Best Disney Films?

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hyp44

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What Disney films do you like best?/think are the best? Even though there were some great ones in the 90's like The Lion King, Aladdin and Toy Story which also all came out when i was a kid i really love the jungle book, its such a cool fun film. nothing really awful happens, the characters are cool and so are the songs, they are really catchy and make you want to sing along . I love the scene between kaa the snake and Shere Khan as Kaa tries to fool Shere Khan but he sees right thru it. Also Shere Khan using Kaa's tail as a doorbell made me laugh. Great film. Mary Poppins i love too, although not keen on the animated bit in that. So what disneys films do you like best?:)
 
I think that you can break Disney films down into catergories.

Lets start with the obvious differences between live action and animation.

IMO for live action It has to be between Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks as the best two. My favourite bby a long way is Mary Poppins which is just magical. Everything just seems to work from the look to the casting to the great songs.
I've always had a soft spot for the Witch Mountain films too. As a kid I wanted powers like Tia and Tony.

When you move into animation it's a lot harder. Pinocchio is one of my favourites. The story is great and it also holRAB a personal memory for me too.
The ultimate one though has to be The Jungle Book. Unlike Snow White and the even dwarfs it's not a bit girls and easily accessible to people of all ages and gender.

Once you have that out the way there are another two catergories. Old/Classic Disney and modern Disney.

Disney for years went through a massive slump and then hit paydirt with Beauty and the Beast and then the Lion King which pretty much saved the studio. As great as these films are and they definately are great films, IMO they aren't as magical as the older Disney classics. Maybe it's political correctness (all fmales have to seem contemorary, strong, independant etc and we mustn't risk doing anything that could be sensitive to minorities) or perhaps it's the choices of subject. I've not seen Mulan. Was the world really asking for Mulan or The Princess and the Frog? And now a total rewriting and changing of Rapunzel. These films have the Disney name but IMO don't have the Disney feel to them.
Toy Story is the only Disney animation of the last 10 years that really feels like an proper Disney film. How much of that is down to Disney and how much down to Pixar I don't know.

Equally their recent live action films haven't managed to be as magical as their output in the 60s and 70s.
Return to With Mountain starring Dwayne Johnson is a good film but it doesn't feel like a Disney film to me. I saw him in Tooth Fairy whoch wasn't an Disney film, but it had the feel of one, Growing up as a kid Disney felt like it was my film studio. it was making films aimed for me a kid, and secondly the adults but always a family movie. In recent years it feels like they are just making films because that's what they do.
 
Clearly Pocahontas wasn't insensitive enough for you, then.

I'm not sure how having damsel-in-distress, princess-waiting-to-be-saved type female protagonists appeared to make the older Disney films seem more "magical".
 
No idea I've not seen Pocahontas..:p

Basically having the damsel-in-distress. princess-waiting-to-be-saved kind of female protgonists are keeping the stories faithful to the books. When you look at the trailer for "Tangled" the reworking of rapunzel it is nothing like the book and the Rapunzel character is nothing at all like her book counterpart.
If Disney wish to make films with stronger female characters etc, then that's great, but don't go back to the classics and rewrite them.

IMO one of the best Disney animations ever is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. In some places it's quite dark. in that the main female lead was an fiery character but so is the character in the original source novel.
Personally I would like to see Disney aim towarRAB the more mature classics for their source material. If there wasn't an film of Gulliver's Travels just about to come out that would have been good. Perhaps Treasure Island, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Lorna Doone or Jane Eyre.
These are more mature stories than the fairytales with the "Disney Princesses" but they could be made as magical as those. If you are going to a source materail taht has weaker female characters then at least be true to the books and have your version of the characters the same way.
 
Pocahontas is best avoided.

I see what you mean about staying faithful to original storytelling to get that quintessential fairytale feel that the old Disney films had, but I guess they have had to move with the times. For the most part it has worked - if Belle was anything like in the original version of Beauty and the Beast by Barbot De Villeneuve then I'd imagine that the film wouldn't have had as much praise. I believe production of the film was delayed for decades because they found it hard to put across original versions of the story to their audience. But their reworking has certainly paid off as it is one of the most highly acclaimed Disney film of all time (and my personal favourite).
 
