Disney Message Sparks Debate

Disney has changed its animation style over the years, and now people online are debating which is better.

These days, the animation style seen in films like The Lion King and Cinderella is hardly ever used. As technology advances, Disney has made a point of using 3D animation to create the more detailed characters and worlds that audiences now recognize in movies like Frozen and Coco.

On X, formerly Twitter, user @PicturesFoIder lambasted the difference when they wrote: "Old Disney movies were absolutely beautiful. What happened?" Alongside their comment, they shared a video made up of snippets from a variety of old Disney movies.

Newsweek reached out to a Walt Disney Studios spokesperson for comment via email Friday.

The tweet resulted in a heated debate in the replies, with people sharing their thoughts on how the animation style has changed in recent years. Many said they prefer how Disney movies used to look.

"The love of money became priority over the love of storytelling," one person wrote.

"All of these were hand drawn on physical paper. You can just tell a lot of hard work and soul went into them. The slight imperfections give the animation character. You lose a lot of this when you go digital," said another.

"They abandoned the old ways, of tradition in favour for the one thing that ruins all men; money. Corporate greed and self-sabotage in favour of appealing to avarice by those who would see all things good reduced to detritus and reflect the ills of modernity," a third person wrote.

Another X user posted: "People don't draw anymore, it's all computers and software now. Every cartoon looks the same, no real creativity anywhere. I swear everyone keeps using the same blueprint for the same face and background style, they just change colors in between. RIP proper animation of the past."

Not everyone is unhappy with the changes that Disney has made, though. Other X users said artistic expression is still present in the movies from the company, with some adding that now the company is better at being inclusive.

"I mean, they still look beautiful! Just bc they're using cg [sic] art doesn't mean they lost their artistic vision," one person wrote alongside grabs from movies such as Moana and Frozen.

"They still are just in a different way. You can't tell me Coco isn't STUNNING," another X user said.

A third person wrote: "Classical Animation hits different but that doesn't take away from the beauty of animation now."

"They added diversity?" said another.

Disney had a disappointing year of box office returns in 2023 as many expected hits underperformed, including Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Haunted Mansion, resulting in it losing the top spot as the highest-grossing studio. Instead, that honor went to Universal Studios, which had huge hits with films such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Oppenheimer and M3GAN.

Universal raked in $4.907 billion at the global box office, while Disney earned $4.827 billion worldwide. It is the first time since 2015 that Disney has not held the top spot in the global studio rankings.

Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger admitted in November during the company's end-of-year earnings call that the entertainment behemoth had fallen short of delivering quality material in its endeavor to pump out content for its audiences, including its Disney+ streaming service.

"I've always felt that quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality," he said. "That's exactly what happened. We lost some focus."

Iger then revealed Disney would reduce production to make fewer movies and focus on higher quality by spending $25 billion on programming in the new fiscal year, $2 billion less than the previous one.