What doesn't Disney own?

[Hot Pepsi]

Indeed, the theme parks were a much bigger part of the company than their media interests until some time in the 80s or maybe later. They were considered an acquisition target for a raider or bigger studio.

For a long time, they certainly had very limited ambitions in film and TV compared to what they became in the 90s.


I always liked Mickey Mouse etc because the cartoons of theirs I’d seen had so much more life than most of the cartoons on TV, except for the classic Looney Toons, of course. I loved those too.

But mostly, I knew the Disney characters through print. We had a bunch of “picture books” featuring Mickey and Donald, etc. I especially loved the one about the haunted house. I think they all came in some kind of book of the month sort of thing. We had a lot of Sesame Street books like that and some other series about a town of sentient animals. We had a lot picture books that I looked at over and over and over. It’s how kids learned to read in those days, of course.

But I liked Mickey et al more than Tom & Jerry, even though I watched that a lot. Tom & Jerry were dicks to each other.

Mickey was a decent guy. I appreciated that.
He wasn’t as funny or clever as Bugs Bunny, of course. But I related to him better as a kind of every man. My taste was boring, I guess.

Why Pluto was a dog like our dog but Goofy was fully humanized never made sense. Nor did it make sense than mice, dogs and ducks were all the same size. It was a different world.

[ursus arctos]

The Pluto/Goofy conundrum belonged on Unsolved Mysteries

[Posty Webber]

I hear you. For me Fleischer Studios still represent the summit of US movie animation. Betty Boop, Popeye, their Cinderella and Snow White — though shorter — knock the Disney versions out of the park. They also did the earliest (I think) animated Superman. Thing is Walt wasn't an especially good animator, artist or story-teller. Instead he turned out to be a brilliant producer and businessman, and won the game that way. It's a knack. You have make product for ten-year-olds and run the business like the most bloodthirsty alligator in the swamp.

Like Stan lee

[Posty Webber]

…I grew up at a time when we couldn't see those films all the time, so when we did - either because they were on TV or it was rereleased to a theater - it was very special.

Exactly – same with me.

On those rare occasions, usually on a Sunday afternoon, that I saw that fairy castle motif I would be totally exhilarated. Even if it was your Fox/Hound, or Sword/Stone level.

[Amor de Cosmos]

I grew up without TV until I was twelve. For Brits of my generation cartoon exposure meant Saturday mornings at the local cinema and occasional holiday visits to a news theatre somewhere (see above.) Disney shorts shared the screen with Bugs Bunny who was much more to my taste, plus we'd go with our parents to see the features. Pinocchio, Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan etc. Walt defined animation until TV arrived, then we got the good stuff. Original Sullivan and Messmer Felix the Cat silents, which were even older than the Fleischers. Then Popeye, three times a week after school! A year or so later we got early Hanna-Barbara, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and the rest. All of these were far funnier and way cooler than Disney's big screen epics, which also included the "educational" Painted Desert and other pre-Attenborough quasi-documentaries.

[ursus arctos]

Including the infamous calumny against lemmings

Most of those were made with endless repeats on the television show in mind, rather than an expectation of big box office

[3 Colours Red]

Even though the Disney renaissance was happening during my formative years, I never really got into it.

It all seemed a bit too twee and nice and stuffed full of allegory and morality, whereas the stuff Nickelodeon was doing during the 90s was much more up my alley. Of course there was The Simpsons as well, with Beavis & Butt-Head, South Park, King of the Hill and Family Guy just around the corner.

And yes, Hanna-Barbera and Warner Brothers shorts were still being shown on TV all the time. Their anarchy and willingness to bend the rules of what should be done for the sake of a joke really chimed with me a lot more. Even when Disney did that with Donald Duck's anger and Goofy's... umm.... goofiness, it just came off as a little forced, at least to me.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

My Name Is Ian’s point about Disney totally resonates with me. I was of an age where there just wasn’t any Disney availability - let alone ubiquity - when I was growing up. I might have seen the Robin Hoody one, and I think a friend’s mum took a group of us to see Dumbo at the cinema when I was about 6, but that is the sum total of all my Disney experiences. About 4 hours in my first 12 years. So when they appeared as cultural references I just didn’t really know what the deal was or why I should care, whether it was seven dwarfs or Pluto and Donald. In fact, I really never understood Donald Duck - Loony Tunes, WB, Hanna Barbera and so on, Tex Avery, Carl Stalling and Mel Blanc, they were kings of cartoons in late 70s early 80s Britain, so our duck was Daffy. And Daffy was, on occasion, actually funny. While Donald really never was. So when Donald showed up I had no idea what the point of him was.

