#Strange world

[scurviesdisneyblog]

𝙳𝚒𝚜𝚗𝚎𝚢 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚌𝚎𝚙𝚝 𝚊𝚛𝚝Ｉᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴏꜱᴛ-ʀᴇᴠɪᴠᴀʟ ᴇʀᴀ (2018 - ᴘʀᴇꜱᴇɴᴛ)

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

hey in regards to the recent "pixar-official make riley straight panic team" news that dropped the other day

[mysharona1987]

Totally not a fascist response to classroom full of kids (with permission slips!) watching a PG Disney film where literally one minute of screen time is dedicated to a boy saying he likes another boy.

[high-quality-tiktoks]

A teacher in Florida is being investigated by the state for ‘indoctrination’ after showing a Disney film which features a prominent gay character. The investigation comes after fifth grade teacher Jenna Barbee showed her class Disney’s 2022 animated movie Strange World as a “brain break”, following a morning of standardized testing. The film features Ethan, an openly gay character, and a romantic plot between Ethan and his crush, Diazo. On TikTok, the teacher said she chose to show the film because it fit in with the class’s curriculum, as they are currently learning about ecosystems. The LGBTQ+ element was not the reason she put the movie on, but described it as “harmless”. Barbee claims she was reported to the state by a school board member, who she says is on a “rampage” against any form of representation in schools and her daughter was in the classroom watching Strange World. A tweet by Barbee’s friend, Carl Zee, shows a letter from the Florida Department of Education which states the teacher is being investigated for “inappropriate conduct”. “If you have evidentiary witnesses or documents pertinent to the case, send them to this office no later than two weeks from receipt of this letter,” the letter states. “[The students] didn’t even know this was a big deal until the board member and the state made it a big deal. “They’re using it against me saying they’re ‘protecting the children’ and it’s for their safety. But what is this actually showing them?” Barbee questioned in the video. She said the investigation is more “traumatising” for the youngsters than the film was in the fist place. “But the minor representations, that have nothing to do with the movie, are such a big deal that now admin in is in their room, pulling their teacher out, calling the students one by one down to the office to interrogate them in the middle of my lessons,” she said. The teacher added that a number of her students had told her they are members of the LGBTQ+ community, prior to the film being shown.

[awakefor48hours]

HBO canceled 36 shows and movies, Disney didn't lift a finger to promote Strange World, someone leaked For the Future, and now they canceled Inside Job. The absolute disrespect for animation is unbelievable

Original tweet

[uselessalexis165]

We’ve dealt with mommy issues

Now it’s time to start dealing with daddy issues!

[fantasygerard2000]

It's funny how WISH was criticized for having "bad animation." The claims made by faux critics is that it's copying Spider-verse.

Anyone who's actually known about animation other than being a "fan" knows that Spider-verse does not own the "hybrid 3D-2D" style. Hell, The Last Wish was literally praised for "imitating it."

This is interesting because in the late 2000's, Disney had originally made Tangled, back then as "Rapunzel Unbraided" to look like a moving painting.

They scrapped this idea because they don't have the technology for a software at the time, but still kept the hand drawn vibes on the character design.

Heck, Disney even made short films to test if they can make a full film in this hybrid style. WISH just happens to be the perfect film for them to make a full feature in this style of animation.

They even use the style in some of their movies in brief scenes like in Raya and Strange World.

Other criticisms about WISH's animation that it looks like Sofia the First or that it's colorless are just goat crap complaints mostly because "it's different".

The "rumor" that WISH was originally going to be animated in 2D is just false. Disney had numerous made statements that most of their newer original films were intended to be animated in hand drawn, but don't have the time and budget to do so. "Oh, they're a billion dollar company, why can't they just hire hand drawn animators?" Simple reason, either they are retired, working on other projects, teaching at art schools or are still working at Disney, doing character animation for the 3D artists to follow. So, making a film purely for the sake of "bringing back 2D animation" is not worth getting these animators back.

2D animation was DYING during the 2000's. The reason why Princess and the Frog failed to bring 2D animation back was because of its writing, being released alongside Live Action Pocahontas Blue Edition, and that its mostly tied to the Disney staples that were criticized at the time.

Even if WISH was 2D animated, people will still criticize it. Which just shows that the animation alone, regardless of style cannot carry a movie.

Dismissing a work and calling it A.I garbage all because you hate the company behind it is just apathetically insulting the artists and animators who are just doing their job. A job that they are at risk losing to the things you are comparing them to.

[justanothercinemaniac]

Having seen Wish and Strange World, I think this batch of Disney films are going to age VERY well.

I know they haven't been received the warmest or had a great box office run, but I keep thinking back on the Disney movies that came out when I was a kid. The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis, Brother Bear, Treasure Planet, all of them were received similarly. Critics didn't love them (except Treasure Planet I think) and they didn't make a lot of money. They were written off as duds.

