Iger has said Disney has built enough capacity to generate more entertainment than the world has cash to consume. The mega machine has become so efficient, they can produce a new marvel level movie everyday if they wanted too. But there aren't enough customers for it.
So the question is, once your corporate mega machine has become this efficient what do you even do next?
I think the whole industry has degenerated to producing uninspiring grub. No wonder they have mastered it. Everything coming out of the company is CGI+emotional response maximization with little new themes.
They should revert to making things that don’t scale, hire screenwriters with original ideas that are difficult to translate to movies, etc.
A friend of mine regularly compares Quentin Tarantino’s early movies to today’s mass produced boredom. Calling it MBA filmmaking. It reminds me of an industry running on Amazon’s recommendation engine, only making derivatives of existing successes.
As someone who lives in Los Angeles and is mostly surrounded by people in film/tv, the indie film industry is a LOT bigger than many people outside of the know realize. And I’m so thankful for that, because that’s where the “things that don’t scale, … original ideas that are difficult to translate to movies, etc” flourish. In a way, the indie movie scene is in better shape than it ever has been— with well-known big name actors even hopping in now and then.
You could argue the indie scene is similar to the startup scene in SV. You have investors/producers pretty much funding these films based on team/talent and a pitch alone, with the festival circuit (could be considered an analog to SV demo-days or investor powows) essentially serving as a way to get bought by big studios for potential wide release, limited-release runs (which can still make a lot of money for those involved), or teams hired/screenplays bought and adapted by other studios. You can even make it big right out of college (or in college) [1] with little-to-no connections, though of course even more-so than SV a name and pedigree gets you further faster.
There’s so much in LA (and NYC) that gets released in theaters only locally, and the city is better for it. It’s the wide-release that, almost by definition, must serve lowest common denominator in order to make its 8/9-figure budget back in a span of months (tech companies get years!!). It’s sad that SF and LA, so close geographically, have industries so socially polarized to each other in every way, since there’s really a lot of overlap when you get down to it (and each industry could definitely learn things from the other)
Is there much in the way of indie action/adventure movies? What I miss most are movies oriented around action that aren't just derivative blockbusters. Compare something like Jackie Chan's Chinese movies or The Matrix to today's generic shaky cam fight scenes.
Even movies like Big Trouble in Little Chinatown or Predator, while not necessarily having plots worthy of the next Great American Novel, at least had interesting memorable ideas.
Quite a bit; just it's mostly living in the direct to video bin, as it were. There's a whole world of pretty decent action flicks out there[1]. Scott Adkins, who's mentioned in that article, makes just about anything he's in worth watching and directors like Jesse V. Johnson, John Hyams, and Isaac Florentine[2] are solid. Oh, and there's a whole cache of good French action movies on Netflix -- Lost Bullet is a good place to start.
As a discovery mechanism, I'd recommend following Vyce Victus[3], who writes reasonably well about action movies.
Have you seen this year's "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once"? If not, I highly recommend it, it's amazing and bonkers and moving and clever. Just an utterly fantastic movie all around. The budget was $25 million—which is not small—but it still feels a lot more indie than most other movies.
> There’s so much in LA (and NYC) that gets released in theaters only locally, and the city is better for it.
There are arthouse movie theaters throughout that play the same movies that you think are only locally shown in LA/NYC. You just need the right context (near a university, for example).
Yes! Exactly. You can find glimpses of the indie scene in many places, if you know where to look for it. But they’re not as pervasive/all-encompassing outside those two cities. Chicago/Austin have scenes, but they’re smaller; Georgia sort of does, too, but it’s more corporate/extensions of big Hollywood studios than an independent community.
What I'd really personally like to see is space opera with better storytelling. But the impression I've got is that the sorts of films that do best as indies are ones where the props are cheap. So in other words, mostly contemporary or maybe historical settings. There are a handful of exceptions I'm aware of, but only a handful.
No, in fact nothing in particular relates it to any other SW content.
It’s just a sci fi show set in that universe, that’s the way I see it. Takes the universe seriously, sets down rules for how it could work and it operates within that space.
But it’s better written, acted and art directed than most TV I’ve ever seen.
Id rank it as high or higher than Chernobyl. I’d say it’s must see TV.
Unfortunately this one seems polarizing. I loved it from the first scene, but there seem to be more than a few people who find it slow and boring to start, and don't come around to it.
What's disappeared isn't the small independent super-low budget movie... as you said, that market is more active than ever. It's the >$10 million movie that everyone in the country can enjoy, has a name brand actor or two, but isn't just some recycled comic book tripe. Forrest Gump. The Big Sleep. Kramer vs. Kramer. Three Men and a Baby. Four Weddings and a Funeral. Terms of Endearment. etc.
