A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)

[GrahamB]

Eisner is out for blood! Or money if he can't get that! Or he'll settle for bragging rights! Or recognition that he still matters! He's not bitter and spiteful, shut up!
Nice to see Bluth find a home in Dublin, I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with. It would be neat if Ireland's reputation for quality animation gets a head start in this timeline, perhaps offering a conduit to America for the quality French and Belgian comics industry via animated adaptations.
Seriously, if anyone can make a quality Valerian & Lorelei it's probably Bluth.

Oh, this definitely deserves its own post,

Agreed! As a long-time Godzilla fan the idea of a 1988 animated feature is one that gets my interest.

I hope these groups turn their ire to him and the Republicans rather then the cartoons.

Unlikely! Reagan-era moralism was a terrible, systemic backslide from progressive social values, sparked by fears of child endangerment and lets face it, WASP '-ism's. Anything in media that might be considered harmful to children, especially violence or horror of horrors sexual content (what that actually meant was pretty open to interpretation), were convenient scapegoats for people who never quite understood that Norman Rockwell never painted scenes from reality but knew that America was under threat!

 

[wietze]

Seriously, if anyone can make a quality Valerian & Lorelei it's probably Bluth.

it would be nice to see star wars not getting away with ripping so much from 'Valerian & Laureline"

 

[Spooner The Trinity]

And while we're on the topic of Roger Rabbit... I have an idea for it, the flesh off Judge Doom burns off as he is crushed by the steamroller, the floppy paper reveals a Toon rotoscoped over an animatronic puppet character. A Terminator.

 

[Unknown]

I wonder if Tim Curry's going to play Judge Doom--he did audition IOTL, but apparently (as I have already mentioned) he freaked out the producers with his audition so much that he wasn't considered...

 

[GrahamB]

Quite something to consider when Christopher Lloyd's Doom was less scary than Curry's might have been.

 

[marathag]

it would be nice to see star wars not getting away with ripping so much from 'Valerian & Laureline"

 

[TheFaultsofAlts]

I have two burning questions about today's new chapter, although the first one is burning hotter than the second.

One, what the heck is Duck, Duck, Goof even about?

Two, if Eisner wants to fight Disney man-to-mouse, maybe ABC should acquire DiC Entertainment earlier on, and maybe even buy Mainframe Entertainment for that extra wallop? I mean, he already has dreams of conquering Jim Henson's domain with The Littles alone, so buying the company that made the cartoon happen in the first place sounds like a fair enough idea! Not to mention that buying the studio that brought you ReBoot and the Barbie film series IOTL would give him leverage against Henson's rights to the TV and film adaptations of Transformers, Jem, and My Little Pony.

 

[Igeo654]

I have two burning questions about today's new chapter, although the first one is burning hotter than the second.

One, what the heck is Duck, Duck, Goof even about?

Two, if Eisner wants to fight Disney man-to-mouse, maybe ABC should acquire DiC Entertainment earlier on, and maybe even buy Mainframe Entertainment for that extra wallop? I mean, he already has dreams of conquering Jim Henson's domain with The Littles alone, so buying the company that made the cartoon happen in the first place sounds like a fair enough idea! Not to mention that buying the studio that brought you ReBoot and the Barbie film series IOTL would give him leverage against Henson's rights to the TV and film adaptations of Transformers, Jem, and My Little Pony.

One thing I can predict is that we're probably gonna see Disney World's extension parks from the 90s cut drastically as many of those ideas go to building Hollywood Pictures' own empire under ABC.

 

[GrahamB]

[snip]

Wow, that article's reaching. They couldn't even use the original Darth Vader! Nothing against Christensen but the general erasure of David Prowse from public consciousness irks me.
Likewise I cannot describe how much I'm annoyed by the practice of questioning the legitimacy of something because some parallel can be found with an earlier, unrelated work (or three, since they had to ring in two other comics just to make their case). Parallel development happens all the time, often between authors or creative teams that might not be aware of the others' very existence, much less being aware of each others' work.

"The Simpsons Did It" is very much a universal trope.

