the pacing is just fuuuuuuuuucked. I swear to god, most of the movie was songs that tried to convey a 2min scene in 10. Or were just plain unnecessary (troll song). It has the problem of scope. Trying to tell a larger story than they have time for. And then just compressing it into a format that feels rushed. I dunno, it does a lot of oscarbaity Disney tropes that I guess worked out in the end. But I can't say that I'm a fan.

Then again who am I to complain. Elsa so moe.

If I hear "Let it Go" one more time, one more time...

The only good part of the movie was "Why have a ballroom with no balls?" Otherwise, it was a jumbled, badly-paced mess with unnecessarily large amounts of singing and quite possibly the most annoying comic relief character ever put to film. Not to open a whole can of beans on this either, but it was a bit sketchy on the sexism. Elsa and Anna both have Barbie doll proportions with eyes larger than their wrists, while the men are decidedly more realistically proportioned, yet unfortunately are either stupid, inept, "fixer-uppers" (don't get me started on that song) or cartoonishly evil. I'm not sure if this is an improvement on the faceless Prince Charmings of the past or not...

Also, what kind of shitty government is this? Arendelle's economy was likely destroyed by Elsa's hissy-fit cold-snap, and they immediately threw away their closest trading partner afterwards even though the guy really was looking out for the good of their kingdom. Unless they offload some of those 8000 salad plates to a foreign economy quick, the peasants are going to be starving come regular winter. They'd probably welcome an invasion from Weasel Town at this point. Cue the guillotines! Not such a happy ending for the royal family after all...

I watched Frozen last night. Idina Menzel's got some pipes.

And John Travolta can't pronounce her name. :/

Just like other pop culture things, the "anti-like" will come out for Frozen. The only real contender for "Best Animated Feature" was The Wind Rises but that is a hard movie to sell due to the subject matter dancing on a fine line but I'm not convinced they handled it correctly so why would "The Academy"? As for "Best Song" the real contender was "The Moon Song" but "Let It Go" was really the literal song representing the first half of the movie.

And props to The Lopez' for preparing a rhyming sing-song acceptance speech. :)

The reasons why I like Frozen are that this represents the latest in the "Sincerity" trend that has been popping up from Captain America to House of Cards. Instead of being like Shrek which is a cynical deconstruction of genre and tropes (in that case of fairy tale), stories built like that take the core conceit and play them completely straight and honest which allows for a different style more like "retrospective" or "introspective" instead of "deconstruction". To that end, this is why Frozen stands above its contemporaries this year where it is looking at themes straight and commenting on them. Hell, Disney themselves helped generate the worst of the "The Pink Pretty Princess" encapsulated in their merchandising juggernaut "The Disney Princess" and here is a movie that has TWO PRINCESSES but it turns it inside out without snide or mean. If nothing else, this is the kind and style of story I want them to go into instead of "more of the same" so I'll gladly show my support with money!

So yeah, I'd totally see a Frozen 2 with the same production people and writers where there are already "mysteries" laced into background. Maybe all of that Marvel stuff is rubbing off of Disney?

ps. It is said that monarchy is kind of a crappy form of government anyway. :) But the core story of Frozen takes place over 2 days....its hard to destroy the economy in a couple of days where in the US we have already seen parts of the country hit with a "cold snap" of a couple of days and the US is still around.

I admit that I had the same reaction but I told myself to ignore it and enjoy my stupid Disney movie.

It shows the problem of monarchy/dictatorship/totalitarianism pretty easily. The princess personally dislikes the representative from Wesselton, therefore people who live in Errendale cannot trade or travel there. Because that's in their best interests!

Oh well, at least it's not like the reaction to Tangled, where some people said it was sexist to change the movie's name from Rapunzel in order to promote the movie to people who wouldn't be interested in a princess movie.

I really enjoyed Frozen. That's kinda all I have to say on the matter, honestly. That was a pretty good movie, in the opinion of someone who's thought Disney movies had kinda stopped being all that great a while ago.

