Toon Zone Talkback - 'Tangled' Exceeds Expectations In Box-Office

[darkdetective]

This is the talkback thread for 'Tangled' Exceeds Expectations In Box-Office (http://www.toonzone.net/news/articles/35755/tangled-exceeds-expectations-in-box-office).

I would not be surprised if Disney suddenly puts a bunch of fairytale musicals into production now despite what they said earlier. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if 'The Snow Queen' goes back into production, though it would probably be CG so they can charge more money for 3D tickets.

[The Cartoon]

This is huge. I saw Tangled today after it was sold out yesterday. It would have been sold out today if I hadn't bought my tickets online. I was thinking that if it was selling out so quickly, it should be doing great in the box-office. I thought that the film was amazing and stayed true to the ideals of classic Disney fairy tales. The fact that it did so well is crucial to making sure that it isn't the last of it's kind. I'm overjoyed to hear this news.

[Daxdiv]

Interesting that it was able to go toe to toe with the newest HP, and only losing by a few million. Though I highly doubt I'll have trouble getting a ticket when I decide to go on Tuesday, since I plan to take advantage of an early showing.

[PC!]

Really surprising to see. I mean, The Princess and the Frog got a lukewarm reception as a return to traditional 2D animation, and Disney's non-Pixar CG efforts haven't been particularly huge hits, either. I wonder what it was about this film that seems to be drawing people that the others didn't have.

[TheVileOne]

This sort of makes Disney look like chumps now after their decision to stop doing fairy tale themed stories for animated movies.

[GWOtaku]

Cool news. I've been busy, but I think I'll have time to finally check this thing out tomorrow.

[Alph]

Really surprising to see. I mean, The Princess and the Frog got a lukewarm reception as a return to traditional 2D animation, and Disney's non-Pixar CG efforts haven't been particularly huge hits, either. I wonder what it was about this film that seems to be drawing people that the others didn't have.

I haven't seen it yet, but maybe it's just that the story is better written. I've been hearing some good word of mouth, unlike other recent Disney cartoons (about which I don't recall hearing much of anything [from people in real life, I mean]).

[tucsoncoyote]

This sort of makes Disney look like chumps now after their decision to stop doing fairy tale themed stories for animated movies.

Agreed...

Frankly let's be honest here, Disney hasn't really made good choices in the last couple of years (and it's kind of not too surprising that Disney is considering to end the fairy tale dream of telling stories the Disney way.

In short, Disney is making me wonder if I should even bother with Disney anymore.. But with Tangled, it at least gives me hope that Disney's 3D CG will be a whole lot better than the CG that is offered by other companies (Save for their in house joint ventures with Pixar.)

In fact I'm starting to wonder if Tron Legacy will be received as well as Tangled has when it opens on 17 December ...

(After all Tangled is a classic now, and Ton? It'll be Disney's legacy to showing that the house of Mouse will either stand or fall..

But right now, with the returns being such that Tangled actully lost by a few million dollars to HP7, wouldn't it be funny if Disney continued to act stupid and thus make it such that they kill everything off, save for live action TV?

That.. would be so scary.. iof they did such a stupid mistake, and allow fairy tales to fall by the wayside..

but then you know Disney.. They love to make mistakes.

:coyote:

[Ed Liu]

At the very least, I think the good box office returns mean that the much mocked and derided shift in marketing of the movie at least did not hurt the movie, as many armchair analysts predicted it would.

I still think that Disney made the right decision for absolutely the wrong reason (http://www.toonzone.net/blog/blogs/188/whats-wrong-with-disney-feature-animation---part-2/), but ultimately I think the creative decisions made in making the movies are a lot more important than the ones made in marketing. Disney himself oversaw a bunch of box office disappointments in his lifetime, but the movies have stood the test of time.

And, all that said, I also hope they DON'T go back on their decision to step away from fairy tales for a little while. I'm willing to sacrifice a genre for a few years if it means we'll get some real creative juice injected into the movies. They'll come back eventually and I can wait.

[moo92]

This is awesome! Maybe they'll put Snow Queen into production again? *crosses fingers*

[TheVileOne]

At the very least, I think the good box office returns mean that the much mocked and derided shift in marketing of the movie at least did not hurt the movie, as many armchair analysts predicted it would.

Former Disney animators didn't care for it either. I think the point is that Disney was ready to pack the ship up on these type of stories and ready to sweep them under the rug. I think the movie did well in spite of the poor marketing campaign.


I still think that Disney made the right decision for absolutely the wrong reason (http://www.toonzone.net/blog/blogs/188/whats-wrong-with-disney-feature-animation---part-2/), but ultimately I think the creative decisions made in making the movies are a lot more important than the ones made in marketing. Disney himself oversaw a bunch of box office disappointments in his lifetime, but the movies have stood the test of time.

Even the Iron Giant was a box office flop. But I just think this proves that these stories can be timeless themselves and Disney does not have to work so hard to try and mislead people about them because they don't feel the are profitable anymore.


And, all that said, I also hope they DON'T go back on their decision to step away from fairy tales for a little while. I'm willing to sacrifice a genre for a few years if it means we'll get some real creative juice injected into the movies. They'll come back eventually and I can wait.

But Ed, what kind of creative juices do you expect them to inject that they haven't previously? Meet The Robinsons? Bolt? They aren't going to out-Pixar, Pixar. Creatively what are you expecting or hoping them to move forward with now that Pixar won't do a million times better?

