A review of all Disney movies' sequels i've watched

[Hector]

LITTLE MERMAID 2
No, no, no, that was just wrong. The original movie was made
in a fairytale style. Who told them it was a good idea to
continue it with something that felt like an american teen
drama series? And, most importantly, why did the happy
ending of the first movie have to be ruined with 12 more years
of fear and misery for the main characters? Repeat after me:
This movie never happened.

LITTLE MERMAID SERIES
Well, prequels do not involve as dangerous pitfalls as sequels,
but still they have to be treated carefully. I think Ariel's character
got overmatured during the series through various experiences.
Considering how immature and inexperienced she appeared to be
at the beginning of the movie, this creates a feeling of contradiction.
Also, what's the point of that implied romance between her and that
Urchin merman when everybody already knew she was going to end
up with Eric? Why implying a love story everybody knows will not
end well? This is not romantic. On the contrary, it gives off a feeling
of sorrow to the watchers. Even so, most episodes were interesting,
i just think it was wrong to base it on the movie. Perhaps they should
have created it as a mermaid series with the same episode plots but
with a different mermaid starring and with new characters in general,
created specifically for the series, having nothing to do with Little
Mermaid universe.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 2
This prequel is one of the best Disney's attempts to further milk a movie
without sacrificing quality for a mere profit. New characters, new romantism,
new mage, without contradicting anything from the first movie. An exception
to my ''don't touch a masterpiece'' theory.

ALLADIN SERIES
The only Disney movie based series i liked. What shows the creators' skill here
is that they did not focus so much on the movie's couple (Alladin/Jasmin) who
had already shone, but on the secondary characters that had so much unused
potential (Genie/Iago), while also avoiding the pitfall of turning the latter two
into main characters, which would be disastrous. Alladin and Jasmine were kept
in the plot, because Genie and/or Iago are just not cut out to being protagonists.
Their potential can be better utilized when there is someone else next to them
to take the leading role.

ALLADIN 2/3
Not so sure how to feel about that. At the second movie, they just brought back
the same villain. Feels kinda pointless. As for the third... well, it was a touching
father/son story, but why did it end the way the first movie was supposed to
(wedding)? All in all, it seems to me they just decided to make sequels for the
hell of it and they just happened to be of satisfactory quality by pure accident.

TIMON AND PUMBAA
As i said above about Genie/Iago, Timon and Pumbaa are not suited to being main
characters. This series was enjoyable and funny but, at the same time, killed the
movie's mage. Just like ''Little Mermaid'' series, they should have done it with new
characters not connected to the movie's universe.

LION KING 2
A fairly good movie. But! When you decide to continue what is probably one of the
best cartoon movies in history, ''fairly good'' does not suffice to stand up to expectations
and avoid tarnishing the strong emotions the original masterpiece generated.
Unless you miraculously come up with an extraordinarily interesting idea, it would be
better to leave such an original movie to its happy ending.

LION KING 3
Ok, that was obviously an intentional parody, so i won't critisize it. Nevertheless, the
scenes with Timon's backstory and Simba's babysitting were excellent supplements
to the first movie and i'd have loved it if Disney had treated those parts as extensions
of its canonicity. Of course, they're not enough to make a whole movie out of them,
but it'd have been an excellent idea to produce them as a short (like Tangled Ever
After short).

POCAHONTAS 2
I haven't watched it, so i can't give it a full review, but i have heard Pocahontas romanced
with another guy. After all that Poca/John Smith build up? Why Disney? Why didn't you let
us hope those two would be brought back together by fate?

HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME 2
Mediocre at most. I believe they did that movie just to pair up Quasimodo with some girl, any
girl, after denying him of Esmeralda in the first movie. Whether the decision to pair up
Esmeralda with the handsome guy in the first place is up to debate (on the one hand, it leaves
the children with the moral message that a beautiful woman must end up with someone of the
same caliber, on the other hand, i agree it would have been kind of weird for a fairytale if a
gorgeous woman like Esmeralda had ended up with someone like Quasimodo), if they cared so
much about Quasi's happiness, they could have just given him a mate in the first movie. No
need to change anything in the plot, they could have just implied it in the end by showing,
dunno, an unknown girl in the crowd smiling to Quasimodo, him returning the smile, and leaving
the rest to our assumption. No need to make a whole movie just to quell the fans' fears.

