How Disney killed 2D Animation

Disney single handedly destroyed theatrical 2D animation. Waiting for Disney to bring it back is a fool's errand. 2D must be brought back by the people.

[vrinnmetagen]

The fact that stop motion animation never seems to do well financially is criminal to me.

[gerawallstar]

Another reason why Iron Giant flopped was because it was released against another 2D film which is Disneys Tarzan. And that film was the financially successful 2d film in a while. I wished we lived in a world where Prince of Egypt, Treasure Planet, and The Princess and the Frog actually succeeded at the box office instead of Shrek and Minions. We would've gotten more 2D films but films with good stories, too.

[kylebarnett]

I could listen to you talk about this all day. So well done and well said.

[hsuehejjw]

I miss 2D animation so much, along with cell animation. I liked it a lot better.

[carlosluismendez]

Disney style and the influence it has in western animation is what killed 2d. Ralph Bakshi said it best, Disney brainwashed western animators to a point that if your stuff is not as polished as Disney then it's crap and sometimes your budget doesn't allow countless line testing.

Treasure Planet, Atlantis and Sinbad were very expensive movies, they wanted to do action adventure movies like Miyazaki did with Mononoke Hime but to do it in the Disney style it becomes too expensive to a point where it was hard to make a profit. Bakshi said that lot of that extra animation movements are the repetition of boring mannerisms anyway but they actually add to the budget.

If Disney wants to do something of the scale of Metropolis 2001, Steamboy or Mononoke Hime that thing would be around 350 millions $. Metropolis 2001 budget was 15 millions $ at that same time when Treasure Planet was around 140 millions $ and the scale in Metropolis is way bigger.