[Dr.Pepper]

I was surprised by this. I knew that Tangled wasn't going to bomb hard or anything, but I wasn't expecting it to have the largest opening in the Disney canon either.

[AdamYJ]

I wonder what they'll attribute this success to. The marketing? The computer animation? The story? Being released at the right time of year?

I'd love it if it were really just because of the idea of combining Disney's classic fairy tale musical approach to a computer animated film. I've been suggesting they try that for a while now. It's certainly better than trying to outdo Pixar and Dreamworks at creating computer animated ensemble comedies and action-comedy romps.

[TheVileOne]

I think its the right type of movie for the right type of weekend.

Thanksgiving weekend is one of the biggest moviegoing days of the year. And its mostly families going to the movies that weekend.

Just remember, Princess and The Frog didn't come out Thanksgiving weekend. It came out in early December right before Avatar.

[Ed Liu]

Former Disney animators didn't care for it either. I think the point is that Disney was ready to pack the ship up on these type of stories and ready to sweep them under the rug. I think the movie did well in spite of the poor marketing campaign.
I don't think it's safe to say "in spite of" when I see no argument to believe that the movie did well "because of" the marketing campaign. There is an ongoing debate on how effective pre-release marketing is in any case, especially with Disney which has had several highly marketed flops in the past few years. All I'm saying is that lots of people were pointing-and-laughing at the marketing, claiming it was deceptive or that it would backfire or whatever. In light of the box office results, those claims have been proven wrong. It is debatable whether the marketing campaign HELPED the movie, but it certainly did not HURT it as many seemed to be predicting.


But Ed, what kind of creative juices do you expect them to inject that they haven't previously? Meet The Robinsons? Bolt? They aren't going to out-Pixar, Pixar. Creatively what are you expecting or hoping them to move forward with now that Pixar won't do a million times better?
By that logic, Disney Feature Animation should just pack it in and let Pixar do all the heavy lifting, shouldn't they? If "Pixar will do it a million times better," what's the point of doing it at all? I am also not a believer in Pixar's infinite infallibility, and if you look at everything the Pixarians say, I don't think they believe in it either.

I also can't say what creative juices I expect them to inject because, by definition, the creative process is unpredictable and not easily measured. If I knew what I was expecting them to do, it wouldn't really be all that creative, would it? The really creative moviemaking ideas are never the ones that give the audience what they want or expect. Something like the new Winnie the Pooh movie is comfort food -- I think they're going for something comfortable, tried, and true, and that's OK, but it's also got the built-in snag of, "But why should I bother to watch this movie when I have a perfectly good Pooh movie DVD already?"

Too much Disney stuff lately has been sticking to formulas, even the stuff that I happen to like (like Bolt or the Tinker Bell movies). To quote Anton Ego, "Surprise me!"

[TheVileOne]

I don't think it's safe to say "in spite of" when I see no argument to believe that the movie did well "because of" the marketing campaign. There is an ongoing debate on how effective pre-release marketing is in any case, especially with Disney which has had several highly marketed flops in the past few years. All I'm saying is that lots of people were pointing-and-laughing at the marketing, claiming it was deceptive or that it would backfire or whatever. In light of the box office results, those claims have been proven wrong. It is debatable whether the marketing campaign HELPED the movie, but it certainly did not HURT it as many seemed to be predicting.

It may not have hurt it, but for one thing I don't think the box office results prove that the campaign wasn't deceptive. Because the campaign was deceptive. This movie was a musical which the marketing campaign fails to really mention. In previous marketing efforts you understand if the movie is going to be a musical or not. One would think, Mandy Moore being a popular singer and musical artist they would maybe want to point out that she sings in the movie.

I think the movie would've only been hurt by the marketing campaign had it been bad. I think the point I want to really make is that the effort by the studio to try and fake out audiences this way was silly and pointless.


By that logic, Disney Feature Animation should just pack it in and let Pixar do all the heavy lifting, shouldn't they? If "Pixar will do it a million times better," what's the point of doing it at all? I am also not a believer in Pixar's infinite infallibility, and if you look at everything the Pixarians say, I don't think they believe in it either.

I think this is certainly an option to explore looking at Disney's recent behavior as of late. I'm really not sure what they want to do or focus on in the case of Disney Animated Features division.


Too much Disney stuff lately has been sticking to formulas, even the stuff that I happen to like (like Bolt or the Tinker Bell movies). To quote Anton Ego, "Surprise me!"

I'm for doing surprising and risky new things but that in itself has to be a risk Disney is willing to take with Animated Features and making more costly flops. But I think Lilo and Stitch is one example where they did something a little weird and a little different that worked extremely well. Lilo And Stitch besides being traditionally animated also used amazing water color backgrounds.

[AdamYJ]

One thing I think they should be careful of is to not throw away any concepts wholesale like saying "no more fairy tales", "no more musicals" or "no more hand-drawn animation", because sometimes when you combine an old idea with something new you get a completely different third thing, which "Tangled" is because it's the first computer animated musical Disney's ever done.

[Shawn Hopkins]

I don't know whether the marketing hurt or helped, but it certainly was deceptive. I saw some ads that made it look like "The Adventures of Flynn and His Girl Sidekick," but this was still a princess movie with all of the usual princess longing and singing. I wonder if anyone was both brought in by the deceptive marketing was disappointed. I think it's pretty easy for even a little boy to see through it, it may be trying to promote itself as a boy-oriented action adventure but it's still about yucky girl stuff like a princess with magic hair.