On October 16, 1923, Walter Elias, a young man of twenty-one, founded an animation studio in Los Angeles with his older brother, Roy. Perhaps, lacking better ideas or more probably with the ambition that one day the name would resonate in every corner of the planet, he decided to call it "Disney Brothers Cartoons Studio".

It began with the short cartoons of a mischievous girl traveling in search of adventure. After Alice in Cartoonland, came the short films of Oswald the cat and, later, one of his most emblematic characters: Mickey Mouse. His unmistakable silhouette, the work of his close friend and animator Ub Iwerks, has become the emblem of business.

However, Disney's greatest achievement came in theaters in 1937.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfsbased on a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, became the first full-length color animated film. A feat that would consecrate the young Walt as a prestigious creator and pioneer. From that moment on, all subsequent animated films would be marked by this feature film, either trying to imitate its successful formula or, on the contrary, trying to transgress it.

Disney resorted to the fairy tale as the film's original source because it saw in these narratives the opportunity to develop through animation something that live-action cinema did not allow. Thus, the studio's colorful universe was able to transport the viewer, child or adult, to a world full of supernatural elements with fairies, witches and dwarfs, where love and good prevailed over evil.

Shortly after came Pinocchioand years later Cinderella y Sleeping Beauty. The characters in these films remind the viewer that, despite the evils of the world, good triumphs over evil. That, in the face of dark forces, as Dostoevsky says in The Idiot, "beauty will save the world."

Walt Disney died in 1966. By that time, his studio had released eighteen animated feature films. In the following twenty years, only nine animated projects were released. As Jordi Sánchez-Navarro tells us, many of the classic animators began to retire and the company was losing ground to the new entertainment wizards, such as Steven Spielberg or George Lucas. In the 1980s, the studio was totally disoriented.

They did not manage to refloat the ship until the end of that decade, when Michael Eisner took the helm and refounded the studio. To do so, they took a trip back to their founding identity. They dusted off old fairy tales and brought to light stories that Walt had dreamed about for years but that had been abandoned since his death.

First came The Little Mermaidthen Beauty and the Beast y Aladdinwith which they returned to cima on the movie scene. In the new films, some of the female protagonists -especially in Beauty and the Beast-gained more weight in the story, with a more active personality than their predecessors.

More than a decade ago, with Tiana and the Frog, Tangled and, of course, Frozen in 2013, the animation studio began an era of glory. Since then, it has released original stories set in different corners of the world, such as the Colombia of Encantothe Hawaiian-inspired Moana and the Japan of Big Hero 6. This was a way to show "the great diversity of the human experience".

But, currently, despite its power, Disney seems to be in a great crisis. Its latest productions, with few exceptions, have been a failure in locker and critics. The new versions of its classics fail to convince viewers. The last three live-action remakes, Pinocchio, Peter Pan & Wendy y The Little Mermaidhave not been as well received as expected, nor have they achieved the fame of their original versions.

The studio, with all its properties, is stringing together several failures that are causing losses in the millions of dollars. For the first time since 2014, in 2023 it has not released any film that exceeds $1 billion in box office.

Strange Worldthe penultimate animated film to see the light of day, has been one of the biggest failures in recent years. Bob Iger himself, CEO of Disney, recently accepted that there has been a loss of quality in its productions.