Collin Willis

Before I release the final article in my Road to Disney World series, I wanted to do something a little different for the penultimate. Instead of ranking or deep diving, I wanted to gather an assortment of thoughts and takeaways that I got watching through all of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ 59 films.

The Magic of Walt

Walt Disney truly was a genius. The films produced under his watchful eye remain the studio’s best, even 50+ years after his death. They’re by no means perfect, and there’s many a racist undertone that sours them, but there’s a magic to the story, movement, and characters that the studio has often struggled to find in the wake of Walt’s death.

There’s a beauty in the simplicity of the Walt Disney era. Walt’s movies are often the shortest and least complex but its in this lack of plot depth that Walt managed to create heart and charm in ways that some of the most ambitious Disney movies have failed to. There’s a lot that can be said about Walt Disney, but I don’t feel the need to say anything more than “Bravo”.

Disney Needed to Move on From Walt

Taking all of the previous paragraph into account, Walt’s passing was a tragic opportunity for the studio. The final two films produced under Walt are where the studio shows its first signs of fatigue. The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book, while enjoyable feel much like Walt reaching into the same old hat and expecting a different rabbit (or mouse).

After his passing, the first few films produced under Wolfgang Reitherman feel like a much needed breathe of fresh air. They’re by no means perfect, but the experimentation in films like The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, and The Fox and the Hound are all dynamically different from the Disney status quo. They lack the magic of Walt but they make up for it in difference and the playful experimentation that the animators use in bringing them to life.

The Rating System

Rating movies based on stars is a dumb system to rely on. Compiling this list of 59 movies with a scoring system that only allows for 11 different scores means that it doesn’t take long for multiple films to have the same score. So, while I was compiling my ranked list I found movies that I had wildly different impressions of nuzzled next to each other with the same star count. Stars cannot encapsulate my true opinions and impressions of a movie and this was a perfect example of why the current trend of percentage over 100 based criticism is intrinsically flawed. Stars, Rotten Tomato Scores, neither will ever be able to properly appraise a movie and highlights its triumphs and/or struggles.

Animation Never Lived a Full Life

In the grand scheme of the Disney Studios, there are really only two full generations of feature-length animators. The Golden, Package, and Silver Age of Walt Disney Animation was overseen (mostly) by Walt and a handful of rotating animators known as the Nine Old Men. These weren’t Walt’s first animators but they began with Snow White in 1937 and several of them were with the studio until as late as 1981. The traditional animation process as well as the transition to xerography was all overseen by the Nine Old Men.

There’s a half generation that begins when the Nine Old Men start shifting towards retirement in the 1970s but that wave is rather abruptly ended by the exit of Animation Veteran Don Bluth and a group of animators that left with him. This generation left before it ever firmly established itself and those of the Nine that were left helped limp the studio along until their successor’s successors came into their own. The second generation, consisting of future directors Ron Clements, John Musker, Glen Keane, John Lasseter, and even Brad Bird and Tim Burton, came in as Don Bluth departed.

It was under this generation that animation moved to computers and was swiftly upstaged by 3D animation. The second generation of Disney animators was also its last, as they oversaw the glorious dusk of the traditional animation process and were around for Disney to inevitably begin modeling its stories in 3D.

It’s sad, that such a beautiful and meticulously crafted artform lasted such a short time. While 2D animation is still around today, the intent, manpower, and heart that the Walt Disney Studio provided it is gone, like a flame snuffed out.