But for everyone my age, those were our favorite Disney movies because those were OUR Disney movies. Wish and Strange World may be no Encanto (what is?), but they're a lot better than I see them getting credit for. And honestly, I'm going to through Raya and the Last Dragon in here too. That was received better by critics but it seems like we don't talk about that as much even though it's awesome. Just like Treasure Planet!

In ten or twenty years, the kids who grow up on these movies will sing their praises as underrated classics. So even as they're written off as, "let downs," today, they won't be forgotten. They'll be loved and cherished by a generation. Knowing some kid will love them as much as I love Treasure Planet and thinking about their inevitable staying power, that makes me REALLY happy.

[lotusmuses]

Congratulations to Hiro Hamada from Big Hero 6 (2014) for being the first biracial (Japanese & White American) main character in Disney films!

Congratulations to Ethan Clade from Strange World (2022) for being Disney's first gay biracial (Black & White) protagonist!

Congratulations to Asha from Wish (2023) for being Disney's first biracial (North African & Iberian) heroine!

big thank you to Don Hall for the first two. also very cool that out of these three characters, Hiro is the only one from a real place (San Francisco, California) albeit one with a fictional history causing it be renamed to honor it's Japanese immigrants. i think that makes his representation even better since it's more 'real'

[synergysilhouette]

Is Disney Animation in it's "Lost Identity" era?

For a few years, Disney has seemed strangely off for the most part with their creative output. I wanted to open the floor for this discussion, opining that after the HUGE success they achieved in the early to mid-2010s, if executive interference and other factors started to encroach upon creative freedom with their storytelling. I was gonna start with "Raya and the Last Dragon," but I opted to start with "Frozen 2" due to the eye-opening documentary on it. This post will include both information about the production of some of Disney's recent films as well as my own theories.

Frozen 2--The sequel to the highest-grossing Disney film ever (not adjusted for inflation), "Frozen 2" was an even bigger phenomenon than it's predecessor. That said, it didn't have as much staying power, with criticism towards the clunky and confusing story. It was revealed during the documentary "Into the Unknown: The Making of Frozen 2" that while wanting to write a more mature, darker story, screenwriter Jennifer Lee was thrown a curve ball when an early screening of the film included families with kids of as young as four years old. She commented that they wouldn't understand what they were seeing, and this proved to be somewhat true, as the kids left feedback for more Olaf. Lee then rewrote the script to be simplified, and included more of Olaf. There was also shown to be a bit of disarray in their studio; other creatives at Disney mentioned the film's confusing nature, and even those in charge of the story were still trying to figure out the kinks. Scrapped concepts (though I'm not sure if they were related to the early screenings) include an alternate prologue with more detail into Agnarr and Iduna's pasts, a scene where Anna and Elsa uncover Iduna's secret room with books and notes on magic, a scene where Iduna and Agnarr discuss telling Anna about Elsa's powers, and a deleted song where Kristoff struggles to propose to Anna (though IDK if this is just for the scene or if it carries on like in the final product). Overall, the desire to come up with something epic as well as Disney's feedback seems to have made this film trip over it's own feet.

Raya and the Last Dragon--First reported in 2018, RATLD is Disney's forray into a fantasy story inspired by Southeast Asian culture. While the diversity was praised, the way it was implemented was not, with East Asians voicing many of the characters, and the film coming off as an amalgam of the region rather than a specific SEA country/countries. While there aren't really notes that suggest too much exec influence, the film did have it's own unique production experience. For one, the film underwent heavy changes seven months before the film was released, including Paul Briggs and Dean Wellins being replaced as directors by Don Hall and Carlos Lopez Estrada, with the former two becoming co-directors, though John Ripa later replaced Wellins as co-director, Qui Nguyen joined Adele Lim as a co-writer, Peter Del Veccho joining Osnat Shurer as co-producer, and Cassie Steele was replaced by with Kelly Marie Tran as Raya (due to changing Raya from a loner to giving her more swagger). That's...a LOT of changes in the crew less than a year before the film is supposed to be released. I do also want to note that their opt to NOT make the film a musical because it took away from the seriousness of the film, yet the film features a good amount of comedy means that there's some kind of dissonance here. It also sounds surprising that Disney wasn't interested in doing another musical given the success their musicals have had throughout their tenure, especially at the time RATLD was set to come out. And the directors even told "Empire" when the film was close to release that there was a cut of the film with broken bones. While they might have been joking (at least the source I saw thought they may have been joking), it wouldn't be surprising if the film came off as too violent to Disney or their test audiences, and they had the story softened. Another thing I find odd is the ending; it's been commented that Namaari's redemption arc isn't really solid, and the message of trusting others ends up being muddled. A personal theory of mine is that the story had better execution of the message originally, or perhaps Namaari was never planned to be redeemed, but Disney wanted a happier ending and either pressed for Namaari to be redeemable or wanted her to be fully forgiven by the end of the film. If that was the case, it may have been a last-minute choice, given that she doesn't really show this in the final product.

