Which Disney Renaissance Film is the BEST? part 7: The Animation

It should come as a surprise to no one that the greatest era in Walt Disney's Feature Animation department is arguably the most beloved era of a single company's film making in motion picture history.  After all, not only was Disney at the height of their creative development, but the studio continued to release hit after hit, without any glaring failures in anyone's eyes.  To many who are reaching adulthood today,. these films are what we grew up on.  My first film watching experiences were at least five of the top movies pictured above.  These films have had a profound impact on how we act, how we think, and how we tell our life stories.  

But which of these high ranking movies is the most superior?  How can one masterpiece be better than another?  That is what I will be focusing on for the next several posts.  Which film was the most structurally sound, which was the most superior in one area, and ultimately, which was the best.  Feel free to argue for one of your movies on this list or if you think my list is incorrect, but please understand that this is all opinion based, so it doesn't make someone stupid if they agree or not.  

Here is how the list will be determined.  All 10 films of the Disney Renaissance will be judged on the following categories:

Hero

Heroine

Villain

Supporting Cast

Songs (The Rescuers Down Under gets a pass here)

Musical Score

Animation

Story

Special Effects

Theme/ Message

Each film will be scored on a 1-10 scale.  The higher points you score for a category, the greater the chance is that film is ranked the best.  But please note that just because a film could get two or three 10's in a row, doesn't mean that it is guaranteed a victory.  Keep a close eye on the consistent films.

At the end of the competition, the films will have their scores divided by 10 (nine for Rescuers Down Under), and a winner will be determined when the math is completed.  The winner will receive the next King's Analysis and a special surprise for it on my YouTube channel, NintendoMan64.

This Round: Best Animation

This was and will most certainly be the most difficult round throughout the tournament, because most of the films, if not all of the films in this era have top notch animation.  After all, the top tier animators and leaders of the animation divisions in most film companies today all got their roots from Disney in this time.  But only a few of these films took the fullest advantage of both the cultural ideas and literary excellence of their respective stories, and it's going to be those Disney Films that become the elite films we all know and love.

10. Hercules 

Yet another dissapointing aspect of the inspiration and creation of Hercules was it's very confusing palette of artistic choices and overall color tone that the animators chose for this movie.  Not to mention that the CGI looks positively horrible when compared to the rest of the era's films (does that hydra look like it remotely fits in with the rest of the 2D characters?).  I heard that the artists looked to Gerald Scarfe and his work that he accomplished with Pink Floyd's The Wall, which is similar to what they attempted to do with the Al Hirschfeld designs with Aladdin.  But in Aladdin, it worked because the colors were wonderful, the lighting was fantastic and the overall tone of the movie leaned more towards that cartoony vibe, while still maintaining it's Disney Origins.  Hercules attempts to be way too many movies in one, one that can be artsy, loaded with pop cultural references, superhero movie, and attempt to remain loyal to the Greek Mythology (as minimally as they did), but the creators forgot that they work for Disney, and that their films need to touch people on both an emotional level and an artistic level.  While confusing to the MAX, the film succeeds in giving us an artsy film, but the last thing the Disney Renaissance needed was an artsy film...

+1 point

9. Mulan 

My mom is going to kill me for ranking both of her favorite Disney Films so low, but I have to when Disney yet again took no advantage of the cultural environment the story took place in.  To me, the animators just sat around in a room and asked what was Chinese and how they could stick it in the movie?  We all know the Great Wall of China, so the movie HAS to start there.  We also know about the Forbidden City and that the Chinese really love the color red.  So, rather than take the time to study the environment and the society, Disney chose the (in Honest John's perspective) "easy road to success".  After taking the time to make these long trips to Australia, the Loire Valley in France, and a Kenyan wildlife preserve, you would think taking a trip to the now semi-communist China would have been easy in 1996, but no.  Disney chose to take the American's perspective of China rather than take the Chinese perspective.  Tsk, tsk tsk...

+2 points

8. The Hunchback of Notre Dame


The Hunchback of Notre Dame is filled with many (and I mean MANY) artistic marvels, but it is also filled with many hiccups in terms of the animation.  I know the technology wasn't too good in terms of CGI yet, but when you study the film closely for the artistic highlights, you find many wooden and reused models for the massive crowds of Paris.  And while I do really understand the difficulty animators undergo to animate 3D models, the models for The Lion King were just SO good.  How can a Wildebeest be easier to animate than a human?  And yet, the good elements, such as the introduction scene, the Hellfire sequence, and the final battle at the cathedral were so epic that they deserve recognition as well.  Unfortunately, the oddities are just too odd for me to gloss over.  Hopefully my mood changes with regards to this film's animation effects in the next round.

+3 points

7. Tarzan



I am actually impressed that Disney hardly utilized any of the animation they had used for The Lion King and rehashed it in this one.  No, Disney saw the need to differ between these two pictures, because both take place in two completely different parts of Africa.  Tarzan takes place in the Congo or the Jungle part, while The Lion King takes place in the Serengeti and the mighty plains of Eastern Africa.  Something I really liked was the decisions the artists made for the styles and colors of the animals.  I thought I would have something to complain about with the red elephants, but it is in good contrast to the dark colored gorillas and the rest of the jungle animals (aside from Sabor of course).  I am a little unsure with regards to the animation of the human characters.  I thought it was a little too jagged for my taste, but I understand it was probably an artistic decision to have these jagged humans in comparison to the softer colored and designed animals.  Disney ended the Renaissance with a bang artistically, there can be no denying that.