I've not read the novel of Beauty and the beast so I can't compare the two Belle's. I would imagine that like The Humchback of Notre Dame it's not what you would label the traditional fairytale story. Perhaps because Disney is moving with the times they need to move on from the fairytales and leave them in their past and look towarRAB the type of books I mentioned or modern classics. It's already been done as an animation and hopefully won't get remade but Disney could so easily have done a version of Watership Down for example.
One thing that they do have in their favour that they never had years ago is the fact that kiRAB will sit through longer films. When you look at a lot of the older films many aren't even 90 minutes long. Thanks to films like Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia and Avatar they now know that kiRAB will sit and watch a film for two hours even two and a half. This allows them more scope to handle longer and more complex stories.
Maybe they could do an animated version of something like Pippy Long-stocking, The Borrowers, Mrs Pepperpot (pauses for everyone to say who? lol) The Railway Children or even an condensed version of The Animals of Farthing Wood. Maybe even having a look at which Roald Dahl stories haven't been made into films yet or could do with improving. I think they are remaking The Witches or that could have been a good one to start with.
 
I haven't seen much of the newer Disney films so can only comment on the classic ones:

Live action - probably Mary Poppins
Animated - Snow White, Pocahontas, The Little Mermaid

The only one I've really seen in the last 10 years or so would be A Bug's Life and Monsters, Inc.
 
Live action - Mary Poppins (I can't tell you how much i loved this film when i was a kid, obsessed some would say :o:D) and Cool Runnings.

Animation - My overall favourite is The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but i love so many....
 
Top 5 Animations:

Aladdin
The Lion King
Beauty and the Beast
The Little Mermaid
The Princess and the Frog

Top 3 Pixar:

Toy Story
Finding Nemo
Up

Best Live Disney:

Bedknobs and Broomsticks
 
If you don't mind me asking how old are you Kyri? I ask because looking at your choices there aren't any animations that come from what many people consider Disne's "Golden Era" they are all the more recent ones, the oldest being 1991.

I'm wondering if a lot of the choices are down to the style of the animation or you just find them better stories?
 
Hmmm.....tough one as there are so many. As much as I enjoyed their vintage films (Snow White, Dumbo, Jungle Book, Mary Poppins,etc.) as a child (I'm 34), the newer films seem better...and most are not what I'd consider true "Disney" either...

The Incredibles (pixar)
Up! (pixar)
Toy Story trilogy (pixar)
Wall-E (pixar)
Ratatouille (pixar)
Monsters, Inc. (pixar)
Pirates of the Caribbean 1 (disney)
Mary Poppins (disney)
 
The Jungle Book without a shadow of a doubt. No interest in The Lion King and all that circle of life crap and especially don't like the transition to CGI (although the ballroom scene in Beuaty and the Beast is quite impressive).

As for live action, always had a soft spot for Escape to Witch Mountain.
 
Oooh this is a toughie. I love love love the old Disney films, Cinderella being my absolute favourite. But i was an 80s child so a lot of the late 80s and early 90s disney films really do stick out for me and i don't really know much about the *newer* ones. For that reson it has to be Alladin and The Little Mermaid, oh and Beauty and the Beast.

Showing my age now me thinks. :)
 
Animations:

1. Beauty & the Beast
2. The Lion King
3. Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs

Pixar/Disney:

Toy Story

Live Action:

Pirates of the Carribean
 
Hey, like your post but just wanted to point out but the 'Disney Renaissance' as it's known began with The Little Mermaid in 1989, Beauty and The Beast was more popular I think and obviously The Lion King was a smash but The Little Mermaid started it all (again) - I'm only picky about it because it's my fave :D
Also, Mary Poppins is definitely the best live action but i've always preferred Pete's Dragon to Bedknobs and Broomsticks - but it always gets overlooked:(
 
In no particular order below.

Disney Live Action:
Blackbeard's Ghost
Bendknobs And Broomstcicks
Petes Dragon

Animated:
Hercules
Robin Hood
The Emperor's New Groove
Oliver & Company
Basil The Great Mouse Detective
Aladdin
The Lion King
Sword in the Stone
Peter Pan
 
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