At first, I didn’t take much notice of this, but after a while, it did get me thinking about all the studios that have tried to take on Disney over the years. Often at times when the company was putting on a weak showing, other companies have pushed out slates of animated movies to grab that market share for themselves, and that’s what we’ll be looking at this year.
We’ll begin with the various attempts by Disney’s old rivals in the animated shorts department, Warner Bros., first with their late-90s feature animation division, then their earlier partnership with Ted Turner. We’ll then look at the complete works of former Disney animator Don Bluth’s independent studio, which includes our only direct-to-video piece. Then a few more Warner-distributed things, before moving to Steven Spielberg’s brief foray into the game with the horribly-named “Amblimation”. We’ll look next at the early 2D work of Spielberg’s far more successful company Dreamworks, then jet back to the 1970s, where Golan and Golobus, who despite their names are somehow not supervillains, loaded their legendary egos into Cannon Movie Tales, the first-ever blatant attack on Disney’s market. After a brief miscellaneous round, we’ll look at the feature films of TV cartoon moguls Hanna-Barbera and holiday special specialists Rankin/Bass.
The end of the volume will take us back to Disney, looking first at their live-action/animation mixes, and then at some animated films they paid for, but didn’t themselves produce.
I’m not guaranteeing reviews for all of these. Some of them, specifically the mid-70s stuff, I’m not even sure have been released on DVD. But this is the current plan, with a few bonus films thrown in along the way.
EXCITEMENT!
MERRIMENT!
WILD VARIATIONS IN QUALITY!
IT’S MY YEAR WITHOUT WALT DISNEY ANIMATION STUDIOS!
(current planned list of films under the jump)
WARNER BROS FEATURE ANIMATION
Quest for Camelot
The Iron Giant
Space Jam
Osmosis Jones
Looney Tunes Back in Action
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
TURNER FEATURE ANIMATION
Cats Don't Dance
The Pagemaster
THE FILMS OF DON BLUTH
The Secret of NIMH
An American Tail
The Land Before Time
All Dogs Go to Heaven
Rock-a-Doodle
Thumbelina
A Troll in Central Park
The Pebble and the Penguin
Anastasia
Bartok the Magnificent
Titan AE
BONUS ROUND - MORE WARNER-DISTRIBUTED FEATURES
Gay Purr-ee
Animalympics
The Nutcracker Prince
Rover Dangerfield
AMBLIMATION
An American Tail 2
We're Back!
Balto
DREAMWORKS
The Road to El Dorado
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron
The Prince of Egypt
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
CANNON MOVIE TALES
The Emperor's New Clothes
Rumpelstiltskin
Hansel and Gretel
Puss in Boots
Red Riding Hood
BONUS ROUND - JUST SOME STUFF I FEEL LIKE REVIEWING
Ferngully
The Swan Princess
All Dogs Go To Heaven 2
The Brave Little Toaster
HANNA BARBERA
Hey There, It's Yogi Bear
The Man Called Flintstone
Charlotte's Web
C.H.O.M.P.S.
Heidi's Song
Go Bots: Battle of the Rock Lords
Jetsons: The Movie
Once Upon a Forest
RANKIN/BASS
Willy McBean and his Magic Machine
The Daydreamer
The Wacky World of Mother Goose
Mad Monster Party
Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July
The Hobbit
Return of the King
The Last Unicorn
The Flight of Dragons
The Wind in the Willows
The King and I
DISNEY LIVE-ACTION/ANIMATION HYBRIDS
The Reluctant Dragon
Song of the South
So Dear to My Heart
Mary Poppins
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Pete's Dragon
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Enchanted
DISNEY-FINANCED ANIMATED FILMS
The Nightmare Before Christmas
James and the Giant Peach
Frankenweenie
Mars Needs Moms
A Christmas Carol
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