Indie movies can range anywhere from $100k-$15M+, it’s a big range.
But I understand your point— mid-budget studio movies (romcoms especially) have been hit the hardest by the pivot to Marvel mania and cinematic universes. Unfortunately that’s as much because of audience preference as it is studios.
Maybe I'm naive, but what stops indie studios from creating cinematic universes? The props, sets, visual effects, etc. are primarily what's expensive, not the size of the (in-your-head) universe. If anything, I would expect indie universes to be more consistent and to have more meaningful/powerful plots, because these things tend to be labors of love rather than the more cookie cutter process we see in the big films.
I think the big thing is the financial risk of committing to a series, but it seems like if you take the films one at a time, you get to see how the last one is doing before you get too far along making the next one. Can't be that much worse than making everything a one-off.
They do! The largest one right now (which is also receiving a wide release, even) would be X (March 2022), then the prequel Pearl (September 2022), and the soon-to-be-sequel in 2023.
They spent probably less than $5M total on the 3 movies (and filmed all at once), and the first two have already brought in $25M at the box office. A pretty good indie success story.
The casual audience isnt stupid. Just lacking patience. New, Solid and well written themes are hard work to follow. Aint nobody got time for that.
But then theres also the insidious observation. My generation are now senior writers and also the majority of the audience and between us is as much creativity as a fart.
They're definitely available for those who are interested-- Criterion is probably the most well known. But a lot of successful indie movies also get picked up by regular streaming services, too. They're just usually not heavily promoted (usually little to no marketing budget).
I think watching DieHard with your kid is a good choice. The journey to adulthood isn't instantaneous at 18, parents should help to guide the kids there. Introducing them to adult cultural experiences at home, and then talking about it, is an awesome thing to do.
Plus DieHard is one of the best movies ever made!
(Have an 8th so not reached that stage myself yet)
Showed BTTF and BTTF2 to my 9 year old twins a few years ago. They loved the films. Not sure what they didn't get - even the concept of alternate timelines seemed fairly well absorbed.
Even a lot of people who lived in that era don't get the Pepsi Free joke since it was a only know by that name for part of the 80s and overshadowed by the larger themes of the Cola Wars.
Aliens: My son suffered from night terrors in the not too distant past - I'd rather not reboot those just yet! :) (Would have to watch them in order, and the first is absolutely terrifying).
Not the SE. The theatrical release. The SE is the worst director's cut I have ever seen. It gives away way too many things that are better kept secret from the viewer (all the Newt backstory is better left unseen).
Been there, done this, and yea, I sort of forgot why it had its rating. Not something I completely think was the worst mistake ever, but perhaps could have been better addressed with a pregame primer of what was in the movie.
100%. While we are at this, I am happy to share my heuristic for sifting "uninspiring grub" from quality shows. Two words: theme song. If the protagonists wander around in silence on a CGI generated background, that's a hard pass right away. Unfortunately, most of Netflix originals fall into this category.
The Bourne Identity, Skyfall, Game of Thrones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and so on.
It does not have to be original. And I don't mean only the intro but the entire soundtrack. Often, the theme song is reused over and over during the film with many variations to set the tone of a scene.
That being said, I just saw Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I thought it dealt with personal issues very well. She Hulk as much as it was derided, was also a different type of MCU show and it was self aware enough to know that Marvel had gotten too formulaic.
I find singling out Tarantino kind of odd here. He's an indie-style filmmaker who attracted a lot of attention and now makes big-budget movies with very big stars.
Which is great, for those who like his particular films. But there are literally thousands of other filmmakers making films every year who don't attract the kind of attention Tarantino does. His films aren't better than theirs -- he's just famous enough that we've all heard of him, and he continues to produce exactly the kinds of thing that you specifically like.
There are tons of things to dig into if you want. Netflix does a better job than most of surfacing small filmmakers (because they can get them cheaply). Film festivals have even more -- more than you can possibly watch in ten lifetimes. Most of it, of course, is dreck -- same as everything else.
I'm glad your friend likes Tarantino, but it just feels a bit like saying, "Gosh, I wish they made more stuff like Tarantino." What I want is an alternative to both Tarantino and the major studios -- and it exists. It just takes more effort.
No, he uses them as examples of how quality storytelling on a budget outcompetes the opposite. The problem with the “MBA thinking” is that it can’t quantify that quality beforehand, and makes the safer but more expensive bet on incremental development.
I find the Marvel movies boring and insulting to my intelligence. Which isn't really surprising since they are made for mass appeal and I generally don't like that sort of stuff.
However, and this statement is made with no actual knowledge of the economics of Disney content creation budgets, but I like to imagine that one positive thing that comes from the monetary success of the Marvel movies is the Pixar Shorts that are being made for Disney+ .
