EISNER’S OUT AT DISNEY.
Or going out, anyway.
I guess we’ll see if their anti-family manner of doing business starts to modify in any degree.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
View all posts by Jimmy Akin
I think this is good. I just hope it’s not a case of “better the devil you know…”.
Hopefully, this is a sign that they will start to promote family friendly entertainment.
Disney can be criticized on many fronts, but family-friendly entertainment has continued to be produced and distributed by the Mouse House. In fact, in the last few years there’s been a decided upswing from the 1990s in family-friendly Disney entertainment, though the quality has been variable.
The best Disney stuff in recent years includes live-action fare like Holes, The Rookie, and Tuck Everlasting as well as 2-D hand-drawn animated efforts like Treasure Planet, Lilo & Stitch, and The Emperor’s New Groove.
Even this year’s Home on the Range, although fairly lame, is basically family-friendly, and recent low-budget Disney sequels to classics such as Return to Never Land and Jungle Book 2 is even more so.
And of course Disney has continued to distribute the best family entertainment being made, namely Pixar’s stuff, most recently Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. They also released Spy Kids through subsidiary Dimension Films, as well as its increasingly lame but basically family-friendly sequels, Island of Lost Dreams and Game Over.
In other good news from Disney, while I wouldn’t call them family entertainment, Signs, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Pirates of the Caribbean are all fine films; the first two, distributed through Touchstone, are even faith-friendly.
The recent increase in family fare from Disney is indeed heartening, but it comes after years of dissing the pro-family movement and soiling the pro-family image that initially made Disney popular.
It also comes alongside of continued insults to the family, such as the “Gay Days” at Disney theme parks (and, yes, I know the dodge that they are booked by an independent organization; that proves nothing as Disney could prohibit the events if it wanted to), offensive movies released by subsidary houses, and offensive programming on ABC, as well as politically correct drivel on The Disney Channel.
Disney’s recent spate of pro-family fare in its its film division is welcome, but Disney has not yet redeemed itself and there is much anti-family corporate culture at Disney that still needs to be corrected.
I guess my major beef is with Disney’s subsidiaries (Miramax primarily) from which movies like Priest and Dogma sprung. Basically, I think Disney should get out of the owning other companies business and into focusing on cartoons, children’s movies, family movies, and theme parks.
Re Brian’s comment “I think Disney should get out of the owning other companies business and into focusing on cartoons, children’s movies, family movies, and theme parks” – I don’t personally criticize Disney’s moves to diversify its business – ESPN, for example, is a valuable addition to the business. In addition, while perhaps Walt’s version of Disney was family-friendly, it’s a stretch of the imagination to claim that it was predominantly Christian (occultic elements run through many of Disney’s early films).
The succession battles will probably begin in earnest now. I don’t know if Chairman George Mitchell will exert any influence on them – the record seems to indicate that George Mitchell doesn’t exert much influence on anything – but if Robert Iger is a leading candidate, I don’t necessarily see any chance for a “stick to the knitting” approach.