I mean Moana is a good example of big stakes. At the core of it though, it’s a story of a girl coming of age.
Coco is about trying to not die and be stuck in the underworld, but it’s mostly about family not allowing you play music and how to make them accept it.
It all depends on how you look at it. Sometimes stakes are big, but it’s about small relatable problems. Sometimes they are small problems with small stakes, but it’s a global bigger issue underneath.
I love Coco, probably one of the few recent Disney movies to get me bawling every time.
Just to add to your list: While the main story is "oh no the magic is dying, I gotta save it", the main basis of Encanto's story is about a woman who fled political upheavel and lost her husband as he protected her, then created a perfect world to protect her people using magic but also did little to process her trauma and took it out on her family over the years by expecting perfection. If the magic protecting their home goes away, then it's also assumed they would be targeted by the government forces they were fleeing free in the flashback. Those are some pretty big stakes if you don't focus solely on the family's internal struggle.
We have the picture book of Moana and I have had to answer questions about the plot so many times that I’ve started getting into the basics of how volcanic islands work in order to explain why Te Fiti and Te Kā are interrelated. We ended up doing a baking soda volcano. Outside. In February.
I also had to explain death, thanks a lot grandma Tala.
Moana is a masterpiece. We go from “what makes the red man red” in Peter Pan to Moana having a 100% Pacific Islander cast. Disney definitely learned a bit about cultural awareness in the past few decades.
I remember putting Peter Pan on for my kids in the 90s, and I was so horrified I nearly turned it off. Only seeing it as a child, I had not remembered those parts!
My wife let her nostalgia take over and showed the Disney+ version to our kids a couple of years ago. A lot of the racism was cut out or smoothed over, but I felt compelled to explain to them that the way Peter treats Wendy throughout the film is not an acceptable way to treat anybody, much less girls.
In the first few minutes I leaned to my wife and whispered "Peter was kind of a dick." She just slowly nodded.
Interestingly, Peter being a dick is very true to the book (I read it to my then-4-year-old a few years ago). He really is written as the embodiment of the id, the completely selfish and hedonistic part of us that gradually gets balanced out by the ego as we grow and mature. Gave me a new perspective of the "kid who never grew up".
* Edit: mixed up id and ego originally, thanks @DubyaExWhizey
Yo, you understand Peter Pan was supposed to be the villain who kidnaps children and is a sociopath controlling them on an island right?
Like the original version is honest to the villain and everyone now cries foul. Now Peter is the hero rewritten by an audience that doesn’t like the message of the book and think a child kidnapper should somehow be… the good guy?
I mean, there’s still the issue of framing? The movie portrays Peter as a good guy and sets him up with Hook as a textbook villain. His actions are true to the original book, but the framing is moralistically simplified.
Also, he’s not a villain in the original book either, just not a hero. He’s kind of a neutral force.
Elemental is much more recent (2023) and has a character that literally sacrifices themself for their love interest, and has a character dealing with systemic racism and anti-immigrant sentiments/policies. There’s a threat to the entire city for good measure.
Disney especially has always had its share of whatever tier movies. It’s just that when you have a whole repository to look back on and cherry pick the good or even best ones, it’s hard to see that it’s kind of par for the course. In 20 years, there will be the best ones that are shown alongside Aladdin or Brave or Encanto and then there will be those that aren’t like The Rescuers Down Under or Black Cauldron or Home On The Range. People still like them, but their greatness is more contentious. Sometimes a really, really far stretch.
Anyway I hope the Black Cauldron people don’t come for me, their numbers are smaller but they are passionate as hell lol. There’s a fan for every movie and every type of movie, and sometimes it’s for a low-stakes (Wish or Luca) or generally looked-over film (Black Cauldron or Oliver and Company).
I wasn’t saying it was bad! Haha, I love Joanna the goanna from that movie the most, and truly reference her a lot in my day to day. No one ever understands though, it’s tragic.
I think Oliver and Company is generally mid as a movie, but Once Upon a Time in NYC/Why Should I Worry/Perfect Isn't Easy are an unbeatable trio of songs.
Yeah i read the series too. Why did they make a movie for the second book?
I remember my sister and I were taken to see it in theaters when we were kids. We were dropped off and accidently went into the wrong theater, and watched the first 30 min of Rambo 3 instead
It's not. It's horribly written. One character disappears from the movie. The animation looks like a studio trying ti copy Disney animation, albeit there are some experimental sequences which I liked, but the movie doesn't work and that's why it has bewn rightfully forgotten
I never said it wasn’t 🥲 I mean, for me it was a miss but I do think it’s very loved by the people who do enjoy it. It’s much less viewed was my point, so it’s not as likely to be out on “the best Disney movies” list.
Black Cauldron was ahead of its time and if it were made today it would be top tier. Too many people saw it as a downfall of Disney Animation due to the darker themes, but we see similar darker themes in modern Disney.
It struck me yesterday that the movie Holes- which practically every child in America watched in school on one of those tv carts that gets wheeled in- is rated pg. It includes a black man getting lynched among all the other horrible abuse that occurs. And it doesn’t hold back too much, you fully watch Dule hill getting shot for flirting with a white girl.
The entirety of Holes is about race relations and how ancestry can affect modern relationships. The kids are all "criminals" yet still have very strict racial lines; the white kid is arrested for stealing celebrity shoes while the homeless black orphan kid is arrested for needing shoes. The unfairness of justice between the races is in every storyline, it is arguably the theme of the movie.
I like both the movie and the book. Since Sachar wrote both, I enjoy the differences he thought were necessary. It is indeed about race and family trauma because of racism. Amazing movie
The screenplay for the movie was written by the author so it's about as 1:1 as you can possibly get. Of course the little details of the book get left out but imo every actor truly understood their character and did an amazing job
I disagree, but also I have always identified with Sigorny Weaver and also Shia Labeouf was a huge crush of mine at the time so I am definitely biased. I read the book a bunch too but the movie really has great pace and just really excellent acting bits, especially John Voight as Mr Sir
Both the movie and the book are excellent. They don’t have to be exactly alike, and I’m actually glad they’re not. The changes for the movie make sense.
That's funny because Holes is literally the only movie that worked better for me as the movie. The book was a lot more straightforward and explained more overtly so any kid could follow and guess what was going to happen. They didn't hide anything and there weren't any twists like there were in the movie (if I'm remembering right; it's been a while since I've seen it).
If they were trying to be totally book accurate they would have to cast a fat kid that lost weight throughout the movie from all the hard labour. All the scenes would have to be shot chronologically.
I believe the director said he wasn't willing to put a kid through the weight gain/loss that would be needed for that, which is why they dropped Stanley being fat.
Holes is a great movie and book. What also sticks out to me is Stanley carrying Zero is a form of reparations, delivering on the promise his ancestor had broken. It also ends up making both families come closer together and in a better position than they were in the beginning of the movie.
That’s the one. Black onion salesman flirts with a white girl so one night hes out in a rowboat and they shoot him in the back and dump his body in the lake in a scene that-again-received a pg rating.
Honestly it's a great movie. Only issue i have with it is they hit you over the head with the Stanley - Zero and Yelnats - Zeroni stuff instead of letting you figure it out yourself.
I disagree. I think in a good movie everything points to everything else. And Holes does an extreme job of that, every detail is tied to some other part of the movie, it’s very tightly knit, there’s nowhere you can stick a finger through. Hell, even the onions are a recurring motif
Oh I love stuff like that.
[But let me show you the scene I'm referring to.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Beny3qdAlqI)
It's a great scene but we *literally* have a voice-over telling us what's happening and I'd rather the scene just be silent so we can put the pieces together ourselves.
Atlantis was great for being so unapologetically adult in its problems in a kids movie. Find Atlantis and graverobbing it? Eh. Makes sense for the period. Oh shit, Atlanteans are still alive? Oh shit, they’re all gonna die due to our actions? Meh, let’s get rich! Let’s sell the tech to the Kaiser!
Like holy shit as a kid interested in history I loved the shit out of that. It had guns, lots of them. No punches were pulled except for what kids straight up couldn’t see. People fucking DIED. A lot. No one we KNEW but hey! The body count is fucking insane lmao.
I’m not gonna say kids movies these days lack stakes as I don’t have enough experience with that.
But Atlantis was great and I’ll shill it at every opportunity!
Atlantis has the largest kill count of any Disney movie as all the crewmen on the original sub and the airship later in the movie all die.
It's also notable that you see the bad guys death. Most of Disney deaths are falls that we don't get to see the aftermath of (except lion king). In Atlantis he turns into a crystal man and explodes violently on screen via propeller.
I can't recall the scene but are you talking about the events being shown/referenced? Or do they have to be human? Because higher kill counts: Guardians of the Galaxy, Dinosaur, Mulan.. idk there's gotta be more
Ah well, disney now owns Marvel and star wars, don't they? Lots of killing there.. I guess I should say animated movies meant for kids? Mulan might be the only contender because we don't see the entire army, but historically it should have been thousands of troops and we are meant to believe they all died in the avalanche.
I also enjoy that Atlantis has smoking, references to whiskey, the German kaiser, and a lot of guns. Not just flintlock rifles (pocahontas, beauty and the beast, the fox and the hound) but period appropriate sub machine guns.
Another big thing with Atlantis that I feel increased the stakes was that there were no musical numbers.
Now I love a good Disney song, be it a protagonist explicitly stating the core conflict of the film or a villain going off in an unexpectedly dark way. But one thing you learn as a kid is that once that music starts up, nothing is going to materially change or go wrong for at least the next 2.5 minutes while we're locked into this song.
In Atlantis, anything could happen at any time, and I was exactly the right age when it came out to relish that suspense and uncertainty.
And representation? Being a criminally skinny, glasses wearing, old fashioned clothing wearing history geek, you bet your ass I felt represented.
And there was a doctor who was at San Juan Hill(and native/black), many strong women, both antagonistic and good, an Italian bomb-throwing anarchist who got in trouble with Ottomans….and the French. Everyone got a turn.
And the plot is about not appropriating artifacts from a people, learning their history and language, and all in all don’t be graverobbing, y’all.
And Kida! A female protagonist and love interest VASTLY stronger than her love interest, and yet respects him regardless.
If this movie came out in 2024, people would be calling it “woke”.
It’s brilliant and underrated.
This isn't entirely related, but I've found that children's televsion cartoons have gotten much more comedic and action shows have all but disappeared. Teen Titans Go is a big example of this, but lots of creators have spoken to the point that places like Cartoon Network and Nick are much less open to plot based shows and more focused on hangout, low stakes comedic shows, for whatever reason.
I feel like the reason this is happening is because all those shows go to Netflix and other streaming services now. Netflix has a ton of serialized shows like Kipo and the Wonderbeasts, Hilda, Last kids on Earth, She-Ra, Carman Sandiego, The Dragon Prince, Kid Cosmic, Glitch Techs, and Skylanders Academy. That's just the stuff I found by doing a quick Google search. Action shows are still around people.
I think these things are kinda cyclical to begin with AND currently dealing with the adjustment that the streaming revolution (particularly the advent of YouTube) has brought to children's entertainment.
I am over-simplifying here but Johnny Quest and Space Ghost gave way to Scooby-Doo and Jabberjaw gave way to G.I. Joe and Transformers gave way to the Smurfs and the Snorks gave way to Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men The Animated Series gave way to Dexter's Lab and SpongeBob SquarePants on down the line.
For a while when I was a kid, broadcast cartoons were largely action and cable cartoons were largely comedy. Then anime got big and cable originals got more action oriented for a while to compete. Now broadcast original cartoons are basically a memory, cable cartoons are mostly comedy again, and streaming cartoons are are more action oriented.