 

[woweed]

Several studios predicted that Disney TV animation would collapse upon itself.

Most predicted that Disney’s upcoming A Small World with its girl protagonist and basis in a 40-year-old children’s novel would be dead-on-arrival

In the words of good old Walt, "Hah. Motherfuckers never learn." (Note: Citation needed.) Seriously, when he made Snow White, people said it would fail. When he started makng live-action movies, people said it would fail. And, now, Disney is on a long-and-winding path to owning everything that exists.

Kricfalusi

GO TO HELL, sorry, reflex action.

 

[Pyro]

GO TO HELL, sorry, reflex action.

It makes me wonder that the work environment at Bakshi-Kricfalusi was like as Bakshi wasn't a saint himself according to this source.

[W]hen [Joanna] Romersa was working at the studio of animation pioneer Ralph Bakshi as a secretary and production manager in the ’70s, she “used to think Ralph was mad at me if he didn’t pat my butt or pinch my boob. … Bakshi was a bastard.” A second artist who worked at Bakshi’s studio in the ’70s and ’80s did not remember him physically touching his female employees, but did say he frequently made remarks to her “that would be considered sexual harassment now.” The former employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said Bakshi would offer to have sex with her in his office, and when she would decline, he would laugh it off as if it were a joke. “It made you wonder who actually did take him up,” she said, adding that whenever a woman got a promotion or a desirable credit on a project, other artists would assume that woman had performed sexual favors for Bakshi…Still, she said she was grateful for the opportunity: Bakshi was one of the few studio heads who would hire women at all.

 

[Unknown]

Oh, the Bakshi-John K partnership will end horribly...

 

[TheFaultsofAlts]

Oh, the Bakshi-John K partnership will end horribly...

That's putting it mildly at beast. Oops! I meant "best".

But really, who's keeping score here.

 

[wietze]

Wow, that article's reaching. They couldn't even use the original Darth Vader! Nothing against Christensen but the general erasure of David Prowse from public consciousness irks me.
Likewise I cannot describe how much I'm annoyed by the practice of questioning the legitimacy of something because some parallel can be found with an earlier, unrelated work (or three, since they had to ring in two other comics just to make their case). Parallel development happens all the time, often between authors or creative teams that might not be aware of the others' very existence, much less being aware of each others' work.

"The Simpsons Did It" is very much a universal trope.

oh but this debate goes a while back, and valerian & laureline are not niche comics, but very well known. and pretty much a given that they were aware of it.
maybe can find older discussions on it.
of course star wars is most unoriginal story ever ( some young protagonist working as a peasant finds out he is destined to fight evil and that he is the son of someone import etc etc, that is the great majority of medieval literature, while the plot itself is likely even older maybe even 3- 4000 yrs old (classic literature)

 

[Ogrebear]

Cool animation update there.

Thundercats movie? Oh dear... I wonder if it just reuses the pilot and extends it?

I wonder how many of these 80's animation 'classic' franchises will be back in the early 2000's like OTL's many revivals?

TMNT movie franchise - I do hope the movies are tighter and better than OTL. So many things where right, but the quality slipped as time went on, which using Vanilla Ice is just a symptom.

Even with the Merch shows over the children's TV landscape has been forever altered and every show will now go through all the focus groups and merchandising committees....

 

[Denliner]

An interesting shift in animation as the old 80s shows like G.I. Joe and Transformers are declining due to market saturation, the decline of animation quality, and the growing awareness around the senseless violence and vapidity of the shows themselves. Disney is looking to be in a pretty good position to take advantage of this change in attitude through their deals with Studio Ghibli and the release of Mistress Masham's Repose / A Small World, not to mention any future animation projects that they can do in the future.

As for Universal, I'm glad that Godzilla is becoming popular as they can easily pair Godzilla and the rest of the monsters with King Kong in future American movies or even in a theme park.

In general, Japanese culture seems to be permeating ever deeper into American society, perhaps ever moreso than OTL since Ghibli has more exposure through Disney while films like Akira are finding success through both theatrical release and home video sales. Otaku culture should be rather...interesting from hereon out, especially in the 90s where we might see something like ITTL Cartoon Network already having Toonami in the early 90s and franchises like Dragon Ball receiving a more positive reception.

