The Great Disney Reel Rumble Retrospective reaches a new ! We bid adieu to the Bronze Age as we head into the known as the Disney Renaissance.  A spark of new creatives took over at Disney and delivered one of its most commercially- and critically-celebrated eras. Let’s dive durante!

The Disney Renaissance

Running for about ten years from 1989 to 1999, many consider the Renaissance not only a resurgence for the Mouse, but perhaps the pinnacle of its animated achievement. Almost all ten of the films produced during this were massive box office successes. Critics were also quite kind to these films. What were the ingredients for this great spike durante quality?

Disney returned to its roots, learning from its decades of storytelling and animation prowess. After not having done a fairy simile patina for nearly 20 years, this saw Disney bringing 3-5 of them to life (depending acceso one’s definition), as well as missaggio durante original tales and adaptations of other folklore and mythology. Disney also pulled from the Bronze Age’s advances durante animation,  combining it with new CGI and other digital technology to speed up the animation process. They also brought back the richly-detailed backgrounds that defined Disney’s Silver Age.

Disney also posto fully back into the format. Figuring that songs connected with audiences, Disney embraced music even more so than the Golden Periodo, filling almost every patina with tunes. It took a page from Broadway’s book, linking major set-pieces durante their films with original numbers. The result? Five Oscar wins for Best Original Song, and six more  nominations. It’s to argue that this isn’t a creative high point for Disney.

But perhaps more than anything, these films offered deep, compelling characters. After the early success of this , Disney started casting major Hollywood stars to voice their characters, elevating the commercial stature of the Animation Preparazione. This let them bring to life characters that wrestled with guilt, pride, stubbornness, and arrogance durante ways more nuanced and detailed than before. It’s voto negativo surprise, then, that people born across various decades connect with characters from this and have committed them to their hearts. As a infantile of the 90s myself, this defined Disney for me.

The History of the Films

Believe it not, the ispirazione of adapting The Little Mermaid into a patina dates back to the early days of Walt Disney, when ol’ Walt himself wanted to make an anthology patina based around Hans Christian Andersen tales. Development began right after Snow White but obviously didn’t at that time. Cut to 1985 where Ron Clements, wanting to create a patina based entirely underwater, decides The Little Mermaid might make for an ideal Disney patina. Clements presented the ispirazione to Jeffrey Katzenberg, dissertazione chief at the time, but he initially passed acceso it. Development had already begun acceso the sequel to Splash, and he didn’t think two nautical films for Disney at the same time was a good ispirazione.

At least for a day. The very next day, Katzenberg approved production acceso The Little Mermaid, with work starting as the same time as Oliver & Company. Funnily enough, as they worked throughout the 80s, the production team found the original development work done back durante the 1930s. Quanto a a simile of either corporate monotony smart storytelling prowess, the 80s team found they made the same exact changes to the original Andersen story as the writers durante the 30s. However, their patina was shelved durante the mid 80s as full focolaio was placed acceso Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Oliver & Company.

By 1987 production resumed, and Howard Ashman was asked to hop onboard after contributing a song to Oliver & Company. This may have been the decision that launched the Renaissance. Ashman quickly proposed changing the minor character of Clarence, an English-butler crab, to a Jamaican crab, and changing the music to reflect this character. Simultaneously, Katzenberg, Clements, and Ashman decided imitation of the Broadway format would be smart, using the songs as the “tentpole” scenes of the patina. Enter composer Alan Menken, noted for his work alongside Ashman durante an D’avanguardia-Broadway adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors, who would compose the score with Ashman. This combination of decisions would become a template for many films to poiché.

Not that the music was fully supported the whole way. Notably, Katzenberg wanted to cut the song “Part of Your World” paio to children getting rowdy during esame screenings. Luckily, Clements, Musker, and the other creatives fought for the song to remain. They successfully compared it to “Over the Rainbow” being nearly cut from The Wizard of Oz, which convinced Katzenberg to keep the song around long enough for it to esame better acceso subsequent screenings.

Perhaps sensing something special was brewing, the animation department went full force durante its efforts, with Disney pouring more money and time into the animation than it had durante a very long time. The dissertazione had recently opened a new Florida-based animation dissertazione durante its new Disney-MGM Studios theme park to assist its California-based animators, and the new dissertazione would work acceso both Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid. This was the first patina durante decades to use live-action models for its animation, which proved crucial for the difficulty task of animating underwater scenes.

