Right now,Bob Iger's Disney is pissing me to no end. Recently they introduced even More girly-girl bullshit in the form of Mako Mermaids. Now they are giving us a full hour of Hannah Montana.
Basically Iger and Sherwood is telling the fans to go Suck It. A very very shameful way to start 2016.
So with that said,Let us take a small trip back to an era where Disney was Disney and the Bigshots didn't piss of Walt's legacy. Where Hannah Montana Mania was not even a thought (thank god). And where they rarely gave us things that we Didn't want.
Let's visit the greatest era of Disney.....The Eisner Era.
From 1985-2005 A man,a genus,ran the House of Mouse. His name was Michael Eisner.
Let's begin with the 1st big thing he did,Revitalized the Disney Channel. Back when it first launched in 1983,the Disney Channel was not very ideal...in fact,it was lame. But in 1986,Michael Eisner modernized it and it be came the #1 competitor to Viacom's Nickelodeon.
Also in 1986,he introduced the masses to Disney Television Animation. The 1st animated show (the Wuzzles) was a flop,but the 2nd one (Adventures of the Gummi Bears) proved to be a hit. However,in the fall of 1987,the world was introduced to what would be the most iconic animated series ever,Ducktales.
And after the creation of Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers in 1988,The Disney Afternoon was introduced. The Disney Afternoon was one of the most iconic weekday afternoon blocks in America. It definatly needs a revival. Anyway,the block would continue to grow until 1996,where it prompltly died.
Also in 1989,Eisner Resurrected Disney at the Box Office with the Little Mermaid,kickstarting the Disney Renaissance. More successes followed and eventually,Disney became popular again.
TV wise Disney was at it's strongest,with great shows and program direction. Box Office wise,it was also doing great....well up until the early 2000's,where Box Office numbers for the company were falling. TV wise,they were still golden though.
Theme park wise things weren't too bad,though in the late 90's,they did have troubles with a revitalised Universal Studios(disney's main rivals in the theme park biz).
The 90's were awesome for Disney TV Wise. In 1997,Eisner commisioned a cool SatAM block called One Saturday Morning,which debut a hear after the end of the Disney Afternoon. Then,in 1999,he created Toon Disney,the 24/7 all Animation network. Despite the name,the Netwirk was more like Boomerang than Cartoon Network,but that isn't excactly a bad thing.
Well the 90's came and went,and inner turmoil rocked the Walt Disney Company. Eisner was ousted and Bob Iger was chosen as a sucessor. This would eventually lead to the Disney Nightmare,but I'll talk about That another time.
Now then,you probally wanna know what Michael Eisner did to get ousted? In the early 2000's,Eisner wanted to bury Pixar and have people forget it existed.Why? I have no idea. Next was the constant string of Box Office flops. The Direct-to-DVD sequels also played a part. And Finally,Eisner started to neglect the Theme parks,Roy Jr. was very miffed at this.
So there you have it,the reasons why Eisner was ousted,while he did awesome work on the TV side of things,he began slipping up in the other areas.
But despite all of this,everyone will agree that the Eisner Era was Disney's greatest era.
The Disney Afternoon and One Saturday Morning gave us a crapload of great shows,Toon Disney gave us a fun nostalgia trip,The animated movies were top notch,and the Disney Channel had some pretty good content. In fact,Did you know that Kim Possible,aka the greatest Disney Channel show ever,was a product of the Eisner Era? It's true.
Despite all of it's epicness,I do have some gripes with the Eisner Era. My first gripe is that Eisner did kinda waste money on the Direct-to-DVD sequels. Though,I will admit,some of them were pretty fun. The other gripe is that he rarely did anything to improve the theme parks. That's sad.
Well there was my salute to the Eisner Era. Michael Eisner may have been lax during his final years,but there's no denying the awesome things he gave us prior to his fall.
See Ya,Space Cowboy!
4 comments:
Quite true. Despite his shortcomings at the end, if it wasn't for Michael Eisner, Disney would be 6-ft under today. There will never be another. As I said before, in times like this, I wish John Lasseter was the head of the Walt Disney Company, not Bob Iger.
Indeed. I think Lesseter would be a good choice. Still,the morons who run the Networks are the ones that must be replaced first and formost
I wish Michael Eisner chose John Lasseter and plenty of other creative talent to replace him, not Bob Iger.
I'm not particularly fond of Eisner, largely because aside from the whole DTV business he did (though I'll admit, even the worst of them were still a whole lot better than "Ariel's Beginning."), and the failure to maintain the Disney theme parks, he also was responsible for that whole event that occurs every starting weekend of June since 1991. However, I will grudgingly admit that ultimately, he was a better CEO than Iger.
Besides, he did do some good, like bring us the Disney Renaissance, a lot of good cartoons from Disney including Kim Possible, and he also ultimately did Disney a favor by kicking that bum Jeffrey Katzenberg to the curb. I thought Katzenberg was a stain to Disney, especially considering his ruining Black Cauldron, his sabotaging any chance at Rescuers Down Under from being anything other than a box office flop due to not getting high in advertising ratings as he would like, ruining Beauty and the Beast by turning it into a radical feminist propaganda film and even hiring Linda Woolverton, the lady responsible for that awful Maleficent movie, and arguably starting Disney's moving it leftward (not to mention completely scrapping one draft for that movie, a draft that Eisner, of all people, thought was very good and wanted a screenplay done for it), and nearly got Pixar shut down and nearly ruining Toy Story by making it into as cynical of a movie as Family Guy. In fact, I'd argue that, with the Renaissance films he had direct control over such as Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, they were successes in SPITE of Katzenberg, not because of him.
Regarding John Lasseter, him being well acquainted with animation definitely makes him more promising than Bob Iger, I'll say that much. However, I'd still say he probably would ultimately be as bad as Iger, mostly because he was just as responsible as Iger was for canning traditional animation after P&TF and Winnie the Pooh underperformed at the box office, as you can read here: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/hand-drawn-at-disney.html
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