The Littles, if done right, could severely blunt the overall success of A Small World by a lot, and Eisner is seriously banking on releasing the film before Disney can. As for the House of Mouse, the crew for A Small World probably knows it's on a tight crunch once they know about the Littles, so it's probably a race against time before the other finishes, and whoever wins gets the spoils of war. Crossing my fingers that Disney wins this, but Eisner definitely won't be down for the count just yet if he does fail to usurp Disney at their own game.

---

I wonder what the Imagineers are thinking when it comes to Disneyland Valencia and the other parks, as 87 starts to close and 88 is when we'll see the Imagineers at the I-Works start planning. With the acquisition of new IPs under Disney's belt like Marvel, Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, The Dark Crystal, The Black Cauldron, even something as crazy as Ghibli or Halyx, it seems like the possibilities are very much endless for new expansions.

For Valencia, maybe the Imagineers are seeing this new park as a playground for new ideas, since they do have an expanded belt of new ideas and IPs to choose from. I definitely believe that Discoveryland is still very much a reality given the opportunity to recycle stuff from Discovery Bay and provide a unique European take on Tomorrowland but what about a more radical idea in Hollywoodland, where they can just put a crap ton of Hollywood movies and properties like Back to the Future, the Muppets, Ghostbusters, and etc?

It might be too offensive of an idea for a Spanish / European audience, though, since it's just a blatant bombardment of movie IPs and consumerist Hollywood culture. Luckily they didn't attempt to add this for Disneyland Paris.

One question is certainly on my mind though: Is there a possibility that Henson and Lucas can create Star Tours like in OTL?

 

[e of pi]

oh but this debate goes a while back, and valerian & laureline are not niche comics, but very well known. and pretty much a given that they were aware of it.
maybe can find older discussions on it.

Yeah but "put woman in bikini" and "villain who wears dark armor/helmet" and "person's face looks burnt" and "character's nose looks like elephant trunk" are kind of generic to be claiming as "stolen ideas". Unless there's a clear line of descent, I'm inclined to say it's convergent evolution.

 

[wietze]

Yeah but "put woman in bikini" and "villain who wears dark armor/helmet" and "person's face looks burnt" and "character's nose looks like elephant trunk" are kind of generic to be claiming as "stolen ideas". Unless there's a clear line of descent, I'm inclined to say it's convergent evolution.

have you looked at the shape of the millenium falcon and valerians ship?

 

[e of pi]

have you looked at the shape of the millenium falcon and valerians ship?

Yes, and while they have a few details in the same spots, that's mostly because they're both "round saucer with lots of details on it". so there's a lot of details to overlap by chance The images selected do a good job of playing up the similarities while playing down the vast differences.

I think the Millennium Falcon's a particularly notable example, because they specifically redesigned from the original concept (the model which became the Rebel Blockade Runner) because it bore a slight resemblance to the Eagle from Space 1999. If they were redesigning because of an accidental tangential similarity, then they wouldn't have in the process stolen another design on purpose:

The Eagle had a very NASA vibe to it, with a truss-like framework and modular panels. The Pirate Ship looked like something inspired by Jules Verne in space, but they both were long and relatively narrow with a cockpit at the front and clusters of engines at the rear. George insisted on a different look entirely, something that wouldn’t look like it had been inspired by anything we’d ever seen.
— Joe Johnston at http://www.joejohnstonsketchbook.com/millennium-falcon

Cited by https://kitbashed.com/blog/a-complete-history-of-the-millennium-falcon

 

[marathag]

Yeah but "put woman in bikini" and "villain who wears dark armor/helmet" and "person's face looks burnt" and "character's nose looks like elephant trunk" are kind of generic to be claiming as "stolen ideas". Unless there's a clear line of descent, I'm inclined to say it's convergent evolution.

Sure, but all of them?

How many ' character embedded in a block' stories can you recall offhand?