Amelia Tate and the Fifty-Eight Films of Walt Disney

On watching all but one of the Walt Disney Animation feature films over a bit more than a month

2-XL isn’t in any of the 57 Films, but he’s here anyway

My film project for the month of June (more or less) was to watch all fifty-seven feature length animated films from Walt Disney Animation Studios. It was a lot of fun for the most part, and I enjoyed following the progression of animation from the 1930s to 2019. As I did with the Pixar films and the films of the Coen Brothers, I will be sharing my rankings for all of these as well. Unfortunately, fifty-seven films makes it unwieldy to talk about them all*. Instead I’ll just summarize my experience and then let you see the rankings. 

As I watched the films, I was struck by how easily they grouped together. As far as I could tell, these were the various eras as grouped by how I watched them**:

Classic Disney (1937-1959)

First film: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Last film: Sleeping Beauty

This is the heyday of Disney Animation, with its first five films (Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi) being one of the best runs of any studio, animated or not. Even the weakest of the bunch, Dumbo, had one of the best songs in the series with “Baby Mine”, and had the memorable pink elephants sequence. The animation still looks great eight decades later, which is something that can’t be said for some of the CG films just a bit older than a decade at this point.

However, it wasn’t a string of legendary classics for 22 years. In the 40s the studio hit hard times and abandoned full feature production in favor of shorts. This resulted in a set of package films. This six film block (Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, Fun and Fancy Free, Melody Time, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad) were shorts packaged together with live action segments to reach feature length. While not as good as the five classics before or after them, they have some interesting things about them, and at least one beloved** theme park ride. 

The era finished with another five films generally considered classics (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, and Sleeping Beauty). A step down from the original five classics, Cinderella and Lady and the Tramp still hold up incredibly well, and Sleeping Beauty has a style and a darkness to it that separates it from most of the other films.

This era was marked by some not great depictions of women, particularly if they were not white and not pretty. And even if they were both white and pretty, the films typically had problems giving those characters agency over their situations. In addition, some of the films (especially Dumbo and Peter Pan) were terrible at depicting Native American characters, or included characters that were based upon stereotypes of African American and Asian people. Sadly, this would be a prevailing theme well into the modern era of films.

The Medieval Era (1961-1981)

First Film: One Hundred and One Dalmatians
Last Film: The Fox and the Hound

After the relatively poor box office performance of Sleeping Beauty, Disney decided to focus on controlling costs of its feature length animation projects, as Walt Disney decided to focus on other aspects of his company. Thus, xerography replaced inking, which saved money but gave the animation a cheaper, shaggier feel. Some of the films, particularly One Hundred and One Dalmatians, use that shagginess to its advantage, but others suffer in either the story department (The Sword and the Stone), or in the animation quality (Robin Hood). It suffers in comparison to the best of the Classical era and the best of the Disney Renaissance.

But nonetheless I still like them. Flaws and all, these films are all still Disney films, and still have a quality to them that a few of the later films lack, and so many other animation studios barely achieve with the best of theirs. 

By the last of these films, The Fox and the Hound, it was clear that an era was ending. Within a few years, new leadership would be in place atop Disney, and there would be a new focus on animation, for better or worse.

The Disney Renaissance (1985-1999)

First Film: The Black Cauldron

Last Film: Tarzan

It’s amazing that this era of Disney animation is the shortest of the four, but what it lacks in longevity it makes up with in quality. Though it took a few films to really get started, this is an era that has some of the most beloved films made by Disney, as well as some of the best songs from any era of the studio. 

But before the peak of the Disney Renaissance were a few films that transitioned from the previous era. At first, I was going to include The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, and Oliver and Company with the previous era, but upon watching the little remembered first one on the list, I realized that it had more in common with The Little Mermaid than The Fox and the Hound. None of these films are terrible, and The Great Mouse Detective is legitimately good, if weird. But they are clearly steps towards The Little Mermaid, and the run of films that it would bring in.