HERCULES SERIES
A sloppy and lazy prequel. Obvious intention to just exploit the movie's success. Hell they even
totally threw the movie's canonicity out of the window, which would be excusable only if we
had to do with a parody (which is obviously not the case here).

TARZAN SERIES
Most episodes were uninteresting. Animal characters were humanized too much. Almost zero
romance between the supposed couple (Tarzan/Jane). They could have perfectly produced the
same plots with a bunch of random guys lost in the jungle. All in all, bad idea.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

I'll go too! First I'll get those you already covered out of the way, then those I have watched that you haven't.

The Little Mermaid 2: Inferior to the original. Not the worst Disney sequel by far (and bringing in new problems was needed to drive the plot, there's no way to do a sequel and preserve the original Happy Ending), but not the best, either. The animation's pretty good at times, but the "awkward teen Melody drama" stuff near the begining is indeed unpleasant and tonally off. And Adult!Flounder is not a bad concept but is just weird and obnoxious in practice. Morgana is a pretty fun villain (although I understand why some people dislike her), although her rightfully-cut villain song was terrible. The final battle against her in the ice palace is gripping and well-scored.

The Little Mermaid: The Series: I only watched some episodes, and… yeah. They pulled it off as well as possible but it was inevitable that Ariel's character would be a bit mishandled for such a long prequel. The Tim Curry manta-ray guy is a lot of fun, as are most of the original characters that I recall, though it is of course a plothole to have Ariel already be friend with Sebastian at this point. I personally wasn't bothered by Urchin (it's realistic that a teenage girl would have some flings before the love of her life; in fact, I believe it was a first for a Disney princess), either. 

Beauty and the Beast 2: The Enchanted Christmas: One of the best of the bunch, to be sure. Maestro Forte is an interesting and entertaining villain, the animation's as good as it could be considering the budget, and the story doesn't feel like a betrayal of the original. The flashback to the day the prince got cursed is a welcome one. All this being said, the film's status as a 'midquel' does strain belief a bit at times (especially considering the way it breaks the flow of Belle and Adam's relationship). 

The Return of Jafar: The animation is what it is, but I always liked this movie (which is really just the pilot of The Series, for the record). Jafar's return is justified because he isn't really the same villain as before, having moved from a cold, calculated vizier supressing all emotion to an all-powerful demon who doesn't hold back. Having Iago redeem himself was a daring choice and a good one. I really like the music of all the Aladdin movies and this one is no exception, although I could have done without Forget About Love. 

Aladdin: A Series: A wonderful fantasy series in the vein of the Harryhausen Sinbad movies and a favorite of mine back in the day. The way the world was expanded is truly commendable and most of the new characters (Mirage, Sadira, Abis Mal, etc.) are well-rounded and enjoyable. 

Aladdin and the King of Thieves: This one felt like a more fully realized, better-animated, musical episode of the series. And that's a good thing! It's an epic swashbuckling fantasy adventure ala Sinbad with the father-son story to tie it all together. Sa'Luk is a frightening villain, if not the most complex one out there, all the main Thieves have a distinct personality to them even if we don't know their names so kudos to the animators, the effects are great, the music is again to die for… The treasure and the lore surrounding it were really great, too. 

Timon and Pumbaa: The Series: I never could really stand some of Timon and Pumbaa's gross humor, but when not dragged down by Pumbaa fart jokes, the series, from what I've seen, has an Animaniacs-ish zaniness that I actually kinda like. I wish the title characters were better-suited to it, is all.

The Lion King II: I didn't like the original Lion King that much, though it's certainly a solid film. I feel very similarly towards this one as I do towards the other, although of course the original's animation is much more impressive. Zira is a great and menacing villain, but the incest thing and the resulting plot-holes do confuse the heck out of the casual viewer.

The Lion King I-1/2: Again. Don't really like Timon and Pumbaa's humor in general. I do like the idea behind the movie and the slew of cameos in the theatre scenes, though. Good job! Also, the animation's great.