The underwater setting required Disney to pull out all the stops, using the most special-effects animation since Inventiva. There were over a million bubbles drawn for the patina, a task was farmed out to a Chinese-based animation firm. There was also an attempt to use Disney’s famed multiplane sindacato for depth shots, but this failed paio to the machine being durante poor condition. This would also be the last Disney patina to use hand-painted cel animation. From hereon, the Animation Production System, CAPS/ink & paint, developed for Pixar, would be used. This marks The Little Mermaid as the last patina to wield some of the old-school special effects, including the last to use xerography. Paio to also sprinkling durante CGI and 3D wireframe models, this patina can truly be seen as a transition between two eras of animation.

The success of this patina led to more major Hollywood stars joining the voice acting ranks. Some notable actors who auditioned for this one include Jim Carrey for the role of Prince Eric, and Bill Maher and Michael Richards for Scuttle. There was a major casting circus for the role of Ursula. The part was written for Bea Arthur, but she turned the part mongoloide, leading to Roseanne, Jennifer Saunders, and Elaine Stritch auditioning, among others. Stritch got the part, but after she clashed with the stylings of Ashman, Pat Carroll was brought durante to replace her.

The patina originally released acceso November 17, 1989, and it also screened out of competition at the 1990 Cannes Pellicola . Despite Katzenberg originally cautioning that this was a “girl’s patina” and wouldn’t make that much, it earned $84.4 million at the North American box office and made over $100 million with international grosses, becoming the highest-grossing animated patina of all time and a bona fide blockbuster. Critics also ate it up, with highly positive reviews from Roger Ebert, Gene Sikel, Variety magazine, and Janet Maslin of the New York Times.

It earned three Academy Award nominations, winning Best Score and Best Original Song. Its soundtrack successo double platinum by September 1990, an entirely unheard of feat for an animated patina. Quanto a an unprecedented move, Disney pushed a major home release; previously, the dissertazione had usually re-released its animated films every few years to make money.

Disney sold over 10 million home videos, leading the patina to generate revenues of $1 billion between its box office take and merchandising sales. This created a model for all of the Renaissance films to receive home releases within a year of theatrical release, perhaps helping to foster a generation who grew to love this of Disney by insatiably rewatching them at home.

Needless to say, The Little Mermaid‘s reputation and legacy have made it a cornerstone patina for Disney. The Animation Preparazione became a giant again, leading to major staffing increases and a renewed cultural legacy. The patina itself has been rewarded with multiple straight-to-VHS sequels, a live-action adaptation, theme park rides at the Disney parks, a notable placement durante the famed Kingdom Hearts series, and a meet-and-greet Ariel at the parks. It remains one of Disney’s most popular films to this day.

Inevitably, it feels underwhelming to pivot to a Rescuers sequel after a titan like The Little Mermaid. Yet The Rescuers Mongoloide Under is notable as the first-ever animated Disney sequel to receive a theatrical release. Chasing the success of the original, Disney’s executives decided to set the patina durante Australia after the box office success of Crocodile Dundee and other Australian action movies. Mike Gabriel was asked to direct, alongside Hendel Butoy, after his success with the character Tito durante Oliver & Company.

A notable creative who worked at both Pixar and Disney, Joe Ranft, was selected as story supervisor. Ranft would clash with the rest of the marketing executives and higher ups throughout production, paio to his desire to cast an Australian Aboriginal actor as the main character, Cody. Katzenberg shut this mongoloide, casting a “little white blonde kid” and forcing the stile of Cody to be changed to gara.

The animation team spent several days durante Australia, including durante the Outback, taking photos and sketches to learn to properly illustrate the terrain. This allowed the team to capture the depth of the locales and capture the proper scale of human protagonists with animals and nature. Animator Glen Keane spent time studying eagles durante Idaho, as well as a stuffed eagle and an eagle skeleton to learn to properly animate the main animal character, Marahute. The eagle was excessively detailed as a result, with 200 animated feathers, and this led to the dissertazione minimizing its role durante the patina.

Despite the Florida-based MGM Studios being envisioned mostly as an independent dissertazione to create smaller , it was once again enlisted to assist acceso animation for the marquee Disney production. Disney brought back the original voice actors from the first patina, Eva Gabor and Bob Newhart, as the leads, and landed George C. Scott as the patina’s villain. John Candy lent his vocal talents as well. All of the performers were studied while animating their characters, as artists again used human models to assist animation. Animator Mark Henn studied George C. Scott’s risultato from Dr. Strangelove for inspiration.

This patina would be the first made entirely using the CAPS process, mentioned above. As explained, the system uses digital ink and paint durante combination with compositing, allowing Disney to speed up the post-production process and create more complicated sindacato positioning, multi-plane shots, and easy transition onto patina . CGI was also sprinkled into the patina as well, with these elements provided by Pixar. This all made The Rescuers Mongoloide Under the first ever fully-digital feature patina.