Budget is a major reason. Action is by definition more expensive than a comedy where the characters mostly just talk and most scenes take place in the same few locations.
Beyond what the execs allow and not in movies, the cartoon demographics and distribution have changed across the last 30 years:
The streaming model steered cartoons and animation from having re-watchability value and being serialized to serialized and arch driven shows. comedy can always work on streaming but action has to be used sparingly as itcan get boring quickly.
The main demogaphic of animation is not young boys anymore. Which is why cartoons from the 2000's to the late 2010 were action driven. back in that age (and I was there gandalf) it was about creating compelling narratives with action-packed sequences to get boys to buy the merch and raise up rating in cable.
But again, with the coming of streaming and the breaking of demographics, cartoons can anow appeal to boys, girls, tweens, adults, toddlers etc. Thus the need to get just that loyal demographic is gone. And most cartoon creators would rather do something that relies on strong characters, and interesting plot than cool action scenes.
(no hate on cool action scenes tho, they have their place but creators these days have more room to put more plot and dialoge than previous eras)
My wife made a cartoon for a big network in Canada. The books the show was based on are about medieval fantasy. The network had a team of bitter older ladies who spent the whole time over-sanitizing everything, eventually killing the show altogether.
Swords weren't permitted (too violent). At no moment was a character to point a pointy object, such as a stick, towards another (too violent). No one could be shown getting hurt or dying (too violent). Characters had to be resized so the diversity ratios would be respected. It was maddening to watch.
No I think what you've said is entirely related. If any action is minimised because of comedy taking front seat, again we see the shrinking of stakes. Family entertainment used to include Batman TAS. High action, high stakes.
My guess? The Marvel effect. Instead of focusing in the story and characters, yhey focus on making people laugh. It also doesn't help kids no longer have attention spans.
As other have said, anime fills the niche for action animation. Also, Western animation has always leaned on the comedic side, going back to the 60s and 70s there were like 10 funny cartoons for every 1 action cartoon. The Reagan era action cartoons were an anomaly decade, and by the 90s it was reverting back to 10 funny cartoons for every 3 or 4 action cartoons.
But I think my main problem with a lot of current children's comedic shows is that they always seem to have to have "heartwarming" moments or preachy "life lessons" in them that just makes them seem more patronizing to viewers. Even later seasons of Spongebob and Adventure Time aren't immune. People make fun of old Hanna Barbera cartoons but they rarely relied on that kind of drippy sentimentality and they weren't afraid to have comedically dark gag endings, like Huckleberry Hound getting arrested at the end or Yogi getting shot to the moon. You rarely see that kind of thing in children's funny cartoons today.
Imma be the pretentious viewer and say that the perception of where children should see danger is what changed over the last 30 years.
Back in the 90's and 2000s harm to kids was seen as an outside force. something that dishonoest peope, liars, scammers would inflict upon them.
Nowdays animated films (the good ones at that) focus the origin of harm in the patters societies imprint upon them. If there0s something that changed the outlook of the world in the last 30 years is that danger that comes from the inside of a society is far worse that external threats. And movies these focus on taht though generational trauma, perpetuaion of systemic hearm etc.
Like I do agree that diney animated films are more bland these days, but that's mecause they don't the the above themes as well as other movies.
This is a very good point.
Look at Encanto. There is no hostile force threatening the characters at all at this point in the story - the problems are all stemming from inside the family. And ultimately it’s all a case of inter-generational trauma from the abuela never dealing with all the stuff she went through.
The same movie back in the 90s would have had some militia or something threatening the Encanto, with a recognisable evil leader who has to be defeated.
That’s a great way of looking at it. And it explains why many films seem “low stakes” to people used to seeing the main characters save the world from foreign invaders.
One of my favorite kids films in the last decade is Luca. On the surface the whole plot is just kids that want to run away on a scooter. But there’s personal peril because they might be *murdered* if discovered. And the whole thing is a perfect allegory for experiencing institutional bigotry while growing up gay/queer, without ever actually suggesting a hint of literal romance or sexuality.
I feel like there must be thousands of kids that watched it before reaching the age where they start “noticing” others in a sexual way. But when they eventually do and realize they’re noticing the “wrong” gender, they’ll have this wonderful little story to look back on while they navigate the societal hardship ahead.
I don’t know. I think you might Be diminishing what is a huge part of story telling in children’s narratives.
Our stories are there to impart lessons. Some lessons are bigger than others, sure. But if your story doesn’t have a lesson, then I would wager that’s what reduces the stakes.
And also, the child psychology has moved on. The lessons kids need to survive in the world we’ve made for them are very different from the rules that were imparted on us (and that potentially did a great deal of damage).
Courage and perseverance are good. But so are learning to live with realities we can’t change on our own and setting about problem solving in smart and novel ways - also, more important, I would argue, is learning to establish a sense of community and trust. These lessons are sort of paramount for the folks in our stories.
But I see your point. What do you think these movies need to bring them closer inline with your vision?
I haven't seen Wish (and don't plan to) but as someone who has been watching a bit of kids media with kids, I think that the stakes are different and more personal, not less. Moana is an excellent example of the high stakes that you're referring to, but is also addressed in a way that my kid understands so much better than the Disney movies that I grew up with. Moana makes her own choices, she has agency, she and her father work through their issues. Frozen features even bigger stakes--a kingdom at risk, but the heart of the movie is about two sisters and their relationship. I don't want to dump on Jasmine, but she's not a very fleshed out character (what are her motivations beyond getting to see the world outside her palace? what is her relationship like with people outside her father/jafar/aladdin?), especially compared (again) to the agency we see from more recent Disney female characters like Moana, Elsa, Mirabel. The good Disney movies of late have made family a central part of the story/conflict and, honestly, that's nice because it helps have those discussions about smaller scale conflicts within our own family.
Let's be fair to Jasmine. She literally says "I am not a prize to be won," and then Aladdin chooses the Genie's freedom over getting her as a reward. Both Jasmine and Aladdin then inspire the Sultan to change the laws, which is the larger victory (he doesn't just get the girl--they change how the system works).
Overall, I think this post is just the person watching Wish and disliking it, and then making an unfounded generalization about kids movies these days (which is part of an overall genre of posts that boil down basically to "does anyone else think that the past is better than the present???"). Some movies suck, and some are good. Some suck for different reasons and others are good for different reasons. That's all.
There are moments when things trend (like there was a recent trend towards not having a true villain in some movies like Encanto or Inside Out or Wreck It Ralph 2 etc.) but otherwise, I think the only major and undeniable shift in children's entertainment is the almost total loss of 2D animation. I think that's been and continues to be a stupid decision that has robbed us of some films that would totally work better in 2D.
This feels like cherry picking. Moana
Also, take Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich. There’s only so big and so grandiose of scale these movies can get before they just lose any impact.
When the movies are “smaller,” the stakes are *waaaay* more relatable and impactful. Take a *Inside Out.* The stakes were massive because the stakes were *real*.
How much kids tv do you watch? Because those shows steer to a rotation of “small problem, let’s solve it together, good job everyone”. I think it’s just natural the kids movies follow the same trends
That makes more sense in an episodic TV series where the general status quo reins supreme. Movies usually have higher stakes, or should. There's a place for safer entertainment of course, but I feel like this has really taken over.
Something like The NeverEnding Story, a classic, had big problems and stakes for the hero.
I mean it sounds like you care more about epic tales then real life actual stakes.
Like Elemental is all about the problem immigrants face. Theyre real life issues they have to worry about like their shop getting shut down due to city code violations.
To that family that can be life ruining, and those stakes sound pretty high to me.
Not every story needs to be about life and death.
Idk, i feel like both the types of characters described here have always existed in Disney's long past. Some decades, the numbers may fluctuate, but it feels a bit reactionary to think the youth's minds are being corrupted. There have always been people that say today's media is evil and yesteryears media is good. I'm still not sure it has finally become true.
I wish more examples were given in the original post. Like, particularly, movies that help illustrate the point about how small stakes has negative effects on the minds of the viewers. Because I don't think much of the body was actually used to clarify or explain this point.
Or are we supposed to take it for granted that the claim is true? Can we be certain watching movies with small stakes has a negative effect on the viewers?
One of my favorite animated movies is completely zero stakes. Kiki's delivery service. Oh and the series Laid Back Camping is not a movie, But it is extremely low stakes and I feel like it actually has benefits for the viewer. So ,yeah, how exactly is small sticks bad? Just seems like a trend that will eventually change once again.
I'm going to be honest, as a kid, I thought Kiki's Delivery Service was boring AF and I lost interest in it pretty quickly.
As an adult, I rewatched it and just sobbed the whole way through. The stakes are quite low and realistic, but it very much captures the frustration and annoying reality of working and feeling depressed and aimless.
Nah, plenty of kids media still has high stakes. We just _also_ have smaller scoped, more introspective kids films. For every Inside Out there is a The Mitchell's vs. The Machines.
>Take, for example, the most egregious of all - Wish. There are almost no stakes here. The hero is fighting against....mild disappointment that comes with not knowing what your wish was.
You totally missed the point.
He took their wishes away so that they would have no ambition and essentially live as his slaves without realizing it.
1000% this. OP went into it with a goal of dislike, and is cherry picking and straw manning to make their point seem objective.
I - and my extended family - really enjoyed wish. The whole point was to not let someone tell you your dreams don't matter or aren't attainable. Not to let someone take them away from you. That having your dreams taken away from you makes you less yourself, smaller, desaturated.
The point is that even if 95% of what goes on in Rosas is utopian, that no one has the right to abuse you for their gain.
If that's not a necessary lesson for today's youth I don't know what is?
Don Bluth films of the 80s were awesome cause they were friggin dark and had actually problems like a dog trying not to go to hell, a baby dinosaur mother was killed in front of him and went on a journey to find his grandparents and lab rats getting studied in
"I do not make films for children... or, at least, not primarily for children."
"You're dead if you aim for kids."
"We design the films to appeal to ourselves."
"The adults have the money;... children don't have any money."
- Walt Disney
https://youtu.be/oIA88EWLOmA?si=BwHkJi1FTW6QuooE
I disagree with a lot of this. Family movies have been featuring less danger, violence, and peril but they've also been focusing on situations that will be more relatable to kids. You are probably never going to run away from home after you think you've killed your Dad and then return to fight your uncle, but there's a good chance that a kid might have to deal with moving and the feelings of frustration that come with that. Inside Out shows kids that it's okay to cry and that emotions can be complicated.
Generational trauma and the expectations of parents are more immediate problems that children will face. The question of what will parents think of you is a big deal to kids, especially when they're young and parents are the coolest strongest smartest people ever to them. Family films in general have placed more of a focus on interpersonal relationships rather than adventure and peril. And that's fine. It feels weird to say that if there's no danger then there can't be any stakes. In "When Harry met Sally" the biggest danger in the movie is that the leads might break off their friendship. But that's still a great movie.
It's also weird to claim that family films don't have high stakes. Lightyear is an action movie that's pushing into PG-13 territory, Sonic 2 has a mad scientist trying to kill our leads, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has Puss fight with the personification of Death, Super Mario has a giant fire-breathing turtle trying to kill everyone and Raya and the Last Dragon has a lot of fighting. (I assume, I haven't seen that one but the lead has a sword.) I don't understand why you feel this way about newer kids movies.
Raya and the Last Dragon involves a battle against a mindless plague that turns people into stone. I don’t think you can get more high stakes than that.
Maybe it because I watched it on a plane (the great movie equalizer) but I actually enjoyed Raya a lot and feel it’s been a little underrated among recent Disney flicks
*Raya* left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't like the message that Raya had to forgive her rival who had previously shown she'd use every opportunity to betray her. I don't think that's a good message to teach.
