Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Disney's Got No Respect for the Mouse
Chicken Little's producer Randy Fullmer told Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cindy Pearlman that the film marks the formal transition by Disney from hand-drawn to computer animation. According to Fullmer, "You show kids two-dimensional [hand-drawn] animation, and they act like you're showing them a black-and-white movie."
What an ignorant assumption. Firstly, a vast majority of animation is still traditional two-dimensional animation. Most television animation is a combination of 2-D and 3-D. Japanese anime is by and large still traditional 2-D. And, as far as I have seen, my children are just as captivated by 2-D as they are by 3-D. Parker would just as soon as watch The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh as he would Monster's Inc..
It's not the medium that sells the films. It's the story. Pixar's films would have been just as successful as traditional animated films as they were as digital animation. And a turd in 3-d is just a more shiny, realistic turd. Not saying Chicken Little is a turd - I have not seen it yet, but if the emphasis was on technique, and not on story, it'll just be another pretty but empty bauble of the type that Hollywood is growing more and more adept at creating.
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