I watched Lilo and Stitch for the first time today, and man. What happened to that? Like, letting creative people just do their thing? Imagine if they were that hands-off today, instead we have very talented artists just recreate Lion King shot for shot with CGI.
I think they let Chris Sanders get away with doing what he wanted to
Lilo & Stitch because Stitch had marketability, and he had a good hand in
Mulan's story turning out the way it did. I don't know who was behind the marketing for that film, but it was fucking brilliant, and it's become one of their biggest cash-cow franchises since the Disney princesses (though I'm still a contender of the belief they threw
Lilo & Stitch under the bus to give
Spirited Away the Oscar). I don't know,
maybe Disney wasn't thrilled with the idea, but I guess they were too focused on
Atlantis to really care although they didn't have faith in
Treasure Planet despite it being written and directed by some of their biggest and most successful people, but it's a really amazing movie that
shouldn't have killed their roots in 2D animation.
I dunno, I guess the shitshow behind
Emperor's New Groove was the final straw for Disney if it wasn't
Treasure Planet itself, leading to that dark period of the mid-2000s where Disney struggled to find their style in CGI.