Congratulations to the Lion King for winning the Disney Bracket Tournament! Thanks to everyone who voted! I hope you enjoyed voting and following the results as much as I enjoyed working on all of it.
In retrospect, I am very pleased with the way the tournament unfolded and turned out. The reason I put this together now instead of waiting for Brave to be released this summer (which would have made a nice, round 64 films) is because this was the perfect time to organize such an event. I wanted to separate the films in some way and dividing them by year was an easy, perfect solution. I could have easily divided the 63 movies into four balanced regions (with, say, Toy Story, the Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid as the #1 seeds), but the lack of any theme or continuity would have taken away from the fun.
Had I waited for Brave to be released, the new Pixar film would have been in the Pixar region and bumped one of the computer animated masterpieces (probably Bolt, the strongest of the four) into the 1994-present region. This move would have required me to push the oldest film in the region (The Lion King) into the region before it (1959-1992) and move the oldest film from that region (Sleeping Beauty) into the first region. The result would have been a significantly weaker 1994-present region (which would have become the 1995-present region) that did not include The Lion King and an over-saturated 1959-1992 region (which would have become the 1961-1994 region) with The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and the Little Mermaid. Mulan, a fine film but one unworthy of a #1 seed would have been the top ranked film in a terribly diluted region. These changes would have also disrupted the clean classification of grouping the Pixar movies with the computer animated masterpieces. For all of these reasons, I choose to organize the bracket with 63 films and give Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs a first round bye.
If I were to do it all over again, I might switch the seeds of 101 Dalmatians (a #5 seed) and the Jungle Book (a #6 seed) as well as Lady and the Tramp (a #7 seed) and Peter Pan (a #8 seed). Peter Pan might have been strong to take down Fantasia, an acclaimed but polarizing film, which may have cleared a path to the Final Four for Pinocchio. Other than that I think the seeds were extremely accurate as evidenced by the voting results.
In my opinion, the round of 32 was the most fun round on which to vote and offered the toughest choices. While I enjoyed voting in the first round, it basically served to weed out the inferior films (Make Mine Music, Treasure Planet, Cars 2, etc.). Round 2 featured six match-ups out of sixteen that ended in a tie. I had a difficult time picking between Wall-E and Up, choosing Pocahontas or Tangled, and deciding on Dumbo or Pinocchio, just to name a few.
My biggest disappointments were the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast getting upset in the first round as well as Aladdin eliminating The Little Mermaid in the Sweet 16. Aladdin only received one more vote than The Fox and the Hound in the first round, so it's inclusion in the Final Four was a bit of a surprise. Though had the Little Mermaid won, it's likely the Final Four would have been all #1 seeds, and where's the fun in that?
Thanks again to everybody who voted! I had a great time reading all your comments and analyzing the results!
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