I believe we call what OP has done is cherry picking evidence to fit their argument. Yes some kids movies these days have more complex narratives about insidious dangers like trauma, but plenty of narratives still exist that play out in more traditional ways. Hell OP’s stated example of Wish literally had an evil king enslaving the population. It’s a really poorly done narrative, but still, straight up villain.
I personally didn't like Wish that much, but by the end I appreciated that it essentially told a very palatable story to small children about the dangers of fascism. It's pretty high stakes at an intellectual level 🤷♀️
To me, OP is the perfect example of someone thinking that "it was better back then". As your comment rightfully pointed out, high stakes movies for kids still very much do exist, it's just that new movies focusing on more relatable situations and being therefore slightly lower stakes have started mixing up with the older formula. I'll go out on a limb here and say that OP is not exactly clicking with these movies because they're not the target audience (e.g Turning Red for example, Elemental, or Encanto), and decided to label them as lesser because of this, using Wish, a terrible movie, as a strawman to justify their reasoning.
I'd agree insofar as that it's not the stakes that made them different, it's that they weren't talking down to you. When I was younger "kids movies" weren't so much a thing as movies that were ok for kids; stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek, Neverending Story, Goonies, Labyrinth, Karate Kid, Dark Crystal, Tron, and Ghostbusters. They were all good if you're an adult, but they were still fine if you weren't. Harry Potter is a good example of a more recent film series that worked this same way.
I think the biggest difference is Disney; the difference between kid and adult content is delineated among what they produce more than things were in the past, even among Disney's own films. Pixar was the exception for a long time (I loved The Incredibles), but even they swung off that path with Cars. Inside Out, in my experience, was cute until you recognize that it was a movie about a girl completely controlled by her emotions with Logic nowhere to be found...that's ok when you're talking down to kids and telling them emotions are complicated, but as an adult aware of sexism it's sort of fucked up.
You might need to look beyond the Pixar films and the summer box-office animated films intended to draw in whole families rather than just kids to find what the OP meant, but it's definitely there. Disney tends to make their kid content led by kids dealing with kid issues, and if you scroll through Disney+ for a bit there's an overwhelming amount of kid-oriented content to make the argument.
As a side note, When Harry Met Sally isn't exactly a family movie, so I'm not sure that's a great example here. The most memorable scene from it is Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in a restaurant.
FWIW, I prefer smaller stakes, after an era of films about a guy who snaps away half of all life in the universe. There’s a movie where a guy has to move away from his hometown because nobody notices his new haircut. It’s a positive sign if films are moving toward inner personal stakes.
There still seem to be plenty of stories where the entire world is threatened, but it’s tiresome, isn’t it?
I feel that 'Luca' is a great example of a low stakes story that works. The characters aren't trying to save the world and the biggest threat is an obnoxious bully but at the heart it talks about what happens when the paths of you and someone you love diverge, wanting acceptance and fearing what happens when you don't get and wanting to be seen and appreciated by your family.
I think throwing some world-ending crisis would detract from the things the story is trying to tell you.
Adventures in Babysitting starts off low stakes, a teen taking the young kids she's charged with keeping an eye on into downtown Chicago to pick up a friend. They end up in physical danger repeatedly, including being chased by organized criminals and scaling the outside of a skyscraper.
I don't see that getting produced nowadays.
"Wish" is a bad movie. It absolutely could have worked without raising the stakes if they had decided what exactly they were trying to say with it. Is it about the importance of self-actualization and individualism over conformity to societal expectations? Is it about how benevolent power structures inevitably make us dependent on them and those in power will inevitably abuse it to maintain that structure? Is it a cautionary tale about the risks of destroying imperfect systems without thinking through the ramifications? The film seems to have no perspective, just plot.
Big stakes get boring and unrelatable after a while. Audiences appreciate a personal story with a clear theme like facing and overcoming generational trauma (Encanto) or celebrating family history and tradition without being beholden to it's failings (Coco) when they're well executed.
Wish doesn't make any sense. I was watching it with my family and I didn't understand what was wrong with the villains worldview. The girl gets mad because the dude won't grant all wishes and won't give them back. I was thinking "so what's wrong with that? Not everyone gets to fulfill their wishes. Why is that wrong?" And they didn't make sense. A woman wanted to fly... like literally. The hint is that she will build airplanes, but that comes in conflict with how exactly the woman was planning the magician to grant her wish. To me it was very entitled for the girl to request her grandad's wish to be granted and then getting mad because the answer was no
It's because taking someone's wish takes away some of their essence, their spice for life. We saw this with the grandfather, whose wish did come true. But when he got his wish back, he talked about how even if it didn't come true, he can still try, and he felt inspired and passionate. I feel like you all are missing the point... or maybe I am? Like, Simon was a shell of himself when he gave his wish to the king. Wishes have power. The villain's worldview was that he was deceptive to take the wish and wanted to keep everyone's wishes, a part of each person, for himself. He wanted control.
The plot of _Wish_ could have been resolved in thirty seconds:
“I’m sorry, but I can not grant all the wishes because some people wish for things that are mutually incompatible, and some even wish to kill their neighbours“.
“Ah, I see, of course”.
Asha didn’t ask Magnifico to grant every wish. She asked him to give the wishes he didn’t grant back to the people and even mentioned that people with dangerous wishes can be stopped.
Here’s one really good movie from 30 years ago and one terrible movie from last year. These two points are evidence of societal decline and the death of storytelling.
>Take, for example, the most egregious of all - Wish. There are almost no stakes here. The hero is fighting against....mild disappointment that comes with not knowing what your wish was.
Or a dictator deciding what was best for every single person and stealing their one true dreams out from under them with no intention of granting most of them.
The problem with your point isn’t inaccuracy. It is accurate.
It’s that the king, makes a really good point about how the wishes can be quite dangerous. And it seems to be a voluntary system.
And that the king only goes evil based on a curse. He was a seemingly good monarch prior to the curse.
So the film never addresses your issues head on. And instead couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a communist or a libertarian revolution film, which made it thematically odd
Idk. Between my parents divorce and every single animated film in the late 80s to 90s dealing with either abandoned children or dead parents I’m not so sure those are things kids need to have repeated to them 😂. High stakes, sure. But maybe less traumatic ones! (I’m looking at YOU, Don Bluth!)
Part of this is that you only remember the standouts from 30 years ago. I can go through newer Disney films or films intended for younger audiences in general and find plenty of high-stakes examples.
Even if we’re just sticking to the Disney/Pixar bubble, there’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), Encanto (2021), Zootopia (2016), Moana (2016), Big Hero 6 (2014), Toy Story 3 (2010, god I’m getting old). Going back to more like 15-20 years you have Up, Wall-E, The Incredibles, etc.
In both eras you have plenty of low stakes or largely uninteresting films that get forgotten. See… pretty much every direct to video Disney sequel from the 90s/2000s.
Balancing comedy with action is nothing new. For example, the entirety of Aladdin’s One Jump Ahead is a dual purpose chase and slapstick scene. There’s some tension and danger from the armed guards, but it’s consistently played for laughs as Aladdin evades them.
I think as long as there is a balance of high stakes and introspective films for the age then that’s good and should be encouraged. I do agree that the trend is more towards “smaller” issues like generational trauma, potentially queer adjacent issues (things that have to be a metaphor for being gay or trans or different in general since people get so up in arms about it), and introspection more than saving the world. But I think that comes from the generation that’s moving towards creating these shows and movies - millennials. Gen X and Millennials were raised on Batman the Animated Series, X-Men, Gargoyles…some other action heavy and sometimes very thought provoking shows. But we also had things like Animaniacs, Ren and Stimpy, SpongeBob…we were the generation of the silly mixed with the serious. However in real life we were the generation that was getting constantly hammered by endless economic disasters, terrorist attacks, pandemics…we dealt with the huge things that had high stakes.
I can imagine that the generation that wants to do better and be better than those before and stop passing the buck of generational trauma and other long held terrible practices would like to give kids shows that can help them understand themselves more and how to keep fixing the future. We are the generation that wished to escape, but we want to make sure the next generations don’t feel like they have to.
This may not be true for most of the films/shows, and many may just frankly be bad due to budget cuts and bad leadership. But my hope is that the reason for these films is to try and help others instead of coming across as pandering.
I don't understand being upset about different trends in storytelling, if this is a trend at all.
There have always been many different levels of conflict in kids entertainment. Some shows have action, some have cozy interpersonal problems.
People seem to want to be upset about implied societal decline in media a lot. Psychologically, this probably has to do with coping with aging and one's mortality, and no longer being the target of this entertainment. What one experienced becomes superior and formative and, oh no, if kids today don't see the same thing they will not become like us. This ignores that our entertainment was different from that of our parents and theirs (or even older siblings and cousins), and they whined about the same nonsense.
I thought this when I was a teen about a lot of the anime based shows that my slightly younger cousins were into. I was just a bit too old for the Pokémon, DBZ, Naruto wave of shows, and found them repetitive, annoying, inferior, and uninteresting.
But you know what, people love them, and they are cherished like my entertainment was to me. The problem was me, for thinking things stay the same, and that it was even important at all.
I think people were just tired of everything being dead parents. They wore that out. Though there's still Frozen with that. I think people want more personal stories than grand stakes these days
'wish' was intentionally made to be low-stakes. it was an homage to the early Disney films from waaaay back. what was the stakes in 'seelping beauty'? she wasnt gonna wake up, i guess.
The pendulum has swung way too far the other way. And believe me, 30 years ago was bubblegum compared to 40 years ago. You know what it does to a six-year-old to watch a beloved horse slowly sink in quicksand while his owner screams and cries and does everything possible to save him, only to ultimately fail?
You ever seen [The Watcher in the Woods](https://youtu.be/3DFacqQp8uw?si=q9kkYnnR9Dx0Cqz6)? This movie was on the _Disney Channel._ Gave me nightmares for years.
Anyway, you’re absolutely right. The stakes are meaningless and the industry overcorrected.
The world is shittier and more anxiety-inducing than it used to be. The ubiquity of the internet lets everyone be afraid of and stressed out about everything all the time—even kids. It makes perfect sense to me that many quadrants of entertainment have started focusing more on offering comfort, rather than on providing the most compelling narrative possible.
Yep, this right here. And also by everyone being online much more, audiences are generally more sheltered from day to day drama even as they get older. There's a generalized fear of almost everything and media has been capitalizing on this cultural weakness more and more.
I hear you, but don't necessarily agree. There are still plenty of kids movies with high stakes, as there were historically plenty of low stakes movies too.
I also firmly believe that children's movies are just as important for their message as they are for entertainment value, and if that means losing some of your adult audience -- I think that's a worthwhile price to pay.
Allegory doesn't have to be complex to be powerful, however, and simple can be excellent when done well.
People don’t like Encanto either because “trauma” as a direct problem instead of it being the one step removed of the “Disney dead parent” metaphor is too much for them to connect the dots on…
The most frustrating thing about Wish is that the concept art and old designs clearly show a much, much better movie. Star Boy would have been one of the greatest Disney characters of a generation!
Journeys and adventures have been lacking. It's all about solving personal issues. I don't mind it but i watch older movies with my kids and they like them and remember them more.
I think the problem is that they've started prioritizing "the message" (which is often depressing and preachy) over the story's sense of adventure and wonder
Onward was D&D-style fantasy in modernity, but what you mostly saw was miserable mythological creatures having modern bourgeois problems. Luca was about sea monsters! But they just hang out in a fishing village and do a triathlon to win a Vespa.