If you haven't seen them I recommend them. They are these original ~4 minute short films that are pet-projects by various creatives working at Disney/Pixar. The shorts include a small interview from the creator where they discuss their inspiration and the fun they had working on the project.
I remember a line from the Daily Show when it was still Craig Kilborn. The show had just gotten a nice newly renovated set, and Kilborn thanked South Park for the money to pay for it.
I suspect (again with no real knowledge) that the Pixar Shorts are financed from the success of the Marvel movies. Or maybe it's just Disney+ subscriber fees.
I dislike the marvel movies for the same reason I dislike comic books: The focus is on making sure there is a next episode in the series, which means status quo above all else. This prevents pretty much anything interesting from happening, because significant changes have to be reverted, or previously interesting stories in the extended universe become retconned when a big budget version is made that removes any interesting elements and replaces it with generic action for "mainstream" audiences.
It's remarkable that the most controversial thing disney has done in decades is making main characters not white.
For example, in star wars, instead of doing something interesting or different, they just magicked the "first order" or whatever into existence so they could have big bad empire again, before eventually just saying "fuck it palpatine is back". They also took a back story that was left untold (getting the death star plans), rejected the expanded universe version that was about a usually ignored population having a big impact and sacrificing much for the good of the universe, and replaced it with a super generic "one important ideologically pure character plus one clearly ideologically evil villain" story with basic action.
Meanwhile in the marvel universe, they've adapted the comic book tactic of saying "multiverse and time travel and alternate realities exist" because then they can keep using popular avatar characters. This of course also means nothing freaking matters, because you can literally retcon in universe. It's so boring, nothing matters.
Vertigo comic books, in my experience, are a lot less guilty of this than Marvel, or even the classic DC variant. But then, Vertigo is specifically geared toward adults.
Kids will, if left to their own devices, watch the same movie over and over again (my VHS copy of Land Before Time just about wore out by the time I was 6). Producers realize this, so they just reshuffle the same story over and over again and sell it to them, over, and over, and over again. Adults tend not to be quite so easy to amuse.
For example, in star wars, instead of doing something interesting or different
While I agree with everything you said as such, the Andor TV show (and Rogue One to lesser extent) indicates that they are at least capable of doing interesting things in the Star Wars universe, beyond Good space wizard vs Evil space wizard. I fear however that most fans don't actually want that and that Andor will be an aberration.
Right on. I can't much stand Marvel anymore, nor many of Disney's recent releases.
But the shorts took me by surprise. They were so deep, content packed, and beautiful. I sat and watched them all with my daughter, by accident really - both of us completely silent just watching, one after the other. A couple made us choke up, at different points. Probably the most beautiful television I've ever seen.
I'd probably pay megabucks to watch such a collection of shorts on the big screen, and that's from someone who hasn't been to the theatre in a decade.
The Marvel movies are awful, but from my understanding, they are made for mass audiences++. That is, they want to make movies that are easy to sell in China and India. That means less dialog because most people don’t want to read lots of subtitles, broad humor because it has to make sense in all cultures and languages, and themes that won’t offend the sensibilities of the various cultures.
The Disney shorts are a good suggestion. I will track them down. Thanks.
Within limits. The new Black Panther didn't release in China; neither did Shang-Chi. China's an important market for Disney but they're not afraid to ignore it from time to time.
Marvel isn’t infallible. Their latest phase is an example of that. Their numbers are great when compared to other studios, but it has not seen the level of critical success that it once did, despite being somewhat more inventive in its the stories being told. I enjoyed quite a bit of their movies, like the latest Black Panther movie or the third Spider-Man movie, but overall, its really taken a step back in terms of quality in almost every other project they have made. They also lost one of their biggest creative auteurs, James Gunn to their biggest rival, as well as the guy who made their Spider-Man movies and the Russo who made the previous two Avenger movies (though it could be these guys return). Ryan Coogler doesn’t seem interested in doing the penultimate (?) Avengers sequel, they aren’t going to trust Taika Waititi or Sam Raimi or Joss Whedon with that movie. They have resorted to getting Hugh Jackman back for a final (?) paycheck as Wolverine for the upcoming Deadpool sequel and apart from that don’t seem to have a plan on bringing their other most famous IP into their franchise, the X-Men.
And also the other big development is that they have lost the Chinese box office marker, though this seems largely out of their control as China is an aggressive geopolitical adversary of the US and is also strictly against LGBTQ representation, and Marvel is (rightfully so) not budging on the edits suggested by Chinese censors.