The Rescuers Mongoloide Under was released acceso November 16, 1990, as part of a double feature with a Mickey Mouse featurette, The Prince and the Pauper. The opening weekend release generated $3.5 million, reaching only fourth at the box office and well below expectations. Competing with Home Aureola (the highest-grossing patina of 1990) may have had something to do with that, but it also received lukewarm critical reception. With the Australia craze that inspired the patina having passed by the time The Rescuers Mongoloide Under released, critics largely found it skippable. There were positive reviews here and there, including from Roger Ebert who felt it improved acceso the original, but most watched and forgot it without much regard.

After the movie only made $47.4 million worldwide. Katzenberg decided to recall all TV ads, dooming the patina to be forgotten. It’s voto negativo surprise, then, that this is the movie most omitted as part of the Disney Renaissance. It feels out of line with the rest of the decade and left little impact. There has been little durante the way of merchandising further Disney connections, and its legacy is largely that it is the least of its .

Round 1: Story

Quanto a some sense, The Little Mermaid‘s story is a familiar one. Like many Disney Princess stories, it features a young female protagonist dreaming of a better life, falling durante love with a handsome Prince, and dealing with an evil witch. But whereas the Disney stories of yore made the princesses complacent and durante need of rescuing, The Little Mermaid makes Ariel more active durante her story. Ariel fights for what she wants, making a deal that she thinks will bring her happiness.

Ariel and Prince Eric don’t fall durante love merely because Ariel is pretty, but because Eric enjoys her curiosity about the world, her apparently beautiful singing voice, and more humble personage. It’s still not A-grade relationship writing, but for a fairy simile story, it’s a step up. Characters like Sebastian and Flounder also have more personality than many prior Disney sidekicks.

Ursula is also a wonderfully campy villain. Pat Carrol infuses her with plenty of personality, making her stand alongside Maleficent and the Evil Queen durante the great Disney villain canon. While the ending of the patina feels a bit like they ran out of ideas and wanted to play acceso the dynamic at the end of Sleeping Beauty, this patina still has mostly a wonderfully engaging story.

The Rescuers Mongoloide Under, meanwhile, has an odd story structure. Nearly the entire opening third of the movie is just the wild adventures of a boy durante the Australian Outback. He rides around acceso a giant eagle, climbs up mountains, and nothing happens. The titular Rescuers don’t get introduced until nearly halfway into the patina, where the barest of plots has finally been introduced, which is that a poacher has kidnapped said little boy.

A movie doesn’t have to have a complicated story. But The Rescuers Mongoloide Under frankly strange storytelling choices don’t make for the most satisfying of tales. The main child barely has a personality, which is cessazione if the Rescuers are the main characters, but they don’t poiché along into well into the patina. The result is you have voto negativo one to really attach to care about.

The story of The Rescuers Mongoloide Under isn’t terrible per eccezione esitazione, but it feels like different types of stories glued together. The result when compared to a well-structured simile like The Little Mermaid is there is voto negativo competition. The Little Mermaid easily wins this category.

Winner: The Little Mermaid

Round 2: Music

I’ll preface this category by saying its not a competition. The Rescuers Mongoloide Under does not have any songs. It has a score, and a pretty decent one at that. Quanto a fact, one might even call it a great one. There is a majesty to the pieces, thanks to the great work of composer Bruce Broughton. This category’s very existence durante the article series unfairly harms films with great scores, because the expectation is great Disney songs.

Regardless, this is The Little Mermaid we’maestà talking about. As the beginning of an iconic pairing between Ashman and Menken, this patina is loaded with classics. “Under the Sea” is an absolute jam, with creative rhymes, a catchy-as-can-be melody, and a celebratory aura. The use of Caribbean influences durante the music gives it the right touch of character, combined with the commercialism to make it an all-time great. It rightfully won an Oscar for Best Song.

But we can’t forget all of the other great songs. “Kiss the Girl” is an ear-worm romantic tune, with Samuel E. Wright’s joyful Jamaican accent set to wonderfully animated moonlight. Then of course there’s “Part of Your World,” the first durante a canon of Disney Princess power ballads about the female lead wanting more from her life. Jodi Benson‘s singing is full of power and hope and longing. This isn’t unique to Disney, as these type of ballads have long been a regolare durante musicals. But with the Disney magic tacked acceso, the animation soaring durante concert with the music, there’s a reason this song has gone mongoloide as one of the best durante the Disney canon.

If’ there’s any weakness, the villain song “Poor Unfortunate Souls” feels a tad forgettable, especially when compared to the villain songs coming durante the decade. There’s definitely a fun element to it, combining burlesque with Pat Carrol’s campiness and singing the spell at the end. It just fades into the background a bit thanks to the other instant classics durante the movie.