@raven10: yes, I know. The 2d animation bits have helped them a lot since Disney had to be DRAGGED into 3D. It sounds ridiculous but it helps a lot, even Brad Bird on Incredibles yelled at how terrible 3D is compared to 2D.

Well the thing with 101 Dalmatians is there's so much to come back to and just study from it. The film has only 1 song, it uses the first time photocopying the pencils instead of inking, there's stop motion car sequences using white boxes in high contrast, the backgrounds aren't painted have a ink lines and characters all look dynamic with expressive movement. The movie feels less about the general plot but instead small character moments where you just view characters interacting with one another.

this scene is perfection

Loved this blogs. Glad Frozen won last night and I'm glad Bobby Lopez became the Youngest EGOT winner. He is amazing.

Man, remember when DreamWorks made good movies? I watched The Prince of Egypt not too long ago and MAAAANNNN it was good.

But besides that and How to Train Your Dragon, I can't think of a single thing by DW that I've thought wasn't abject garbage, or at the very least just snide and cynical and low-brow, assuming the audience was fat and stupid. Maybe I'm forgetting something though.

Disney's been really on and off through the entirety of its existence, and I don't love every "classic" Walt Disney movie they have or every 90's "golden era" movie either. It's kinda hit and miss for me.

EDIT: I remember reading this article about supposed Disney tropes and the "strong" feminism of Frozen, which I never saw as a part of it. I found it to be an interesting and fun movie that felt different from many other movies I've seen, that had self-centered and irrational young female characters learning important life lessons and how not to be idiotic.

Not that I think the Oscars are remotely legitimate but I was somewhat bummed Frozen won last night, though it is good.

Miyazaki eats Disney movies for breakfast.

Wait how do you have multiple golden eras? If anything isn't this the bronze era?

I finally got around to watching it yesterday. It's the first Disney film in a while that actually feels like a Disney film. For years, I've been arguing that they got terrible after the prevalence of computer animation. Turns out they just needed to give a shit again.

I think I'd still prefer a traditionally animated, 2D version of that story, though. I haven't seen Princess and the Frog yet. Would it scratch that 2D itch?

Like video games, doing "traditionally animated, 2D versions" of things is "prohibitively expensive" and doesn't scale well for "modern production schedules". I want to say the last major Disney animation, if not all animation, was The Princess and The Frog which was 2D but it was heavily computer assisted and already noted above was right after the Pixar acquisition and Lasseter coming in. And this was a artistic choice where Lasseter had to reach out to many old artists and technical talent who had long since left Disney get this completed.

So just like video games today, it is much easier to find trained artists who know how to build a model, build textures and shaders for it, rig it, build lighting and post process shaders than trained artists who know how the tricks and the trade to produce character animation by hand. Even artists doing character designs for 3D know how to draw 2D but that is a bit different than creating full animation production.

Another fun fact about Frozen in particular that reflects the modern world: At least in the US if not elsewhere, one can buy a ticket to see Frozen in the theater and then go home and buy it on iTunes or Google Play (the physical blu-ray comes out in a couple of weeks from "today"). This will probably become more common place where the window between theater and home releases is getting smaller and smaller. Frozen was helped by the competition or lack there of where it had months and months of ticket sales that kept it in the theaters. The only real competition in the space is yet another very stellar piece of animation: The LEGO Movie (Everyone go see this!). This movie has already hit the magic "billion" mark and it hasn't even started sales on disks.

Something speculative I wonder about that also reflects the modern world: How well it is doing in foreign markets. If your ancestry is Scandinavian or know anything about Scandinavian culture, this movie is easily the most "Super Concentrated Scandinavian" thing in recent memory. The details all over this movie remind me of childhood days at museums, restaurants, and bakeries my grandparents would take us and the huge amount of the information that they drilled into our heads. So to me, I love the details and I could rattle off all of the big and little things in the background and I am not surprised at all how big it is in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. I was shocked to find it is popular in South Korea and other places that I would think would necessarily care for animated movies, let alone musicals, let alone animated musical movies, let alone one so clearly European. Is this due to the attention Disney is lavishing on these versions? Are they getting local but big stars to voice and do these versions? Maybe it has to do with the rapid distribution of the movie as well. Why is this movie doing well outside the US and Europe seems to be a key but I'm not entirely sure how they did it.

