#qui nguyen

[disneytva]

A night of different creatures and new places to explore is around the corner. 🏝️👖🐢

The Disney Channel premiere of Walt Disney Animation Studios "Strange World" followed by the SERIES PREMIERE of "StuGo" starts Saturday January 11 at 6:15PM EST.

[do-you-know-this-play]

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021, Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada, Paul Briggs and John Ripa)

03/06/2025

[terranoctis]

[she-kills-monsters-backstage]

Orcus: I came out here to have a good time and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now.

[watchingmoviesandshit]

Strange World (2022)

[movie-titlecards]

Strange World (2022)

My rating: 6/10

Very pretty landscapes, but everything else about it feels weirdly perfunctory

[neovallense]

Mundo extraño (Strange World, 2022)

[healed1337]

Box Office Bomb month 4 - Strange World

This blog post could also double as Disney Animated Movies 61, but I think I’m done with being a completionist in that sense. I enjoy doing these theme months enough that I’m no longer going to look at every single movie released in the runs I’ve done in the past. Also, I have no interest whatsoever in Pixar’s Lightyear movie that released last year. A Buzz Lightyear movie without Tim Allen? They…

[nohtora]

chúc mừng năm mới ! wishing you all good luck and good health for this lunar new year !!

in vietnamese culture, the zodiac animals are slightly different – instead of the rabbit, we celebrate the year of the cat ( aka my year hehe ) 😺 — art prints / stickers & posters !

[disneytva]

A night of wild creatures with Dr Lullah and the Clades.

Catch the premiere of Walt Disney Animation Studios "Strange World" followed by the premiere of Disney Television Animation's 100th show "StuGo" 👖🏝️🗺️ Next Saturday at 6:15PM EST only on Disney Channel

[do-you-know-this-play]

[kermodefan94-blog]

The Odd Case of Disney's Strange World.

On the discourse around one of the blandest movies of 2022.

Do you know that there was a theatrical Walt Disney Animation Studios production pushed out into the world on November 22nd 2022? Better question. Did the mouse house want the general public to know that this release even existed? That is the question currently surrounding the discourse one of the most memorably notable flops this author can remember in his time as a film watcher. $72 million…

[parasympatheticnervoussystem909]

she kills monsters by qui nguyen continued

PROLOGUE

SCENE 1 1

[coffeenewstom]

Banh Mi Op La - vietnamesisches Straßen-Frühstück (Reblog)

Ein Morgen in einer vietnamesischen Stadt, wie Ho-Chi-Minh-Stadt, Hanoi oder Da Nang. Während der chaotische Verkehr über die Straße braust, findet das Leben vieler Menschen auf dem Bürgersteig ab. Vom Café über Imbiss bis hin zum Friseur, alles findet nicht nur in, sondern auch vor den Geschäften statt. Dabei gibt es gerade bei den Cafés eine große Auswahl: Von der großen, klimatisierten,…

[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)