And then there’s also the case for superhero fatigue, and I am saying this as a fan of most of these movies, (I watched most of their previous movies during high school and college almost religiously), but the amount of content they dumped on Disney+ which was of varying quality was too much for me to really watch. I skipped half their shows and most of their movies (waited for Disney+ for most of the movies except for Spider-Man and BP2). I genuinely don’t feel interested in most of their upcoming lineup, except maybe GoTG 3 and Captain America 4 (if it’s any good). I might be speaking for only myself here, but I potentially see that happening more so in future with general audiences.
I'm confident you're actually behind the curve here. The term 'capeshit' has been around for years to express annoyance with the oversaturation of the market with superhero content.
An individual may feel fatigue, but when the general audiences start to feel the fatigue, that’s going to actually make a difference. If there was a superhero fatigue for years, Endgame couldn’t have made nearly grossed ~2.8B USD.
Considering that Marvel movies are not making “all of the money” and are instead making “most of the money” in the eyes of its investors, they may be thinking that the head winds are changing and might want to forestall such a thing.
Of course, there were other reasons that Chapel may have been sacked as well, such as the “Dont say Gay” bill fiasco, as well as having lost their tax free status in Florida,the Mulan controversy, the previously mentioned issues at Marvel, alienating creatives (including publicly fighting one of its biggest stars),underwhelming Star Wars and Disney movies and shows, (possibly) losing the streaming rights for the IPL in India (cause Hotstar in India had a decent chunk of the streaming market in India cause of it).
There is no such thing as superhero fatigue or Star Wars fatigue or X fatigue. It's all just excusing bad content. The drive to fill out the Disney+ catalog with a bunch of series where constant release was the main focus and not quality or coherent stories made people stop watching. It was also a mistake to make the series contain relevant events for the movies to build from as well, since once a series was missed you could be out of the loop on key details for the next movie, but if there actually was widespread positive reception of all these shows it wouldn't be a major issue.
They may have thought viewer engagement for the shows like Agents of Shield, Agent Carter, the Netflix shows (https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/luke-cage-iron-fist-cancel...) and the execs may have assumed audiences weren't interested as they weren't tying into the movies (though this might be a part of their decision to go for churning Disney+ content like clockwork). If you browsed social media threads for those shows at the time the earlier seasons were airing, it definitely seemed that way (though this is anecdotal)
I think this is why I and so many people have enjoyed Andor. He's not some hotshot or hero. He's just some guy who'd rather live his life in peace, but the Empire keeps standing on his neck. In comparison, Obi-Wan is still a master Jedi knight even in hiding. He can't not be that. It was still better than most of the others where the characters are heroic in stature and skills if not always in behavior.
This is what happens when you have a guy from the parks division at Disney suddenly responsible for the whole company. How Bob Iger was even allowed back after making the decision to appoint a successor from the parks division speaks to just how panicked they all are right now.
I liked the earlier movies, but to me the biggest problem is that they are now all connected and thus all required to watch.
I skipped a bunch of them and had no idea what was happening in the latest Avengers.
There were so many characters popping up that i had no knowledge of and weird sideplots that i hadn't seen. It just ended up confusing and frustrating.
The Avengers being a crossover is okay with me, but when the solo movies require in depth knowledge of previous unrelated projects is where I need to draw the line. The biggest failure for me was the Doctor Strange 2 movie, where the Scarlett Witch became a murdering sociopath off screen,though I was able to enjoy the movie regardless.
Check out Andor. It's under the Disney Star Wars umbrella, but it's nothing like the rest of star wars. Made by the same people that worked on House of Cards, Game of Thrones, the Bourne series, Nightcrawler, and others. It's smart and subtle and insanely entertaining, though it is a slow burn that focuses on character development rather than action. But it has action too... But no light sabers or Jedi. Yet...
Yes, Andor has been the most decent Star Wars throwaway yet for me, and that's including all the new movies and tv vehicles that came before. Understated, brooding, solid acting, and free of the stale plot and shoddy writing in the others that becomes apparent once the atmosphere wears off. Proof in this era that you can create something decent without giving the left and right cultural attaches too much to whine about (though I'm sure they'll find something).
The thing that has most worn me out of all the star wars, marvel, etc. franchises is their simple moral framework pitting good vs. evil. There is basically as little moral ambivalence as possible. I find myself inhabiting a world full of moral ambivalence, and so these types of movies and shows just don't offer me anything to take away.
Does Andor break that formula? Does it paint the empire / the rebels in a less cartoonish light than other star wars?
I think we saw a little of this with The Mandalorian. In the episodes where we first meet Cara Dune, and she talks about being a "dropper" shock troop. It definitely gives you a much grittier, Machiavellian view of the rebellion, and it seems like the Imperials view droppers as savages whose conduct is beyond the pale.
