Why do people refuse to accept "Dinosaur" into the canon?

[Neal]

Ever since Walt Disney Animation Studios launched its website and had added Dinosaur to their canon list of films, people have either accepted or rejected the idea.

From my understanding, the film was developed in a secret studio on the same lot as the WDAS (then the WDFA).

Its goal was to effectively combine live action props with CGI animation - which would have been a new concept at the time.

The studio was secret, yes, but on the same lot as WDAS/WDFA and was a fully-supported Disney project.

So why do people act like its such blasphemy to add it to the list? I know its years later they added it, but its not like they added The Wild (merely distributed by Disney) or the sequels (all produced in Australia) - they added a film that was made on the same lot as many other classic Disney films.

I can't understand why people are so vehemently against that.

[Dr.Pepper]

Probably because they added it to the canon list years later. Plus I think alot of people don't care much for that movie and I heard of a few that say if its CGI, then its non-canon.

[Neal]

Well, its not like there's any OTHER Disney animated film waiting to be added.

Dinosaur was a made on-site movie that was just sort of there...a bystander to the rest of the films for years.

The rest of the Disney animated films were done by DisneyToon or other outsource companies.

So, if there were other animated Disney films waiting to be added then maybe I'd understand. But all that's left now are the outsourced sequels or films Disney only distributed.

And it's the 'Animated Canon' - not '2D animated canon'. Animated means animated whether it's 2D, CGI, Mo-Cap or Stop-Motion.

And many people who are willing to accept Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, Bolt, etc. won't accept Dinosaur.

And the people who only accept 2D are in for a reality check - if Princess and the Frog fails, then Disney will once again declare 2D dead to them. A lot is riding on PatF.

So what then? CGI films like Rapunzel are NOT Disney films just because of the CGI? Doesn't seem right, especially seeing as Glen Keane is overseeing the project.

[J. B. Warner]

I don't take issue with the CGI - after all, I include Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Bolt in the canon alongside all the other films. The problem I have with Dinosaur is that all the backgrounds are live-action - there are barely any shots in the film (if there are any at all) that are 100% animated. Live-action has been incorporated into WDFA films before (Fantasia, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, etc.), but never did it take up the bulk of the film like it does in Dinosaur. I don't count it as a full animated film - I see it as a live-action/animation hybrid film, at best.

And there's also the fact that Disney included it retroactively. I suspect there's some truth to the theory that they threw it into the canon eight years after the fact just so that Rapunzel could be their 50th animated film.

[Spideyzilla]

I don't take issue with the CGI - after all, I include Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, and Bolt in the canon alongside all the other films. The problem I have with Dinosaur is that all the backgrounds are live-action - there are barely any shots in the film (if there are any at all) that are 100% animated. Live-action has been incorporated into WDFA films before (Fantasia, Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, etc.), but never did it take up the bulk of the film like it does in Dinosaur. I don't count it as a full animated film - I see it as a live-action/animation hybrid film, at best.

And there's also the fact that Disney included it retroactively. I suspect there's some truth to the theory that they threw it into the canon eight years after the fact just so that Rapunzel could be their 50th animated film.


How could Bolt be canon? It isn't even released yet!

[J. B. Warner]

How could Bolt be canon? It isn't even released yet!

It's still being made by Walt Disney Feature Animation. Same goes for The Princess and the Frog and Rapunzel - just 'cause they're not out yet doesn't mean they're not part of the WDFA chronology.

[BrendaBat]

So why do people act like its such blasphemy to add it to the list? I know its years later they added it, but its not like they added The Wild (merely distributed by Disney) or the sequels (all produced in Australia) - they added a film that was made on the same lot as many other classic Disney films.

I never knew there was a controversy over Dinosaur. :shrug:
But I can understand why its sudden inclusion in the Disney cannon would upset some people. Dinosaur was really nothing more than a gimmicky showcase for Disney's nifty new CGI division. The movie itself had no real story to speak of and it was more live-action than it was CG.

[Lavenderpaw]

And the people who only accept 2D are in for a reality check - if Princess and the Frog fails, then Disney will once again declare 2D dead to them. A lot is riding on PatF.



Well,we don't know this for sure.It has to do with how much attention and faith Disney puts into this.I believe Enchanted did very well in theaters and it's a 2D/LA hybrid.The animation in PaTF reminds me a little of Lilo and Stitch but that doesn't mean anything if Disney doesn't do everything in their power to promote this.It may be a critical success,but if it's a merchandise and box office bomber then it will be another strike against our beloved traditional animation. :sad:

[Neal]

Well, for Enchanted - you can't really take a film that was 1 hour and 47 minutes and consider it's ten minutes of animation enough that the success of the film ensures success of 2D animation.

PatF will be at least an hour and ten minutes or more of animation from start to finish. It's quite different.

And I'm pretty sure I remember Disney saying themselves that if PatF fails, then they won't keep the 2D unit open.

They had already spent millions to re-train all their 2D artists to use 3D modeling software and whatnot. Going back was a costly process.

