Disney's Competition Part 4: Copycats!

Dreamworks Animation and Don Bluth's animation team, along with other companies that have competed against Disney over time, have each had unique approaches to making their own mark in the history of animated movies. However, it seems that often times, they borrow some of Disney's ideas and try to make it their own. This is not just about the princess formula, which introduced us to the idea that Disney's competition was trying to copy successful ideas, but there are many other ways that these companies have tried to copy Disney in order to make some big bucks.

This article is much more focused on the producers and the production companies that financed and created these movies rather than the animators themselves. After all, without the authority and decisions of the producers and production company, we wouldn't have as many of these movies (the good and the bad) as we do now.

Lackluster Sequels

This may be the saddest part of the competition in animation movies. Once a movie becomes popular, it's time to start the franchise, which means rolling out a bunch of crummy sequels that only feature the main characters from the last movie and none of the charm and drama of the hit classic that's based on.

It's especially sad seeing Disney stoop so low as to create sequels for movies that came out decades ago. You may not have realized these existed, so I'm sorry if I burst your bubble by showing you the following.

These are just some of a handful of the home video sequels that Disney has produced.

Don Bluth himself may not be involved with any sequels that followed his main theatrical hits, but it is sad to see companies try to make money off of his team's creation with poor follow-ups.

This is just the tip of the Land Before Time sequels iceberg

Then there's Dreamworks. I mentioned in my Dreamworks article about how as soon as they had a hit movie (Shrek, Madagascar) that they have tried their hardest to make that single hit into a cash cow franchise. Shrek somehow managed to spawn four sequels, one of which is a spinoff featuring a side character in a lead role.

Madagascar gained two sequels, a TV show, and holiday specials.

I'll just sit here and wait for Kung Fu Panda 3 and How to Train Your Dragon 4 to show upin theaters. It's bound to happen.

Do These Movies Look the Same?

A quick sidenote intro to this section. Did anyone else think that the dinosaurs in The Land Before Time looked pretty similar to the design found in Fantasia?

Those T-Rexs look way too similar.

This is mostly based on the Dreamworks vs. Disney competition, though perhaps Dreamworks' real competition was Pixar. I made a joke in the last article about how Antz, a Dreamworks production, looked an awful lot like a Disney/ Pixar movie, which is of course A Bug's Life. Both were released around the same time (1998) and focused on the lives of ants in their colony.

This is not the only time that this weird phenomenon would occur. Shark Tale (2004), an underwater comedy about fish and featuring goofy shark characters happened to come out just after Finding Nemo (2003), which was an underwater comedy about fish and featured goofy shark characters.

Flushed Away (2006), a movie starring talking rodents, was introduced to audiences just before Ratatouille (2007), a movie starring talking rodents. The Incredibles (2004) was such a hit that Dreamworks did their own unique twist on the superhero comedy genre in the form of Megamind (2010).

I think the only time that a Dreamworks Animation doppelganger became a bigger hit than the Disney counterpart was Madagascar (2005). The basic plot is that a group of animals, led by a lion, escape from the Central Park Zoo and find themselves in the wild of the big island off the African coast. Disney came out with a movie called The Wild (2006) which was about a group of animals, who are led by a lion, escaping from the Central Park Zoo and find themselves in the wild of...Africa. Now, it could be that since Pixar wasn't attached to the project that The Wild was not as good, but my point is that incredibly Dreamworks, in its attempt to copy the works of Disney/ Pixar, somehow managed to create a franchise while Disney's version just somehow fell flat and became an unknown failure.

Did you honestly know this was a thing until you read about it here?

Pop Star Writes Soundtrack:

In case you did not know this already, the main man you can thank for the catchy tunes from The Lion King soundtrack is Elton John. This majestic piano man is most directly responsible for "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" staying in the finished cut of the movie, but he also helped compose the rest of this now classic music score.

Did you also know, however, that Elton John was pulled in to compose the music for a rival movie just a few years later. Dreamworks Animation managed to have the man responsible for "Tiny Dancer" also become responsible for the soundtrack to their movie Road to El Dorado. The catchiest of the tunes (i.e. the one that's hardest to get out of my head) is "The Trail We Blaze".

