Hacker Cinema
The Great Mouse Detective
1986 · Film · 74 min
Directed by Ron Clements, John Musker, Burny Mattinson, David Michener
AnimationFamilyMysteryCrimeAdventure
When the diabolical Professor Ratigan kidnaps London's master toymaker, the brilliant master of disguise Basil of Baker Street and his trusted sidekick Dawson try to elude the ultimate trap and foil the perfect crime.
2 positive1 mixed5 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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8 comments on Hacker News
>What work of Disney (company, not the man per se...) is more influential on the modern American Psyche (today, in 2026) than Ironman, X-Men or Spiderman?
All of them. None of those MCU movies really did anything to the "american psyche", forgettable entertainment.
And even if they had done, the question was "in terms of how Americans see themselves and how people around the world sees us". Nobody sees Americans in in 2026 the way Stan Lee or MCU saw them. Not even themselves. How they have been seen in general wasn't determined in 2026 or 2020 or 2000, but in the 20th century. And even how they're seen and see themselves in 2026 is not defined by the MCU either.
Concerning the general view on US, Disney movies (especially including Pixar) have had much more influence. But I mentioned other even more important things: Hollywood in general (pre-MCU, from early film to John Ford, and to Copolla and Scorsese), the western and the idea of the west/'frontier', rock n' roll...
>Sleeping Beauty? That's French. Beauty and the Beast? Also French. Great Mouse Detective? British. Alice in Wonderland? British. Pinocchio? Italian.
In their Disney treatment they're 100% American.
> I'm listening to a review of The Great Mouse Detective (1986) which has a similar ethos, as did other content targeting young people from that era.
You bring up a great point, I do feel sometimes that children media in the 80s didn't completely try to dumb down complexities of adult life even when targeting children. While there are exceptions, it does feel less true nowadays when looking at modern media. The problem I feel is that at the same time as we sanitize children' content more than we used too, children have more access to unfiltered content through often poorly secured devices.
As for Grim Fandango, I played it around 15 and while, yes there were elements that flew above my head. I still remember it as an amazing experience and my first introduction to the film noir genre (shortly after that was reinforced by playing Under a Killing Moon given to me by a friend of mine)
Same experience here. I loved The Great Mouse Detective, at age 8. Not much later I read The Dark Knight in a translated trade paperback, and it really tickled my little mind. There was a trend of having comic adaptations of movies back then, so I also read and loved the License to Kill comic and was disappointed when Terminator 2 omitted some scenes in the movie -- until the Director's Cut came out.
I was certainly not traumatized (apart from the week of nightmares after seeing Alien one night on TV at age 12). Because of this, I had no arguments when I learned my 11 and 13 year old kids' mom and their stepdad had secured tickets for us to go see Deadpool & Wolverine when I was visiting last time.
Kids understand more than one may think, depending on how much "real life" they assimilate through culture (and parental guidance), I believe.
That's a good point. What's funny is that "The Great Mouse Detective" was actually the film I was thinking of this whole time - I believe the ending sequence took place in Big Ben, and it looks quite good by 2024 standards. But I forgot the name of the movie and assumed it was "Oliver & Company" because Oliver is a plausible name for an English mouse :)
This one clearly is not...
Eve Titus (the author) is listed as a producer on the Disney movie "The Great Mouse Detective", which is derived from her characters.
https://bakerstreet.fandom.com/wiki/The_Great_Mouse_Detective
1) My first thought on reading this: 'LaTeX never seemed all that melancholic to me..." took a second to get reoriented
2) A lot of his films were favorites of mine in childhood, and I didn't know until much later that they shared a creator. Having said that, two of the disney movies mentioned here as not being so great, "The Fox and the Hound" and "The Great Mouse Detective," were also childhood favorites.
3) For anyone thinking "they don't make them like that anymore," I'd highly recommend you watch and then make it all the way through "Adventure Time." The Ice King's arc is as sad and haunting as anything in Bluth's works. Season 9 begins with the effects of PTSD, complete with auditory hallucinations.
> I don't know what you think a Disney story is, but all of Disney's major works are based on existing folk stories and other works already in the public domain.
False. Here's some of their animated features based on copyrighted works (as best as I can tell):
Dumbo
Bambi
Peter Pan
Lady and the Tramp
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
The Sword in the Stone
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The Rescuers
The Fox and the Hound
The Black Cauldron
The Great Mouse Detective
Treasure Planet (partially based on the 1987 TV miniseries Treasure Island in Outer Space)
Meet the Robinsons
The Princess and the Frog
Big Hero 6
(I'm using the list in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films, and picking out the “based on” or ”inspired by” credits that look recent enough.)
I actually just finished watching The Great Mouse Detective with my wife - first time for her and the first time for me reliving that element of my childhood in more than twenty years – I was terrified it wouldn't live up to my memory, but was surprised at how good it was. I'm pretty sure it was my first exposure to the world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (and I do recommend it heartily to anyone who hasn't watched it!).
Of Doyle's non-Sherlock works, The Lost World is the first that comes to my mind. Great fast read, also highly recommend! (Though nothing beats the full and complete collection of Sherlock Holmes, see [1] for the PDF and [2] for the actual book).
1: https://maggiemcneill.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/the-complete-sherlock-holmes.pdf
2: http://amzn.to/1UBvHwJ