Long post warning, because I should use them more often:
I've been kinda buried, typical of me when it comes to the seemingly-biweekly hyperfixation, in the early 2000s Disney animated movies. Namely the pre-CHICKEN LITTLE movie, prior to the studio's switch to a future in CG movies. (With the encore of pair of PRINCESS AND THE FROG and the 2011 WINNIE THE POOH along the way.)
And I noticed, a lot of them, including a few non-Disney animated films from the period, have an almost deliberate "old-fashioned" bent to them. Now, Disney was never a stranger to period pieces when it came to animated features. Outside of the fairy tale and fantasy films set in dream-like worlds, places that exist in irrealities inspired by the real world and their respective source materials, you had more than enough films set in actual identifiable real-world places in past time periods.
For example, before going to straight-up dream worlds, ALICE IN WONDERLAND and PETER PAN from the early 1950s are clearly set in England. The former, Victorian-era England, the latter Edwardian. LADY AND THE TRAMP is somewhere in the Midwest, turn of the 20th century. It's in a state where the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad ran through, for sure, as you can see a logo for it on a train car in the film. (Sidenote/tangent: The direct-to-video sequel, SCAMP'S ADVENTURE, seems to suggest that the town Lady and Tramp live in is actually in New England... But the B&O Railroad does not run through any New England region state. The furthest to the East it goes is New York state. It's possible that the writers saw Jim Dear nailing a Yale flag to the wall in the original movie, and assumed it was set in Connecticut. And the DTV movies are an EU sort-of situation when it comes to these movies.)
So those are three 1950s examples, you also had THE ARISTOCATS being explicitly set in 1910 Paris, THE FOX AND THE HOUND appears to be set down South right around that time. '90s Disney had plenty, too: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, POCAHONTAS, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, MULAN, TARZAN, to name a few. HERCULES goes to ancient Greece and mythology, ALADDIN is set in a fictional Arabian city, that one I feel is more on the dream-world level of - say - SNOW WHITE or LITTLE MERMAID, where the setting/time period isn't quite written out. This is why I don't tie myself in knots trying to determine where and when THE LITTLE MERMAID takes place. It's literally an amalgamation of different European and tropical locations, inspired by a story by a Danish author, and it has a Caribbean crab in it.
But no, early 2000s Disney is more specific than not! DINOSAUR is obvious, THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE is set in ancient South America (its Incan Empire setting originally had much more bearing on the story back when it was KINGDOM OF THE SUN, the movie that had gotten thrown out that this replaced), ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE takes place in 1914 - starting in Washington D.C. and then largely being set below the Earth thereafter, LILO & STITCH is present-day Hawaii, BROTHER BEAR is a post-ice age Pacific Northwest, and HOME ON THE RANGE is clearly set in Malaysia in 2177 A.D.
All joking aside, it's almost a string of movies like that... Except TREASURE PLANET, which is set in a fictional galaxy, full of fictional planets, and no sign of Earth, much like the STAR WARS universe. Yet, TREASURE PLANET's cosmic setting is 1800s pirates/high seas aesthetic meets spaceships and high-tech. After all, it *is* Robert Louis Stevenson's TREASURE ISLAND, a story dating back to 1881 as a serialized adventure before it was made into a complete novel two years later. Just take out 1800s Europe.
Now, at one point, the 2004 release of HOME ON THE RANGE was going to be followed by a movie called A FEW GOOD GHOSTS, which was once known as MY PEOPLES. This project went through several title changes over time... A 2D/CG hybrid that was a magical Appalachian love story involving ghosts that was to be set in the 1940s. The movie would’ve probably been released in the summer of 2005 if all had gone well, as it was to go full-steam ahead by the time of its cancellation in November 2003. By that point in time, Disney execs had long made up their minds about 2D animation, and because this was to be made by the Florida unit… Well, BROTHER BEAR didn’t meet expectations at the box office out of the gate… No more Florida unit, no GOOD GHOSTS…
What a lot of these movies have in common is that they, as mentioned earlier, are seemingly much more old-school than the animated movies of the '90s *and* their CGI contemporaries.
The majority of these movies were released during the years when a new CGI movie was - 99% of the time - pretty much an audience hit by default (SHARK TALE and CHICKEN LITTLE individually outgrossed LILO & STITCH, for example), and that definitely hurt the perception of hand-drawn 2D animated feature films. It's been written over and over, so much theorizing as to why the majority of these movies failed to connect with audiences the way the newest Pixar or DreamWorks CGI film did... And sometimes, I look at some of this cluster of movies and I can only notice how weirdly out-of-time they are… Either too late to the party, or there well before it's even planned. Like, years in advance.