So if PatF fails to generate enough profit to justify them going back, then they won't continue 2D. I'm quite sure a Disney rep said that themselves. I'd have to find where.

[J. B. Warner]

And I'm pretty sure I remember Disney saying themselves that if PatF fails, then they won't keep the 2D unit open.

They had already spent millions to re-train all their 2D artists to use 3D modeling software and whatnot. Going back was a costly process.

So if PatF fails to generate enough profit to justify them going back, then they won't continue 2D. I'm quite sure a Disney rep said that themselves. I'd have to find where.

Now, see, this really burns my bacon. So, if the movie fails, it won't be because of poor promotion or a bad critical reception or a weak plot or boring characters - it'll be because it's not computer animated?

There are times when I just want to take the Disney executives' collective heads and clunk them together Three Stooges-style. The choice of medium is not the only deciding factor in how good a movie is.

[Blackstar]

Ironically, that was why Disney shut down it's 2D department the 1st time after Home on the Range flopped. Disney apparently though HotR's failure was due to it's being hand drawn, and not because it was a weak, derivative story. Do execs ever learn from their mistakes?

[Ed Liu]

Ironically, that was why Disney shut down it's 2D department the 1st time after Home on the Range flopped. Disney apparently though HotR's failure was due to it's being hand drawn, and not because it was a weak, derivative story. Do execs ever learn from their mistakes?

The alternative is to admit that they either made a bad decision to greenlight the movie or that they were the ones who screwed it up with their notes to make it better ("Does the thing Ahab is chasing have to be a WHALE? Sharks are the in-thing right now. Maybe he could chase a giant shark instead."). Nobody likes to admit either one in the wonderful new world of Corporate America even if they know it's true, and that goes triply-so in Hollywood.

It's also hard for a corporate mindset to deal with the fact that movies are essentially creative endeavors, and creativity isn't something you can measure, track, or gauge. Something that sounds like a terrific high concept can turn out to be a complete flop, while something that sounds completely unfilmable can be the next classic. Nobody can wrap their brains around that, and it's way too hard to figure out why a movie sucked by analyzing it (that's what those critics are for, but Hollywood has also made a living on exploiting critics or dismissing them depending on which is more convenient for their ends). So, blame it on something else that you CAN measure and move on to the next project. This is the same group of people who blamed the failure of the second Tomb Raider movie on the poor reception of the latest video game, instead of the fairly self-evident fact to everybody else in existence that the first movie blew giant moose chunks and the second looked even worse.

Just an observation of fact. I think it's wrong in about a dozen different ways, and reading about how Pixar does it (http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=25813) makes it pretty clear why they've got such a string of critical and box-office successes.

But yeah. A string of crummy hand-drawn movies that flop must mean the audience doesn't want hand-drawn movies any more. Sadly, I think the only thing that might change their mind on that is an entire year of flops from Pixar and DreamWorks, but then they'll probably just write off animation entirely.

-- Ed

[Classic Speedy]

This is the same group of people who blamed the failure of the second Tomb Raider movie on the poor reception of the latest video game, instead of the fairly self-evident fact to everybody else in existence that the first movie blew giant moose chunks and the second looked even worse. Eh... I don't know. I think that by 2003, most were just tired of the Tomb Raider franchise in general. That's bound to happen to a massive entertainment entity sooner or later. I don't think the first movie's quality had much to do with the failure of the second.

Sorry for the tangent.

[Baltofan]

"Dinosaur" was a box office failure.

[Radical Raven]

Why "Dinosaur"? Why not the notably more popular Nightmare Before Christmas?

[Philo & Gunge]

Why "Dinosaur"? Why not the notably more popular Nightmare Before Christmas?
Perhaps because The Nightmare Before Christmas (and by extention, James and the Giant Peach) was not a 100% sole Disney production. They were co-productions between Disney and Skellington Productions.

[AdamYJ]

Well, I don't know what people mean by canon, but I personally just didn't care for the movie. It felt like a warmed-over combination of Tarzan and The Land Before Time.

[PeppeRaskell1]

I have the Dinosaur movie, and I felt that parts of it were derivative from the original Land Before Time movies, especially the dino-steals-egg-and drops it in the river opening sequence.

[veemonjosh]

I never really understood the term "Disney Canon".

I mean, like, does it mean that all the movies in the list take place supposedly in the same continuity?

[Neal]

No, not necessarily does it mean a continuity.

"Film canon is the limited group of movies that serve as the measuring stick for the highest quality in the genre of film. The idea of a film canon has been attacked as elitist."

It's a different kind of canon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_canon#Film_canon_from_collective_polls

[veemonjosh]

No, not necessarily does it mean a continuity.

"Film canon is the limited group of movies that serve as the measuring stick for the highest quality in the genre of film. The idea of a film canon has been attacked as elitist."

It's a different kind of canon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_canon#Film_canon_from_collective_polls


Ah, gotcha.

But what do collective polls specifically have to do with this? :sweat:

[Neal]

My point was that when everyone hears 'canon' they think of continuity like in stories, but canon can also just mean a group of like-things. Thus the Disney animated canon is the group of Disney's animated films.