The Magical World Of Disney #346: Top 100 Disney Movies, Part 16

70. Spirited Away (2002)

Spirited Away (Japanese: 千と千尋の神隠し, Hepburn: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, lit. ’Sen and Chihiro’s Spiriting Away’) is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten, Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Tohokushinsha Film, and Mitsubishi and distributed by Toho. The film features the voices of Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takeshi Naito, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Tsunehiko Kamijō, Takehiko Ono, and Bunta Sugawara. Spirited Away tells the story of Chihiro Ogino (Hiiragi), a ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood, enters the world of Kami (spirits of Japanese Shinto folklore). After her parents are turned into pigs by the witch Yubaba (Natsuki), Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba’s bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world.

Miyazaki wrote the screenplay after he decided the film would be based on the ten-year-old daughter of his friend Seiji Okuda, the film’s associate producer, who came to visit his house each summer. At the time, Miyazaki was developing two personal projects, but they were rejected. With a budget of US$19 million, production of Spirited Away began in 2000. Pixar animator John Lasseter, a fan and friend of Miyazaki, convinced Walt Disney Pictures to buy the film’s North American distribution rights, and served as executive producer of its English-dubbed version. Lasseter then hired Kirk Wise as director and Donald W. Ernst as producer, while screenwriters Cindy and Donald Hewitt wrote the English-language dialogue to match the characters’ original Japanese-language lip movements.

Originally released in Japan on 20 July 2001 by distributor Toho, the film received universal acclaim, grossing $395.8 million at the worldwide box office. Accordingly, it became the most successful and highest-grossing film in Japanese history with a total of ¥31.68 billion ($305 million). It held the record for 19 years until it was surpassed by Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train in 2020.

Spirited Away is regarded as Miyazaki’s magnum opus and has often been listed among the greatest films of all time. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, making it the first, and to date only, hand-drawn and non-English-language animated film to win the award. It was the co-recipient of the Golden Bear at the 2002 Berlin International Film Festival (shared with Bloody Sunday), and is within the top ten on the British Film Institute’s list of “Top 50 films for children up to the age of 14”. In 2016, it was voted the fourth-best film of the 21st century by the BBC, as picked by 177 film critics from around the world, making it the highest-ranking animated film on the list. In 2017, it was also named the second “Best Film…of the 21st Century So Far” by The New York Times. In 2022, it was ranked as the 75th greatest film of all time by the Sight & Sound critics poll.

A classic Hayao Miyazaki movie that not only features amazing animation but a compelling and engaging story and great characters and visuals to keep it afloat.

69. The Fox & The Hound (1981)

The Fox and the Hound is a 1981 American animated buddy drama film produced by Walt Disney Productions and loosely based on the novel of the same name by Daniel P. Mannix. The 24th film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film tells the story of two unlikely friends, a red fox named Tod and a hound dog named Copper, who struggle to preserve their friendship despite their emerging instincts and the surrounding social pressures demanding them to be adversaries. Directed by Ted Berman, Richard Rich, and Art Stevens, the film features the voices of Kurt Russell, Mickey Rooney, Jack Albertson, Pearl Bailey, Pat Buttram, Sandy Duncan, Richard Bakalyan, Paul Winchell, Jeanette Nolan, John Fiedler, John McIntire, Keith Coogan, and Corey Feldman.

he Fox and the Hound was released to theaters on July 10, 1981 to financial success. At the time of release it was the most expensive animated film produced to date, costing $12 million. It was re-released to theaters on March 25, 1988. A direct-to-video midquel, The Fox and the Hound 2, was released to DVD on December 12, 2006.

The movie was a pretty big deal in the way Disney’s animated feature films were produced from this point on.

Production of the film began in Spring 1977. The film marked a turning point in the studio: Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men” did initial development of the animation, but by the end of production the younger set of Disney animators completed the production process. Wolfgang Reitherman was producer, and championed staying true to the novel, while Larry Clemmons was head of the story team. Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Cliff Nordberg did much of the early development of the main characters.

The newer generation of directors and animators, including John Lasseter, John Musker, Ron Clements, Glen Keane, Tim Burton, Brad Bird, Henry Selick, Chris Buck, and Mark Dindal, would finalize the animation and complete the film’s production. These animators had moved through the in-house animation training program, and would all play an important role in the Disney Renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s.

However, the transition between the old guard and the new resulted in arguments over how to handle the film. Reitherman had his own ideas on the designs and layouts that should be used, but the newer team backed Stevens. Animator Don Bluth declared Disney’s work “stale” and walked out with 11 others to form his own studio. With 17% of the animators now gone, production on The Fox and the Hound was delayed. Bluth had animated Widow Tweed and her cow, Abigail, and his team worked on the rest of the sequence. The exodus of so many animators forced the cancellation of the film’s original Christmas 1980 premiere while new artists were hired. Four years after production started the film was finished with approximately 360,000 drawings, 110,000 painted cels and 1,100 painted backgrounds making up the finished product. A total of 180 people, including 24 animators, worked on the film.

This huge production delay does unfortunately show up in the movie in terms of you could tell that the film can’t decide if it wants to stay true to the novel or do something different from the book and so you have this clash of two different ideas of what the movie wants to be that just doesn’t come together very well. And that’s the biggest problem with the movie is that the story is not really well put together.

But other than that, the rest of the movie is good. The animation overall is really solid and it definitely does a good job of giving us an idea of what’s going to come at the end of the decade with these new animators coming in with this film.

The characters themselves are also very good in this, they are all very likeable, you actually do believe in the relationship of Tod & Copper and you can definitely see this conflict that they have as they start off as friends but then come to the unfortunate realization that they have to be enemies. It also helps that both sets of voice actors do a good job making the relationship more believable. You have Keith Mitchell & Corey Feldman as the young Tod & Copper and Mickey Rooney & Kurt Russell as the older Tod & Copper. Yeah, Mickey Rooney & Kurt Russell having good chemistry together on screen, I can’t believe I’m even saying that but it really does work here.

The film also manages to get some really good emotional moments in this, I mean, REALLY good emotional moments. The scene where Tod’s guardian, Widow Tweed, takes Tod into the wild and knowing she’ll never see him again, it’s friggin’ depressing to watch because it’s shot really well and they perfectly encapture the right emotional impact for a scene like this.

There are definitely a lot of good things in The Fox & The Hound that makes it a movie that’s worth multiple viewings but I just wished that the story could’ve been more well put together and not feel like two different minds were trying to decide what they wanted to do with the movie. Overall, yeah, it’s worth watching The Fox & The Hound and you will definitely enjoy a lot of it regardless of a convoluted storyline.

#100 & #99

#98 & #97

#96 & #95

#94 & #93

#92 & #91

#90 & #89

#88 & #87

#86 & #85

#84 & #83

#82 & #81

#80 & #79

#78 & #77

#76 & #75

#74 & #73

#72 & #71

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