Also, in the episode where she and Mando are (kidnapped/stowaway whatever, can't quite remember) on the Imperial shuttle. The Imperial pilot makes it clear that his hatred of the rebellion is deep, personal, and 'moral'. "Do you have any idea how many millions of people were on that battle station?" Not that he has exactly seized the moral high ground, working for the Empire, but I definitely saw that as a "rebellion ~ al Qaeda" moment.
I disagree, I feel like its the same as all the rest but the writers in the board meetings are like.. We need to make Star Wars for 25-40 year old men to feel like adults watching it.
> slow burn
planned that way not because it is a slow burn high pay off scenario. But because it is planned to drag on so you just keep watching it consistently. Most of these garbage shows in the last 5 years or so have embraced this 'pseudo-slowburn' style to make baby men feel more sophisticated while hooking them into consistently watching.
I feel like the writers and decision makers saw all the funko pop marvel watching 30 year open mouth beard consumers and wanted to 'blow their minds' with 'slowburn' to remind them that consuming childrens movies are actually sophisticated and adult
>30 year open mouth beard consumers and wanted to 'blow their minds' with
No one said anything about blowing minds.
>But because it is planned to drag on
Unfortunately all shows are infected with this garbage. You end up grading this stuff relatively on a spectrum (“don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” etc) . This the “ads” of the streaming era. It is so ubiquitous people either build a tolerance, tune-out during the interval, or stop watching tv all together in protest.
>to make baby men feel more sophisticated while hooking them into consistently watching
A more sophisticated show with better writing and actors would indeed make people feel more sophisticated…yes. If, to take another example, somebody pitched me “Better Call Saul, but in space,” I’d probably watch that as well. Frankly, Dune is more a children’s movie than Andor, so you might as well say that 25-40 year olds have no business amusing themselves with science fantasy or sci-fi at all.
The litmus test for this seems to be: Make the exact same scifi show (space etc) but without the Star Wars branding. Will it be considered a children’s move? My answer in this case, no. Will it still be decent? Yes it would.
Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Obi-Wan are all magnitudes more juvenile than this attempt.
A quasi-spoiler perhaps, but I personally find it hilarious that a subplot involves a workers revolt in what could be a Tesla gigafactory 20 years from now…in a tv show produced by Disney.
I like watching all this garbage sometimes so I am not putting anyone down without putting myself down but it is what it is and the latest Dune movie might as well been a star wars or marvel movie, and that was the point when they watered down the smart parts, cleaned the politically dubious parts/swapped characters for representation, and added all the CGI summersault action
> The litmus test for this seems to be: Make the exact same scifi show (space etc) but without the Star Wars branding. Will it be considered a children’s move? My answer in this case, no. Will it still be decent? Yes it would.
The thing about Andor is that the Star Wars setting is entirely unnecessary. That series could be set anywhere; the setting is just a cash grab.
What you call a cash grab an executive would call “target market”. You are not going to get funding to make a sci fi show (100+ million I assume) without integrating it into some kind of pre set market that will eat it up. In that sense it’s just product market fit.
I thought this at first, but it's arguably that Rogue One and Andor are the only Disney properties that deeply tie in to the universe. They really set up the events for the original trilogy and make them feel more filled out and real. The tone is one of sacrifice and hope, and intentionally plays as a counterpoint to the powerful space wizards in the films. It feels like the creators respect the narrative.
I have a particular distaste for rogue one, because it took a story that didn't need to be officially told, and gave it an official movie that was stupidly boring, uninteresting characters, no real value in the grand scheme of things, and generic as all hell.
"A bunch of bothans died to bring us this intel" is literally a more compelling story than rogue one.
Definitely need to watch a bit more! It gets a lot better post episode 3, but your complaint still holds true in general with the series about the slow-burn. It's written well enough that you are engaged with each episode, excited about where the show is going. But then each episode ends, and for most of them, you do a recap of what happened during the hour you watched and the actual plot and character development is thin. It feels like it was written in 3 episode arcs, where small stuff happens for the first two episodes and then in the third episode the plot really advances.
I was very positively surprised by Andor. I really like the way they show the empire side of things and how one (presumably) "advances" in such a system.
It's a good opportunity to right the wrongs and double down on the good stuff. In case of FTX, there are SBF, misters Wong and Singh.
Imagine a second coming of Erlich Bachman as a crypto bro. Who would not wanna watch this? For the feminists out there, there's emancipated miss Ellison.
For sure. I remember really liking Gilfoyle as a character for his deadpan no bullshit and high skill personality. But then I watched a supercut of his "best moments" (at least according to one youtuber) and it was chock full of insults against Dinesh's masculinity, which is both gross from a racism point of view (I have been told that foreign men are often considered less masculine as a kind of racism) and gross from a healthy masculinity point of view (It's okay for men to cry, and have diverse interests, etc). Of course they could update the characters, but they could also just leave that story to rest.