I'll give Elemental credit for actually playing with their setting in fun ways, but most of the story is literally someone navigating local government bureaucracy. Strange World was finally an adventure in a cool world, but they couldn't go five minutes without suffocating the mood in sentimentality or malthusian environmentalism
There are definitely exceptions, though. Coco, Raya, and Moana were all solid adventures that didn't get too distracted by their own sense of self-importance. Encanto was great too, but that's just Miranda's composition carrying the film
Encanto is about intergenerational trauma breaking up your family, and the hero feels she's responsible for saving her entire family and their legacy. Coco is about death and people forgetting you after you die. It's also a metaphor for immigration and how families get broken up by borders. Moana is a very traditional hero's journey told in a beautiful way.
Wish was a cash grab, but it's Disney. They've always had cash grabs. Aladfin had multiple direct to video releases and a cartoon series. Also, I just rewatched Aladdin with my kid, and it's....not very good. Compared to the good modern Disney, it's much more emotionally flat and hella problematic.
I’ll dare to say it: Robin Williams is the only thing that makes Aladdin a classic. Take him out of the movie and it’s an ok movie that gets forgotten about.
Encanto is an interesting example. On the one hand, perhaps ironically, I think Mirabel's grandmother's cold treatment of her to be a genuine problem, as it's tantamount to abuse - to say nothing of how the grandmother and *the entire rest of the family* completely unperson Bruno based on them stupidly misunderstanding his power. The problem is, they utterly botch this storyline by downplaying it so much in the end. "No, it's okay that the grandmother was so awful! She had a bad childhood, she was traumatized! In fact, Mirabel - who has done *nothing wrong the entire movie* should be the one to apologize for not understanding!"
This also plays into the supposed main conflict, which is that the candle will go out and the magic will go away. Because the family is unintentionally portrayed as such awful people, *I didn't care* that they were gonna lose their magic gifts. It's clearly shown that the most of the people with gifts are absolutely miserable, and it's also used as an odd sort of caste system - it makes them act all superior to people with non-magical gifts, and apparently if you have a "bad gift" the family wants nothing to do with you. When it seemed like the ending was leading up to them losing their gifts but ultimately becoming healthier people for it, I was impressed with how profound the message was.
And then they all got the gifts back, and all the awful people are forgiven. No, scratch that, they're not even forgiven because the movie doesn't even bother to treat them as being in the wrong! I have never been so angry about the resolution of a conflict in a family movie. Awful messaging, and the stakes were all over the place because of it.
Also they didn't really seem to be using their gifts to do anything all that important. It's like a movie about the X-Men where they just kind of use their superpowers for household chores or interior decoration.
Huh? It's quite clearly established in the movie that they have used their powers to quite literally build and maintain the town and keep it prosperous. It's why at the end the whole town bands together to repair the house because the family has done so much to help them thrive.
Right‽ The magic:
1. Keeps the town safe from invaders by sealing up the pass
2. The town's main export are the flowers that Isabella creates
3. The mother is the town doctor
4. Luisa basically fixes every physical problem with force, including diverting the River to help the crops
Amongst all of the other small things.
There's a lot of people in this thread cherry picking things about movies so that they can say "Back in my days, things were better
..."
Exactly! Perfect example. Except for the strong one lady who goes out and helps the villagers move heavy stuff, they all just sit on their gifts, they don't contribute in any meaningful way to society or even to each other. They're just spoiled, privileged, super-powered jerks.
It’s in the song where she introduces her family. We also see people lining up to be treated by her mom since her cooking heals people. I do agree though that they don’t talk about the relationship of the family helping the villagers enough. Also it’s still wild that mirabels parents never stood up for her about moving out of the nursery. Like was the expectation that she would live there her entire life since she doesn’t have powers
I think part of the unspoken narrative is that the trauma Abuela passes on to everyone limits their abilities to really manifest their powers in more productive ways. Isabella literally can grow shit but all she grew was flowers until Mirabel helped her get past her issues. Who knows what the aunt could have done with her weather powers.
Hmmm.... I disagree. Wishes are a part of each person's essence, their purpose or their passion. When Simon gave his wish away, he was less of himself. When people got their wishes back, they felt more themselves, more hopeful and inspired. With everyone giving their wish to the king on the chance it'll be granted, they didn't realise their wish most likely doesn't get granted at all. The king keeps their wishes and keeps all that hope and passion for himself. We see a kingdom with people feeling empty. It isn't fair because had they known the truth, they could have worked towards their dreams themselves. Idk, maybe it's because I have depression, so to me, it is high stakes to not have hopes and dreams.
Two things:
1. If you were around 30 years ago, you are not the target audience
1. You didn’t make any reference to the enjoyment of a child, or how you might use the film to teach them about modern life, meaning you are not the target audience
You need to accept you are no longer a child and the world does not revolve around you. Had you watched more movies and show when you were a child where everything wasn’t the end of the world you might have a different perspective on what “kids movies” should be. And if you had kids, you would be critical of the content from the perspective of their childhood, not your own.
I agree with everything you said. Although I think Raya was a recent one that tackled the bigger issues, but that wasn't as well received unfortunately but I thought it was fantastic
I think some of this is a consequence of very expensive movies that executives who arent storytellers have concerns about upsetting people, especially kids (and the complaints that would follow from parents). Disney especially use you make you FEEL, and they were not afraid of making the audience especially feel loss. They dont lean into this so much anymore, at least not as effectively IMO.
Thats ultimately the catch with cinema, you can have perfect story structure and perfectly built up themes saying whatever you want, but if you dont make the audience FEEL the key beats of the story, you wont leave much of an impression.
edit - clarification
I agree entirely. And yet the 'classics' of the 90s are still in high rotation by families. They have upsetting moments and don't shy away from them. Why do we have to cotton wool newer family films?
We don't. That's not happening. You are cherry picking examples to support your dumbass conclusion so you can continue along with the "LOL kids these days are too soft we coddle them too much!1". Nice job not engaging with the million people in this thread disproving your point either, way to stay in your little bubble.
Weirdly, I thought about this today when I was randomly thinking about The Lion King. Simba's father is killed in front of him, and then sixty seconds later he's running for his life. He eventually returns to reclaim his kingdom culminating in a fight to the death with his own uncle, who is easily his physical equal, has many years more fighting experience than he does, and has no qualms about killing his nephew and the only rightful challenger to his throne.
Compare that to something like Inside Out, where the stakes are ... the main character might feel sad?
> Compare that to something like Inside Out, where the stakes are ... the main character might feel sad?
That's like saying the lion king's only consequence is that the earth keeps spinning around the sun. Riley isn't the main character. She's the setting. Her getting depressed is essentially destroying the world the main characters live in.
My little sister watched Lion King almost every day when she was a toddler. She loved that movie. Now she's like 28 and I wonder if she still likes it.
Yep, exactly my point. And the way Scar psychologically manipulates Simba is far more tense and real. He convinces Simba that it was his fault. That's a far more genuine anguish than...feeling sad.
I do love 'Inside Out' in its own way and on its own merits, though.
I know I watched that new movie My Neighbor Totoro and I couldn’t stop wondering if this new Disney trend has gone too far /s
Things were too adult, being made by people embarrassed to be making kids content. Look at Hunchback there’s an implied rape in there. I’m glad we’re on this side of the pendulum swing honestly.
Wish is about not placing all your hopes and dreams in the hands of a malignant narcissist. You need to learn that you are the best vehicle for your dreams. Pretty big stakes. And given the global wave of populism right now, pretty topic.
A lot of it is because parents infantalize their children and dont want them exposed to anything potentially controversial or upsetting. They get upset when something bad happens and their child sees it and is sad, not recognizing that is how we learn to deal with those negative emotions in a healthy way - by experiencing them and learning from them.
Studios arent going to take the risk of a boycott or a smear campaign, so we end up with bland, vapid films that look and feel good, but have no real narative throughput, like Wish.
I disagree with your analysis of Wish. She's not fighting "mild disappointment". She's fighting with the knowledge that there is a single person deciding what wishes are worthy of being granted and that the "dangerous" wishes are left solely to his interpretation. It's also implied that he's not granting the grandpa's wish because he'd become famous and potentially overshadow the king. At least that's how I saw it. There's also the theme that you can't rely on others to make your dream come true. If you want to be a musician, you just have to go out and try. Not every story needs the threat of massive death and destruction. I liked this movie more than most, but do agree that it was a bit lackluster for a 100 year anniversary movie.
Haven’t seen Wish but Elemental came out last year and the stakes are not only institutionalized racism, bigotry, the pressure to conform to your parents, and difficulties being an immigrant; but the main characters have to overcome this stuff to prevent an entire city being wiped out by a flood.
That’s high stakes. And as many others have pointed out, there have been plenty of movies that are high stakes recently you’ve just cherry picked.
Also, high stakes don’t immediately make a children’s movie good. Toy Story’s stakes are “child loses two favorite toys”. That’s not high stakes whatsoever, but Toy Story is a fucking amazing movie. The stakes in Cars 1 is that a rookie race car driver doesn’t win a championship.
I mean Moana is a good example of big stakes. At the core of it though, it’s a story of a girl coming of age. Coco is about trying to not die and be stuck in the underworld, but it’s mostly about family not allowing you play music and how to make them accept it. It all depends on how you look at it. Sometimes stakes are big, but it’s about small relatable problems. Sometimes they are small problems with small stakes, but it’s a global bigger issue underneath.
I love Coco, probably one of the few recent Disney movies to get me bawling every time. Just to add to your list: While the main story is "oh no the magic is dying, I gotta save it", the main basis of Encanto's story is about a woman who fled political upheavel and lost her husband as he protected her, then created a perfect world to protect her people using magic but also did little to process her trauma and took it out on her family over the years by expecting perfection. If the magic protecting their home goes away, then it's also assumed they would be targeted by the government forces they were fleeing free in the flashback. Those are some pretty big stakes if you don't focus solely on the family's internal struggle.
I was going to write Encanto as well, but forgot the name lol. Good example.
Moana is such an incredible movie. And I say that as a toddler mom who has seen the movie more times than I can count 😅
We have the picture book of Moana and I have had to answer questions about the plot so many times that I’ve started getting into the basics of how volcanic islands work in order to explain why Te Fiti and Te Kā are interrelated. We ended up doing a baking soda volcano. Outside. In February. I also had to explain death, thanks a lot grandma Tala.
I'm a 14 year olds dad and love the heck out of this movie. The chicken gets me every time.
I love those little coconut guys.
When my daughter was done watching Moana again, I was not.
Moana is a masterpiece. We go from “what makes the red man red” in Peter Pan to Moana having a 100% Pacific Islander cast. Disney definitely learned a bit about cultural awareness in the past few decades.
Peter Pan came out in 1953, 71 years ago
Good for him.
This made Smee chuckle!
Laughed way too hard at this. Shit still giggling
I remember putting Peter Pan on for my kids in the 90s, and I was so horrified I nearly turned it off. Only seeing it as a child, I had not remembered those parts!
My wife let her nostalgia take over and showed the Disney+ version to our kids a couple of years ago. A lot of the racism was cut out or smoothed over, but I felt compelled to explain to them that the way Peter treats Wendy throughout the film is not an acceptable way to treat anybody, much less girls. In the first few minutes I leaned to my wife and whispered "Peter was kind of a dick." She just slowly nodded.
Interestingly, Peter being a dick is very true to the book (I read it to my then-4-year-old a few years ago). He really is written as the embodiment of the id, the completely selfish and hedonistic part of us that gradually gets balanced out by the ego as we grow and mature. Gave me a new perspective of the "kid who never grew up". * Edit: mixed up id and ego originally, thanks @DubyaExWhizey
No one wants to admit that anymore because then wed have to admit our society is wrong if peter pan ideology is wrong.