+4 points 

6. The Rescuers Down Under 


Without the aid of much of a musical accompaniment, Disney Animators knew they would have to create a visually stunning film out of The Rescuers Down Under if it was going to possibly succeed in this new era.  And to an extent, they succeeded.  There are some really jaw dropping elements of the animation, which is really lightyears superior to the original movie.  But outside of the breathtaking flying scene between Cody and Marahute, even the animation in this movie seems downplayed, especially when compared to other films in the era.  I guess Down Under was doomed from the start, and yet it still manages to give us some impressive views of the Australian Outback and other such areas.  But in all fairness, the Marahute scene was what pushed this past Tarzan.

+5 points

5. Beauty and the Beast 


As with most of the rounds on this list, the sacrificial lamb was needed to be discovered.  And, despite having some of the best draftsmen, artists, animators, and storymen on board, Beauty and the Beast cannot avoid another lukewarm finish in a consecutive round.  The animation in this film is still stellar and really gives us the feeling that we are watching a Broadway show with all the great decisions with regards to staging and lighting that the artist chose.  There are also some very interesting artistic decisions that the creators made, such as having the lightning in the fight between Gaston and the Beast be green, or just the spectacular scene of the Beast's transformation.  The single best element of the story is the introduction scene, the intro being told through stained glass window, which really brought us into the kind of traditional Disney film we would be witnessing.

+6 points

4. Pocahontas 

After years of wondering why Jeffery Katzenberg thought Pocahontas was a Best Picture worthy piece, I think I may have finally found the reason.  As much as the film completely ruins the geography of Virginia, this film takes complete advantage of all of the epic moments the animators and storymen developed for this world.  This film received a $10 million dollar budget increase when compared to The Lion King, and the artists took full advantage of the additional funds.  The colors in this movie are just wonderful, as well as the lighting.  We could see that the animators had matured since the days of The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Company, and they incorporated every lesson they learned along their journey from 1985-1995, and all of the missteps and flaws they found were attempted to be washed away by the magical animation of this picture.  Kudos to directors Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, who both understand what epic animation requires.

+7 points

3. Aladdin 

The decision to animate the characters of Aladdin in the style of New York City artist Al Hirschfeld's loose and free style was the decision of the first major animator on the film, Eric Goldberg.  An avid Hirschfeld fan, Goldberg utilized as much as he could of the designs in his animation of the Genie, but the tone was set for the majority of the characters (Jafar seems to be the only character left out).  But the brilliance in animation goes beyond just the idea of bringing in designs.  Aladdin was Disney's first attempt at a sort of "Epic Fairy Tale", which has only continued with Frozen, but this film was the first to incorporate a stellar color scheme with a great usage of lighting and various stage-esque effects, utilizing each minor animation technique so well that it cannot be ignored.  Aladdin really did stand as a cut above the rest in terms of the Early 90's Renaissance films.

+8 points 

2. The Lion King



Disney clearly needed to make sure each film was in stark contrast to the previous, not just in terms of story and setting, but animation style.  Beauty and the Beast utilized a simple color palette and more of a mature style to it's designs.  Aladdin was more loose and playful, using a great color scheme and the great genius of Hirschfeld.  It was also clear that The Lion King needed to stand out as a different kind of film.  It wasn't a story about a magic spell or a magic lamp.  The main emotional connection was not between a boy and a girl, but a father and a son.  That is why the artistic brilliance of The Lion King's animation team decided to take a more epic scale in terms of it's animations.  The animators took the time to animate many effects such as lens flares and realistic looking weather and animals that would allow us all to feel that we have been transported somewhere different than the average Disney movie.  We get to witness the epic scale that Africa has to offer, and yet the artists still managed to add onto the size and epic scale that we had already seen.  Like in Bambi, everything looks more real than animated, and one could see themselves making a trip to Africa just because of this.

+9 points 

1. The Little Mermaid

I don't think people give this film the kind of credit it deserves in terms of it's animation.  Please note that every animated film in the Renaissance from The Rescuers Down Under on utilized the CAPS system, which allowed the animators to paint the characters and digitally assemble each shot and blend the characters with the backgrounds.  The Little Mermaid was animated in the same tradition films like Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were: with pencils, paper, ink and paint, and every single moment of animation in the film was put together painstakingly by hand.  They didn't use CGI to animate camera pans like in The Lion King or Aladdin.  Everything was utilized with techniques Walt Disney would recognize, including his own personal invention of the Multiplane Camera system, which gave us such shots as the first glimpses of King Triton's Castle and the finale shot.  Every single bubble was animated by hand (though outsourced to China and South Korea).  This film really was the end of an era.  No Disney Animated film would ever be assembled in the ways that had made Walt Disney famous ever again.  Every scene in this film is marvelous, the colors match the tone of each scene just perfectly, and the overall beauty of The Little Mermaid's animation cannot and has not been matched by any 3D film yet, though Frozen definitely came close.  I guess Disney saves their best animation for Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales.

+10 points 

Current Standings:

1. Aladdin                                                     59 pts
2. Beauty and the Beast                               55 pts
3. The Lion King                                          53 pts
4. The Little Mermaid                                  51 pts
5. The Hunchback of Notre Dame              43 pts
6. Pocahontas                                               29 pts
7. Tarzan                                                       24 pts
8. Mulan                                                        24 pts
9. Hercules                                                    24 pts
*10. The Rescuers Down Under                  23 pts

Next round may have another big shake in the standings.  One film has an extreme advantage over the rest in this next genre, but can it ride that advantage to a Top 3 spot?  Find out when we tackle the Best Special Effects...