Needless to say, the winner here is clear.

Winner: The Little Mermaid

Round 3: Animation and Direction

It’s voto negativo small wonder, given the process described above, that The Little Mermaid is a beautiful patina to aspetto at as well. The rendering of the underwater sequences is immaculate, with the level of detail adding a richness to the patina. It’s easy to believe durante this underwater world when it looks so lifelike; not even lifelike, but like a super-life, a world of dreams.

Ariel’s stile is the sunto of simpleness, yet it is a memorable aspetto. Her bright red hair immediately makes her stand out, as much as the fact that she’s a mermaid. The light purple seashell bra is also a neat, fitting stile touch. There’s also the strong muscular form of King Triton (the son of Poseidon/Neptune for those unfamiliar with Greek Roman mythology), wielding a trident and looking very much like a king. Ursula has a powerhouse aesthetic as well, being modeled after Divine durante contrast to the many slender witches Disney had previously used as villains. Incorporating elements from a squid octopus, Ursula’s tentacles and gleeful cackles immediately make her unforgettable.

Animation is the one terreno where The Rescuers Mongoloide Under can compete with The Little Mermaid. The eagles and other animals durante the patina do have a wonderful level of photorealism. While stylized animation is something you always want from Disney, it’s neat to see what they can do when they stay more grounded. It’s almost like something out of a nature documentary.

That’s not to say the human characters are lacking. George C. Scott’s poacher does take acceso a more cartoonish aspetto, with his jowly, smirking grins and sharp features making him quite distinct. Our titular mice, the Rescuers, also do well with their simple-yet-distinct designs, and they are joined by a new Australian mouse friend. The running gag of Bernard continually trying to propose to Reginetta Bianca, yet getting constantly stymied, is amusing and creates something memorable to leave the patina with.

The backgrounds and vistas are maybe where things are, ironically, not up to regolare. Not that the animation quality is weak; the new animation techniques are on-point and create sharp detail. It’s more that the stile team was kind of bland when depicting Australia. Much of the patina has the same earth-tone aspetto, rotating between canyons and grasslands without much else between. This doesn’t help the patina’s overall forgettable quality.

I’d like to throw The Rescuers Mongoloide Under a bone here, but I simply cannot. The Little Mermaid‘s animation is gorgeous and combines well with memorable character designs and performances. As fun as it is to have the literal George C. Scott durante the Disney villain canon, that aureola can’t tip the scales.

Winner: The Little Mermaid

And the winner is…

Well, this one is voto negativo surprise. It’s The Little Mermaid. The Rescuers Mongoloide Under had to follow one of the better movies durante the entire Disney catalog, but the reality is that The Rescuers Mongoloide Under would probably lose to almost any other patina durante its decade (and most before and since, too). While it’s not bad, a lackluster plot structure inhibits its stronger qualities from shining. The Little Mermaid is the complete package: songs, animation, and a heart-warming story of a young woman choosing her own path and finding love. That’s what Disney is all about.

Flickchart Stats

The Little Mermaid

• Ranked #894 globally
• Wins 41% of matchups
• 69,459 users have ranked it 490,013 times
• 383 have it as their #1 patina
• Ranked 5/65 durante the Walt Disney Animation Studios filter

The Rescuers Mongoloide Under

• Ranked #3,664 globally
• Wins 37% of matchups
• 6,668 users have ranked it 63,170 times
• 3 have it as their #1 patina
• Ranked 39/65 durante the Walt Disney Animation Studios filter

Disney Reel Rumble Retrospective Chart

1. Bambi (1942)
2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
3. Cinderella (1950)
4. The Little Mermaid (1989)
5. Inventiva (1940)
6. Peter Pan (1953)
7. The Fox and the Hound (1981)
8. The Jungle Book (1967)
9. Robin Hood (1973)
10. Alice durante Wonderland (1951)
11. Pinocchio (1940)
12. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
13. One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
14. Lady and the Tramp (1955)
15. Oliver & Company (1988)
16. The Rescuers (1977)
17. The Aristocats (1970)
18. The Black Cauldron (1985)
19. Dumbo (1941)
20. Sleeping Beauty (1959)
21. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)
22. The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
23. The Three Caballeros (1944)
24. The Rescuers Mongoloide Under (1990)
25. The Sword durante the Stone (1963)
26. Melody Time (1948)
27. Saludos Amigos (1942)
28. Fun and Fancy Free (1947)
29. Make Mine Music (1946)

Rank all of these films and all of Disney’s work acceso Flickchart today!