Elton John is not the only pop radio singer to lend his writing craft and voice to a major animation production. Barry Manilow (not to be confused with Rod Stewart) also crafted some songs for animated movies in the 90s.

Seriously these guys could be twins

The producers that controlled Don Bluth and his animation team signed on Barry Manilow to write the soundtracks for the following movies: Thumbelina and The Pebble and the Penguin. Remember these cheesy songs?

Straying Far Away From Original Story

This is a problem with a lot of movies, whether they are based on true events or if they are based on previous stories written in book form. However, we can see comparisons between the way that Disney totally changed different types of stories and how their competitors followed suit.

For the sake of keeping this short, let's just examine each studio's take on a historical tale.

We all remember Disney's Hercules right? We remember how, according to Disney, Hercules was born a complete god, who grew up an outcast among humans and his main teenage romantic crush is Megara. However, in the original myths, Hercules was only born a demigod (Hera was not his mother, but often a main antagonist because she was jealous of Zeus' relationship with Hercules' human mother). Yes, he was super strong and proved himself a hero, but a lot of the main tasks that he does (slaying the hydra, battling giant boars and harpies, etc.) come after he married Megara, had a couple of kids with her, and then was driven crazy by Hera and killed his family and his tasks are his penance for those sins.

Dreamworks created The Prince of Egypt based on the story of Moses from the Pentateuch. They readily admit in the opening that it is not an exact translation/ interpretation of the original story, which is good, because some audience members would probably be have issues with the movie otherwise In the Pentateuch, Moses is found in the river as a baby, but then in the next paragraph, he's a full grown man who is exiled after killing an Egyptian to protect a Hebrew. None of this chariot-racing brotherly love stuff that was in the Dreamworks movie. In fact, Dreamworks was so focused on the relationship between Moses and Ramses that they seem to race through the plagues and the Passover, which are very important moments in the life of Moses and the Hebrews.

Don Bluth's team may not have gone very far back in history, but they do have one historical-based movie. Anastasia. Sure, they tried to make this movie as fictional and fantasy-based as possible, but maybe they would have had an easier time doing that had they not based the plot on real events in Russian history (as well as real rumors about the Grand Duchess Anastasia). It's not just the life of Anastasia herself that's turned into fantasy, but also the portrayal of Rasputin was very far off from the real deal (who was actually creepier than the movie version). In fact, the realest moment in the movie was the revolutionaries storming the castle.

Just one more part of this series to go and it should be the most fun. In the next post, we'll theorize what the future of animated movies will look like, all based on what has happened over the past two and a half decades.

Disney's Competition Part 3: Dreamworks

The other company that has challenged Disney at the movie theaters is Dreamworks Animation. With a sixteen year run (so far) of creative movies, some good and some forgettable, Dreamworks has managed to garner more popularity and finances than Don Bluth's animation team did and has managed to last til the present time (you might remember that How to Train Your Dragon 2 is about to hit theaters).

The Start

It all starts with one man's dream of creating high quality animated movies (sounds a little familiar right?). Jeffrey Katzenberg is a movie producer who had previously worked for Disney's studio before moving on to establish his own company (again, very familiar background here).

How well did the company do starting out? Just take a look at the first movies that Dreamworks Animation created.

Wait, wasn't this made by Pixar?

Good, but the book was better

We made a movie about gold. That means box office gold, right?

BINGO!

While the first few movies did all right during their original release and have gone on to become somewhat popular on DVD, the thing that made Dreamworks a major rival to Disney was Shrek. For many reasons, this is the first major hit for Dreamworks, which means they would go on to milk this cash cow for all it's worth as we all now know, with the sequels, the Christmas special, and the stage musical all created over time.

The Plateau of Meh

From there, Dreamworks began to produce more animated features as various and creative as the early movies they produced. Some were based in classic 2-D animation style, and yet kind of fell in to obscurity over the years.

What do ya know, a fantasy pirate movie made in the 00s. 

Watching people ride horses is not as fun as actually riding horses

For the record (and I guess I should have mentioned this earlier in the series) the popularity of animated films is somewhat subjective. Some of you might say that one of these movies was a classic from your childhood that you remember every detail of because of how much of classic it was while some of you might look at that same movie and go "Since when was this a thing?".

