Animation’s Weird History With Sequels

Sequels, sequels, sequels... Apparently the mark of creative stagnation. Even more so with animation, even more so with the supposedly too-holy-for-sequels Pixar... The very studio that wasn't allowed by the company they were once in a contract with to make sequels. Oh yeah, did you ever miss those fine details? On how Pixar's original contract …

Dynergy; or, Death of a Mouse?

Forgive a bad pun, but... The Walt Disney Company is one hell of a family. Note, The Walt Disney Company is. Not necessarily "Disney"... Is Disney dead? Well, that is certainly a loaded question if there ever was one. To even begin to unpack such a question, first of all... It all depends on what …

The Chris Sanders Trilogy

You know what's fascinating? Director Chris Sanders has never directed sequels to his own animated features. In his lengthy career, he has directed three all-animated features total: Lilo & Stitch for Walt Disney Animation Studios (then "Feature Animation"), and then How To Train Your Dragon and The Croods for DreamWorks. His latest feature is a …

Adventures into the Past 3: Thomas on TV / Is It Nostalgic Bias?

I'm talking about Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends again. A comfort series in hell-times. In the previous post on those anthropomorphic locomotives, I talked about how much the series meant to me as a child and why I still find its earlier incarnations - namely the original books written by Rev. W. Awdry and …

KUNG FU PANDA and My Autistic Experience

Ska-doosh! DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda came out over 12 years ago, and a real standout amongst their library of over 30 animated features. The Mark Osborne/John Stevenson film marked something of a departure in the realm of computer animated DreamWorks films, in that it wove fun humor and slapstick into a martial arts adventure epic …

Streamation

I have wondered all throughout the spring and summer of this disastrous year if the most recent animated features were all going to go to streaming, and possibly relegate animated features to the small screen only in the foreseeable future. Sometimes the Chicken Little in my head goes off in scenarios like these, because animation …

SpIns: A Love for Logos

What does "SpIn" mean? Recently, I found out through fellow autistics that "SpIn" is short for "special interest", which a lot of use to describe the very things we are deeply invested in... Be it movies, TV shows, books, video games, the nature of some every day thing... It is something you have an encyclopedic …

‘Raya’, Director Changes, and Leadership

Recently, Walt Disney Animation Studios dropped some big details on their upcoming original adventure movie Raya and the Last Dragon. Image via Entertainment Weekly. Originally announced to the public during the 2019 D23 Expo, after years of reports circulating about it, Raya and the Last Dragon was to have been directed by Paul Briggs and Dean Wellins. …

Adventures into the Past: It Isn’t Nostalgia

Hope you're all getting through 2020 well. I know it's been rough for a multitude of reasons for me, and I've been trying out different ways to destress as the weather thankfully shifts from ludicrously and almost oppressively hot, to a nice and even mix of warm and cool before my favorite season gets here. …

The Disney Renaissance’s Missing Link?

Popular opinion and maybe Disney themselves determine that the esteemed Disney Renaissance progressed a certain way: The Little Mermaid happened in late 1989, and then Beauty and the Beast happened in late 1991, rest is history, right? But what was going on in 1990? Thirty years ago? It's easy to name one significant event, and that …