Link to the thread on 'the end of traditional animation?' where this film was originally mentioned under the title American Dog, with its original director Chris Sanders. Sanders ankled the production, as the trades say, when John Lasseter began calling the shots at the Walt Disney Feature Animation unit.

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Disney's Bolt
Disney fans are still outraged at the dismissal of Chris Sanders (Lilo and Stitch) from his film American Dog.
Now renamed Bolt, the revised senario is being directed by Chris Williams (Mulan) and is being readied for release on 11/26/08. A new image (above) released today on ropeofsilicon.com has some of the fans even more enraged. The character's redesign is less appealing and more generic, some say, than Sander's original. . . .
Jerry Beck, CartoonBrew.com, December 27

Animation fans prematurely shoot off their mouths about "Bolt"
Jim Hill points out the parallels between what WDAS's next release is now going through and "Beauty & the Beast" & "The Lion King" 's troubled productions
Jim Hill Media, January 2

The Meta-ness of "Bolt"
The amount of wising up required, in order to appreciate the Bolt idea, is staggering. As a viewer, you are expected to understand that you’re watching an actor, playing a dog who “really” is an actor-dog playing a hero-dog, not that he knows it. Since the central action of the film revolves around the actor-dog’s false belief in the authenticity of his hero-dog role, you have to suspend your disbelief of the actor-dog’s implausible ignorance. Can anyone capable of that also be capable of genuine childlike wonder? I’m not sure.
If you’ve read The Tipping Point (and you have… c’mon…. admit it), you may recall a related vignette about a certain episode of Sesame Street, in which Big Bird searches for a new name. The plot of the episode was fun for adults—-Big Bird, in a moment of existential ennui, concludes that his name is oddly functional and lacking in character, and spends the rest of the episode looking for a new one. But the story was confusing to young children, who speed up their learning about the world by assuming (usually correctly) that the things they encounter have one consistent name apiece. The layering was overkill. It makes for an interesting vignette because most of us have long since forgotten what it would be like to lack layers, to view the world as a simple place where the distance between things-as-they-are and things-as-described doesn’t hold a lot of inherent interest.
From Big Bird to Bolt, it seems, we’ve come a long way. But I’m not sure I like the progression. I’m tempted to say that if a typical five-year-old is Bolt-ready, we are doing way, way too much wising up of young kids, way, way too early. . . .
David Robinson, The American Scene, July 4

Amusing post. Is there anything seriously intended in it, or is he just joking from one end to the other? Because Bolt sounds a lot like Buzz Lightyear.

Here's the trailer:



I have to say, the hamster cracks me up quite a bit.

Looks like the anti-Tropic Thunder. (He thinks it's real, but it's not; they think it's fake, but it's not.)

Between this and Meet the Robinsons, I'm almost beginning to wonder if John Lasseter is deliberately making Disney churn out mediocre, run-of-the-mill films so that Pixar films look better (but both films were put into production before Lasseter shook things up, so it's difficult to say what can be pinned on him and what can't). As with Chicken Little (produced before Lasseter took over, IIRC), there seems to be a continuation here of Disney's recent trend towards mimicking the antic style of DreamWorks cartoons.

Which is not to say that this film WILL be mediocre. Maybe it'll be great. But the ad is pitching one kind of film, and it seems to be right up there with the ads for Open Season and a whole bunch of other animated also-rans. Compare and contrast this to, say, the sly teasers for Finding Nemo.

The hamster is the only thing that cracks me up at all. But it's a trailer. Who knows...

I saw the new "ad" yesterday, when I finally got around to seeing Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and quelle coincidence, today Patrick Goldstein links to this story:

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Movie theaters balk at lengthy 'Bolt' preview
Walt Disney Pictures has gone to great lengths to promote its Nov. 21 animated movie "Bolt." But when the studio attached a six-minute-long promotion for the 3-D family flick -- about a superhero dog -- to film prints of its box-office hit "Beverly Hills Chihuahua," numerous theater owners said Disney had gone too far.
Theater owners said the "Bolt" spot intruded on their screen time and not only made "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" run longer than it should but also cost them time that the theater owners could fill -- with other showings or their own commercials. . . .
Disney maintains that the preview is in fact a "featurette," a mini-film not unlike the award-winning animated shorts that Disney and Pixar put ahead of their animated features. Disney even submitted the "Bolt" footage to the Motion Picture Assn. of America for a rating as a short film, and was given a PG mark for "some mild action."
But the theater owners saw it differently, and complained to Disney; their trade organization, the National Assn. of Theater Owners; and the MPAA. . . .
The lengthy "Bolt" trailer -- which features appearances from the film's voice performers, John Travolta and Miley Cyrus, and footage from the film -- did not appear in the traditional slot where coming attractions usually appear. Instead, the spot came after all of the trailers had been shown, and after where exhibitors typically present a theater's "feature presentation" credit.
While there is no firm policy on the number of trailers that can run before a movie, there are voluntary and codified rules about how long those previews can last. "The length of a trailer must not exceed two minutes, thirty seconds," says the MPAA 2006 Advertising Handbook. . . .
Los Angeles Times, October 25

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Incidentally, one of the two scenes included in this promo -- yes, two ENTIRE scenes (arguably more, since the first "scene" takes place in two different locations, and is thus sort of TWO scenes) are included in this promo -- seems to take place fairly late in the movie's story arc. At least, given the premise and the way these things usually go, that's how it seemed to me.

Bolt grossed a mere $27 million this weekend, despite decent-to-good reviews, and despite stronger input than usual from the folks who made Pixar what it is today. Which reminds me of this item I posted in our thread on 'the end of traditional animation?':


Pixar now has nine films, Blue Sky now has four films, and DreamWorks Animation now has ten CGI non-Aardman films (all but one of which, i.e. 1998's Antz, have had bigger opening weekends than Bolt and Meet the Robinsons), but other than that, the stats above remain the same. (Well, Bee Movie had an opening weekend of $38 million, and Shrek 3 had an opening weekend of $121.6 million, so DreamWorks's highs and lows have nudged both up and down. But the point remains.)

Well, I took my family to see Bolt over the holidays. The bad: rather too much Toy Story / Toy Story 2 in it. (The delusional hero who believes he has powers that he does not in fact possess, and who has to come to terms with the truth; the female lead who has an abandonment back-story – when Mittens the cat tells her story, you can almost hear “When She Loved Me" from TS2 starting to play.) The good: the hamster character is a total hoot who steals every scene he's in, the 3D effects work, the action scenes are genuinely entertaining in an intentionally over-the-top sort of way, and the various minor characters all justify their screen time.

After a very poor opening, Bolt held strongly through the week, and looks good to have little, if any drop, in its second weekend, so at least it isn't going to disappear without a trace. It certainly deserves better than that.

bowen wrote:
: The bad: rather too much Toy Story / Toy Story 2 in it.

Heh. I made that same comparison in my review. (And the villains' cat-eye logo looks kind of like the heroes' oval logo in The Incredibles, no?)

I was very tempted to say something along the lines that Bolt is a throwback to the days when Pixar movies were just plain fun and not grand metaphors for the studio's own importance, or some such thing, but I refrained. Until now.

Good crowd in the matinee this afternoon. My friend and I enjoyed it, and the young ones around us seemed to be into it.
bowen wrote:

Agree with the "good," but I don't think the "bad" was so bad. It may be a bit formulaic, but was given an effective twist with these characters.

Trivia note: Bolt is on track to be only the third non-Pixar Disney animated film to gross over $100 million this decade, following Chicken Little (2005, $135.4 million) and Lilo & Stitch (2002, $145.8 million). Disney has released an average of one new feature-length cartoon every year since the mid-1980s; and in the 1990s alone, SEVEN of those films grossed over $100 million (said films being The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, Pocahontas, Mulan and The Hunchback of Notre Dame). And that was back when $100 million meant something. Nowadays, however, at a time when DreamWorks, Pixar and even 20th Century Fox are routinely topping $100 million, sometimes in a single week, non-Pixar Disney has managed to do it only these three times.