Anywho, Dreamworks also brought in some British claymation that they can't take credit for creating, but at least they can take credit for bringing them to the attention of an American audience.

Starring: Mel Gibson's fake American accent

Were-Rabbit? There-Rabbit.

After these movie releases, however, we start getting into the more forgettable and computer-generated focus of Dreamworks Animation.

"Will Smith Fish" just wasn't as catchy of a title.

Tried to make Jerry Sienfeld funny again

Dreamworks trying to flush their own company down the drain?

Don't push me cause I'm close to the hedge

Back to the Hits.

While these movies are not necessarily the worst movies ever, they were not on par with any animated classics that came before it, whether from Dreamworks or otherwise. The one Dreamworks animated movie that was able to make a huge smash at the box office during this time period was...

Filmed on location in Madagascar and at the Central Park Zoo

I think that this movie played a huge part in keeping Dreamworks Animation afloat. This portion of history for Dreamworks is similar to what happened to Don Bluth in the 90s where he had a string of moderate, mediocre movies out there with one or two huge successes here and there. The biggest, most popular animated movies from Dreamworks during this time was Madagascar and Shrek along its sequels. Had it not been for these two franchises, we may not have Dreamworks Animation today. Notice that none of the movies said "From the creators of Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Bee Movie" or "From the creators of Antz and Flushed Away".

It was all about Shrek  and Madagascar. That is, until Dreamworks knocked kid's socks off with...

For once, a Jack Black comedy that paid off.

Making kids want a pet dragon even more 

I do not know how Dreamworks managed to put these two giant hits together in such a short time, but these are the movies that helped cement Dreamworks Animation as a modern animation giant with a unique style of computer-generated animation. Even Monsters vs. Aliens, which came out around this time, got some attention, though maybe not as much as the other two above.

Though I think if the whole thing had been about the Stephen Colbert-voiced President character,
it would have been a mega blockbuster success of a film.

Recent Efforts and Legacy Thus Far

Because of these big successes, Dreamworks Animation has gone on to create massive amounts of sequels of their hit franchises. However, in recent time, they have continued their pattern of making uniquely creative CGI movies.

This movie will blow your mind!

It was hard to get the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman, their schedules were pretty booked

So, does Vin Diesel voice one of the snails?

From the creators of "Rocky and Bullwinkle"...wait...

So, what is the legacy of Dreamworks Animation so far? Well, they have really managed to dig in to the modern focus of computer-generated animation. Their animation style and artistry is probably only matched by Pixar. Save for Shrek, if any of the older movies that they made (the ones that came before Madagascar) are well-known, they are known because of a cult-following they received after coming out on DVD and video.

It's hard to tell the legacy of Dreamworks Animation for certain. Except for Shrek none of the movies have been around long enough to be considered animated classics like Don Bluth and company's The Secret of N.I.M.H.. I think that Dreamworks will manage to be around longer than Don Bluth's animation team, which is due to the amount of box-office successes they have had and the amount of movies that they have produced.

While I do not necessarily like the approach of turning one successful movie in to a cash-cow franchise, it has certainly been helpful for Dreamworks not only at the movie theaters, but in television as well. Movies like Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar and How to Train Your Dragon have received their own TV series, which can be seen on the Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network channels. That kind of effort has managed to keep Dreamworks Animation in the spotlight and has allowed them to experiment with many creative movies and allowed them to overcome any flops or forgettable movies along the way.

Are they the same classic quality as Disney? It's hard to tell right now. I would say that the animation quality is vastly different from the classic Disney films, but that means that Dreamworks has managed to find its own path to go, rather than copy the Disney art style and choices.

So now that we've covered who the companies are that competed against Disney, next we'll dig deeper in to the "how" they have competed before looking to the future of animation.

Counting Our Blessings

I think it's kind of difficult to get up on Mondays and Tuesdays and be a bright beacon of positivity to people. Maybe it's because I'm a big fan of the weekend and I realize that it's several more days until the weekend is back. Maybe it's because I suddenly put together a long To-Do list for the week and get bogged down in projects or things I may not necessarily want to do. Whatever the case, the start of the week is just not necessarily my favorite day of the week.