@raven10: Beauty and the Beast is the best animated film ever created; and probably around the top 50 overall.

The movie is too traditional for it's own good. On the one hand you have all the trope subversion going on through out the movie, and on the other, it's still using the old Disney tropes right along side the subverted ones. It's old school disguised as new school, and while it dose alright, I think it could have been a much better movie if it had focused more on what it actually wanted to be, rather then playing both at the same time.

Elsa is the most interesting character in the movie, but never actually gets anything more then a few songs to develop her character, that was disappointing. I will say that I liked her as the big bad of the movie, it works a lot better then some of the 2 dimensional "Big Bad's" of the past, of course we still have one of those anyway.

Kristoff & Hans were both a waste of space, Hans gets to play the "real" villain in the end, after playing "prince", but it comes off flat. I would have much rather he simply kiss Anna only to see it not work & then "white knight" and try to kill Elsa to save Anna. It would have worked better, though I'm still not sure it would make Hans character worthwhile.

Kristoff is just the love interest, and sadly it's not any more believable then then the 15 minute whirlwind "romance" that Anna & Hans have at the start of the movie, which means that the "choice" scene at the end of the movie is completely flat, I'm not sure why he's even in the movie.

So overall it's a New/Old-Old/New Disney movie that, frankly, would have been much better if they had kicked the male characters to the kerb, or at least developed then enough to make them worth the screen time they take away from the sisters, who really did need a little bit more screen time devoted to their conflict & their characters. It's still a good Disney movie, but it could have been a lot better.

To be fair, I haven't seen either, but I was a little dissapointed Frozen beat out The wind rises at the Oscars. I may be being a little cynical, but I just enjoy 2d animation more. That's why I'm occasionally able to wade through the mess that is most anime for the very few golden chunks of greatness. It just feels like their's more character to it. I'm sure Frozen is a great movie. From everything I hear, it seems Disney's returned to form with it. It's just I associate 3d animation ( basically anything that isn't Pixar) with garbage.

I guess that's beside the point. I can't wait to see Frozen and I think "Let it go" is a phenominal song, definitely worthy of the accolades it's received. One such other movie I was glad got some attention was Ernest & Celestine. That film looks so gorgeous and has such an endearing chlidren's book art style to it, and it was good ol' 2d animation.

@mormonwarrior: That article is thoroughly awful.

@extomar: I mean, it's Disney. People go based on the credibility of the name and not the setting of the story. They attempt to ground all their stories with deep cultural roots and identifiers. I'm sure Frozen does as well in China as Mulan does in Denmark, so to speak. Or Aladdin doing as well in Paris as Ratatouille did in Tehran.

Good write up! I hope that Disney continues on its current trajectory, the childrens need more good movies. I had no idea that the current Disney direction came as a term for their purchase of Pixar, looks like a double win.

@fredchuckdave said:

I still watch it every couple of years. For some reason out of all the Disney movies I watched as a kid, that one stuck with me.

@themanwithnoplan: I still prefer 2D as well but I think Frozen came closer to capturing the magic of 2D animation than any CG film before it. I think 2D manages to capture mood and tone better than 3D. Maybe that has more to do with the artists behind the films, but the best 2D animation to me is just so much more evocative than anything in 3D. I mean any one scene in Bambi is more incredible to me than any CG scene ever. The storm that opens Dumbo, Fantasia from opening to close, Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent and all her scenes, The opening of both The Lion King and Hunchback, and almost every second of Beauty and the Beast are all outstanding. And that doesn't even mention the Xerox stuff like 101 Dalmatians or Robin Hood which are stunning in their own way. And of course it doesn't take into account amazing non-Disney films like those of Don Bluth, Studio Ghibli, Michel Ocelot, Satoshi Kon, or Sylvain Chomet just to name a few.

