Hello and welcome to In Too Deep Disney vs Warner Bros, where I put these two studios at each other’s throats to see who comes out on top.
Now Disney’s biggest claim to fame are their fairytales. The studio is practically built off the practice. Disney and fairytales go together hand in hand. But Warner Bros is no slouch either, what with their countless adaptations. So, the only fair way of judging these two studios is taking the adaptation of the exact same source material and seeing how it plays out. So without further ado…
Faithfulness
Well when it came to faithfulness, in keeping with the original text, four times out of five Disney won that round. If it wasn’t for their take on Jack and the Beanstalk they’d have walked away with a clean win, but on the whole, Disney tended to stick closer to the original tale, whereas Warner Bros tended to veer off more into parody.
Protagonist
Well in a narrow three to two win, Warner Bros managed to walk away with the win. On the whole the protagonists in the shorts tended to favour Warner Bros far more than they did Disney. Perhaps due to Warner Bros decision to experiment more with the characters and take them out of the mould, whereas Disney preferred to keep the protagonists closer to the original text.
Antagonist
In a surprise upset, four out of five times, Disney tended to have the far stronger antagonist. Granted the Wolf made up two of those occasions, but the only time Disney won was when it brought Bugs Bunny to the table in a rare antagonistic role. Now of course one could argue that my views on protagonist/antagonist were probably the wrong way round, which would no doubt have flipped the final results on their head, but I stand by how I measured it.
Side Characters
It really should be no surprise that when it comes to the category of Side Characters, Warner Bros outstrips Disney four to one. If it wasn’t for the fact that the tortoise and the hare short by Warner Bros didn’t have any side characters then it’d have easily been a clean sweep for Warner Bros. When it comes to characters, Warner Bros tends to walk away with the win more often.
Visual Presentation
Talking about clean sweeps though, it should be no surprise at all when Disney walks away with all five wins. I mean this is Disney we’re talking about, they pretty much invented animation as far as most people are concerned. Not having them win would be quite a shocking upset. So put this one in the ‘no-duh’ category.
Humour
At a surprising four to one, and not a complete five like I was expecting, Warner Bros walks away with a majority of their shorts just being funnier on the whole. That’s not to say the Disney shorts were unfunny, just that Warner Bros tended to focus a lot more on humour than Disney usually did.
Film Factor
It was a close knit race. Warner Bros won the first round with Little Red Riding Rabbit, but with Disney catching up with Giantland. Disney managed to take the lead with The Grasshopper and the Ants, only to falter when Warner Bros pounced with the excellent Tortoise Beats Hare. But, at the very last moment, using the superior strength of The Three Little Pigs, Disney made just one better short than Warner Bros in my eyes. It was a very close race, but Disney just made slightly more better shorts than Warner Bros over this blog series.
Winner
Well, we have two ways of looking at it. We can either add it up by individual points, or by number of wins. By individual points, we have 15 points to Warner Bros and 20 points to Disney. When it comes to number of categories won, Disney won four, in the Faithfulness, Antagonist, Visual Presentation and Film Factor category. So no matter which way you slice it, the ultimate winner of this silly little contest is…
Disney
Yes, much to my shock, Disney ended up making the better shorts overall. If you asked me at the start who I thought was going to win, I’d have said Warner Bros due to personal preference. But, breaking each short down and aiming them at each other, ranking them against each other and nothing else, more often than not Disney would take home the win. Granted I chose these shorts solely on the fact that they shared the same plot, without doing any research beforehand to try and bias the results. I hadn’t seen most of these shorts till I sat down to watch them, with the only thing they sharing was the same source material. But, at the end of the day, despite my love of Warner Bros, Disney emerged the clear winner.
So there you have it. My ultimate conclusion to this little debate I’ve been going on about. If you disagree with anything, or have anything to add, feel free to leave a comment. Till next time.