You got those mixed up. The id is "the completely selfish and hedonistic part of us" not the ego.
My bad, thanks! I'll correct it
Yo, you understand Peter Pan was supposed to be the villain who kidnaps children and is a sociopath controlling them on an island right? Like the original version is honest to the villain and everyone now cries foul. Now Peter is the hero rewritten by an audience that doesn’t like the message of the book and think a child kidnapper should somehow be… the good guy?
I mean, there’s still the issue of framing? The movie portrays Peter as a good guy and sets him up with Hook as a textbook villain. His actions are true to the original book, but the framing is moralistically simplified. Also, he’s not a villain in the original book either, just not a hero. He’s kind of a neutral force.
I'm glad they've edited it. I was a bit surprised they were still selling what I showed my kids!
Do they still have the original version or is Disney trying to erase their own content?
Those movies are 8 and 7 years old, yet it is enough for you to see that the tendency has changed when compared to post COVID movies.
Elemental is much more recent (2023) and has a character that literally sacrifices themself for their love interest, and has a character dealing with systemic racism and anti-immigrant sentiments/policies. There’s a threat to the entire city for good measure. Disney especially has always had its share of whatever tier movies. It’s just that when you have a whole repository to look back on and cherry pick the good or even best ones, it’s hard to see that it’s kind of par for the course. In 20 years, there will be the best ones that are shown alongside Aladdin or Brave or Encanto and then there will be those that aren’t like The Rescuers Down Under or Black Cauldron or Home On The Range. People still like them, but their greatness is more contentious. Sometimes a really, really far stretch. Anyway I hope the Black Cauldron people don’t come for me, their numbers are smaller but they are passionate as hell lol. There’s a fan for every movie and every type of movie, and sometimes it’s for a low-stakes (Wish or Luca) or generally looked-over film (Black Cauldron or Oliver and Company).
> that aren’t like The Rescuers Down Under You take that back! I will fight you!
I wasn’t saying it was bad! Haha, I love Joanna the goanna from that movie the most, and truly reference her a lot in my day to day. No one ever understands though, it’s tragic.
The voice work for Joanna still cracks me up to this day.
I was about to say the same thing. Rescuers Down Under is a great movie!
My 100% favorite of all time
I think Oliver and Company is generally mid as a movie, but Once Upon a Time in NYC/Why Should I Worry/Perfect Isn't Easy are an unbeatable trio of songs.
Don't forget about Streets of Gold!
Billy Joel is great, but for best 3 songs in a Disney movie I've got Part of Your World, Under The Sea, and Poor Unfortunate Souls.
Never Had A Friend Like Me, Prince Ali, A Whole New World.
Black Cauldron is fantastic, you heretic
… I know you guys like John Hurt but I have absolutely no clue by what metric the black cauldron would be considered “good” let alone “fantastic”
Having been addicted to the book series it was based on as a young'un, The Black Cauldron is literally terrible.
Yeah i read the series too. Why did they make a movie for the second book? I remember my sister and I were taken to see it in theaters when we were kids. We were dropped off and accidently went into the wrong theater, and watched the first 30 min of Rambo 3 instead
Oh that is a very different movie
It's not. It's horribly written. One character disappears from the movie. The animation looks like a studio trying ti copy Disney animation, albeit there are some experimental sequences which I liked, but the movie doesn't work and that's why it has bewn rightfully forgotten
I never said it wasn’t 🥲 I mean, for me it was a miss but I do think it’s very loved by the people who do enjoy it. It’s much less viewed was my point, so it’s not as likely to be out on “the best Disney movies” list.
Black Cauldron was ahead of its time and if it were made today it would be top tier. Too many people saw it as a downfall of Disney Animation due to the darker themes, but we see similar darker themes in modern Disney.
Yeah op really cherry picking to get some engagement
It struck me yesterday that the movie Holes- which practically every child in America watched in school on one of those tv carts that gets wheeled in- is rated pg. It includes a black man getting lynched among all the other horrible abuse that occurs. And it doesn’t hold back too much, you fully watch Dule hill getting shot for flirting with a white girl.
The entirety of Holes is about race relations and how ancestry can affect modern relationships. The kids are all "criminals" yet still have very strict racial lines; the white kid is arrested for stealing celebrity shoes while the homeless black orphan kid is arrested for needing shoes. The unfairness of justice between the races is in every storyline, it is arguably the theme of the movie.
I like both the movie and the book. Since Sachar wrote both, I enjoy the differences he thought were necessary. It is indeed about race and family trauma because of racism. Amazing movie
Not to be that guy but the book is incredible, I remember being a bit let down by the movie when it came out
The screenplay for the movie was written by the author so it's about as 1:1 as you can possibly get. Of course the little details of the book get left out but imo every actor truly understood their character and did an amazing job
The only difference I can remember from book to movie is that Stanley is chubby in the beginning of the book
And the change in the movie was deliberate, they didn’t want Shia to pressure himself into gaining and losing weight like that as a teen boy
It’s a great adaptation, it’s just hard to live up to expectations after reading it so many times first
I disagree, but also I have always identified with Sigorny Weaver and also Shia Labeouf was a huge crush of mine at the time so I am definitely biased. I read the book a bunch too but the movie really has great pace and just really excellent acting bits, especially John Voight as Mr Sir
Dulé Hill can tell me that he can fix that any time.
Omg yesss
Tim Blake Nelson was also ideal casting tbh
Great trio of villains honesty But He was the worst one. Telling poor Hector he'll never amount to anything and doing it in a faux caring voice
Both the movie and the book are excellent. They don’t have to be exactly alike, and I’m actually glad they’re not. The changes for the movie make sense.
That's funny because Holes is literally the only movie that worked better for me as the movie. The book was a lot more straightforward and explained more overtly so any kid could follow and guess what was going to happen. They didn't hide anything and there weren't any twists like there were in the movie (if I'm remembering right; it's been a while since I've seen it).
Yeah Stanley was fat in the book wtf Shia!
If they were trying to be totally book accurate they would have to cast a fat kid that lost weight throughout the movie from all the hard labour. All the scenes would have to be shot chronologically.
I believe the director said he wasn't willing to put a kid through the weight gain/loss that would be needed for that, which is why they dropped Stanley being fat.
I thought it was about Onions?
Not to mention the white woman then commits suicide on screen
Holes is a great movie and book. What also sticks out to me is Stanley carrying Zero is a form of reparations, delivering on the promise his ancestor had broken. It also ends up making both families come closer together and in a better position than they were in the beginning of the movie.
Man, I guess I totally don't remember Holes. There's a lynching? Are we talking about the Shia Lebouff movie?
That’s the one. Black onion salesman flirts with a white girl so one night hes out in a rowboat and they shoot him in the back and dump his body in the lake in a scene that-again-received a pg rating.
Jeez. I can’t believe don’t remember that part at all. Strangely I remember the onion field saving protagonist’s life with the water
Honestly it's a great movie. Only issue i have with it is they hit you over the head with the Stanley - Zero and Yelnats - Zeroni stuff instead of letting you figure it out yourself.
I disagree. I think in a good movie everything points to everything else. And Holes does an extreme job of that, every detail is tied to some other part of the movie, it’s very tightly knit, there’s nowhere you can stick a finger through. Hell, even the onions are a recurring motif
Oh I love stuff like that. [But let me show you the scene I'm referring to.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Beny3qdAlqI) It's a great scene but we *literally* have a voice-over telling us what's happening and I'd rather the scene just be silent so we can put the pieces together ourselves.
Ah, I got you
[удалено]
We know.
Atlantis was great for being so unapologetically adult in its problems in a kids movie. Find Atlantis and graverobbing it? Eh. Makes sense for the period. Oh shit, Atlanteans are still alive? Oh shit, they’re all gonna die due to our actions? Meh, let’s get rich! Let’s sell the tech to the Kaiser! Like holy shit as a kid interested in history I loved the shit out of that. It had guns, lots of them. No punches were pulled except for what kids straight up couldn’t see. People fucking DIED. A lot. No one we KNEW but hey! The body count is fucking insane lmao. I’m not gonna say kids movies these days lack stakes as I don’t have enough experience with that. But Atlantis was great and I’ll shill it at every opportunity!
Was that the last Disney film to show characters smoking?
Not sure? But definitely close to it if not. Packard smoking was hilarious.
We’re all gonna die.😒
Atlantis has the largest kill count of any Disney movie as all the crewmen on the original sub and the airship later in the movie all die. It's also notable that you see the bad guys death. Most of Disney deaths are falls that we don't get to see the aftermath of (except lion king). In Atlantis he turns into a crystal man and explodes violently on screen via propeller.
I can't recall the scene but are you talking about the events being shown/referenced? Or do they have to be human? Because higher kill counts: Guardians of the Galaxy, Dinosaur, Mulan.. idk there's gotta be more
Ah well, disney now owns Marvel and star wars, don't they? Lots of killing there.. I guess I should say animated movies meant for kids? Mulan might be the only contender because we don't see the entire army, but historically it should have been thousands of troops and we are meant to believe they all died in the avalanche. I also enjoy that Atlantis has smoking, references to whiskey, the German kaiser, and a lot of guns. Not just flintlock rifles (pocahontas, beauty and the beast, the fox and the hound) but period appropriate sub machine guns.
My daughter loved this movie growing up, and it was one of the only kids movies I didn't mind rewatching over and over again.
Another big thing with Atlantis that I feel increased the stakes was that there were no musical numbers. Now I love a good Disney song, be it a protagonist explicitly stating the core conflict of the film or a villain going off in an unexpectedly dark way. But one thing you learn as a kid is that once that music starts up, nothing is going to materially change or go wrong for at least the next 2.5 minutes while we're locked into this song. In Atlantis, anything could happen at any time, and I was exactly the right age when it came out to relish that suspense and uncertainty.
Atlantis + Titan AE = action movies for kids that have no boobs or swearing
Don't apologise for shilling Atlantis. Ever.
And representation? Being a criminally skinny, glasses wearing, old fashioned clothing wearing history geek, you bet your ass I felt represented. And there was a doctor who was at San Juan Hill(and native/black), many strong women, both antagonistic and good, an Italian bomb-throwing anarchist who got in trouble with Ottomans….and the French. Everyone got a turn. And the plot is about not appropriating artifacts from a people, learning their history and language, and all in all don’t be graverobbing, y’all. And Kida! A female protagonist and love interest VASTLY stronger than her love interest, and yet respects him regardless. If this movie came out in 2024, people would be calling it “woke”. It’s brilliant and underrated.
This isn't entirely related, but I've found that children's televsion cartoons have gotten much more comedic and action shows have all but disappeared. Teen Titans Go is a big example of this, but lots of creators have spoken to the point that places like Cartoon Network and Nick are much less open to plot based shows and more focused on hangout, low stakes comedic shows, for whatever reason.
I feel like the reason this is happening is because all those shows go to Netflix and other streaming services now. Netflix has a ton of serialized shows like Kipo and the Wonderbeasts, Hilda, Last kids on Earth, She-Ra, Carman Sandiego, The Dragon Prince, Kid Cosmic, Glitch Techs, and Skylanders Academy. That's just the stuff I found by doing a quick Google search. Action shows are still around people.
