A Tribute to Don Bluth: The Animation Auteur Who Commanded Disney to Become Better

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The Dark Age of American Animation

For close to a century now, Disney has been synonymous (and indeed, treated as all but interchangeable) with American animation at large. If you go back and watch a Disney animated feature from the 1940s or ‘50s, you’ll notice just how fluid and lushly drawn the animation itself often is and how it manages to hold up to the test of time. Even a more modest production from that period proved magnificent, like ‘Lady and the Tramp’, which was so lavishly produced that it was shot in ultra-wide CinemaScope. Contrast the Disney output of this period, basically up to the time of Walt Disney’s death in 1966, with the animated Disney ventures that came afterward. While movies like ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘The Rescuers’ are not exactly bad per se, the jump from hand-drawn animation to computer animation is noticeable.

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Disney’s output in the ‘70s was overall disappointing, and nobody understood this better than Don Bluth. Born in 1937, Bluth began working as an animator at Disney in the ‘60s but took on more prominent roles in ‘70s productions such as ‘The Rescuers’ and ‘Pete’s Dragon’, the subpar quality of which incentivized him to leave Disney and form his own animation studio, Don Bluth Productions. In the 1980s, while Disney was struggling to produce critical and commercial hits, Bluth’s features were setting a new standard for American animation — a standard that would both doom Bluth and cement his legacy.

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‘The Secret of NIMH’ (1982)

Bluth’s first feature, and arguably his greatest, was ‘The Secret of NIMH’, released a year after Disney’s ‘The Fox and the Hound.’ These two movies can hardly be more different, although each does have its virtues; ‘The Fox and the Hound’ is a calm and melancholy slice of life about the friendship between a fox and a bloodhound, while ‘The Secret of NIMH’ has considerably higher ambitions. Based on Robert C. O’Brien’s bestselling novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, Bluth’s film follows Mrs. Brisby (name changed), a little mouse of a housewife who ventures into the wilderness in hopes of finding a cure for her deathly ill son. Along the way, Mrs. Brisby comes across a secret society of rats, not only intelligent but technologically advanced to a supernatural degree.

Not only is ‘The Secret of NIMH’ gorgeously animated, with a fluidity not seen in Disney productions at this time, but it’s a mature fable about the complicated relationship between technology and mysticism, simple and fast-paced enough that children can understand, but ponderous enough for an adult audience. Despite being rated G, ‘The Secret of NIMH’ is more mature and intense than any modern Disney movie you can think of, but it’s also the most perfectly balanced of Bluth’s movies in terms of maturity. If Bluth were to have a single masterpiece, ‘The Secret of NIMH’ might be it.

‘An American Tail’ (1986)

The mid-1980s marked perhaps Disney’s darkest hour, with the commercial and critical disaster that was ‘The Black Cauldron’ in 1985. While Disney was floundering, Bluth’s sophomore feature would become (up to that point) the highest-grossing animated film of all time. ‘An American Tail’ was released in 1986, in direct competition with Disney’s mouse-centric venture, ‘The Great Mouse Detective’, and critics generally preferred the latter. Two popular movie critics of the time, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, go on to criticize ‘An American Tail’ for being too dark for children. Despite this, Bluth’s feature performed considerably better at the box office. Several of Bluth’s films would compete directly with Disney’s output for any given year, but it was the rivalry between ‘An American Tail’ and ‘The Great Mouse Detective’ that would, more than anything else, set up what would later be known as the Disney Renaissance.

For the moment, Bluth was on top, and with none other than Steven Spielberg in the producer’s chair (not the last time the two would collaborate), ‘An American Tail’ stands out as a striking (if also perhaps too dreary) depiction of the immigrant experience in America. Never before or since has New York been given such life (warts and all) through hand-drawn animation.

‘The Land Before Time’ (1988)

Don Bluth’s last financial hit (with one exception) was ‘The Land Before Time’, released in 1988. Not only did Spielberg return as a producer, but George Lucas also joined the project as a co-producer. This time, ‘The Land Before Time’ is about the dinosaurs — specifically Littlefoot, a young sauropod looking for the Great Valley (a Jerusalem for sauropods) in the wake of his mother’s death. Now, I admit right now that I’m biased, but ‘The Land Before Time’ is my favorite of Bluth’s films; it’s the one I grew up watching the most, and even as an adult, I find its allegorical approach to death and grief to be arresting. The story is quite simple, with Littlefoot making friends as he treks through the prehistoric land, overcoming natural obstacles and giant carnivores who want to have him for breakfast, but much like Bluth’s previous films, it’s steeped in a haunting dreaminess that may be too intense for children, but which nonetheless envelopes the viewer in a haze of implicit mysticism.