@extomar: South Korea is actually a huge animation hub. They mostly make anime style films. Several of their best works have won major international awards and outside of Japan and the US I don't think I could name a nation more in love with animation. In all honesty, animation is huge all over the world. Disney is massively popular in South America. You only have to look to the fact that the government sent Walt to South America as WW2 was breaking out to convince them to support the allies. He made two movies based on that trip. So, yea, Disney is huge there. And obviously in Japan the relationship between Pixar and Studio Ghibli gives Disney a great deal of legitimacy in a culture that often rejects foreign media. So I'm honestly not surprised at all. Also, the foreign market as a whole has been rapidly expanding. These days as much as 3/4 of a film's sales will come outside of the US. So it doesn't surprise me honestly.

@mormonwarrior: I don't think Dreamworks was ever especially great. Brenda Chapman, the creator of The Prince of Egypt is just a phenomenally talented animator. Both she, and the creators of How to Train Your Dragon were ex-Disney folk. I honestly can't think of a single Dreamworks film I'd place on the same level as the best Disney.

Yeah, I didn't like the overall sentiment but I at least liked the breakdown of how many Disney movies actually have the oft-mentioned "Disney tropes" of happily ever after, damsel in distress, etc.

There were two things I was clumsily trying to get at:

- Disney hasn't always had success in foreign markets for some age groups let alone generally. I mean I really don't think South Korean was excited for Meet The Robinsons or Bolt. :) Maybe it is really the Pixar/Lasseter shift that lifted things so that Tangled and Wreck-it Ralph where much more palatable to the world in general even if one only had vague notions of Western Culture. I know Lasseter brings a lot but that much? It feels unbelievable when you step back and look at it which is part of the theme through this series of blog posts. :)

- The flip side to this internationalism (is there a better term?) is that it can work both ways. Even with Tangled it was a bit rough to find the non FES versions of some of the songs (this has probably changed recently). Now it is stupidly easy to find any of the versions like:

That is kind of remarkable and should be applauded. I kind of wish there was an "official 30 language version" of the movie....isn't this what Blu-ray is for? :)

@extomar: I know what you are trying to say but you are just incorrect. Disney movies have always played well overseas. That is from Snow White up through the present day. As I wrote in my first blog in the series, Disney was nearly shut down during and directly after WW2 because the company could not make money without the foreign market. Data is not available for all of movie history, especially foreign data, but in general Disney films have made at least 50% of their earnings overseas. Bolt and Princess and the Frog both made around 2/3 of their earnings overseas, and Meet the Robinsons made about 50% of its earnings overseas. There are a couple factors involved here. Firstly, throughout much of movie history Disney was the only studio making theater quality animated films. Early animated films in other nations were not nearly as successful, and outside of Japan, the foreign animation scene just barely existed. Therefore almost all of the animated films seen by people anywhere in the world up until this century were made by Disney. In fact, Disney characters are recognized by children in virtually every nation in the world. So regardless of the setting of the story, Disney films are universally loved the world over.

The second thing is that unlike American and some European cultures, in many Asian cultures animation is not seen a children's form of entertainment. In South Korea and Japan especially, people of all ages go to theaters to see animated films, only a small fraction of which are made for children. There is no stigma involved with seeing an animated movie in most of southeast Asia and in fact films like Bolt and Meet the Robinsons are probably closer tonally to what those cultures are used to seeing from cartoons made in their native countries.

So, essentially, what you are saying is simply not true. None of it honestly. Disney is loved the world over. I mean there are Disney theme parks in China, Hong Kong, and Japan, as well as in the US and Europe. And those parks are just as successful if not more so than the American versions. So, yea, I don't know what else to say. What you are saying just isn't true. Disney films are traditionally the most successful American films in the foreign market and the different connotation that animated films have in Southeast Asia have made that region the most important region for Disney in the world outside of the US.

And I guess the other thing I can mention is how popular Japanese animation is worldwide. Look at the massive anime community in the US. People who really love that form of film making will learn about Japanese culture, and even learn to speak Japanese just so they can understand anime. And even those who don't are able to appreciate Japanese animation. Spirited Away, for example, is the only foreign animated film to win an Oscar. It is a story about Japanese folklore that Americans can appreciate on a base level, even if they miss the vast majority of the references most any person in Japan would understand. The themes of Spirited Away are universal, just like the themes in Disney movies are universal. You don't have to be familiar with Japanese legends to appreciate Spirited Away in the same way that a Japanese person doesn't need to be familiar with American or European culture to understand Disney movies.