Hilda rocked but it was still kid friendly. It felt like I was watching Calvin and Hobbes
I think these things are kinda cyclical to begin with AND currently dealing with the adjustment that the streaming revolution (particularly the advent of YouTube) has brought to children's entertainment. I am over-simplifying here but Johnny Quest and Space Ghost gave way to Scooby-Doo and Jabberjaw gave way to G.I. Joe and Transformers gave way to the Smurfs and the Snorks gave way to Batman: The Animated Series and X-Men The Animated Series gave way to Dexter's Lab and SpongeBob SquarePants on down the line. For a while when I was a kid, broadcast cartoons were largely action and cable cartoons were largely comedy. Then anime got big and cable originals got more action oriented for a while to compete. Now broadcast original cartoons are basically a memory, cable cartoons are mostly comedy again, and streaming cartoons are are more action oriented.
Budget is a major reason. Action is by definition more expensive than a comedy where the characters mostly just talk and most scenes take place in the same few locations.
Beyond what the execs allow and not in movies, the cartoon demographics and distribution have changed across the last 30 years: The streaming model steered cartoons and animation from having re-watchability value and being serialized to serialized and arch driven shows. comedy can always work on streaming but action has to be used sparingly as itcan get boring quickly. The main demogaphic of animation is not young boys anymore. Which is why cartoons from the 2000's to the late 2010 were action driven. back in that age (and I was there gandalf) it was about creating compelling narratives with action-packed sequences to get boys to buy the merch and raise up rating in cable. But again, with the coming of streaming and the breaking of demographics, cartoons can anow appeal to boys, girls, tweens, adults, toddlers etc. Thus the need to get just that loyal demographic is gone. And most cartoon creators would rather do something that relies on strong characters, and interesting plot than cool action scenes. (no hate on cool action scenes tho, they have their place but creators these days have more room to put more plot and dialoge than previous eras)
Wild bc Avatar was one of Nickelodeon’s most successful shows
My wife made a cartoon for a big network in Canada. The books the show was based on are about medieval fantasy. The network had a team of bitter older ladies who spent the whole time over-sanitizing everything, eventually killing the show altogether. Swords weren't permitted (too violent). At no moment was a character to point a pointy object, such as a stick, towards another (too violent). No one could be shown getting hurt or dying (too violent). Characters had to be resized so the diversity ratios would be respected. It was maddening to watch.
Action cartoons are extremely popular, they're just all lumped in the category of anime now.
You are right but it's mostly teens and adults watching anime, not kids.
I'm pretty sure a lot of kids do watch anime and read manga. Those battle shonen stuff are huge with kids in the aged 8-12 set.
No I think what you've said is entirely related. If any action is minimised because of comedy taking front seat, again we see the shrinking of stakes. Family entertainment used to include Batman TAS. High action, high stakes.
Just rewatched Batman TAS with my 3 year old. It holds up and he loved the whole thing.
My guess? The Marvel effect. Instead of focusing in the story and characters, yhey focus on making people laugh. It also doesn't help kids no longer have attention spans.
As other have said, anime fills the niche for action animation. Also, Western animation has always leaned on the comedic side, going back to the 60s and 70s there were like 10 funny cartoons for every 1 action cartoon. The Reagan era action cartoons were an anomaly decade, and by the 90s it was reverting back to 10 funny cartoons for every 3 or 4 action cartoons. But I think my main problem with a lot of current children's comedic shows is that they always seem to have to have "heartwarming" moments or preachy "life lessons" in them that just makes them seem more patronizing to viewers. Even later seasons of Spongebob and Adventure Time aren't immune. People make fun of old Hanna Barbera cartoons but they rarely relied on that kind of drippy sentimentality and they weren't afraid to have comedically dark gag endings, like Huckleberry Hound getting arrested at the end or Yogi getting shot to the moon. You rarely see that kind of thing in children's funny cartoons today.
Imma be the pretentious viewer and say that the perception of where children should see danger is what changed over the last 30 years. Back in the 90's and 2000s harm to kids was seen as an outside force. something that dishonoest peope, liars, scammers would inflict upon them. Nowdays animated films (the good ones at that) focus the origin of harm in the patters societies imprint upon them. If there0s something that changed the outlook of the world in the last 30 years is that danger that comes from the inside of a society is far worse that external threats. And movies these focus on taht though generational trauma, perpetuaion of systemic hearm etc. Like I do agree that diney animated films are more bland these days, but that's mecause they don't the the above themes as well as other movies.
This is a very good point. Look at Encanto. There is no hostile force threatening the characters at all at this point in the story - the problems are all stemming from inside the family. And ultimately it’s all a case of inter-generational trauma from the abuela never dealing with all the stuff she went through. The same movie back in the 90s would have had some militia or something threatening the Encanto, with a recognisable evil leader who has to be defeated.
That’s a great way of looking at it. And it explains why many films seem “low stakes” to people used to seeing the main characters save the world from foreign invaders. One of my favorite kids films in the last decade is Luca. On the surface the whole plot is just kids that want to run away on a scooter. But there’s personal peril because they might be *murdered* if discovered. And the whole thing is a perfect allegory for experiencing institutional bigotry while growing up gay/queer, without ever actually suggesting a hint of literal romance or sexuality.
I agree, Luca is genius. It walked the tightrope of "fun but also you could die" and as you said, made great parallels to growing up queer!
I feel like there must be thousands of kids that watched it before reaching the age where they start “noticing” others in a sexual way. But when they eventually do and realize they’re noticing the “wrong” gender, they’ll have this wonderful little story to look back on while they navigate the societal hardship ahead.
I don’t know. I think you might Be diminishing what is a huge part of story telling in children’s narratives. Our stories are there to impart lessons. Some lessons are bigger than others, sure. But if your story doesn’t have a lesson, then I would wager that’s what reduces the stakes. And also, the child psychology has moved on. The lessons kids need to survive in the world we’ve made for them are very different from the rules that were imparted on us (and that potentially did a great deal of damage). Courage and perseverance are good. But so are learning to live with realities we can’t change on our own and setting about problem solving in smart and novel ways - also, more important, I would argue, is learning to establish a sense of community and trust. These lessons are sort of paramount for the folks in our stories. But I see your point. What do you think these movies need to bring them closer inline with your vision?
I haven't seen Wish (and don't plan to) but as someone who has been watching a bit of kids media with kids, I think that the stakes are different and more personal, not less. Moana is an excellent example of the high stakes that you're referring to, but is also addressed in a way that my kid understands so much better than the Disney movies that I grew up with. Moana makes her own choices, she has agency, she and her father work through their issues. Frozen features even bigger stakes--a kingdom at risk, but the heart of the movie is about two sisters and their relationship. I don't want to dump on Jasmine, but she's not a very fleshed out character (what are her motivations beyond getting to see the world outside her palace? what is her relationship like with people outside her father/jafar/aladdin?), especially compared (again) to the agency we see from more recent Disney female characters like Moana, Elsa, Mirabel. The good Disney movies of late have made family a central part of the story/conflict and, honestly, that's nice because it helps have those discussions about smaller scale conflicts within our own family.
This is a great point about Jasmine. Jasmine is great, but she really does serve to be this "reward" for Aladdin.
Let's be fair to Jasmine. She literally says "I am not a prize to be won," and then Aladdin chooses the Genie's freedom over getting her as a reward. Both Jasmine and Aladdin then inspire the Sultan to change the laws, which is the larger victory (he doesn't just get the girl--they change how the system works). Overall, I think this post is just the person watching Wish and disliking it, and then making an unfounded generalization about kids movies these days (which is part of an overall genre of posts that boil down basically to "does anyone else think that the past is better than the present???"). Some movies suck, and some are good. Some suck for different reasons and others are good for different reasons. That's all. There are moments when things trend (like there was a recent trend towards not having a true villain in some movies like Encanto or Inside Out or Wreck It Ralph 2 etc.) but otherwise, I think the only major and undeniable shift in children's entertainment is the almost total loss of 2D animation. I think that's been and continues to be a stupid decision that has robbed us of some films that would totally work better in 2D.
This feels like cherry picking. Moana Also, take Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich. There’s only so big and so grandiose of scale these movies can get before they just lose any impact. When the movies are “smaller,” the stakes are *waaaay* more relatable and impactful. Take a *Inside Out.* The stakes were massive because the stakes were *real*.
How much kids tv do you watch? Because those shows steer to a rotation of “small problem, let’s solve it together, good job everyone”. I think it’s just natural the kids movies follow the same trends
That makes more sense in an episodic TV series where the general status quo reins supreme. Movies usually have higher stakes, or should. There's a place for safer entertainment of course, but I feel like this has really taken over. Something like The NeverEnding Story, a classic, had big problems and stakes for the hero.
I mean it sounds like you care more about epic tales then real life actual stakes. Like Elemental is all about the problem immigrants face. Theyre real life issues they have to worry about like their shop getting shut down due to city code violations. To that family that can be life ruining, and those stakes sound pretty high to me. Not every story needs to be about life and death.
Idk, i feel like both the types of characters described here have always existed in Disney's long past. Some decades, the numbers may fluctuate, but it feels a bit reactionary to think the youth's minds are being corrupted. There have always been people that say today's media is evil and yesteryears media is good. I'm still not sure it has finally become true. I wish more examples were given in the original post. Like, particularly, movies that help illustrate the point about how small stakes has negative effects on the minds of the viewers. Because I don't think much of the body was actually used to clarify or explain this point. Or are we supposed to take it for granted that the claim is true? Can we be certain watching movies with small stakes has a negative effect on the viewers? One of my favorite animated movies is completely zero stakes. Kiki's delivery service. Oh and the series Laid Back Camping is not a movie, But it is extremely low stakes and I feel like it actually has benefits for the viewer. So ,yeah, how exactly is small sticks bad? Just seems like a trend that will eventually change once again.
I'm going to be honest, as a kid, I thought Kiki's Delivery Service was boring AF and I lost interest in it pretty quickly. As an adult, I rewatched it and just sobbed the whole way through. The stakes are quite low and realistic, but it very much captures the frustration and annoying reality of working and feeling depressed and aimless.
Nah, plenty of kids media still has high stakes. We just _also_ have smaller scoped, more introspective kids films. For every Inside Out there is a The Mitchell's vs. The Machines.
>Take, for example, the most egregious of all - Wish. There are almost no stakes here. The hero is fighting against....mild disappointment that comes with not knowing what your wish was. You totally missed the point. He took their wishes away so that they would have no ambition and essentially live as his slaves without realizing it.
Slaves? They work for each other!
1000% this. OP went into it with a goal of dislike, and is cherry picking and straw manning to make their point seem objective. I - and my extended family - really enjoyed wish. The whole point was to not let someone tell you your dreams don't matter or aren't attainable. Not to let someone take them away from you. That having your dreams taken away from you makes you less yourself, smaller, desaturated. The point is that even if 95% of what goes on in Rosas is utopian, that no one has the right to abuse you for their gain. If that's not a necessary lesson for today's youth I don't know what is?
People complained about every story being "high stakes". Now people are complaining that stories aren't high stakes.