Pocahontas 2: I actually really like this movie. The songs are as good as the original's (though neither's are stellar), the animation doesn't have the grand moments of the original but is very good at what it does do, and I really, really love Radcliffe in both films. Pocahontas's being paired with John Rolfe instead of Smith was, I believe, to stick just a tiny bit closer to historical truth (though that doesn't make it that close at all even then); personally I don't mind because I wasn't all that taken in by the romance in the original, and if you don't have that blinding you, well, adult people fall in and out of love and meet new people and fall in love again. It happens. Again, like Ariel's teenage flirting with Urchin, it's a realistic touch that Disney does too rarely in their feature films.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame 2: It was an almost impossible task for a direct-to-video, small-budget film like this one to match the original's Fantasia-esque animation, and it was also impossible for TV writers ever to come up with a fitting sequel for an adaptation of a Victor Hugo epic. The movie was stillborn on arrival. The executive command to center the movie on Quasimodo 'getting the girl' only made matters worse. But that being said, for what it was… I don't mind it. Its pastel-colored style is no match for the original but is pleasant on its own; Sarouche is no Claude Frollo but he's amusing enough as these things go and can be pretty threatening; and Madeleine may only exist so Quasimodo can bed her in the end, but she's a likeable character. The romance was kinda sappy but not badly written — again, as far as these things go. Phoebus and Esmeralda's son Zephyr was just there for his own sake and didn't have much about him, but I didn't find him annoying as some people apparently do. Overall, a movie that didn't need to exist, but eked out a living pretty decently once it was decided that it would.

Hercules - The Series: Again all the issues of a midquel, but if you get the canon continuity off your mind for a moment, not bad. Icarus is annoying as hell, but Hades is funny as ever, and the Arabian Nights episode was as unexpected as it was well-made. More crossovers like that, guys, please! The various reimaginings of obscure Greek myths often unknown to the American public was also very much appreciated. I'm not a fan of the original film's music and overall design, so I don't like those here either, but I don't think the series did the movie a disservice in any way.

The Legend of Tarzan (the Tarzan series): As good as expected, and occasionally better. The animation is pretty good as far as TV goes, and the Tarzan character lends himself to various jungle-based adventures very naturally (since he comes from a long-running novel series in the first place). Whatever criticizes the lack of romance, but… eh, the movie did that pretty well; the series is accepting them as firmly established couple that doesn't get angsty or all-lovey-dovey on a daily basis anymore, and instead focused on the adventures, and that's good. They're a married couple, end of story. I don't mind the animal characters being "humanized" — if anything, it'd have been kinda awesome if they'd actually gone farther and gone a tad Animal Farm with Jane and the Professor progressively realizing the animals are all sapient and then trying to civilize them for better or for worse. The 2016 Jungle Book pulled that sort of thing off beautifully in a very similar setting.



And now for the ones you haven't talked about yet: 

Atlantis: Milo's Return: Lame title, but otherwise great movie. It was cobbled together by linking three originally-separate plots for three TV episodes, and it shows, but all it does is give you a great taste of a great show that sadly never was. The Atlantis team is pretty likeable and lend themselves to mystical adventure plots really well, with something more that even the superficially-similar Aladdin TV show didn't have, namely carefully planned worldbuilding behind it all to be revealed season by season, linking all the magical elements to Atlantis. As it stands, the movie may be a bit messy, but the three mystical plots are gripping and well-made, and the finale… wow, the finale. I won't spoil it, because, people, it's something I did not expect, and I remember cheering out loud when I first saw it. Anyway, the animation is TV quality but has a nice effect here and there. Overall, I strongly recommend this flick if you liked the first one.

Belle's Magical World: Oh God. This is bad. The animation is lower-tier TV, but the real problem here are the stories. They're obnoxious 'moralizing' tales that make little sense within the continuity of the first movie and do nothing to progress the characters or the magic. The few things it does well enough (new object characters, for instance), Enchanted Christmas did much better.

