It’s expensive enough nowadays for a family of 4 or 5 to go to the movies at REGULAR price but if you ask Mom and Dad to pay double and they have to go out of town with the kids to see a film, that just doesn’t make sense!

I guess Disney’s rationale with IMAX was to spruce up the films and add those new, UNNEEDED musical sequences to lure people in. In many ways, that thinking had the opposite effect. People still wouldn’t pay inflated ticket prices, they still wouldn’t go to the IMAX theaters, and there were many complaints by videophiles, animation fans, and purists about the changes Disney made to the films.

I personally never understood why they added the junk they did to those films and why they felt it was necessary to retouch scenes. The films were FINE the way they were originally released. It’s the Star Wars/Close Encounters editting debacle all over again… And believe me, they NEVER released the original editions of Beauty & the Beast or The Lion King on DVD. The “original theatrical releases” of those films on the 2-disc sets are just the spruced-up IMAX editions minus the new musical sequences… and there were things edited/changed in many scenes of the “new and improved” IMAX versions.

I know that personally after going to see Spider-Man 2 in IMAX format that I’m not bothering with another IMAX-format Hollywood feature any time soon. Even for a good film like Spidey 2, it was just not worth the extra price I had to pay to get in and I felt the enhancements were practically unnoticeable.

Again, even without the price hike in tickets driving people away from IMAX theaters, after watching one unremarkable IMAX edition, why would people BOTHER to see a film in IMAX format? Technology for its own sake that doesn’t have a noticeable impact on quality or can’t generate a decent turnover in profit doesn’t make sense… It’s no wonder IMAX has basically been a business bust. There have been great documentaries made for IMAX theaters, but it’s still a money pit…

The fact that POCAHONTAS is out before LITTLE MERMAID is a bit disturbing.

Disney is doing The Little Mermaid soon enough.

It got the IMAX treatment but was never released to IMAX theaters because of the poor box office of Fantasia 2000, Beauty & the Beast: IMAX, and The Lion King: IMAX editions. I guess people don’t want to have to pay double ticket price AND drive miles out of their way to see movies that are only playing in 50-some theaters throughout the country!

The Little Mermaid will undoubtedly be a 2-disc Platinum edition because it’s the REAL beginning of the Disney Renaissance (1989-1994). Buena Vista Home Video has to make up for the shabby quality of the last Mermaid release on DVD in 1999… That was a single-disc, non-anamorphic widescreen no-frills version of the movie but what do you expect for a first-generation DVD release?