However, in those times when I might not be a happy-go-lucky goofy ball, I try to remind myself of the blessings in my life. I try to remember all of the gifts that I have been given, big or small. I do this to find joy in the little things. I'm surrounded by blessings and I know so many of you are to.

So today, I just wanted to put together a list of blessings that I think are blessings that many people have and also things that many people take for granted.

1) My Relationship with God

I think we often overlook our relationship with God because we find it difficult to make time to be with Him. However, He is always with us through good times as well as those times of struggle and difficulty. He is always there to guide us to becoming the best versions of ourselves and fulfill His will for our lives. It's up to us to be aware of the relationship and to make time to be with Him through prayer and Mass and the Sacraments.

This year, I have really had to build my trust and faith in God and His plan for my life. However, I have spent so much more time with Him in Mass, prayer, and the Sacraments than I have ever before. It has helped me to grow closer to Him and remember that I am created by Him. When I remember that God has a divine purpose for me and knows what's best for me (just as most fathers know what their son's needs are and gives them advice), I realize that I just need to chill and trust without worry.

2) Family

Whether we get along splendidly with our families or if it's just a constant struggle to be around them, family is an important part of our lives. Our parents help guide and support us as best as they can and we in turn have to learn from them. Our siblings help us learn how to interact with people and how to overcome struggles in our relationships. Ultimately, family shows us how to be loved and how to best love others.

I have been extremely blessed by the family that I have. My parents may be far away, yet they still give me support in various ways from gifts in the mail to advice on life issues. My brother and I have learned how to get along better over the years and I really enjoy getting to spend time with him. Plus, I have so many relatives back home, aunts and uncles, grandmother, cousins, my godson. I have received a ton of support from these people and I look forward to reuniting with them all when I return home.

3) Friends

We may not take friendships for granted as often as our other relationships, but nonetheless I do not think we always realize how powerful these friendships are. We may let disputes or distance create a rift between us. We may especially take for granted our ability to spend time and communicate with our friends and suddenly realize that in the past few months we have not maintained friendships in the way we would like to.

I have so many good friends back home in Missouri. Some friendships have existed since high school, some since the last few months of college. A major reason why I have been able to work with Reach Youth Ministry is because of the support of my friends (especially their prayers and kind words). I have been blessed with the ability to maintain communication with these people that I am far away from. I am looking forward to being back home to where I can reunite with some old friends and take trips to see friends who do not live close to me.

4) Food and Water

Because of how easily we have access to good food and clean water, it's really easy to take these things for granted. There are so many people in this world who do not have an ability to buy enough food to eat and do not have clean running water around them. When we do not see these people suffering from starvation and thirst, it's easy to forget just how easy some of us have it.

I know I take food for granted, especially when it is food that I may not necessarily enjoy eating or when I voluntarily skip a meal because I do not see food that is appetizing to me. I know I take water for granted, because I can easily waste it or I avoid drinking it because I like the taste of soda better. I'm very glad I have options to choose from and hope that I can do something to aid those who are less fortunate.

5) Clothing and Shoes

Again, because of the easy access to these things, we take them for granted. Often we just have to worry about whether our clothes match or what label we're wearing. There are some people who do not have enough clothes to keep warm from the cold or to change out of when they get too sweaty or dirty. There are also people who do not have good shoes to protect their feet.

I am very fortunate to have enough clothes (even with a limited wardrobe and budget) to keep warm when it's cold or stay cool when it's hot. In fact, I have so many clothes that I can donate some of them to nearby thrift shops for those who need clothing at a low cost. Also, I'm very grateful to have shoes, especially when I go out into nature and trek over rocky and rough terrain.

6) A Functioning Vehicle

We wouldn't really be able to travel as far or as easily if we did not have a vehicle to drive. Often people are so focused on the latest sports cars or the need to make their cars as immaculately spotless as possible that they do not just enjoy the fact that their vehicle is functioning and can take them from Point A to Point B.

On Reach, we may not have the newest vehicles or the least problematic vehicles, but at least we have a van that takes us to so many different places that are far away. At least we have something that cuts down on travel time and allows us to pack in multiple people and all of our luggage. Ever since I got my license at 16, I've had a vehicle to drive which has allowed me to help others travel as well as provide me with so many journies.