Similar here as well, though with maybe a bit more recognition. Things like The Wonderful World of Disney and the bank holiday specials always seemed like such a let down - it was ostensibly a sop to us kids in the schedules but then half of it seemed to be people in stripy blazers and straw hats on steamboats singing old-timey shit, and the aforementioned wildlife stuff, and the chuckles were few and far between.

My kids (now grown up) have little recognition of WB and Hanna Barbera characters at all, and know the Disney characters more as theme park mascots rather than knowing their actual films and cartoons. We got Disney+ at the start of lockdown last year and my daughter declared she was going to watch all the old Disney movies that she'd never seen but I don't think she got far through the attempt.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Including the infamous calumny against lemmings

Most of those were made with endless repeats on the television show in mind, rather than an expectation of big box office

I'm sure that was true in the US, but the Wonderful World of Disney wasn't on British TV at the time.

[Hot Pepsi]

Similar here as well, though with maybe a bit more recognition. Things like The Wonderful World of Disney and the bank holiday specials always seemed like such a let down - it was ostensibly a sop to us kids in the schedules but then half of it seemed to be people in stripy blazers and straw hats on steamboats singing old-timey shit, and the aforementioned wildlife stuff, and the chuckles were few and far between.

My kids (now grown up) have little recognition of WB and Hanna Barbera characters at all, and know the Disney characters more as theme park mascots rather than knowing their actual films and cartoons. We got Disney+ at the start of lockdown last year and my daughter declared she was going to watch all the old Disney movies that she'd never seen but I don't think she got far through the attempt.

I agree. I recall being frequently disappointed with TWWOD. Too many documentaries. Not enough animated movies. Too many musicals and boring stuff with Dean Jones - although I liked The Love Bug and the original Flubber movie- and stuff that was a bit too teenager-oriented like The Parent Trap. I do recall loving The Black Hole. I watched it again recently. It doesn't hold up. But Tron was awesome.

Its remarkable how slow and dull old adventure movies feel. I recently watched the original Treasure Island film. The climax is a few characters rowing a small boat into a sand bar in a small cove. I also watched 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea (or however many it is). Mostly people just talking. Compare and contrast to Pirates of the Caribbean CGI maelstorm, for example.

[San Bernardhinault]

God, I remember absolutely loving The Black Hole, but every bit I remember about it was terrible. Perhaps my standards have changed.

I guess we did see some Disney stuff - like The Black Hole, and a handful of those wildlife documentaries, what I never really saw were the iconic movies and, even more, the Micky and Minnie and Goofy and Donald and Pluto stuff. The things that people really associate with Disney.

[elguapo4]

The Wonderful World of Disney was a staple of Sunday afternoon TV in Ireland throughout the 70s and 80s, and it always seemed to be about mountain lions or chipmunks, though you'd occasionally get Donald Duck against Chip and Dale or Goofy as Ichabod Crane.

[Auntie Beryl]

Disney's 1990s home video availability policy - which seems bizarre in a world of 'everything anytime' - was to hold most of their 'classic' animated films off the market, then re-release one VHS per Christmas in a blaze of marketing/hype before deleting it again in spring. Come Q4 it would be another one's turn.

I worked in a record shop with access to video wholesalers, and would try and to order videos in for customers, often without success.

The advent of DVD changed all that and you'd see the whole range available racked together in multibuys, etc. But for years, you just couldn't buy specific Disney titles first hand on VHS. You were kept waiting.

[Edit: it was the same with the Bond back catalogue in between cinematic release windows.]

[Ginger Yellow]

HP, I sort of got the sense that "graphic novel culture" was taking off in the US only to be crushed by the film studios going wall to wall superhero and anime becoming very popular.

To add to HP's comments, I feel it maybe did get crushed, at Marvel/DC. As a comics fan who isn't into the big superheroes (but does read the occasional superhero comic run), I find I almost never read non-superhero Marvel/DC comics these days - it's almost all Image for me these days. Whereas when I was first getting into comics in a big way there was a ton of Vertigo stuff I was into, and to a much lesser extent some Marvel things like Runaways which are technically superhero comics but didn't really tie into the larger universe and didn't suffer from the usual superhero things I hate like retconning.

