Disney Studios- Disney Live Action Consistently Lacks

Lets talk about Disney's live action film slate the last few years? What's been your favorite? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you probably haven't been too impressed. Over the last ten years, look at the biggest live action releases for the Disney Studios

2002- Country Bears, The Rookie
2003- Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Seabiscuit, Haunted mansion
2004- Princess Diaries 2, Miracle, National Treasure, Around the World in 80 days
2005- Ice Princess, The Pacifier, Herbie: Fully Loaded, Santa Clause 3, Sky High, Chronicles of Narnia: Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
2006- Glory Road, Eight Below, Shaggy Dog, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Invincible
2007- Bridge to Terabithia, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, The Game Plan, Enchanted, Underdog, National Treasure: Book of Secrets
2008- College Road Trip, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, High School Musical 3, Bedtime Stories
2009- Race to Witch Mountain, Hannah Montana: The Movie, G Force, Old Dogs
2010- Alice in Wonderland, Prince of Persia, The Sorcerers Apprentice, Secretariat, Tron: Legacy
2011- Prom, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

So what is my point? Really look at some of these movies and think about their budget, the returns, and the actual quality of the movie.

The good movies- The most successful movies from this list are ones that earned the most revenue with the least overhead cost AND were well received by viewers. These are Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Miracle, Princess Diaries 2, and Enchanted. These movies were of HIGH QUALITY.

The bad movies- The Rest. Most of the other movies maintained small to medium budgets and were unique, i.e., Ice Princess, Eight Below, Invincible, College Road Trip, Old Dogs, Prom, etc. These movies were not successful, but Disney experimented and just fell short, no harm done.

However, there is a third category, one's that Disney SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER, and that should not have been made. These movies had no solid story or plot, had overblown budgets, and were complete failures. Disney ignored common sense and simply sought to capitalize on A-list stars, special effects, and nonsense stories. I call these the ridiculous movies.

The ridiculous movies-
  Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest & At World's End. The first movie (Curse of the Black Pearl was fun), had a story, and even had the visible moments from the attraction. The second and third movies were pure nonsense. What is the story? You can't even follow all the twists and turns of the third movie. The special effects took center stage in these movies and it was obvious they only wanted the biggest explosions and the biggest actors. So I ask this question- WHY WERE THESE MOVIES MADE? The answer is simple, because the market called for it and the consumer demand was there for more pirates. Disney capitalized on the pirate craze and FRANCHISED the idea by putting it in all of their business segments, i.e., Disney used pirates in all areas to reach the boys demographic. Knowing this, Disney sacrificed the standards for a quality movie, such as plot and simply wanted the method which would bring in the most money at the least resistance.

  Alice in Wonderland. Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter sounded great didn't it? Who wasn't looking forward to this, it was a great cartoon, so why wouldn't it make a great live action movie? Not only was this movie weird (Yes it's Tim Burton, but still it was very weird), but it was bad AND it didn't stay true to the book it was based off of. Concepts like stabbing an eye out and calling it "Underland" were completely unnecessary for a DISNEY MOVIE. Additionally, I know they wanted to make Johnny Depp the star of the movie, but the MAD HATTER IS NOT THE MAIN CHARACTER OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Depp's $20 million salary may not have helped the movie. Now I know it made over $1 Billion at the box office and the budget was around $200 Million, so profitability was great, but making a movie PURELY FOR PROFIT PURPOSES AND TO FRANCHISE THE IDEA INTO OTHER BUSINESS SEGMENTS is wrong and shows poor movie making quality.

The Chronicles of Narnia Movies. These movies had huge budgets and were just plain terrible. I'm glad Disney realized this prior to Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

The Pacifier, The Game Plan, Race to Witch Mountain. Stay away from Dwayne Johnson, he doesn't help a movie.

I have come up with a few basic guidelines that would help Disney in their film slate each year.

1) Continue to make low to mid budget movies each year. These are the films you can experiment on and not go "all in". The stakes should be low. Every once in a while you will hit a homerun.

2) Stop casting Dwayne Johnson. Find me one good movie of his that is Disney appropriate.

3) I know this will be controversial, but STOP DOING BUSINESS WITH JERRY BRUCKHEIMER AND MICHAEL BAY. These tentpole movies with $200 million budgets are unnecessary, focus too much on special effects, and are just plain not good movies. Pearl Harbor (Touchstone), Pirates 2 & 3, Sorcerers Apprentice, Prince of Persia, Chronicles of Narnia films, Tron: Legacy, and Alice in Wonderland were all unnecessary tentpole movies. What's worse is that Disney is continuing this trend with huge budgets, superfluous visual effects movies, and overpaid A-list actors. Disney's the Lone Ranger will star Johnny Depp as Tonto. Of course, the camera will be on him the majority of the movie, but HE IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THE MAIN CHARACTER. Additionally, the planned Oz: The great and powerful and Tron 3 are expected to have bloated budgets as well while there is LITTLE DEMAND for such movies. Andy Hendrickson's comments that "story" is essentially irrelevant in tentpole movies shows just how far the studio has slipped at making quality movies.

4) The most interesting aspects of Disney live action over the past ten years are successful adaptations of inspirational sports movies, Marvel movies, and movies based on attractions should receive most of the emphasis and funding.

   Inspirational sports movies have a long history with Disney (Remember the Titans, Miracle, Invincible, Angels in the Outfield, Seabiscuit, The big Green, the Mighty Ducks, etc.) and while ALL OF THESE ARE NOT GOOD, THEY HAVE LOW BUDGETS AND TELL A STORY. Sports help tell a story and are very relatable to kids and parents. They should keep making these because they make them better than other studios.

  Movies based on marvel characters are the new trend and are exciting. THIS CREATES BUZZ AND THESE ARE THE MOVIES WHICH SHOULD HAVE THE LARGER BUDGETS. THE ANTICIPATED AVENGERS SHOULD HAVE A LARGE TENTPOLE BUDGET, but with that budget Disney needs to ENSURE that the STORY IS SOLID, CHARACTERS ARE RELATABLE, AND THE MOVIE IS FUN.

  Let's face it, thus far movies based on attractions have not been great. Though Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was fun and had some visible moments from the attraction, the trend has been pretty poor with these movies. The Haunted Mansion was bad, we all know that, but most people can't really express why. The Country Bears was awful, no explanation needed. An attraction movie MUST FOLLOW THE PATH OF THE ATTRACTION TO A DEGREE AND SHOULD SEEM REMINISCENT OF THE ORIGINAL. Disney is going back to the drawing board and re-evaluating these movies. The upcoming Jungle Cruise and Magic Kingdom could be very exciting and fun, but it is clear that these could also be terrible if not done properly.

5) The upcoming Muppet Movie looks very exciting and TRUE TO THE MUPPET CHARACTERS. Given this, Disney has likely realized that the Muppets are a tremendous asset for Disney because they are essentially a PG-13/R Rated set of characters. The Muppets can do things that the standard Disney characters cannot.

6) Re-start Hollywood Pictures and Emphasize Touchstone pictures more. These studios let Disney make more adult oriented movies. One could be for PG-13 while one is for R rated movies, or some combination thereof, but they own these names and can use them to disassociate a title from the Disney name, letting them make more risky and unique pictures.

  Disney needs to get back to making love action quality movies at reasonable prices. Going to the movies should be fun again. I will address the animated features in other posts.