All the things we grew up loving were once original stories, and I would love to see more new original content rather than this machine that "efficiently" churns out smoothed over copies of the same hits from last year.
What's ironic about this comment and some of the replies, is that it seems like people WANT this show and other shows to be "Disney-fied". Nothing uncomfortable, no awkardness, no real-world grit or problems, nobody is the but of the joke, nobody struggles, etc
Why would you expect a character in a comedy show to be a good role model? All of the characters have pretty obvious flaws and the show is better for it.
It's not just his behavior, but how the writing and presentation of the show frame those behaviors. You can have a sexist character, but how the show treats that behavior reveals what the people creating the show want the audience to take away. The show can present bad behavior as leading to negative consequences. But Gilfoyle's sexism is presented uncritically as comedy, with no negative consequences. It is the framing of this behavior that I take issue with.
The grumpyness is what I love about him. But in the supercut I watched, he is constantly specifically attacking other men's masculinity in a way which felt super toxic. There's plenty of healthy ways to present a grumpy character but Gilfoyle's behavior with regard to masculinity just sucks.
Well a Canadian man in the USA making fun of a Pakistani man in the USA could easily be racism, even if it is subconscious. White men are the socially dominant group in the USA, and it is people of color who have told me about this issue with masculinity. A man from Pakistan and a man from Canada get treated very differently in our society.
But the behavior is also just plainly sexist. The implication of racism is just extra bad.
Oh my God. With Disney money we could have all three last books on streaming. Disney could pick up the show ten years from now and the aged actors wouldn't even matter. What a dream.
You would think with Bezos money we would too. I don’t understand why he bought the series then didn’t bring it to conclusion. I’ve read they didn’t want to deal with aging the actors, but that’s kind of absurd given the state of the art.
To me, even if he was a good CEO, that reeks of hubris. Nobody likes films that feel like mass-produced corporate affairs, where the jokes were decided by committee instead of by two brothers writing a script. As for a Marvel movie a day, CGI artists as an industry are overloaded with work right now and it’s even showing in Marvel movies. There aren’t enough workers in the machine for something as ludicrous as that claim.
Entertainment lost something when it just became “content.” Bragging that you are excellent at churning out “content” is not something I would be proud of. Are you good at churning out movies that are original, interesting, unique, and creative? Or are you good at producing a dozen Marvel spin-offs and various movie sequels?
Honestly, I think it has more to do with the gutting of Pixar and Disney studios after Lassiter was forced out. I believe I heard that that Encanto was the last Lassiter idea that he pitched to Lin Miranda before he left. I think that probably helps explain why it seems cohesive. Versus almost all of the more recent Disney and Pixar stuff feels like poor copies or overly targeted identity flicks. Disney studios is kind of a mess, almost all of the innovation is now happening outside of Disney. Lego movie, spider verse, etc.
Disney now owns Searchlight Pictures (formerly Fox Searchlight). They have an incredible legacy of unique high quality creative films. Go watch Shape Of Water or The Favorite. They just came out with The Menu, which I’d recommend (saw it in the theater just today). Seeing adult oriented original screenplays is just heavenly. You literally couldn’t pay me to sit through a Marvel movie.
Next focus on quality instead of quantity. Less She-Hulk and more Loki. Maybe every single Star Wars character doesn’t need a six or ten episode backstory. Maybe Cars doesn’t need four sequels. The Lone Ranger has kept his mask on since 1933, the Mandalorian couldn’t do it five episodes.
Short term? Continue squeezing money to appease your shareholders. Find ways to maximize profits at your theme parks, increase subscribers to your streaming platform, and find to make making movies cheaper.
Long term? Impossible to tell. If you'd asked anyone 20 years ago what Disney would look like today, nobody could've imagined Marvel or Star Wars being the way they are, both under the Disney umbrella. And with streaming to boot.
I think this strategy - the milking of every single possible dollar out of the parks, and the grow at all cost Strategy of Disney+ are pretty much at an end. the surveys coming out of Disney the last year have gotten more and more desperate as Disney tries to understand why things like the Star Wars hotel and the elimination of fast pass and magical express are deeply unpopular. Disney’s managed to piss off an incredible number of clients on both sides of the isle in Florida - their biggest state for Disney World. Managed to alienate people who were reliable ticket holders with the constant nickle and diming at the same time as Universal is pouring money into their parks and threatening Disney’s Orlando dominance. Disney Managed to charge more for a bit for their premium products even while they have been horribly maintained. A YouTuber recently had an unbelievable video on the state of cleanliness at one of Disney’s most expensive resorts. This kind of short term gain long-term cost is a sickness in American business strangely. Disney in particular seems to go into these patterns. Michael Eisner fell into the same trap before Bob Iger replaced him.