[Snake Plissken]

Another for the Disney-means-little crowd. In fact the first movie that I saw at the cinema was Battle Beyond The Stars. It was supposed to be Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but my mum got the dates for the cinema changing the films around wrong.

Always was a Looney Tunes guy because you could easily catch them on BBC1 or BBC2 rather than Disney, which was restricted to a clip show every bank holiday. (And Hanna-Barbera sucked.)

[3 Colours Red]

(And Hanna-Barbera sucked.)

That's largely true with hindsight (and how did I not mention Warner Bros' incredible 90s revival in my previous post - Tiny Toons? Animaniacs? Taz-Mania? Batman? Freakazoid?) but that's what you do when you're a kid - you force yourself to watch absolute shite like it's the best thing ever.

[Benjm]

Always was a Looney Tunes guy because you could easily catch them on BBC1 or BBC2 rather than Disney, which was restricted to a clip show every bank holiday. (And Hanna-Barbera sucked.)

Merrie Melodies used to piss me off. Some of them had the big Warner Bros cartoon characters in them but others were crap about singing bulrushes and the like. The disappointment if it turned out to be one of the latter was acute.

[Snake Plissken]

I think the problem with Hanna Barbera was just the cheapness of it. From recycling the formula every episode to the awful, awful canned laughter even as a kid I realised it was shit.

I fully admit to being very precocious about such things at a young age - even at age 10 I was most bothered by the crap Chromakey and shite special effects in stuff like Dr Who / Rentaghost. Wires and stuff I could deal with, but obvious blue-screening was Right Out in my mind.

The 90's stuff was amazing and I guess we sort of how the Simpsons to thank for letting some of it onto the screen. When I watched my first Tiny Toons show ("How I Spent My Vacation"), I saw them pick up a hitchhiker dressed exactly like Leatherface and I was "Oh, I am so fucking in for this".

[Patrick Thistle]

I watched The Black Hole for the first time last year and it's laughable to think it came out in between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. As Star Wars cash in attempts go it's probably the worst by some considerable margin.

[willie1foot]

I suspect I might be of a weird age when it comes to Disney. When I was very little there weren't hardly any video players, so it was TV only in our house, and it didn't hardly figure in my childhood at all. I loved (and still love) Hanna Barbera and Warner Bros. Still do. I still don't really understand what the conceit of Mickey Mouse is.

I've wondered whether it's related to this, in any way, in terms of being an age thing:

https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/exp...e-70s-and-80s/

But the bottom line is that it was just... absent from my life. To this day, I've only seen a couple of its most famous films, and I don't particularly have much inclination to change that. So I think that I've tended to overlook just how motherfucking massive they are.

I was persuaded to get Disney Plus by them announcing that they are releasing all five series of The Muppet Show onto it (it's in a couple of weeks, I think). I haven't fully explored it yet, but it's got Disney (obvs), Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, and Nat Geo. There's stuff on it my kids like, and stuff on it that I like. But Disney as A Thing isn't woven into my DNA in that way that happens to things that you carry over from childhood. Not in the same way as, say, The Pink Panther or Wile E Coyote, at least.

I may be a bit older but I went to the pictures to see the Disney films e.g. Jungle Book, Robin Hood, Aristocats, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Lady and the Tramp, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Mary Poppins, The Love Bug etc. plus there was the Disney Wonderful World of Colour (in B&W for me until about 1970) on the telly every week.

[Snake Plissken]

I watched The Black Hole for the first time last year and it's laughable to think it came out in between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. As Star Wars cash in attempts go it's probably the worst by some considerable margin.

I have fond memories of it, which I probably shouldn't tarnish by rewatching it. The "running over the bridge outracing a huge ball of fire" had me gasping. Maximilian was terrifying and awesome. And that ending was batshit.

It's Disney at its most po-faced and trying to be worthy though.

[Hot Pepsi]

I do recall liking The Black Hole at the time, but the special effects aren't great, even for that time. The physics don't make any sense and the ending is batshit, but that may be to its credit.

[Gangster Octopus]

For me Fleischer Studios still represent the summit of US movie animation. Betty Boop, Popeye, their Cinderella and Snow White — though shorter — knock the Disney versions out of the park. They also did the earliest (I think) animated Superman.