And finally, regarding Lassetter. Lassetter got his start working for Steve Jobs a man who understood that people would pay for a quality product. Jobs was willing to make enemies, and to throw friends under the bus if they were not living up to his incredibly high standards. That is how Steve worked. People who worked for him at the very least were afraid of him, and many hated him. But they all respected him and he put in place a culture where anyone who wasn't doing the best job possible would be reprimanded and no one was too important to be fired at a moment's notice. This strategy and obsession with perfection was the exact same strategy Walt used at Disney. Those who worked under him would tell stories of Disney literally tearing their drawings apart if he felt they weren't up to snuff, and that he refused to accept anything but the very best. Disney was not an animator. He didn't direct, write, or animate a single movie in his entire life. His job was to make sure every single employee gave 110%. And he and Steve Jobs are arguably the two best people ever at doing that. Lassetter is similar. He hasn't directed or written a movie in a decade. He is a mediocre artist at best and honestly the films he personally wrote and directed are generally some of the lesser works in Pixar's output. What makes Lassetter great is that like Steve Jobs or Walt Disney he is unafraid to criticize. No one is too good at Pixar. I mean he recently removed Bob Peterson from The Good Dinasaur, a man who has been with Pixar for years and worked on some of their most successful films. He is one of the core Pixar creatives. But his film wasn't good enough, so Lassetter removed him. And that is what makes him great. He doesn't let personal loyalty effect his judgement and he isn't afraid to cancel something that isn't working regardless of the time or money put into it. It is a massive shift in culture and that is what has changed Disney. Lassetter is a great leader and an extreme perfectionist, and he has a brilliant sense of what will work and what won't.

I just can't seem to care about any movie that is CG. I was fine with it when movies first started coming out, but I really wish cell animation would come back.

It has to be an age thing right? Am I the only that dislikes CG? Perhaps it is also due to movies no longer doing animatronics and instead rendering some stupid CG.

I don't think anyone respects a person willing throw someone under the bus. That is one of the most fucked up things one could do to a person at work.

It's not just you. I wrote off most animated things about the time I got to high school (2006) and didn't get back into animation until college - and it was the more traditionally animated Japanese side of animation that pulled me back in. CG movies can be interesting, but they're never as visually striking as Akira, Metropolis, Miyazaki's works, or practically anything in Disney's pre-CG animated canon. Unfortunately, it looks like anybody in the West who could make such movies lost interest about the time that Titan A.E. shut down Fox's animation studio.

@tycobb: I think I just poorly worded that. I was trying to get across that Jobs did not let personal loyalty stand in the way of making the best product possible. Being the best buddy of Steve Jobs didn't make you any more likely to get chosen for a project. He chose the best person for the job, even if that meant passing over people who maybe had more experience or loyalty with the company. And quite a few people hated him for it. He was initially thrown out of the company because of his unprofessional attitude towards his employees. Back in those days there were stories where people would make an effort not to get stuck alone with Jobs in an elevator or break room as he would begin questioning you on your performance and if he didn't like what he heard he would fire you on the spot. Jobs made great products. He was NOT an especially nice person or a beloved person among those who knew him. He was a great actor and performer but his public persona was just that, a performance. People who worked with him tell stories that paint a very different picture.

Titan A.E. was not a good movie, but it sucks that it essentially ended the career of Don Bluth. That guy was a master of 2D animation. And I definitely prefer 2D animation to CG. I think Pixar manages to make some of the best animated films out there but the fact that they are animated is often unimportant. Pixar movies have great stories and great characters, but as works of animation they can't hold a candle to the best 2D stuff. I will say, though, that Brave and the real-world segments of Monster's University both managed to capture some of the magic of 2D animation that I had been missing, and Frozen was honestly the first CG film I have seen that to me at least was as good as a lot of the better 2D stuff.