Top 10 live-action Disney films (that prove Star Wars is in safe hands)

Film fans aren’t sure what to think about George Lucas selling Disney the rights to the Star Wars franchise – after the awful mess that was episodes 1-3, you could be forgiven for wishing they would leave the series well alone.

Don’t panic though – we’ve got every faith that Disney will come through and produce some fantastic new films. Why? Its excellent track record when it comes to live action. Today we’ve listed just a few of the many superb films Disney has produced over the years, which should put your mind at rest.

10. RETURN TO OZ

Proving that Disney can do dark and tense movies while keeping it family-friendly, this 1985 Oz film’s cult following is proof of the enduring appeal of clever effects – including a life-sized animatronic chicken – and surprisingly complex storytelling. You know it’s going to all be a bit harrowing as soon as Dorothy – trapped in a real-world mental institution – is transported to Oz only to encounter the ruins of the yellow brick road.

The film admittedly spooked a number of small children during its cinematic release, but there’s always been room for that sort of tension in the Star Wars archetypal battle of good versus evil. The excellent design of characters such as Jack Pumpkinhead and the outstanding lead performance of a very young Fairuza Balk bode well for creature effects and strong female characters, too.

9. COOL RUNNINGS

Cool Runnings took the true story of the first Jamaican Olympic bobsled team and turned it into a family-friendly comedy that managed to be sweet without ending up (too) schmaltzy.

After failing to make the Jamaican sprinting team due to a qualification mishap, Derice Bannock teams up with champion pushcart racer Sanka to form a bobsled team, enlisting the help of John Candy’s disgraced former bobsled champ Irv. The team overcomes financial and technical battles, as well as the disdain of the East German team, to race in the Olympics.

The cast is likeable and funny, and the cod-Jamaican accents are far less offensive than The Phantom Menace’s horrendous racial stereotypes.

8. HOCUS POCUS

This Halloween-themed family film revolves around the attempts of three witches to ensure their immortality by murdering children. Cheery stuff, right? The plot could easily be the stuff of schlock horror, but Disney gives it a family adventure twist with a pair of intrepid teenagers and great comedic casting for the witches (Sarah Jessica Parker really was funny once, we promise) and the inevitably amusing consequences of a trio of 17th century witches running head-on into a modern American Halloween.

Although it didn’t do massively well with critics and cinema-goers at the time of its release, Hocus Pocus has since proved to have the kind of enduring cult appeal and all-ages entertainment value that’s exactly what’s missing from Lucas’s own Star Wars prequels.

7. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

If there’s one character that’s now come to define Johnny Depp’s illustrious career, it’s Captain Jack Sparrow. From his slightly drunk swagger to his mumbling speech pattern, there are traces of this mad sea dog in almost everything he’s done since, proving how deeply engrained the Pirates films have become in popular culture. Admittedly, they’ve all become slightly more ludicrous with age, but the sea battles were stunning, its huge cast of colourful characters were well-rounded and well-liked (except maybe Orlando Bloom), and watching Bill Nighy with a squid tentacle beard just never gets old.

There’s simply no other set of films out there that capture the same sense of high-seas adventure and rapscallion tomfoolery, and when it’s all crowned by the enduring character of Captain Jack, we’d happily endure all manner of inane quests for cursed gold, eternal youth and Davy Jones’ locker. It proves that, with the right cast of characters, Disney can make a film out of pretty much anything – even a space opera which features a walking carpet as a main protagonist.

6. ENCHANTED

The ultimate combination of traditional hand-drawn animation and live-action antics, Enchanted was a seamless blend of old and new-school Disney. It took all the tropes of Disney films of yore – damsels in distress, evil queens, talking animals, and randomly bursting into song – and stuck them in modern day New York with hilarious results. It was both a playful homage and a self-mocking extravaganza of Disney in-jokes, hidden cameos, and it was all scored by Disney Renaissance maestro, Alan Menken. It can be a little over-the-top at times, but James Marsden’s hammed up narcissistic prince is definitely worth it.

It also proved Disney was happy to play the fool with its source material, something the latter three Star Wars films failed to grasp. Throughout the original trilogy there were elements of humour, but these either fell into unwanted parody in the Phantom Menace or simply evaporated amongst the angsty final film.

5. TRON

It may not have much of a plot, but there’s no doubt Tron (the original, not the tedious remake) is a seminal film.

This was the first movie to get audiences genuinely excited about computers, which in 1982 were far from ubiquitous. Tron made a mainframe seem like a mad parallel world, full of lightcycles, flying ships and gladiatorial combat, rather than just a collection of shonky Pascal code.

Couple this with astounding special effects, enhanced by Disney’s decision to film on large Super Panavision 70, and you have a film that could be considered the first CGI masterpiece. Considering how well the original Star Wars trilogy’s special effects have aged, Tron bodes well for Disney to match ILM’s stonking 1977 special effects in any new Star Wars titles.

4. ALL THE MUPPET FILMS

If you want proof that Disney can turn its hand to any genre, watch any one of the Muppet films. There’s a huge list to choose from: although officially Disney only handled Treasure Island, Christmas Carol and last years Muppets Movie, the same production team also worked on Muppets from Space, Muppets take Manhattan and the Muppets’ Wizard of Oz. All vastly different genres, all fantastic films.

With a production team like the Jim Henson company at the helm, you could be sure of a fine balance between comedy, action and drama, plus all the creature effects would be handled with care, rather than generated on computers and thrown into the background at the whim of the director.

We aren’t the first to think an unholy crossover like this might actually work…

Now that we think about it, a Muppets/Star Wars crossover could work – with Kermit as Han, Miss Piggie as Leia, Gonzo as Luke, Fozzie as Chewie and Bunsen and Beaker as C3P0 and R2D2, what’s not to like?

3. ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN

Released two years before the original Star Wars film, Escape to Witch Mountain was a rather dark adventure with a paranormal twist that explored the themes of space travel before the sci-fi boom brought about by A New Hope.

With two young actors in prominent roles, Witch Mountain could easily have been a rather hateful film, but it worked incredibly well – unlike Jake Lloyd’s awful performance as Anakin Skywalker in the Phantom Menace. We’re just grateful the field of special effects saw such progress between ’75 and ’77, as Star Wars could have been a completely different film – just look at the flying campervan in the Witch Mountain trailer.

2. FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR

Flight of the Navigator was one of the first films to use CGI effects as well as traditional model and puppetry work and the overall effect has aged surprisingly well. With its combination of artificially intelligent alien spacecraft, the young protagonist losing several years of his life due to the effects of faster than light travel and ruthless government forces, Flight of the Navigator deals with some complex concepts while still being an exciting family film. More of this, please.

Again balancing adult themes with child-friendly action, it was pitched exactly where we would hope a new Star Wars film might be. Although anyone that watched the original trilogy in the cinema has long since grown up, each film was always designed to appeal to new audiences as well as existing fans – it would be a mistake to ignore this with a new trilogy, so we’re counting on Disney to get the balance right.

1. THE AVENGERS

If there’s one group that’s more rabid and protective of its subject matter than Star Wars fans, it’s comic book fans. Turning beloved comic book characters into big-screen movie heroes can be a recipe for disaster (Daredevil and Green Lantern jump to mind) but Disney proved it knew what it was doing with The Avengers. Wisely putting it in the hands of Joss Whedon, it became one of the biggest blockbusters of all time and received almost unanimous praise.

With so much source material, there’s little doubt that a similarly passionate director would be able to work wonders with the Star Wars license. It’s one of the greatest movie franchises of all time, so Disney would have no qualms throwing money at the project, getting the biggest name stars and most mind-blowing special effects you could imagine.