If you noticed the lack of issues this past week it was because I took a family vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida. It was a fantastic trip that I hope my young daughter never forgets. While down there, we saw reminders of all of the great Disney movies from the past 60+ years including the first, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, all the way to the latest, The Princess and the Frog (set to release this December). It started me thinking about the 80s and it turns out that my favorite decade was one of the least prolific for the great Disney franchise.

There was an animated feature-length film released in 1989 which I will discuss later because it really re-launched that aspect of Disney movies and would lead to huge successes in the 90s and beyond. But first, I will briefly the main Disney movie that I remember from the 80s and that is Tron.

Tron was the 1982 sci-fi film starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner and Cindy Morgan about a young computer software engineer played by Bridges who is sucked into the digital computer world. It was released at a time when computers were just making their way into the mainstream and is one of the first films by a major studio to combine live action with computer graphics extensively. Here is the original trailer for Tron...

Though I was not a big fan of the movie at the time, there was an arcade game based on Tron which I did enjoy playing quite a bit. It ranks highly on my Top Classic Arcade Games of the 80s list which you can check out by clicking on that link. My favorite part of that game is also one of my favorite parts of the movie and that is the lightbikes. Here is the scene from the original movie with the lightbikes...

You may or may not know that there is a sequel scheduled to be released in 2010 called Tron Legacy. There is an early trailer for the film already and the lightbikes look to be even cooler in this new version. Here is the teaser trailer for the upcoming Tron Legacy...

As for animated feature-length films from Disney in the 80s, there were not many of note. There are really only five to note including The Fox and the Hound (1981), The Black Cauldron (1985), The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Oliver & Company (1988) and of course The Little Mermaid (1989). The last is the movie I referred to at the beginning which served to re-launch the feature-length animated film as both a popular and lucrative focus for Disney.

The Little Mermaid opened in November of 1989 and grossed over $84 million in the U.S. during its initial release. It marked a return to the musical format that made Disney films popular from the 1930s to the 1970s. The Little Mermaid featured seven original songs by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman with two of them receiving Oscar nominations for best original song and one winning it ("Under the Sea"). Here is the original trailer for Disney's The Little Mermaid...

After the huge success achieved by The Little Mermaid, the Disney animation department expanded greatly from about 300 artists in 1988 to 2400 artists by 1999. It would be followed by other huge successes like Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994). The Little Mermaid is not one of my personal favorites, but if you want to see my list of Favorite Animated Feature Films then click on that link to check that one out. Also, in case you were wondering, I did get to meet Ariel a couple times while visiting Disney World. With a young daughter who happens to be a big fan of all the Princesses, it was inevitable.

So Disney did not see huge successes in the 80s, but there were a few (like Tron and 1989's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) and one big one with The Little Mermaid.

That's all for this issue of Kickin' it Old School. Hope you enjoy the "Preview Review" issues and please let me know if there are any particular 80s movies that you want to see me cover. Thanks as always for reading. If you are interested in reading any of my other 80s related issues, please click there for a summary of those. You can also always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column to find any other issues you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK LOGO in the upper right hand column. This will take you to the Fan Page where I ask you to then click on "Become a Fan". Even if you are not a Facebook member yet, please consider joining and registering as a fan at that page. You can also now follow Old School on Twitter by clicking on the FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER LOGO also in the upper right hand column. This will take you the page and you can just click on the box that says "Follow". Let other 80s fans know about it as well! Peace and much love.