Some of the movies were entertaining.
Of course, a bunch are based on treasured material that was a timeless classic before they made a cartoon about it
I think your missing the point, its not that disney stole the work, its that disney CLAIMED it was thier first "original" animated movie. It actually was not original apparently, and much of thier work has not been "original".
Indeed. Snow White for instance was written by the Brothers Grimm in the 1800s. Disney made a movie about it and grossed like 8mil. Since their story is protected by Copyright you cannot make a movie or book or anything else about Snow White, they own it without any sort of sale to obtain it or permission by it's long dead author. Then they demanded Copyright be extended because making 180mil off stolen work isn't enough securing their stolen material.
All the good
Disney classics are stolen material. Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (better known as the disney version of sleep hollow), Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, & The Jungle Book, are all stolen material. The ONLY animated video Disney created between the 40s & 60s era was Make Mine Music and that is mostly a compilation of music works by other people and Disney saw fit to drop most of that for the rerelease and focus on one of the short stories in it.
Then the biggest fucking pirate in the world died, and they final made an original video, The Aristocats. It took them twenty years to make an original, then they made one and lapsed and made Robinhood, Then for the first time ever they paid for something, Winnie the Pooh was a HUGE success at the time (and still is), when it's author died in the 60s they approached the grieving widow and bought her out. Still not Disney's success, it was someone else's. In 1976 Copyright was extended which preventing Pooh from timing out in 1985 and in 1977 they made a movie about Pooh. Hey I guess extending Copyright does help the author want to make more stuff, no wait. The author was dead, hmm...
Anyway, moving on. The Rescuers is based off The Rescuers and Miss Bianca through you won't see that in the movie listing I linked to on Wikipedia. The Fox and the Hound cartoon was based off a novel of the exact same name. The Black Cauldron, meh. The Great Mouse Detective was a copy of one of Eve Titus's stories, which by the way Eve made an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyles no-longer-protected work rather than copying it. Oliver & Company was released one year before it left Copyright but that stayed out of courts. Lastly The Little Mermaid, also stolen. In 40 years Disney released 23 animated films, of those only one of them was created by them the rest was stolen material. Barring the Pooh buyout when it had 25 years left on it's Copyright but now it won't expire until 2026 effectively meaning they got an extra 41 years out of the deal that the widow couldn't try and charge for.
There is more but I need to head out, surely you have an idea at least. And we have only touched on how bad Disney is. I can start showcasing how the movies were copy/paste animations (by tracing) of each other if you really want me to destory your childhood.