The good news for iger is that the bar is set low. He could bring back fast pass or the magical express and roll back some of the planned costs increases and the fans will love them for it.
Disney does also risk the Netflix too much crap not enough content problem as well. Marvel has lost its cultural relevance for some of its core audience with the end of the infinity war saga. Everything since it’s been a mess.
As a sidenote, Disney just bought the biggest cruise ship ever built for the Asian market. I suspect interesting things are afoot there.
>As a sidenote, Disney just bought the biggest cruise ship ever built for the Asian market. I suspect interesting things are afoot there.
It reminds me a bit of KFC, which for a variety of reasons has left it's North-American presence to flounder while focusing on the rest of the world and Asia in particular. This has been effective so far thanks to their existing scale and being one of the first fried chicken joint to enter the market, but has gone on other domestic and local brands have entered. I have to wonder if Disney is maybe 10 years earlier on this curve and is starting to cash out on NA to some extent.
Also as a point of pedantry the Global Dream was intended to be the largest ship by passenger count at 9000, but is being scaled back to 6000 by Disney. By tonnage it will 7th, close behind Royal Caribbean's Oasis class ships and MSC's new world class so while it is quite large, the industry in general seems to be moving that way also.
If what they were doing is a commodity product, I would agree - but it's not - it's much more upmarket, in which case being in the USA is essential to their long-term success. Disney cruises are 3x their competitors cost-wise, for example (as I learned the painful way recently).
Shanghai and Hong Kong Disney are also being held hostage to the Chinese communists and their covid and anti-western policies. The contract with the oriental land company is very limiting on Disney.
I suspect we would see expansion in Brazil before anything else at this point
It's not impossible to tell - they'll buy and takeover more and more of your culture and existing competitors and IPs, enter other venues of entertainment and expand their empire of protected content to encompass as much as what you daily see and consume as possible.
Considering how much they've squandered Star Wars video game IP, or video game IP in general, probably leaving billions on the table. That said, maybe it's to prevent cannibalizing other divisions, but it's hard to imagine type of media more extractive than micotransctions. IIRC Fifa + Madden made like 1.5B revenue last year.
I think Disney got soured off of gaming when the fan and critical response was so harsh against Battlefront 2. They tried microtransactions and ended up going down as the most downvoted comment in reddit history.[1]
I remember. IMO they tried outrageous microtranstions on fanbase who were demographically resistent which TBH some practices are more acceptable 5 years later. Disney also has other women oriented franchises that seems to have big mobile potential. Also never too late to acclimizate the young, the parks already nickle and dime like crazy. Of course I don't want this, but I think it's something they can milk. Video games compete with sleep, casual games with everything.
giving big exclusive contracts was a huge mistake by Disney for video games. It's easy to just sell everything to EA, but it doesn't actually result in good publicity for them, which they learned the hard way with Battlefront 2. When you have a massive IP that has tons of different periods and openings for various games, you really need to license out smaller chunks all over the place. Games Workshop is a really good model that Disney should have followed.
If it turned out 3 years ago Disney developed an AI that writes and generates Marvel Phase IV movies all “in-machine” with no human input, writers, directors or actors whatsoever nobody would be surprised. We’d be impressed but not surprised.
Side rant: Worst fourth wall break in history. If they really wanted to do the K.E.V.I.N. storyline they should have made the show a grittier legal/detective thriller (a la Jessica Jones) with a season long conspiracy arc about K.E.V.I.N. taking over Disney by infiltrating Marvel.
Bonus woke points if they imply that K.E.V.I.N. is a sexist AI made by SV techbros that’s sabotaging She-Hulk’s series.
I thought Disneyland was the original "verse," but a metaverse sounds enticing.
Disney was quite early in MMPORG scene, with their online game Toontown (which was sunset a couple of years ago).
There was a more recent example with a scene in "Wreck-it Ralph 2" that showcased a Disney metaverse. Furthermore, Disney did collaborate with Skylanders. Perhaps expand on that?
>Iger has said Disney has built enough capacity to generate more entertainment than the world has cash to consume.
In other words, they have distorted the market because over-capacity should let prices fall.
But even if they keep their prices, cash doesn't have to be the limiting factor. The available cash is not fixed. If they spend their income instantly, 'new' cash is available to the market, and Disney can sell more entertainment.
>So the question is, once your corporate mega machine has become this efficient what do you even do next?