These are just six categories that I think affect majority of our lives and yet are easy for us to ignore. I know there are many many other unique blessings in our lives, whether it's the sunshine or it's the ability to go to school or whatever is personal to you. Please take some time in these next days, whether they're days of joy or sorrow, and count all of the simple things that you have that you may take for granted. I know it brings joy to my life whenever I do this.

Disney's Competition Part 2: Don Bluth's Animation

My childhood would not be complete without the animators and filmmakers that competed against Disney. It's all about quality and art, which not only Disney provides but also its competitors provide as well. There are two main groups to talk about, so let's dig in to the first for now and get to the second one later.

Don Bluth

The man. The myth. The mustache.

Here is a quick history on Don Bluth. He grew up loving Disney's original movies and he eventually got a job to do plenty of animation work for Disney. However, as the quality of the movies and the animation began to drop during the 1970s, Don and some of his Disney buddies decided to leave in order to make animated movies of their own. They wanted to make animated classics that were at the same quality as the early great works of Disney.

The 80s Success

Don Bluth managed to fulfill his dream of creating quality animated classics. His company's first feature length movie The Secret of N.I.M.H may not have been a huge hit at first, but it has gained popularity over the years on home video and it was enough to attract the attention of Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg, and eventually George Lucas, helped in producing the next high quality movies by Don Bluth. These were An American Tail and The Land Before Time.

These first three films have kind of been childhood staples since their creation and I think it's because of not only the creativity of the stories, but the unique style of art that Don Bluth brought to the movies. That is why these movies have carried on all these year. Even the next film, All Dogs Go to Heaven, has been a somewhat popular movie that may not be as great as these earlier works, but still remains known nonetheless.

Don and company can probably count themselves not only lucky that these movies were top-notch animated-classics-in-the-making, but that these movies also happened the come out while Disney was still in a bit of a slump of sloppy, non-classic works.

What Happened in the 90s? 

Disney's slump quickly came to an end with a Renaissance period part in thanks to its return to the princess formula. Meanwhile Don Bluth tried to compete, but his method of competition left something to be desired.

Apparently cutesy animals doesn't always mean box-office gold

Some of these movies above may be unfamiliar to you, or perhaps they are faint memories of the one time you saw them as a kid and then quickly forgot it about the next day (save for maybe "Thumbelina"). I think that what happened here was an interference in the production by outside sources.

The, people who put money into a product want the result to please them, right? So, most likely, investors who helped finance the productions probably wanted specific things from the movie that they were funding (for more detail on this explanation, search Don Bluth Films on Facebook and look at responses to people's questions). In order to please the people who paid to create the movies, Bluth and team scrambled together several duds.

The Grand Finale

Don Bluth ended his directorial career with two very interesting movies. Anastasia and Titan A.E.. The former introduced a little bit of computer animation to non-Disney movies, since the world of American animated filmmaking began to rely on more on computer generated images, and Bluth's ability to adapt CGI into hand-drawn animation was presented in Titan A.E.. As I said in the previous post, part of the popularity of Anastasia was that it stuck to the princess formula while Titan A.E. has kind of remained in obscurity. I actually kind of like Titan A.E. because of the creativity of the story as well as the artwork that came from that movie. However, even these two movies were not enough to keep Don Bluth in competition with Disney and so he went off to work on other projects.

Legacy

I think the fact that I recently had a random conversation about whether An American Tail or its sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes West  shows that Bluth, along with his animation team, has created and established movies that last. I think that a lot of people in my generation can say that they had a Don Bluth movie or two on their movie shelves next to the Disney movies, which shows that Bluth was at least doing something to attract attention.

Why was Bluth and his animation team able to compete against Disney for as long as they did? Well, they were doing things right, at least during the first few films. They made films that contained high artistic quality. Even though majority of the characters in these movies are animals, the characters moved and acted with humanistic qualities which did not detract from the films but instead gave them more depth. The animators were also not afraid of utilizing unique animation styles such as rotoscoping. Not to mention the fact that Bluth gave his movies a large scope. When we see Fievel the mouse looking at New York City from atop the Statue of Liberty or dinosaurs fighting or a space ship flying through the galaxy, we see characters in larger than life situations against grand backdrops.