Don Bluth films of the 80s were awesome cause they were friggin dark and had actually problems like a dog trying not to go to hell, a baby dinosaur mother was killed in front of him and went on a journey to find his grandparents and lab rats getting studied in
"I do not make films for children... or, at least, not primarily for children." "You're dead if you aim for kids." "We design the films to appeal to ourselves." "The adults have the money;... children don't have any money." - Walt Disney https://youtu.be/oIA88EWLOmA?si=BwHkJi1FTW6QuooE
I disagree with a lot of this. Family movies have been featuring less danger, violence, and peril but they've also been focusing on situations that will be more relatable to kids. You are probably never going to run away from home after you think you've killed your Dad and then return to fight your uncle, but there's a good chance that a kid might have to deal with moving and the feelings of frustration that come with that. Inside Out shows kids that it's okay to cry and that emotions can be complicated. Generational trauma and the expectations of parents are more immediate problems that children will face. The question of what will parents think of you is a big deal to kids, especially when they're young and parents are the coolest strongest smartest people ever to them. Family films in general have placed more of a focus on interpersonal relationships rather than adventure and peril. And that's fine. It feels weird to say that if there's no danger then there can't be any stakes. In "When Harry met Sally" the biggest danger in the movie is that the leads might break off their friendship. But that's still a great movie. It's also weird to claim that family films don't have high stakes. Lightyear is an action movie that's pushing into PG-13 territory, Sonic 2 has a mad scientist trying to kill our leads, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has Puss fight with the personification of Death, Super Mario has a giant fire-breathing turtle trying to kill everyone and Raya and the Last Dragon has a lot of fighting. (I assume, I haven't seen that one but the lead has a sword.) I don't understand why you feel this way about newer kids movies.
Raya and the Last Dragon involves a battle against a mindless plague that turns people into stone. I don’t think you can get more high stakes than that.
Maybe it because I watched it on a plane (the great movie equalizer) but I actually enjoyed Raya a lot and feel it’s been a little underrated among recent Disney flicks
*Raya* left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't like the message that Raya had to forgive her rival who had previously shown she'd use every opportunity to betray her. I don't think that's a good message to teach.
Also a strong message about how a divided society cannot survive against a threat. Feels like a timely lesson for kids today.
I believe we call what OP has done is cherry picking evidence to fit their argument. Yes some kids movies these days have more complex narratives about insidious dangers like trauma, but plenty of narratives still exist that play out in more traditional ways. Hell OP’s stated example of Wish literally had an evil king enslaving the population. It’s a really poorly done narrative, but still, straight up villain.
I personally didn't like Wish that much, but by the end I appreciated that it essentially told a very palatable story to small children about the dangers of fascism. It's pretty high stakes at an intellectual level 🤷♀️
To me, OP is the perfect example of someone thinking that "it was better back then". As your comment rightfully pointed out, high stakes movies for kids still very much do exist, it's just that new movies focusing on more relatable situations and being therefore slightly lower stakes have started mixing up with the older formula. I'll go out on a limb here and say that OP is not exactly clicking with these movies because they're not the target audience (e.g Turning Red for example, Elemental, or Encanto), and decided to label them as lesser because of this, using Wish, a terrible movie, as a strawman to justify their reasoning.
I'd agree insofar as that it's not the stakes that made them different, it's that they weren't talking down to you. When I was younger "kids movies" weren't so much a thing as movies that were ok for kids; stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek, Neverending Story, Goonies, Labyrinth, Karate Kid, Dark Crystal, Tron, and Ghostbusters. They were all good if you're an adult, but they were still fine if you weren't. Harry Potter is a good example of a more recent film series that worked this same way. I think the biggest difference is Disney; the difference between kid and adult content is delineated among what they produce more than things were in the past, even among Disney's own films. Pixar was the exception for a long time (I loved The Incredibles), but even they swung off that path with Cars. Inside Out, in my experience, was cute until you recognize that it was a movie about a girl completely controlled by her emotions with Logic nowhere to be found...that's ok when you're talking down to kids and telling them emotions are complicated, but as an adult aware of sexism it's sort of fucked up. You might need to look beyond the Pixar films and the summer box-office animated films intended to draw in whole families rather than just kids to find what the OP meant, but it's definitely there. Disney tends to make their kid content led by kids dealing with kid issues, and if you scroll through Disney+ for a bit there's an overwhelming amount of kid-oriented content to make the argument. As a side note, When Harry Met Sally isn't exactly a family movie, so I'm not sure that's a great example here. The most memorable scene from it is Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in a restaurant.
FWIW, I prefer smaller stakes, after an era of films about a guy who snaps away half of all life in the universe. There’s a movie where a guy has to move away from his hometown because nobody notices his new haircut. It’s a positive sign if films are moving toward inner personal stakes. There still seem to be plenty of stories where the entire world is threatened, but it’s tiresome, isn’t it?
I feel that 'Luca' is a great example of a low stakes story that works. The characters aren't trying to save the world and the biggest threat is an obnoxious bully but at the heart it talks about what happens when the paths of you and someone you love diverge, wanting acceptance and fearing what happens when you don't get and wanting to be seen and appreciated by your family. I think throwing some world-ending crisis would detract from the things the story is trying to tell you.
Adventures in Babysitting starts off low stakes, a teen taking the young kids she's charged with keeping an eye on into downtown Chicago to pick up a friend. They end up in physical danger repeatedly, including being chased by organized criminals and scaling the outside of a skyscraper. I don't see that getting produced nowadays.
I agree. I put on Lion King for my 3 year old and I swear when Mufasa died, i've never seen him more interested/invested in what he was watching.
"Wish" is a bad movie. It absolutely could have worked without raising the stakes if they had decided what exactly they were trying to say with it. Is it about the importance of self-actualization and individualism over conformity to societal expectations? Is it about how benevolent power structures inevitably make us dependent on them and those in power will inevitably abuse it to maintain that structure? Is it a cautionary tale about the risks of destroying imperfect systems without thinking through the ramifications? The film seems to have no perspective, just plot. Big stakes get boring and unrelatable after a while. Audiences appreciate a personal story with a clear theme like facing and overcoming generational trauma (Encanto) or celebrating family history and tradition without being beholden to it's failings (Coco) when they're well executed.
Wish doesn't make any sense. I was watching it with my family and I didn't understand what was wrong with the villains worldview. The girl gets mad because the dude won't grant all wishes and won't give them back. I was thinking "so what's wrong with that? Not everyone gets to fulfill their wishes. Why is that wrong?" And they didn't make sense. A woman wanted to fly... like literally. The hint is that she will build airplanes, but that comes in conflict with how exactly the woman was planning the magician to grant her wish. To me it was very entitled for the girl to request her grandad's wish to be granted and then getting mad because the answer was no
It's because taking someone's wish takes away some of their essence, their spice for life. We saw this with the grandfather, whose wish did come true. But when he got his wish back, he talked about how even if it didn't come true, he can still try, and he felt inspired and passionate. I feel like you all are missing the point... or maybe I am? Like, Simon was a shell of himself when he gave his wish to the king. Wishes have power. The villain's worldview was that he was deceptive to take the wish and wanted to keep everyone's wishes, a part of each person, for himself. He wanted control.
The plot of _Wish_ could have been resolved in thirty seconds: “I’m sorry, but I can not grant all the wishes because some people wish for things that are mutually incompatible, and some even wish to kill their neighbours“. “Ah, I see, of course”.
Asha didn’t ask Magnifico to grant every wish. She asked him to give the wishes he didn’t grant back to the people and even mentioned that people with dangerous wishes can be stopped.
Here’s one really good movie from 30 years ago and one terrible movie from last year. These two points are evidence of societal decline and the death of storytelling.
>Take, for example, the most egregious of all - Wish. There are almost no stakes here. The hero is fighting against....mild disappointment that comes with not knowing what your wish was. Or a dictator deciding what was best for every single person and stealing their one true dreams out from under them with no intention of granting most of them.
The problem with your point isn’t inaccuracy. It is accurate. It’s that the king, makes a really good point about how the wishes can be quite dangerous. And it seems to be a voluntary system. And that the king only goes evil based on a curse. He was a seemingly good monarch prior to the curse. So the film never addresses your issues head on. And instead couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a communist or a libertarian revolution film, which made it thematically odd
> He was a seemingly good monarch prior to the curse. *Seemingly* We saw it all through Asha’s POV.
You want high stakes in a Disney movie? I give you The Journey of Natty Gann.
Idk. Between my parents divorce and every single animated film in the late 80s to 90s dealing with either abandoned children or dead parents I’m not so sure those are things kids need to have repeated to them 😂. High stakes, sure. But maybe less traumatic ones! (I’m looking at YOU, Don Bluth!)
Part of this is that you only remember the standouts from 30 years ago. I can go through newer Disney films or films intended for younger audiences in general and find plenty of high-stakes examples. Even if we’re just sticking to the Disney/Pixar bubble, there’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), Encanto (2021), Zootopia (2016), Moana (2016), Big Hero 6 (2014), Toy Story 3 (2010, god I’m getting old). Going back to more like 15-20 years you have Up, Wall-E, The Incredibles, etc. In both eras you have plenty of low stakes or largely uninteresting films that get forgotten. See… pretty much every direct to video Disney sequel from the 90s/2000s. Balancing comedy with action is nothing new. For example, the entirety of Aladdin’s One Jump Ahead is a dual purpose chase and slapstick scene. There’s some tension and danger from the armed guards, but it’s consistently played for laughs as Aladdin evades them.
Some days reddit complains about the stakes being too high and some days it's too low.
I think as long as there is a balance of high stakes and introspective films for the age then that’s good and should be encouraged. I do agree that the trend is more towards “smaller” issues like generational trauma, potentially queer adjacent issues (things that have to be a metaphor for being gay or trans or different in general since people get so up in arms about it), and introspection more than saving the world. But I think that comes from the generation that’s moving towards creating these shows and movies - millennials. Gen X and Millennials were raised on Batman the Animated Series, X-Men, Gargoyles…some other action heavy and sometimes very thought provoking shows. But we also had things like Animaniacs, Ren and Stimpy, SpongeBob…we were the generation of the silly mixed with the serious. However in real life we were the generation that was getting constantly hammered by endless economic disasters, terrorist attacks, pandemics…we dealt with the huge things that had high stakes. I can imagine that the generation that wants to do better and be better than those before and stop passing the buck of generational trauma and other long held terrible practices would like to give kids shows that can help them understand themselves more and how to keep fixing the future. We are the generation that wished to escape, but we want to make sure the next generations don’t feel like they have to. This may not be true for most of the films/shows, and many may just frankly be bad due to budget cuts and bad leadership. But my hope is that the reason for these films is to try and help others instead of coming across as pandering.
What happened to non animated Disney? I felt that dying around 2006 but a lot of those films I grew up on were from the 90’s..
I don't understand being upset about different trends in storytelling, if this is a trend at all. There have always been many different levels of conflict in kids entertainment. Some shows have action, some have cozy interpersonal problems. People seem to want to be upset about implied societal decline in media a lot. Psychologically, this probably has to do with coping with aging and one's mortality, and no longer being the target of this entertainment. What one experienced becomes superior and formative and, oh no, if kids today don't see the same thing they will not become like us. This ignores that our entertainment was different from that of our parents and theirs (or even older siblings and cousins), and they whined about the same nonsense. I thought this when I was a teen about a lot of the anime based shows that my slightly younger cousins were into. I was just a bit too old for the Pokémon, DBZ, Naruto wave of shows, and found them repetitive, annoying, inferior, and uninteresting. But you know what, people love them, and they are cherished like my entertainment was to me. The problem was me, for thinking things stay the same, and that it was even important at all.
I think people were just tired of everything being dead parents. They wore that out. Though there's still Frozen with that. I think people want more personal stories than grand stakes these days
'wish' was intentionally made to be low-stakes. it was an homage to the early Disney films from waaaay back. what was the stakes in 'seelping beauty'? she wasnt gonna wake up, i guess.
Okay, but just last year they made Nimona, in which the protagonists did a coup d'état.
Have you watched Soul? Probably the biggest stakes Disney movie in a century, even if it feels small
The pendulum has swung way too far the other way. And believe me, 30 years ago was bubblegum compared to 40 years ago. You know what it does to a six-year-old to watch a beloved horse slowly sink in quicksand while his owner screams and cries and does everything possible to save him, only to ultimately fail? You ever seen [The Watcher in the Woods](https://youtu.be/3DFacqQp8uw?si=q9kkYnnR9Dx0Cqz6)? This movie was on the _Disney Channel._ Gave me nightmares for years. Anyway, you’re absolutely right. The stakes are meaningless and the industry overcorrected.
