Disney/Pixar’s Up: Can an Uncompromised Vision Pay Off?

The end of artistic credibility begins with one label: sell-out. Painters will starve, writers will waste away, and musicians will play in subway cars before they compromise their ideals for monetary gain. Even corporate machine the Walt Disney Company had to fight practical financial judgment in order to realize its creative vision for Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Seventy years later, the studio’s still facing the art vs. money dilemma, but now the stakes are higher.

On May 29, Disney and its subsidiary Pixar will release Up, its eighth feature together. The film centers on Carl, an elderly curmudgeon who ties enough balloons to his house to send it skyward. It follows the tradition of Disney’s summer animated blockbusters, but according to Brooks Barnes at the New York Times, investors aren’t sure about its marketability. Early reviews have been positive. The blog Blue Sky Disney called it “sophisticated, mature, and poignant.” But none of those adjectives mean anything to children. And none of them are normally used to describe mass-produced toys. A 78-year old protagonist is as unlikely a candidate for a line of action figures as his portly Boy Scout sidekick is for a series of fashion dolls.

Disney/Pixar, once the undisputed champion of animated films, has seen a steady decline in its movies’ profits. Its last two titles, Ratatouille and Wall-E, were just as acclaimed but they did not move as much merchandise as their predecessors. Up is a new low in this respect. Thinkway Toys, the studios’ go-to toy manufacturer since Toy Story, isn’t turning out anything for the new film. Target and Wal-Mart have already stated that they won’t be giving much shelf space to the products made by other companies.

Disney CEO Robert A. Iger is unconcerned. He stated, “We seek to make great films first.” It’s true that Disney and Pixar have accomplished a reputation for quality work. After the prize for Best Animated Feature was introduced at the Academy Awards in 2001, Disney/Pixar has won 4 of the 8 awards. Of course, other studios have become formidable competitors:  DreamWorks’ Shrek was the first to win in the new Oscar category. The studio’s other successes include Madagascar, its sequel Back 2 Africa, and Kung Fu Panda. Warner Bros. won over audiences and received its own Oscar for Happy Feet. Fox’s well-received Ice Age franchise will continue with a third installment. The standard will always be Toy Story, but Disney doesn’t dominate the market the way it once did.

Disney is also not an art-house studio. Its commercial presence is more than well-established. The Little Mermaid alone originated a sequel, a prequel, a TV series, and a Broadway musical, among other spin-offs. Disney’s movies are its best-known products. No matter how original they may be, they can be lost in the competition without some commercial appeal. There are three examples of how this can affect the brand.

The first example comes from Disney’s own history. In his biography Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince, author Marc Eliot describes the difficulties the studio faced after its founder’s death in 1966. A long-developing rift between its creative and administrative teams escalated and the quality of the movies declined. Ron Miller became president and CEO in 1978 with the intent on making “more sophisticated” films. The most infamous of his projects is the inventive but costly TRON. As chairman Card Walker put it, “TRON proved audiences would not accept anything from the Disney studio that didn’t look like a Disney film.” (Years later and after the studio re-established itself, TRON earned such a strong cult following that a sequel is now in the works).  

The studio didn’t begin to regain its former glory until new CEO Michael Eisner presided over Who Framed Roger Rabbit? a film with a cast of familiar cartoon characters. For all of its high-tech animation, it looked like a Disney film, and it was a huge hit. It was a first for licensing as well with 34 separate agreements and 500 products made.

The second study is the case of Don Bluth Productions. Don Bluth, an artistically dissatisfied Disney animator, walked away from the studio with sixteen others in the midst of the post-Walt upheaval to form their own company. As the animators’ former employer battled itself, the new studio’s features The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time won over critics and audiences. The winning streak of Don Bluth Productions (renamed Sullivan Bluth Studios in 1985) was so strong that it didn’t foresee Disney’s comeback at the end of the 1980’s.

In the early 1990’s, 20^th Century Fox bought what it renamed Don Bluth Entertainment. After a string of lackluster flicks, it released its last profitable film, Anastasia, in 1997. The musical about a plucky princess borrowed heavily from Disney’s latest offerings. Still, Anastasia revived the studio enough to make it overconfident. Its 2000 gamble Titan A.E. combined hand-drawn and computer animation and had a script co-written by acclaimed sci-fi auteur Joss Whedon. Unfortunately, it came across as too adult for children and too childish for adults. Titan A.E.’s rave reviews couldn’t save it, and Don Bluth Entertainment never recovered.

The third and more optimistic example is that of the Jim Henson Company’s films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Both were very technologically progressive for their 1980’s release dates.  Both have sometimes frightening visuals that do not resemble the usual Henson fare. And both scared away audiences. It may have taken two high-profile bombs instead of one, but the Jim Henson Company made sure to stay safely bright and colorful for the next 15 years.

Around the time Disney bought the Muppets in 2004, the Jim Henson Co. brought back Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. They were marketed on DVD to the same audience that first rejected them. Like TRON, the movies finally got their due because by then the original target market was old enough to appreciate the movies. Hip retailers like Hot Topic began to sell related merchandise. The Jim Henson Company got a twist on its image: family-friendly entertainment, now with an intriguing dark side.

For now, the Disney/Pixar brand is still strong enough to attract a wide audience. The studio partnership does not immediately have to reconcile its commercial interests with its creative ones. However, in this economic climate, it may want to focus on making at least one feature that satisfies both needs before its animation departments are threatened again. After all, innovation does not guarantee a TRON or Dark Crystal/Labyrinth-type rebirth. (Remember Shinbone Alley? No? Exactly). Even the most steadfast artiste would agree that his work would have no value, cultural or otherwise, without an audience.

Barnes, Brooks. “Pixar’s Art Leaves Profit Watchers Edgy”. New York Times. April 5, 2009.

Eliot, Marc. Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince: A Biography. New York: Carol Publishing Corporation. 1993.

“Disney Buys Jim Henson’s Muppets and Bear”. Muppet Central News. February 17, 2004.

“Don Bluth’s Biography”. Don Bluth.com. 2009.

Lenburg, Jeff. Who’s Who in Animated Cartoons: An International Guide to Film and Television’s Award-Winning and Legendary Animators. New York: Applause Books. 2006.

“The World of Jim Henson.” Great Performances. PBS. WNET, New York. 1994.

Westal, Bob, et.al. “Animated and Forgotten: Feature Length ‘Cartoons’ You May Not Remember”. March 14 2008.