I think the greatest thing that set out Bluth and his company was Disney was that the maturity of his movies was greater than majority of Disney's. These movies were darker than most Disney features and often had creepy moments, yet these films were still appropriate for kids. These are movies that treat their audience with maturity and respect, instead of thinning the plot or characters. Adults can sit through this movie without cringing from any cheesiness or silliness that comes from other cartoon features. Kids watch this movie knowing that they are risking being scared at certain scenes, but understanding that the risk is worth it because of how good the story is

In the next installment, I will examine the other company that has competed against Disney, which will bring us in to the present moment in animated movies. There's still plenty of good things to come in this series.

Disney's Competition Part 1: The Princess Formula

Disney has been a film company that has directly affected my childhood and I assume will continue to affect my future. I figured it would be nice to kind of examine a little bit of Disney's history, or more specifically look at the movies that have heavily competed against Disney during my lifetime. This will be done in order to have a better understanding of what we can expect from future Disney movies as well as future animated movies in general.

Oh, and I figured since a lot of this post involves links and pictures, I can cut up this post into multiple articles to spare y'all from reading one giant post that takes an eternity to finish. So with that in mind, let's take a trip back in time to...

The 90s

I always find it interesting that people mistake The Swan Princess, Thumbelina, and Anastasia as Disney movies. Disney was too busy producing stuff like The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hercules to be producing more typical, formulaic princess movies. And yet, it's kind of understandable that people make that mistake because of the typical princess formula.

Take The Swan Princess for example. Here we have the typical beautiful princess and prince.

Here singing about how beautiful the other is.

Along the way we meet the comic relief animal sidekicks.

Oh, and Princess Odette grew up with only one parent before becoming an orphan.

This guy's happy he doesn't make it past the first ten minutes of the movie.

Then we have the adult villain with magic powers.

Smoke signals?! What dastardly magic is this?

And in the end the prince and princess are married and live happily ever after.

Now where have we seen this all before?

Beautiful Prince and Princess

"We just met a minute ago. Wanna get married?" "Yes!"

Animal Sidekicks

Princesses Who Lose a Parent

I grew up with just a father, and he got turned into a seaweed thing for awhile

Girl, I grew up orphaned and controlled by my wicked stepmother. And that was BEFORE becoming a princess

An Adult Villain with Magic Powers

And a Wedding at the End

You might be saying, well that's just the basic character and plot archetypes found in fairytale movies. What about the music? Glad you hypothetically asked that. For that, let's examine the songs that we hear from Anastasia.

There's the opening number to explain the situation of the story.

The song about a girl's struggle for self-discovery.

The song about dreams.

The villain's operatic music number.

The montage music to make the storyline go faster.

And we can't forget the cheesy song about romance.

Sounds a little bit familiar right?

Opening Song to Explain Plot

A Girl's Self-Discovery

The Song About Dreams

The Villain's Song

The Montage Song

And the Cheesy Romantic Number

Success?

So what was the point of matching Disney's style, characters, story, and music? Well, since a big part of the reason that Disney became famous is because of its princess movies, it only makes sense to steal those ideas to gain popularity as well.

However, the simple fact is that because Disney's name wasn't stamped to the films of The Swan Princess, Thumbelina, and Anastasia, none of those movies saw as large of a profit as other competition like The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast (Does that count as a princess movie? Oh well, I'm counting it anyway). However, there are many people in my generation who know and appreciate Anastasia and The Swan Princess as if they were legitimate Disney classics (Thumbelina wasn't as big of a hit). And over time, people still remember the tunes and the basic story to these movies, which means that VHS (now DVD) sales are probably good and that a decent chunk of change has been given to the creators.

Since these movies are still remembered by people in my generation, even if they are often mistaken for Disney movies, there is something to say about the success of being able to reproduce Disney's princess formula.

Look for more analysis and thoughts on Disney's Competition to come in Part 2.

P.S.-I cannot take all the credit for the thought process that led to the development of this post nor can I say that I was all too creative with the jokes and critiques that I made along the way. Here are a couple of links that inspired this post.

Honest Trailer-Frozen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb5IH57SorQ

Nostalgia Critic-Swan Princess (Beware of language throughout this video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoWIGycdl5s