The Mouse Returns To Its Post-War Roots

So Diz Co. released its movie slate for '17, and whattayaknow?

Most of its offerings are either A) animated productions or B) animated productions masquerading as live-action features. (Is this a 21st century version of the late forties? When the studio offered up hand-drawn shorts, compilation and hybrid animated/live-action features, and -- at the end of the decade -- was prepping the fairy tale Cinderella?)

In 2017, there's the (partial) live-action remake for Beauty an the Beast, where live-action and CG animation recreates the hand-drawn blockbuster of 1991. No further comment required.

And there's Guardians Of The Galaxy, Volume 2, which will be heavy with visual effects and digital sets and animated characters. But Chris Pratt is a live-action figure, so it (kind of) falls into the flesh-and-blood category. This baby will very likely best Pratt's other sci-fi offering Passengers, released to less than total audience enthusiasm the end of last year.

Then we have Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell Tall Tales (or something). Because there is a desire to keep budgets of these later episodes of the franchise in check, the CG animated effects might be be reined in a bit.

Walt Disney Animation Studios steps back in 2017 and Pixar comes forward with two releases. The first will be the third installment of the Cars franchise. Never underestimate the power of toys flying off the shelves to power multiple episodes of one of the Emeryville studio's weaker multi-part sagas.

Then near the end of 2017, Pixar releases an original titled Coco ...

... followed by the next episode of Star Wars. This will be Ms. Fisher's last installment, unless the producers decide she can become an animated character and continue on.

Yeah, there are non-animated elements in the release schedule, even a documentary. But if we're honest, the amount of pure animation and animation that's sprinkled among the real-life actors takes us back to those happy times when America and its allies had beaten the Axis powers and all was sunlight and flowers. And Disney, paddling fiercely to keep its small corporate head above water, was making animated/live-action movies similar to the ones we're seeing seventy years later.