Of all of the smaller groupings inside eras, the five films (The Little Mermaid, Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King) at the peak of the Disney Renaissance is my second favorite. Even the weakest of the films, Rescuers Down Under, has one of the best pieces of animation in any of the Disney films. I bet reading this you have already hummed something from “Part of Your World”, “Belle”, “A Whole New World”, or one of the other memorable songs, or at least you are now. 

Of course, this wasn’t to last, even though the late renaissance films are never terrible, Mulan is legitimately good The Hunchback of Notre Dame, really surprised me at how good it was. The era wasn’t without its own myopia when it came to women or non-white characters, once again resorting far too often to lazy stereotypes, or to casting people who weren’t Chinese to play Chinese characters in Mulan. And the less said about a lot of what was going on in Pocahontas the better.

By the time Tarzan was released, it had been five years since The Lion King, and once again Disney started cutting budgets. The Renaissance was over, and it would take almost a decade of wandering in the wilderness of the 2000s before Disney would find another identity that worked.

The Modern Era (2000-2019)

First Film: Fantasia 2000

Last Film: Frozen II

The weakest period in Disney animation is not the 1970s, but the 2000s. This is where the only two films I didn’t like (Home on the Range and Chicken Little) can be found. However, it’s unfair to say the entire era was bad. It’s a mixture of great films (Lilo & Stitch, The Princess and the Frog), very interesting and fun films (The Emperor’s New Groove, Brother Bear, Meet the Robinsons), and some interesting failures (Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet). 

This is the era where Disney moved from 2D animation to 3D, like its sister studio Pixar. The first moves towards that direction were pretty rough, but with Meet the Robinsons and Bolt Disney started showing they could do it pretty well, and by Tangled the most recent decade was off and running.

While still not perfect, this era at least started to try to deal with some of the problems with women and BIPOC that previous eras had. Characters, like Tiana, Lilo and Nani, and Moana were complex characters with motivations above and beyond getting rescued or finding their Prince Charming. 

The most recent decade of Disney films have been marked by competence, if not always greatness. Some wonderful songs can be found from this period, including “Let It Go” and “How Far I’ll Go”, and other songs that don’t end in “go”. The worst thing about the era is that Disney no longer does 2D animation, and hasn’t since 2011’s Winnie the Pooh. Maybe someday, they’ll go back to the well, but until then we’ll have to make do.

Alright, so now that you made it through all of that, I hope you enjoy reading the rankings. 

RANKINGS

58. Make Mine Music (Wasn’t on Disney+)
57. Chicken Little

56. Home on the Range

55. Dinosaur
54. The Black Cauldron

53. Fun and Fancy Free

52. Winnie the Pooh

51. Melody Time

50. The Sword and the Stone

49. Three Caballeros

48. Saludos Amigos

47. Tarzan

46. Fantasia 2000

45. Bolt

44. The Aristocats

43. Pocahontas

42. Peter Pan

41. Treasure Planet

40. Hercules

39. Oliver and Company

38. Alice in Wonderland

37. Atlantis: The Lost Empire

36. Ralph Breaks the Internet

35. The Rescuers Down Under

34. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

33. The Jungle Book

32. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

31. The Fox and The Hound

30. The Rescuers***

29. Brother Bear

28. Zootopia

27. Frozen II

26. Meet the Robinsons

25. Big Hero 6

24. Robin Hood

23. The Emperor’s New Groove

22. One Hundred and One Dalmatians

21. Mulan

20. Dumbo

19. Aladdin

18. The Great Mouse Detective

17. Frozen

16. Sleeping Beauty

15. Tangled

14. Snow White

13. Moana

12. Bambi

11. The Princess and the Frog

10. Cinderella

9. Wreck-It Ralph

8. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

7. Lilo & Stitch

6. Fantasia

5. Lady and the Tramp

4. The Lion King

3. The Little Mermaid

2. Beauty and the Beast

1. Pinocchio

* The first draft of this included a sentence or two about every film. I only made it to Beauty and the Beast, right around halfway through the list, and I was already at 2300 words.

** Sadly departed, at least at Walt Disney World

*** This is higher than my rankings on Twitter, as I realized I had this too low.