30 years ago, Disney released The Rescuers Down Under. A sequel to 1977’s The Rescuers, it was an adventure film, free of the typical Disney musical structure, set in the rugged outback and was meant to continue the momentum established by 1989’s The Little Mermaid. Accompanied by a typically robust marketing campaign and a healthy line of consumer products and promotional tie-ins, Disney expected the film to be a big holiday hit. But when the film was released into theaters it left almost as quickly, opening to a surprisingly challenging marketplace and an indifferent audience. And it would be a shame if that was the end of the Rescuers Down Under story, because the movie was actually something of a technological trailblazer, establishing the groundwork for all of your favorite movies of the Disney Renaissance that followed. Without Rescuers Down Under, a movie all but forgotten, there would be no Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin, movies established as unforgettable classics. The techniques pioneered by the film, according to former Disney CEO and Chairman Michael Eisner (in his memoir Work in Progress), “technologically and artistically revolutionized the archaic method by which animated movies had been made since Snow White.”