Encanto--Given that this film was a critical and commercially successful film (at least for COVID) with staying power, there isn't much for me to note/theorize on the film, since it doesn't seem to suffer from the same issues the prior two films do. After Jared Bush, Byron Howard, and Lin-Manuel Miranda discussed having extended families, they opted to focus on a musical surrounding one. Disney resisted the idea of focusing on 12 characters at first (and Miranda wasn't surprised since they removed Moana's 8 brothers, reasoning that she had other priorities to focus on), and like many films, went through variations. Co-director and Co-writer Jared Bush mentioned that it was difficult to contend with, and seeing how condensed Luisa, Isabela, and Dolores' storylines were in the film, I do wonder if Disney continued to pressure them to remove characters and/or shorten the storylines. Given that the Madrigal family was originally much larger and there was a deleted fistfight between Isabela and Mirabel, I wouldn't be surprised.

Strange World--Okay, for this one, I REALLY don't have much to say. The film comes off as very generic, and the concept art and deleted scenes (that I've seen, anyway) don't seem to suggest why Disney greenlit this film, though the generational themes does seem right up their alley, and the environmentalism message is timely. I'd blame it on the massive change done with Raya, as Hall and Nguyen were brought onto that team, and then once that was done, only had about a year left to work on "Strange World," which...well, as "Moana 2" will tell you, having only a year to do things--even with a cool idea--is not going to amount to much success.

Wish--It's all been said before, and there's no defense for why this shouldn't have been spectacular besides exec influence for whatever reason. Deleted concepts here include Amaya as the sole villain, an Amaya/Magnifico villain couple, a removed member of The Teens, Star having a human form and being Asha's soulmate (though what that means is anyone's guess; we were all hoping it was romantic), and Star actually having a model, meaning him being removed was probably a last-minute thing. Add on to the fact that character designs changed, personalities were simplified, and Julia Michaels said that she and Benjamin Rice were only given a storyboard to go off of each time they did the songs, despite meeting with execs every Tuesday. Seeing how bland "Wish" was, exec interference shouldn't be ruled out. Such a shame that Disney did this for their anniversary film.

Moana 2--Originally planned as a TV show announced in 2020, it was revealed on February of this year that it was planned to be reworked into a film, with the crew behind the show only being alerted of this in January. They literally had ten months to refit the series into a film, and I'm sure they still had to deal with pushback. The only reason they were able to do this is because animation usually happens roughly a year before the film is released. As such, they had to deal with technically being behind schedule with their animation, leaving little--if anything--to rewrite and fix.

Overall, it seemed the past half-decade has been turmoil for Disney struggling to give their creatives time and room to breath when storytelling, more concerned with their brand than long-lasting success. Really hope "Zootopia 2," "Frozen 3," and their 2026 original film don't suffer from these issues. Kinda hopeful since Z2 test screenings went well and F3 was pushed from 2026 to 2027.

(Oh, and some shameless promotion for my account: check out how I'd rewrite the revival era, as well as individual posts that go into the specifics on my guide page: https://www.tumblr.com/synergysilhouette/741045631364235264/my-alternate-takes-on-disney-films?source=share)

[foureyedfreezy]

I'm over the Little Mermaid drama, but that ironic statement against it is Disney should make "new characters" instead of casting a black woman to play Ariel. But the thing is, people hate original content too. They call Turning Red and Strange World cringy and inappropriate to children. They call Encanto overrated. They call Raya and the Last Dragon boring or a Avatar: the Last Airbender rip-off. They are even bashing Wish and the movie isn't even out yet. Pretty much anything that isn't catered to straight white people is considered bad by default in the Disney fandom.

[flower-boi16]

I love Disney going around parading about “supporting everyone under the rainbow” and then literally stamping out any media of theirs that represents those people under that Rainbow.

Disney is so great guys.

[lejindaryikiki]

Omg, I just watched Once Upon A Studio!

Here are some screenshots which I captured.

The big hero 6 gang 😃 (baby Hiro is here!)

Isa, Abuela and Calhoun spotted ❤️

Miraboo (and Taff)! ♥️🤭

My two bbys (Lewis and Wilbur) 😍

Boun, my son 😃

Dolores (and Jaeger is behind her)

Felix, my birather 🫡

Namaari, Camilo, Baymax, Ralph and Vanellope spotted ❤️❤️❤️

My fav characters (Elsa, Anna, Maui, Moana, Pua, Kristoff) together 😚😚

And at last,

The grand picture together 😚😚😁

I'm fluffing sobbing 😭😭

[raurquiz]

#happybirthday @lucyliu #lucyliu #actress #AllyMcBeal #CharliesAngels #FullThrottle #Elementary #RedOne #StrangeWorld #Shazam #FuryoftheGods #SetItUp #Payback #ShanghaiNoon #Chicago #KillBill #LuckyNumberSlevin #WatchingtheDetectives #TheManwiththeIronFists #KungFuPanda #TinkerBell

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.

—J B S Haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Papers, pp 298-99 (1927)

Robert Scott Horton