I'd never come across the Superman before, but they are currently being shown on Talking Pictures on Saturday mornings. Crap stories, but impressive animation.

[Hot Pepsi]

I watched the Justice League Snyder Cut so you don't have to. Unless you're really into this shit, don't watch it.

In fact, I watched it twice. Once alone and then once synched to The Ringer's real-time podcast about it.

It is way better than the original half-ass Snyder plus Weedon version. I originally thought that Joss Weedon was a good director, since he made Buffy, but apparently he's a real dick and the last Avengers movie he did, age of Ultron, is widely regarded as the worst, so there's that. Plus, his vision clashes so completely with Synder's that it just doesn't work.

On the podcast, Sean Fennesey put it well. The Weedon version is incoherent, not as funny as it thinks it is, and looks like shit.

The Snyder version looks a lot better - although there are some parts where the CGI looks like a Playstation game and is excessive. It is a lot more coherent, but it is still hard to follow if you're not paying close attention and/or don't know much about the characters and McGuffins. It's four hours long and yet still leaves a lot of unresolved stuff for sequels that won't happen. Nevertheless, it still has some action bits that look like they weren't quite planned out and don't make sense. Perhaps he just wasn't able to shoot everything he wanted to before he left the first time and they just couldn't fix it. Or maybe he just isn't a great director.

It has lots of that Snyder slow-mo shit. Soooo much. Like a long bit of Aquaman looking cool while a Nick Cave song plays. It works with The Flash stuff, because his ability to almost freeze time is his whole schtick, but still, its a bit much.

He is the film version of a comic book artist that gets really popular as an artist so he decides to write his own stories too even though he isn't a good writer. Lots of examples of that.

Really, he should just make music videos and trailers. His stuff looks cool, but he has no fucking clue how to develop characters or give anyone a personality, and that's especially problematic with DC characters who, if done wrong, are susceptible to being just blank grim-dark cyphers. But that still works better than having them be blank grimdark cyphers occasionally busting each other's balls with quips. It doesn't really develop the New Gods villains much either. They're just kind of stock super-baddies.

Sadly, the fans seem to really love it, so we'll probably get more of this version. It appears Snyder has a lot of fans even though he doesn't seem to have ever met another real human being and wants to make Superman a murderer and wanted to somehow make Superman's child the next Batman which makes no sense, etc. He made Sucker Punch, FFS. And 300. He is the epitome of style over story. And he loves violence, which doesn't help.

But there are a few things the Snyderverse did really well.

For example, Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor is perfect. Instead of the playboy, lush kind of funny guy played by Gene Hackman or Kevin Spacey, it shows Luthor as a kind of beguiling techno genius. That's how he's been in the comics for 30 years and that's a much better character for our times. Kind of like a scary combination of Trump and Elon Musk. That's a villian worthy of Superman.

He also seems to sort of get that Superman stories aren't really about Superman. They're about his relationships to other people, especially Lois Lane. The first two Donner films really got that. That's why WB has launched another TV show about them as a couple. But Snyder doesn't know how to actually direct humans, so that doesn't work as well as it should.

A great line in the podcast from Fennesey, when Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is talking to Martha Kent (Diane Lane). "These two women have seven Oscar nominations between them, and here they are talking in the dark about Superman. Unbelievable." That's one of the only human scenes in the film. It kind of works, I guess, because the actors are pros, but not as well as it could.

I also like Aquaman as alcoholic dirtbag. He always gets mocked in pop culture because he was kinda useless on Super Friends, but Jason Mamoa gets it. So at least there's that.

And Ben Affleck is a good older Bruce Wayne. And he has good smoldering chemistry with Wonder Woman, but they don't pay that off because that's not how the story is supposed to go. It's just the way those actors perform it. Sometimes that happens, I guess. Great fashion for both of them too.

But really, The Flash is the only one of the main characters who gets a definite personality other than just being sad and angry.

If you want to see a cool Justice League movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, watch the animated version of Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier. It's an homage to the early 60s comics and that whole googly vibe. Sadly, Darwyn Cooke died a few years ago. I loved his art.

[Ginger Yellow]

He is the epitome of style over story.

And yet, it's such a dumb style. Like, fair enough, I see how the visual style of Sin City fit the comic book it was adapted from. But he does the same slomo desaturated shit with nearly all of his films regardless of the context. It's like JJ Abrams lens flare, but worse.