I'll try to combine some of the aspects of music in animated Disney features that came up in the latest posts with another post regarding the original question wether characters should sing again...
Should they? YES - in every animated Disney feature? NO - some stories / features just long for characters singing while others just don't fit the approach of a musical show.
But: the (animated) musical feature has always been one of the core products of Disney cartering huge parts of its core audience. Disney clearly admits that if you look at these terrible direct to video sequels. They are ment to be produced cheap still attract the biggest possible audience and make a lot of money. Getting songwriters to compose songs for a direct to video release on top of another composer for the score and then also spend additional money on recording these songs (which in the case of most direct-to-video releases aren't released on CD later on where one could earn some extra money with the already produced recording) does definitely increase the cost of these direct-to-video-releases. Why are they doing this for products which are meant to be cheap features to make money? There can be only one answer: because the audience wants it.
So if the audience wants it there someone please tell how could Disney believe that the theater-audience is that much different, in fact the direct-to-video-release-buyer usually is also the one going to see the movies on the big screen. But then this means: people would like to see an animated musical featur there too!
In the end I think it can't be in the interest of us, as Disney music fans, or of the animators to make every animated Disney feature a musical (as this would annoy quiet a few Disney fans and customers) but there should be a healthy number of them. And currently they are just missing. Just as there was a string of musical-only features earlier there is now a string of non-musical-features and both strings can only harm the company and get them to loose certain parts of your company.
For me the secret (which Disney did not yet find) would be a better mix of the different types of animated features (and why only animated features? Maybe Disney should get back on the bandwagon of live action musical features too which has just been revived by "Moulin Rouge"?!).
If Disney does want to keep animated musical featurs coming and impress the audience for sure they do need to have a diversity of composers / songwriters in this section too. Even so I do love the work of Alan Menken I still admit that there is a kind of common style to all his works and it would be refreshing to see a true animated musical feature by someone else again. Alan Menken basically had its big break-through thanks to Disney (even so "The little Shop of Horrors" was a classic before already). So to get more diversity in this area and to find new talents (which would also help the bottom line as an unknown songwriter will be cheaper than an Alan Menken) the direct to video releases could be a kind of testing ground for new talents. Unfortunately I don't see that they are used this way. Instead of giving songwriters the opportunity to show wether they are able to pull such a big project they are only allowed to supply one or two songs out of a bigger number which results in a strnage mix missing the uniting feeling. Yep it might be more secure or cheaper now but in the long term this also means you have to find another way to get your next Alan Menken and this kind of composer is not running around with a sign on the head "I'm the next Alan Menken". What will Disney do when Alan Menken retires or ends his contract? Currently there is no songwriter for a musical who would really be dedicated to Disney. Yep Phil Collins did a surprising could work for Tarzan and Sting may have worked wonders for TENG if he would have been allowed to use all his songs with the original storyline, but these pop-stars are exceptions and I don't think you get them cheap...
And to come to the instrumental scores of recent Disney releases: it is interesting to note that three major releases in a short period of time are scored by the same composer - is this Newton-Howard Disney's Alan menken of scores? I don't know - I just wanted to point out how much he is doing for Disney animated feature (and I think he did work on some live action movies of the Walt Disney Companies many labels too).
This "long term" involvement at least gave him a chance to grow - at least in my mind. While I thought that the Dinosaur soundtrack was just plain boring and missing a common theme (not to speak of certain parts which more or less reminded me of other scores) I did love the score he did for Atlantis. Really great and I still listen to it now and then...
Animated features with a pop theme song for the end-titles (which coems in handy for the pop-label of the company) certainly lend itself for certain storylines better than a musical but I do have to admit that these instrumental scores while they can be great in the movie (as in Atlantis) are usually forgotten by the audience the moment they leave the theater only a small number of fans is really interested in them... which once again is a good point for mixing the two types of animated features as musical features open a whole new world of ways to earn money later on with soundtrack CDs, best of CDs, cover versions, ...
Yours
Dirk
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