Disney is one of the biggest studios and companies in the world, which is why it’s easy to forget that Disney almost disappeared in the 1980s. This was a particularly hard time for the company, with box office bomb after box office bomb making Disney incredibly unstable. The box office failure of The Black Cauldron was nearly the final nail in the coffin for Disney, and something drastic needed to change for the company to make it out of the 1980s.
Luckily, something did change: the Disney Renaissance started. The Little Mermaid was the first in a streak of major hits, with the streak of movies from the late 1980s throughout the 1990s allowing Disney to turn into the powerhouse that it is today. Disney’s poor critical and commercial performance during the 80s has led many fans to write the decade off, which has led to these three great movies getting lumped in with the rest of Disney’s poor 80s offerings.
1988’s Oliver & Company came out just before the beginning of the Disney Renaissance, meaning that it is often left out of conversations regarding some of Disney’s best movies. However, it is a ton of fun and one of Disney’s better films from the decade. Billy Joel’s music and performance as Dodger make the movie a great time for fans of the musician, and it deserves to be as beloved as Disney’s other animated classics.
1983’s Something Wicked This Way Comes is Disney’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s dark fantasy novel, and it is almost never talked about anymore. The film is far darker than Disney’s typical fare, which is why it wasn’t immediately popular upon its release. However, it is easily one of Disney’s best live-action outings of the 1980s, and it should be more well-known today.
If any Disney movie in the company’s entire history deserves more credit, it’s 1986’s The Great Mouse Detective. Disney’s Sherlock Holmes story is absolutely incredible, filled with creativity, and features a genuinely compelling mystery. On top of that, Ratigan is genuinely one of Disney’s best villains, and he deserves to be as well-known as characters like Maleficent, Ursula, and Jafar.
However, the real reason that The Great Mouse Detective deserves more credit is that it directly led to the Disney Renaissance. The film was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, and it made $50 million against a $14 million budget. This much-needed box office success led Disney to trust Musker and Clements with more films. Their next project was The Little Mermaid, followed by Aladdin and Hercules. Musker and Clements are two of the architects of the Disney Renaissance, and if it wasn’t for them, Disney may not be here anymore.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