I admit I got a little misty-eyed when I saw this back in November, not because I found it just incredibly poignant, but because I was so glad to see a genuinely good film wander out of the wasteland of WDFA -- or Walt Disney Animation Studios, as they're apparently calling it now. Sure, it may be composed of leftover Pixar parts (in addition to the obvious Toy Story and Cars resonances, there's Mittens pulling a Hopper on the Pigeons, and those very Incredibles-esque action sequences), but the whole thing works in a way that I don't think anything from Disney has since Lilo & Stitch. And, thank God, it's more in line with the even-keel pace of Pixar films than the overstimulated nonsense of Dreamworks films and Disney's other two CGI efforts. It may not reach any grand artistic heights, but if Lasseter's plan is to start with the basics of how a story works, this is a pretty good first step.

But I admit I'll be very interested to see, somewhere down the line, this era of the studio's history examined the way Walt's has been in recent years. My brother gave me The Art of Bolt for Christmas, and while it's a lovely book, I'm a little surprised to see that only two pieces of production art from American Dog, Chris Sander's original version of the film, show up in the book -- strictly environmental shots showing the development of the painterly CG backgrounds Disney has been working on. I suspect the eventual DVD will be likewise mum about American Dog, and that makes me wonder. I'm a big fan of Lilo & Stitch, and the look, at least, of Sanders' film, was much less 'Pixar-lite,' as Peter put it -- Tom Maurstad, of the Dallas Morning News, seems to have written his review under the impression Bolt IS a Pixar film. I'll buy that there were serious story problems necessitating the whole reboot, but I do wonder if we're not watching Lasseter turning Disney into a model of early Pixar, at least for now. There are worse things to be, of course, but I'm hoping that over the years Disney Animation Studios will turn into something equally good but different.

SDG, if you're reading this: I take it from the complete absence of Bolt from your year-end family film wrap up, you haven't seen it yet? If you haven't, I do recommend it. It's much better than the ad campaigns would have you believe, if for nothing more than the strength of its characters. Although it won't do anything to ameliorate your problems with Disney Animation's general antipathy towards father-figures. There are no fathers in the films, and the two father figures -- the agent and the director -- are both pretty much dross.

N.K. Carter wrote:
: . . . and those very Incredibles-esque action sequences) . . .

FWIW, in my review, I also compared the Bolt villains' cat-eye-shaped logo to the Incredibles' capital-I-in-an-oval logo.

: But I admit I'll be very interested to see, somewhere down the line, this era of the studio's history examined the way Walt's has been in recent years.

Definitely. It will be interesting, too, to see what the more "objective" histories of Pixar look like down the road. The Pixar Story, a feature-length documentary by Leslie Iwerks (daughter of Disney co-founder Ub Iwerks) that was recently included on the WALL-E DVD, is interesting enough as an "authorized biography". But it's still an authorized biography.

: I'll buy that there were serious story problems necessitating the whole reboot, but I do wonder if we're not watching Lasseter turning Disney into a model of early Pixar, at least for now.

FWIW, it has been observed that all of the Disney productions these days tend to have co-directors, whereas all of the Pixar films released this decade have had a single credited director. There is, if you will, more auteurism going on at Pixar than there is at Disney, where the productions do not necessarily reflect a single artist's vision quite so much. (Though it is worth noting that at least one Pixar film has been taken out of one director's hands and given to another, i.e. Ratatouille, just as Lasseter has taken Bolt and Tron 2 and perhaps other projects away from their creators and had them reworked from square one by other filmmakers.)

Disney tries to figure out why "Bolt" missed its box office target
But what really bothers the suits back in Burbank is the huge monetary difference between what "Bolt" earned domestically and what "Panda," "Madagascar 2" and "Horton" hauled in during their stateside runs.
"Coming in second to Pixar, I can live with. They're the best in the business, after all. Besides, we own them. So all that money still goes into our pocket," said one unnamed Disney Studio exec. "But to have 'Bolt' earn less than the latest Blue Sky & DreamWorks animated features? That's kind of tough to take."
Especially given the ambitious promotional campaign that Walt Disney Pictures put together for WDAS' latest project. Which even involved John Lasseter, who -- in a particularly memorable appearance on "The Bonnie Hunt Show" -- actually slide down a fire pole in an effort to get would-be moviegoers excited about "Bolt."
Jim Hill Media, January 6