Unfortunately, while it did well at the box office, ‘The Land Before Time’ did not perform as well domestically as Disney’s release that year, ‘Oliver & Company.’ For what it’s worth, the latter is the more obscure movie nowadays. Have you seen ‘Oliver & Company’? Interference from Spielberg and Lucas also resulted in the film being cut for content considered “too scary” for children, resulting in a film that is maybe too short (only 69 minutes). From here on out, studio interference would only worsen for Bluth and never get better.

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‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’ (1989)

Then came the terror. Without so much as skipping a beat, Bluth released his next feature, ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’, only one year after ‘The Land Before Time.’ Of Bluth’s first four features, ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’ was the least successful commercially, and to this day, it remains something of a hidden gem. The plot is a bit zany, granted. We get Charlie, a wisecracking dog who runs a gambling racket, and early on, he gets killed by the leader of a 1920s-style mob (also run by dogs). Charlie gets sent to heaven, even though he’s pretty far from a boy scout — but, not wanting to stay dead, he pulls a fast one and makes his way back to the land of the living. Can Charlie redeem himself? Will he get sent to Hell the next time he dies? It’s all a bit morbid, and of Bluth’s first four films, ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’ is the most tonally inconsistent; even so, it continues the mystical angle of Bluth’s previous efforts with gusto, more than making up for its narrative shortcomings.

‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’ only did decently on the commercial front, and Disney’s animated feature that year, ‘The Little Mermaid’, eclipsed Bluth both critically and commercially, not only wrestling Bluth’s grip on the industry away from him but unambiguously marking the beginning of the Disney Renaissance. While Bluth would continue to direct movies after ‘All Dogs Go to Heaven’, he would never again direct a film that taps into his unique virtues as a filmmaker.

The Decline and Fall of Bluth’s Empire

Things were never the same again. On paper, Bluth was more productive in the ‘90s than he was in the ‘80s, with five features released. However, something had gone very wrong: of these five features, only ‘Anastasia’ managed to leave a mark without significant contempt. In 1991, we saw ‘Rock-A-Doodle’, in 1994, ‘A Troll in Central Park’ and ‘Thumbelina’, in 1995, ‘The Pebble and the Penguin’, and in 1997, we got ‘Anastasia’, which was treated as a return to form. Between MGM, Warner Bros., and the studio previously known as 20th Century Fox, Bluth made films that now had major financial backing, but the firm grip these studios had on his productions guaranteed that he could no longer make his films nearly as spiritual or challenging as before, with all of the aforementioned films (except for ‘Anastasia’) being far more comedic than what was customary for Bluth — and far less ambitious than previous projects.

‘Anastasia’, of course, did decently with critics and audiences, and some people remember it fondly to this day, but even so, it reeks of an attempt to copy what had become the signature style of Disney. Bluth’s final feature as director, ‘Titan A.E.’, released in 2000, was such a financial trainwreck that it forced Fox Animation Studios to close its doors. While ‘Anastasia’ provided some relief, Bluth’s career spiraled in the 1990s, and for the past two decades, he has been in semi-retirement.

Why We Need Hand-Drawn Animation

The world of animation (especially in the United States) has changed so drastically since Don Bluth’s peak years that watching his best movies nowadays feels like you’re stepping into a different realm. American animation studios will, pretty much without exception, only produce 3D animated features. When ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ hit theaters in 2018, people’s minds were blown by the fact that some effects at least appeared to be drawn by hand. While Bluth’s films were never perfect, they captured emotions and tones that 3D animation seemingly has a harder time achieving. 3D animation, while it can be both visually and emotionally gripping at times, lacks the human imperfections of hand-drawn frames. Why does ‘Akira’, the most pivotal of anime movies, still dazzle viewers after more than three decades, while early 3D outings like ‘A Bug’s Life’ are now more treated as artifacts? Part of it has to do with advancements in technology; early 3D animated films simply don’t look as convincing as what comes out now, but I think it also has to do with a difference in technique and even a difference in philosophy. Don Bluth’s best films showed us, at a time when the animation industry was in a tough spot, that you can make movies aimed at children that are nonetheless intense, somber, contemplative, and yet still adventurous.

Today, Disney all but owns theatrical animation in America. There are a couple of challengers: DreamWorks refuses to back down, despite its shaky output, and Sony Pictures Animation has stepped its game up in the past few years, but animation, specifically children’s animation, is now defined by Disney and the formula it has made for itself. Don Bluth shook up the industry at a time when it threatened to stagnate into oblivion; we could use another filmmaker like him.

By Brian Collins

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Brian Collins

Brian Collins is a cinephile, an avid reader, and a writer at The Hollywood Insider. Brian is a firm believer that great Cinema can come from any genre and from any country. While he has a fine time with dramas that garner attention come awards season, Brian likes to analyze and celebrate genre filmmaking, such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, westerns, etc. With The Hollywood Insider as support, Brian hopes to bring light to genre films, both American and abroad. He is also a contributor to the blog series Young People Read Old SFF.