As such, most of these movies became cult favorites of the few people who did see them back when they first came out or when they debuted on home video. These fans are all in their 20s now, at the highest. Yesterday's flops, today's "what? This movie SLAPS! How did it lose money at the box office?”
The majority of the CGI movies made in the late '90s/early '00s are thoroughly modern in some way or another. If it's not the setting, then it's the attitude. SHREK, for example, is set in a mishmash ye olden dayes fairy tales & nursery rhymes Europe (the first PUSS IN BOOTS movie further confirms this, being explicitly set in Spain), but everything else about it is as late '90s/early '00s as you can get. ICE AGE… Literally in the title, yet the comedy and writing rings more Looney Tunes and modern humor. I was turning 10 when ICE AGE came out, so I was aware of what the sorta-kinda general attitude was circa early 2002. The humor in the movie matched that; it was cool for an adult in their 20s to check out the talking prehistoric animals cartoon and quote it.
Pixar is kind of out of the question, well, this particular early run of Pixar movies. The TOY STORY movies, A BUG'S LIFE, and FINDING NEMO all clearly take place in the present. Timeless present-day settings, where it's modern enough but not too much to date the movie in question. (How 'bout that line in BUG'S LIFE about "the twig of '93"?) MONSTERS, INC. is set in a fantasy world, but that too is modern day, what with the cars and technology and every other detail. Boo doesn't walk in out a 1930s human world, haha.
When it comes to pre-2005/06 Pixar, the one exception in this criteria is THE INCREDIBLES, which is set in a retro-futuristic 1960s whose technological advances are informed by the presence of superheroes in that world. And yet, it's not a movie that feels out of time, old-timey, dated. It uses the '60s influences to enhance, rather than trap the storytelling. It’s also curiously not set in any specific American location - much like TOY STORY 1 & 2, and A BUG’S LIFE. In comic book tradition, it’s set in the fictional Municiberg, which I can only surmise is somewhere on the West Coast. CARS and RATATOUILLE and UP, afterwards, would go back to present-day. WALL-E, the far future. BRAVE, in 2012, would be Pixar's first real period piece, a fantasized medieval fairy tale Scotland. That was their 13th feature…
And yet, there’s an air of nostalgia for a past decade in pretty much the majority of these earlier Pixar films… Which is a deep dive for another day, and others have already looked at that sort of thing. But, a lot of the movies made by the TOY STORY alumni (John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich) in particular are very much rooted in the directors’ late ‘50s/early ‘60s upbringings… But not in a way that renders them "corny". At least, to audiences circa 2002, that is.
The 2000s, in general, were a much different time anyways. And it just wasn't the appropriate era to release a small cluster of old-timey movies. Made in what was seemingly perceived as an old and outdated medium, when 3D environments and characters were WOWING people left and right. I can see why most audiences just didn't take too well to a Jules Verne-style animated adventure that was probably - with its PG rating - too silly for anyone over the age of 10 looking for an action movie. Nor a very classic adventure movie-style space epic. Nor a cartoon Western that literally *looked* like a lost vintage Disney cowboy cartoon a la the 'Pecos Bill' segment of MELODY TIME and EVERY COWBOY NEEDS A HORSE. Nor a familiar wilderness adventure movie that recalled '90s "new age" vibes. If the Appalachian folk musical had come out when intended, I suspect it too would've been rejected for similar reasons.
It's no surprise that LILO & STITCH, set in the modern day and not at all old-fashioned like that, was the lone box office success here and - for a brief while - a major phenomenon once it was on video. THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE is snappy and modern and energetic, but that was impacted by its troubled production and the studio just dumping it. Its ludicrous legs at the box office and later video sales would prove that, people actually really liked that movie. The few people who saw it, that is. If it had been backed with a better campaign, that would've probably been Disney Feature's biggest movie since THE LION KING.
But it's those four movies... ATLANTIS, TREASURE PLANET, BROTHER BEAR, and HOME ON THE RANGE, that form this unique grab-bag. One that also includes DreamWorks' fairly edgy 2D-animated period adventures released around them, THE ROAD TO EL DORADO, SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON, and SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS. All of those lost money, too.
And they told these stories in ways that were incongruous with the times, when audiences wanted farting ogres and silly sloths and wacky Ellen DeGeneres fish. Maybe they all would've done better as thoroughly-CGI movies, maybe not… But it's a weird vibe across the films that I’ve noticed over the years. Quaint, in a way. Maybe it was “cringe” or whatever in the moody and edgy early 2000s, but today - with so much time having passed and the world ever-changing - it’s all rather charming.
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