Disney

Zootopia 2

  • Title: Zootopia 2
  • IMDb: link

We don’t get very many mainstream animated feature films centered around a mystery, especially from Disney. While the 2016 film wasn’t as big a hit as Finding Dory, it still cleaned up at the box office and earned enough to deliver a new mystery to be solved by our intrepid bunny and wiley fox team (even if it did take nearly a decade).

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Aladdin

  • Title: Aladdin (1992)
  • IMDb: link

Released to critical and box office acclaim, although not without controversy for its depiction of Arab characters and culture, it’s easy to forget the success Disney’s Aladdin had given it would be soon eclipsed by The Lion King just two years later. While not the title character, it’s impossible not to begin with Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie. Despite the negative experience with working with Disney, Robin’s stream-of-consciousness comic style translated terrifically to an animated character (even if I could do without some of the more obvious Disney pop-culture references).

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Tron: Ares

  • Title: Tron: Ares
  • IMDb: link

Tron: Ares is the movie Tron: Legacy should have been. Largely ignoring the events of Legacy, the new film give us corporate espionage while also playing on the real-life debate of greed and fear of the proper use of Artificial Intelligence. On one side we have Eve Kim (Greta Lee), stepping in as the head of ENCOM following Sam Flynn‘s departure. On the other side we have Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters). Both are pursuing the breakthrough to manifest physical objects and programs into the real world for longer than 29-minutes (at which they become unstable and dissolve into dust).

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Toy Story

  • Title: Toy Story
  • IMDb: link

Re-released in theaters for the film’s 30th Anniversary, Toy Story was never the quintessential film for me that is is for some. While I certainly understand its importance to the company, and thoroughly enjoy the film, the animation is still rough in a couple places (most notably in the human characters) and it lacks the emotional impact to me that both Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 deliver. That said, it’s still a damn fine movie taking us into a world of what happens to a child’s toys once they leave the room. 

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The Aristocats

  • Title: The Aristocats
  • IMDb: link

Originally released in 1970, I first saw The Aristocats during one of its re-releases in theaters. The last film to be personally approved by Walt Disney, the last film to be released during co-founder Roy O. Disney‘s tenure as CEO, and notably worked on by five of Disney’s core animators, the film is an interesting mix of classic Disney animation with splashes of French styling and jazz thrown into the mix as well. Much like Disney’s next feature Robin Hood, released three years later, you can feel a change in the studio’s continued direction away (at least temporarily) from the classic princess films that built so much of the magic kingdom.

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