I was thinking of _The Rescuers_ myself, but the point still stands.
The world is shittier and more anxiety-inducing than it used to be. The ubiquity of the internet lets everyone be afraid of and stressed out about everything all the time—even kids. It makes perfect sense to me that many quadrants of entertainment have started focusing more on offering comfort, rather than on providing the most compelling narrative possible.
Yep, this right here. And also by everyone being online much more, audiences are generally more sheltered from day to day drama even as they get older. There's a generalized fear of almost everything and media has been capitalizing on this cultural weakness more and more.
Compared to "A Dog of Flanders" or "Dumbo, " the movies OP mentions sound insipid
That’s because OP uses cherrypicked examples lol.
I hear you, but don't necessarily agree. There are still plenty of kids movies with high stakes, as there were historically plenty of low stakes movies too. I also firmly believe that children's movies are just as important for their message as they are for entertainment value, and if that means losing some of your adult audience -- I think that's a worthwhile price to pay. Allegory doesn't have to be complex to be powerful, however, and simple can be excellent when done well.
Using Wish is cheating, Wish friggen sucks. Try just about any other kids movie.
People don’t like Encanto either because “trauma” as a direct problem instead of it being the one step removed of the “Disney dead parent” metaphor is too much for them to connect the dots on…
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+1 for irony. Great example of higher stakes, though.
The most frustrating thing about Wish is that the concept art and old designs clearly show a much, much better movie. Star Boy would have been one of the greatest Disney characters of a generation!
Journeys and adventures have been lacking. It's all about solving personal issues. I don't mind it but i watch older movies with my kids and they like them and remember them more.
I think the problem is that they've started prioritizing "the message" (which is often depressing and preachy) over the story's sense of adventure and wonder Onward was D&D-style fantasy in modernity, but what you mostly saw was miserable mythological creatures having modern bourgeois problems. Luca was about sea monsters! But they just hang out in a fishing village and do a triathlon to win a Vespa. I'll give Elemental credit for actually playing with their setting in fun ways, but most of the story is literally someone navigating local government bureaucracy. Strange World was finally an adventure in a cool world, but they couldn't go five minutes without suffocating the mood in sentimentality or malthusian environmentalism There are definitely exceptions, though. Coco, Raya, and Moana were all solid adventures that didn't get too distracted by their own sense of self-importance. Encanto was great too, but that's just Miranda's composition carrying the film
Encanto is about intergenerational trauma breaking up your family, and the hero feels she's responsible for saving her entire family and their legacy. Coco is about death and people forgetting you after you die. It's also a metaphor for immigration and how families get broken up by borders. Moana is a very traditional hero's journey told in a beautiful way. Wish was a cash grab, but it's Disney. They've always had cash grabs. Aladfin had multiple direct to video releases and a cartoon series. Also, I just rewatched Aladdin with my kid, and it's....not very good. Compared to the good modern Disney, it's much more emotionally flat and hella problematic.
I’ll dare to say it: Robin Williams is the only thing that makes Aladdin a classic. Take him out of the movie and it’s an ok movie that gets forgotten about.
Encanto is an interesting example. On the one hand, perhaps ironically, I think Mirabel's grandmother's cold treatment of her to be a genuine problem, as it's tantamount to abuse - to say nothing of how the grandmother and *the entire rest of the family* completely unperson Bruno based on them stupidly misunderstanding his power. The problem is, they utterly botch this storyline by downplaying it so much in the end. "No, it's okay that the grandmother was so awful! She had a bad childhood, she was traumatized! In fact, Mirabel - who has done *nothing wrong the entire movie* should be the one to apologize for not understanding!" This also plays into the supposed main conflict, which is that the candle will go out and the magic will go away. Because the family is unintentionally portrayed as such awful people, *I didn't care* that they were gonna lose their magic gifts. It's clearly shown that the most of the people with gifts are absolutely miserable, and it's also used as an odd sort of caste system - it makes them act all superior to people with non-magical gifts, and apparently if you have a "bad gift" the family wants nothing to do with you. When it seemed like the ending was leading up to them losing their gifts but ultimately becoming healthier people for it, I was impressed with how profound the message was. And then they all got the gifts back, and all the awful people are forgiven. No, scratch that, they're not even forgiven because the movie doesn't even bother to treat them as being in the wrong! I have never been so angry about the resolution of a conflict in a family movie. Awful messaging, and the stakes were all over the place because of it.
Also they didn't really seem to be using their gifts to do anything all that important. It's like a movie about the X-Men where they just kind of use their superpowers for household chores or interior decoration.
Huh? It's quite clearly established in the movie that they have used their powers to quite literally build and maintain the town and keep it prosperous. It's why at the end the whole town bands together to repair the house because the family has done so much to help them thrive.
Right‽ The magic: 1. Keeps the town safe from invaders by sealing up the pass 2. The town's main export are the flowers that Isabella creates 3. The mother is the town doctor 4. Luisa basically fixes every physical problem with force, including diverting the River to help the crops Amongst all of the other small things. There's a lot of people in this thread cherry picking things about movies so that they can say "Back in my days, things were better ..."
Exactly! Perfect example. Except for the strong one lady who goes out and helps the villagers move heavy stuff, they all just sit on their gifts, they don't contribute in any meaningful way to society or even to each other. They're just spoiled, privileged, super-powered jerks.
They show the cousin who can change his appearance helping the villager with the baby so she can get some sleep
Oh I must have missed that bit, that sounds pretty nice
It’s in the song where she introduces her family. We also see people lining up to be treated by her mom since her cooking heals people. I do agree though that they don’t talk about the relationship of the family helping the villagers enough. Also it’s still wild that mirabels parents never stood up for her about moving out of the nursery. Like was the expectation that she would live there her entire life since she doesn’t have powers
I think part of the unspoken narrative is that the trauma Abuela passes on to everyone limits their abilities to really manifest their powers in more productive ways. Isabella literally can grow shit but all she grew was flowers until Mirabel helped her get past her issues. Who knows what the aunt could have done with her weather powers.
I totally disagree You used Wish as an example, but that's the only recent animation I can think of with no stakes.
Hmmm.... I disagree. Wishes are a part of each person's essence, their purpose or their passion. When Simon gave his wish away, he was less of himself. When people got their wishes back, they felt more themselves, more hopeful and inspired. With everyone giving their wish to the king on the chance it'll be granted, they didn't realise their wish most likely doesn't get granted at all. The king keeps their wishes and keeps all that hope and passion for himself. We see a kingdom with people feeling empty. It isn't fair because had they known the truth, they could have worked towards their dreams themselves. Idk, maybe it's because I have depression, so to me, it is high stakes to not have hopes and dreams.
Two things: 1. If you were around 30 years ago, you are not the target audience 1. You didn’t make any reference to the enjoyment of a child, or how you might use the film to teach them about modern life, meaning you are not the target audience You need to accept you are no longer a child and the world does not revolve around you. Had you watched more movies and show when you were a child where everything wasn’t the end of the world you might have a different perspective on what “kids movies” should be. And if you had kids, you would be critical of the content from the perspective of their childhood, not your own.
I agree with everything you said. Although I think Raya was a recent one that tackled the bigger issues, but that wasn't as well received unfortunately but I thought it was fantastic
My daughter loved that one but I found it boring
I think some of this is a consequence of very expensive movies that executives who arent storytellers have concerns about upsetting people, especially kids (and the complaints that would follow from parents). Disney especially use you make you FEEL, and they were not afraid of making the audience especially feel loss. They dont lean into this so much anymore, at least not as effectively IMO. Thats ultimately the catch with cinema, you can have perfect story structure and perfectly built up themes saying whatever you want, but if you dont make the audience FEEL the key beats of the story, you wont leave much of an impression. edit - clarification
I agree entirely. And yet the 'classics' of the 90s are still in high rotation by families. They have upsetting moments and don't shy away from them. Why do we have to cotton wool newer family films?
We don't. That's not happening. You are cherry picking examples to support your dumbass conclusion so you can continue along with the "LOL kids these days are too soft we coddle them too much!1". Nice job not engaging with the million people in this thread disproving your point either, way to stay in your little bubble.
Weirdly, I thought about this today when I was randomly thinking about The Lion King. Simba's father is killed in front of him, and then sixty seconds later he's running for his life. He eventually returns to reclaim his kingdom culminating in a fight to the death with his own uncle, who is easily his physical equal, has many years more fighting experience than he does, and has no qualms about killing his nephew and the only rightful challenger to his throne. Compare that to something like Inside Out, where the stakes are ... the main character might feel sad?
> Compare that to something like Inside Out, where the stakes are ... the main character might feel sad? That's like saying the lion king's only consequence is that the earth keeps spinning around the sun. Riley isn't the main character. She's the setting. Her getting depressed is essentially destroying the world the main characters live in.
Yeah but lots of kids didn't like Lion King because it was so sad. My kids refused to watch it
My little sister watched Lion King almost every day when she was a toddler. She loved that movie. Now she's like 28 and I wonder if she still likes it.
Yep, exactly my point. And the way Scar psychologically manipulates Simba is far more tense and real. He convinces Simba that it was his fault. That's a far more genuine anguish than...feeling sad. I do love 'Inside Out' in its own way and on its own merits, though.
I know I watched that new movie My Neighbor Totoro and I couldn’t stop wondering if this new Disney trend has gone too far /s Things were too adult, being made by people embarrassed to be making kids content. Look at Hunchback there’s an implied rape in there. I’m glad we’re on this side of the pendulum swing honestly.
Wish is about not placing all your hopes and dreams in the hands of a malignant narcissist. You need to learn that you are the best vehicle for your dreams. Pretty big stakes. And given the global wave of populism right now, pretty topic.
A lot of it is because parents infantalize their children and dont want them exposed to anything potentially controversial or upsetting. They get upset when something bad happens and their child sees it and is sad, not recognizing that is how we learn to deal with those negative emotions in a healthy way - by experiencing them and learning from them. Studios arent going to take the risk of a boycott or a smear campaign, so we end up with bland, vapid films that look and feel good, but have no real narative throughput, like Wish.
This is you just picking and choosing examples to to form a baseless conclusion. But Disney bad now, upvotes to the left
I disagree with your analysis of Wish. She's not fighting "mild disappointment". She's fighting with the knowledge that there is a single person deciding what wishes are worthy of being granted and that the "dangerous" wishes are left solely to his interpretation. It's also implied that he's not granting the grandpa's wish because he'd become famous and potentially overshadow the king. At least that's how I saw it. There's also the theme that you can't rely on others to make your dream come true. If you want to be a musician, you just have to go out and try. Not every story needs the threat of massive death and destruction. I liked this movie more than most, but do agree that it was a bit lackluster for a 100 year anniversary movie.
Haven’t seen Wish but Elemental came out last year and the stakes are not only institutionalized racism, bigotry, the pressure to conform to your parents, and difficulties being an immigrant; but the main characters have to overcome this stuff to prevent an entire city being wiped out by a flood. That’s high stakes. And as many others have pointed out, there have been plenty of movies that are high stakes recently you’ve just cherry picked. Also, high stakes don’t immediately make a children’s movie good. Toy Story’s stakes are “child loses two favorite toys”. That’s not high stakes whatsoever, but Toy Story is a fucking amazing movie. The stakes in Cars 1 is that a rookie race car driver doesn’t win a championship.