Disney animated features: the Gothic period (1977-1988)

I was figuring the mixed animal-human world, and the jarring tone, was some failed attempt to keep up with An American Tail, which came out two years to the month before O&C - but maybe that's not really enough time for the kind of production timetable they had?

From Wiki:

After the release of The Black Cauldron in 1985, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg invited the animators to pitch potential ideas for upcoming animated features, infamously called the "Gong Show". After Ron Clements and John Musker suggested The Little Mermaid and Treasure Island in Space, animator Pete Young suggested, "Oliver Twist with dogs". Originally wanting to produce a live action adaptation of the musical Oliver! at Paramount Pictures, Katzenberg approved of the pitch. (...) At a certain point, this film was to be a sequel to The Rescuers.[citation needed] If this had happened, it would have given the character of Penny more development, showing her living her new life in New York City with Georgette, as well as her new adoptive parents. This idea was eventually scrapped and later shelved because the producers had then felt that the story would not have been convincing.

So...that makes sense I guess, in that most of the stuff in this that doesn't have much to do with Oliver Twist actually does feel pretty Rescuers-y. I just don't know why you'd make a movie of Oliver Twist if you didn't actually want to. I mean, lord knows A Christmas Carol seems like it'd have some potential in animation if you can get around the leaden structure.