John Lasseter is a man in extremely interesting position at the Mouse; both for what he can and can't do and the perception that has been built around him...
As much as I love him and respect his work, there's only so much he can do. Remember that his title is Chief Creative Officer, Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, Principal Creative Advisor, Walt Disney Imagineering. He's an advisor, he doesn't run WDI; that's left to Bruce Vaughn and Co. as well as the decisions that Jay Rasulo makes. Not to say that he doesn't have power with the credibility he has from the Pixar films. Success opens many doors and his ability to create blockbuster after blockbuster keeps an open ear to the Imagineer leadership. Having Iger's ear doesn't hurt either. But with the firing, yes firing of Tim Delaney and Valerie Edwards it's clear that there are limits to his power. He's worked with Delaney quite a bit and would more than likely not have fired him. But he's not in that position and he's a pretty busy man with that animation thing he's got going.
It doesn't mean he won't/can't acquire more power, but that's something that's going to take time and more success at the box office. His ability to influence where the company goes right now has been a direct correlation to the power and perception of the track record of the Lamp. If "The Princess and the Frog" comes out and does great, it's not only going to raise moral and spirits at the Hat Building; it's going to create job stability there. As they continue to make more and more stable product there's going to be less releasing people as projects wind down. And in a few years the southern California branch of Disney feature animation will start doing what the northern California branch does. Hire more animators. It won't happen overnight, naturally, but with success comes growth. Should the next couple of years address the story problems Disney films have had for most of the last decade, we should start to see a much brighter outlook for fans of Disney Animation.
And with that comes more power for John Lasseter and Ed Catmull. The more they're able to take Disney and make it smart, quality animation with clever storytelling, the more say Lasseter will have over other parts of the Disney empire that don't have much to do with feature animation. From the running of Disney Toons to Disney Publishing to an affect on Walt Disney Television Animation. Having Lasseter's influence over the quality of other products and entertainment in the Walt Disney Company is a good thing. A company is lead from the top down. If the leader is corrupt it bleeds down into the rest of the company. The reverse would happen if a company was led by someone of great character and values... like Walt Disney, for instance? Disney has already benefited from the three years that John has been there. It'll benefit much greater from the coming decade if John Lasseter is in charge of a good portion of the company. And that brings me to Jay Rasulo... once again.
As I mentioned earlier, Lasseter is an advisor... an executive in WDI that has little power in written form. His influence comes from the respect he's garnered over the last decade. What he says will carry weight, but it won't alter the inner workings of day to day life in the halls of WDI's headquarters in Glendale. When Rasulo resigns or is fired, and someone else is put in that is more in line with Lasseter, we'll start to see faster improvement. John doesn't deal in the day to day running of Imagineering and doesn't have the influence to overturn some Suits wrongheaded plan to fire or reassign someone from a project. That's going to take more time and changes that have yet to occur. As the movies continue to do better, the DVD sales continue to generate cash and the current projects that Lasseter is working on for DCA premiere and more importantly, bring more people through the gates, you'll start to see his influence increase inside WDI. It doesn't mean that there aren't problems inside the company, but it also doesn't mean there's not a great deal of opportunity lying ahead.
You just have see the positive and watch out for the potholes along the way...
