Cake Icing: Custom Logos

Logos... Custom variants of well-known logos... The Walt Disney studio has a long history of doing this. Disney had signed with RKO Radio Pictures in 1937, who would distribute all of their features and shorts for roughly fifteen years. Before each film (with the exception of the first, Snow White), the RKO logo would precede …

‘Suicide Squad’, Criticism, and Optimism

Suicide Squad is the third entry in the budding DC Extended Universe. The DC Extended Universe isn't exactly in good critical standing. Its first entry, the divisive Man of Steel, had its ardent admirers and its very vocal, steaming non-fans. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was a rushed attempt to address the criticism leveled …

Breaking Down Disney’s “Dark Age”: Part 2

In the last part, I took a look at the first films that entered production after Walt Disney's passing in 1966, The Aristocats and Robin Hood. These were two very compromised films, the filmmakers behind them had to be very budget-conscious all the while delivering fun films that would get The Jungle Book's success, and …

Breaking Down Disney’s “Dark Age”: Part 1

It is often stated that Walt Disney Animation Studios went through a prolonged "Dark Age" after the death of Walt Disney and the posthumous release of The Jungle Book. A dark age that would end with The Little Mermaid in 1989, often called the start of Disney's Renaissance... What is true is that the studio …

The Current State of Disney Live-Action

A year ago, it seemed like the message was clear: Stay the course... Walt Disney Studios, the live-action end of Disney's whole movie monolith, has seen a lot of success in the recent years, but a lot of crushing flops as well. As a result, they seem to want to specialize in one kind of …

Ranking the ‘Mad Max’ Tetralogy

Mad Max... What a lovely saga! One of the greatest, most iconic, most influential science fiction film series of all time. One that all started with a little, microbudget movie no less, that was released during the beginning of one of sci-fi cinema's golden ages. The first film was released in the spring of 1979, …

DreamWorks’ Future

DreamWorks has a complicated history, and can be a complicated studio to talk about. Being over 20 years old, they've seen their ups and downs. Jeffrey Katzenberg formed DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, after storming out of The Walt Disney Company in the autumn of 1994. Naturally, given his success with Disney's …

Flop Talk: The Inconsistent Reporting on Box Office Failures

Box office flops... One thing they are good at: Making the press race to do autopsies. "What went wrong?" they bellow, "here are the reasons!" they declare. Let's look at two box office flops: The Good Dinosaur and The Legend of Tarzan. Let's look at a film that performed similarly to them, but broke even …

Mainstream American Animation Today and Tomorrow…

2016 is arguably a watershed year right now for the mainstream feature-length animated film... Zootopia, Walt Disney Animation Studios' wonderful new animated original, not only exceeded expectations, but also became one of the highest-grossing animated films and one of the few original, not-based-on-any-source-material films to cross $1 billion at the worldwide box office. It is …