Cinderella II: Dreams Come True: It's…… well, it's……… harmless. Like Milo's Return, it attempts to stick three unrelated episodes of a cancelled TV show together, and unlike Milo's Return that, as noticeable as the three different subplots may be, actually does go the distance and glue them into a coherent story, Dreams Come True just sticks them as flashbacks. The framing device isn't worth the film it's printed on, but the actual stories aren't… bad. They're childish, but not obnoxious. Lucifer pampered to try and seduce a lady cat is amusing in a fleeting, cartoony sort of way, the idea of Jacq trying to be a human isn't half-bad, and a redeeming story for Anastasia was (like Iago's redemption) a really nice idea. The worst out of the bunch is naturally the first one, with Cinderella trying to bring her blblbl most unorthodox views to the palace. Overall, not a very good film but not as horrendeous by far as Belle's Magical World.

Cinderella III: A Twist in Time: A really great film, even if the best way to describe it in the words of another reviewer is that it's "desperately trying to be any Disney movie but Cinderella". Lady Tremaine steals the Fairy Godmother's wand and goes back in time before the Prince found Cinderella, using more magic along the way to make sure Anastasia is the one who marries the Prince. Twists and turns ensue, the animation's not as good as the original but it's really good, and there's an adventurous feeling to it all. Cinderella and the Prince and King are both given some additional personality (which the Prince sorely needed) and it's really well-done. Being the continuity maniac that I am, I also love that Twist in Time, while its fairy tale plot erased the events of Dreams Come True from existence, still took the effort of referencing elements introduced in that film, such as Anastasia's future boyfriend and the appearance and personality of the Head Maid at the Palace.

Lady and the Tramp II: Not the worst film objectively, but one of my personal least favorites. The original film had a lot of charm that this one squanders by getting the anthroporphism subtly wrong, and things like the film starring new characters rather than the originals (who are relegated to very minor roles), the human characters' faces being clearly visible, and the occasional CGI bit, are really jarring. In theory I'd give them praise for having lifted the Scamp character from the comic strips, and really, it's not a horrible film at all, but I just really don't like it.

101 Dalmatians II: Oh yeah! That one's good! It hit just the right balance of returning and new characters, and its animation and background style, while not true xerox, felt similar to the original. Cruella and the Baduns are as funny as ever and the new characters are equally enjoyable. I suppose more time could have been devoted to Pongo, Perdita and the Ratcliffes, but I'm still really happy with what we got. Definitely check that one out if you liked the first one.

Mulan II: Not bad, not bad. I don't like either this one or the first Mulan very strongly, but from my perspective, the sequel is no disgrace to the first one. The animation is of course smaller, and the villain isn't worth Shan Yu, but the animation's very good.

Bambi II: Not as good as the original (like Lady and the Tramp, it got a bit confused with how anthropomorphic the characters ought to be, although it's less annoying in this one), but a good film anyway. I liked it. The Prince of the Forest was developped well, they gave Ronno some sorely-missed characterization… and the animation is clearly trying its very best to match the original's and doing rather well for itself at it.

Return to Neverland: Not a fan of all the Lost Boys stuff (but then, I didn't like the Lost Boys that much in the original), but other than that, a really strong film. One does rather miss the Crocodile, but Captain Hook is every bit as entertaining as in the original, the WW2 opening was a surprise (it's all going very Bedknobs and Broomsticks) but not a bad one, I like Jane as a protagonist… The most memorable thing in the movie, and for good reason, is of course the rather short but ever-so-amazing sequence with Hook's ship flying over London and even outrunning an aeroplane squad. It's simply concentrated awesomeoness. At any rate, I also like the Tinker Bell subplot well enough, Peter's done well, Smee is done well, the sequence at the end where Peter and Wendy meet up simply heartbreaking and as it should be… it's a very strong flick. 

[Hector]

Dec 18, 2017 17:59:53 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

The Little Mermaid 2: Inferior to the original. Not the worst Disney sequel by far (and bringing in new problems was needed to drive the plot, there's no way to do a sequel and preserve the original Happy Ending)

I know, but they could have at least let the characters enjoy their hard earned hapiness for a while
(like in Lion King 2, where the new problems arose when Kiara was an adult) instead of getting them
into trouble right away. When i went back to watching the first movie, i was like ''What's the point of
all those struggles of the heroes and the romantic ending, since we now know they'll be miserable for
12 more years?''