Expand to other markets. They know everything about human perception. They can leverage that to make more games or VR applications. They can build better education platforms or even create new cities. They could even try to convince Apple, Amazon and Google to open up the declining personal assistant market [1].
However, stable diffusion threatens their position. Who needs Disney's capacities if other algorithms can do it better? Disney will have to enter the AI race and spend all their money on developers and researchers. Unfortunately for them, they haven't used the last 20 years to create something like an online Cinderella university to globally identify young geniuses and funnel them into their company.
> Expand to other markets. They know everything about human perception. They can leverage that to make more games or VR applications. They can build better education platforms or even create new cities. They could even try to convince Apple, Amazon and Google to open up the declining personal assistant market
An extremely well-oiled movie-making machine is not a good games-making machine, VR or not.
And while there may be some cross-over with game-making, there is certainly no cross-over with voice assistants, where did you even think of that? Home assistants don't actually assist you in the home, they are mostly a device you buy to serve you ads (and occasionally switch the music when your hands are dirty).
> However, stable diffusion threatens their position. Who needs Disney's capacities if other algorithms can do it better? Disney will have to enter the AI race and spend all their money on developers and researchers.
You really don't understand the AAA movie business if you think Stable Diffusion is anywhere near threatening Disney.
They just explained that they've gotten so good at making blockbusters, they don't have enough clients for how many blockbusters they can make. Even if Stable Diffusion was any good at making AAA movies (they're a few decades away from that), someone trying to use it to compete with Disney would quickly find they have no power whatsoever to actually market their movies - that is where Disney truly shines.
And it's not about movie posters and reviews, marketing in the business is greatly tied to creating stars. People arent just coming to see Iron Man, they're coming to see Robert Downey Jr, or Chriss Pratt etc. AI-generated movies have no hope to compete with the marketing power of a big-name celebrity.
>there is certainly no cross-over with voice assistants, where did you even think of that?
Disney Land is a beautiful environment where the technical details are hidden. That's what they can replicate with assistants outside their parks.
>Home assistants don't actually assist you in the home
That's the point. Unlike Amazon, who hasn't managed to integrate their home automation with Alexa (see comments in [1]), Disney could approach assistants more holistically like they approach their parks and create a blissful experience of their clients' lives.
Voice assistants are voice assistants because the system doesn't know position, movement and other signals yet. People trust Disney so they can collect all data to react to movements or whatever else is possible.
Additionally, they are skilled in stories, in decision-making. Right now, assistants are servants who fulfill commands. A good assistant supports beyond that. The system has to know what people care about, what moves them, to turn their complex life into a linear, beautiful story.
*edit: If Disney does know everybody's location, they can use their movies for the ultimate gamification of work: You can only watch the next episode of your favorite series if you complete your milestone at work.
Go off-script and make something that actually feels new and original? If they really have turned art and entertainment into an assembly line they definitely have the bandwidth to try some weird stuff.
Although it would be hilarious if they just started releasing a new superhero movie every week. The Marvel universe is pretty deep.
Disney has Universal breathing down their necks in Orlando right now. They have to finish up major expansion projects in Asia as well as in France. Now is not the time to return capital.
You develop an AI to automate the process and expanding on this process eventually the company is essentially a bunch of code running in the cloud that generates a film on demand that fits the needs of each customer perfectly. (Obviously you separate out the real world business like Theme Parks).
Hopefully release more movies on Disney+ that remain high quality. I just quit Netflix because their relative output is higher but quality is complete garbage. We need something better.
I think they’re priced out most consumers though with a day pass a $120+. I’d imagine a theme park less than $70 per day could attract a lot of people.
Title should probably be changed to something like "Bob Iger Back as CEO of Disney, replacing Bob Chapek" because the current title has auto-dropped the exclamation point after "Disney Shocker!" and makes it sound like Bob Iger is a "Disney Shocker".
Especially since the reason Iger left is that he just wanted to retire. Basically everyone at Disney wanted him to stay.
Huh. I’m not terribly surprised - Bob Chapek’s leadership has been “less than ideal” from many different angles (political skirmishes, scattershot Marvel Phase 4, Disney+ still being unprofitable, theme park cost increases). Still surprising that something happened about it.
However, maybe it isn’t. The stock is down 40% YTD, 10% over the last 5 years. Pretty mediocre. Not that it’s been a great year for any stock, but losing 2/5ths value is still an outlier.
It’s not hard to see why. A $1.5 billion operating loss in the streaming division last quarter, despite 164M subscribers, is a major black eye. With $5.96/mo. being the average worth of a user, that means approximately $977 million monthly in streaming revenue, or $2.93 Billion per quarter - yet Disney is somehow spending $4.43 Billion per quarter to keep the streaming subscription ship afloat. If I’m an investor, I’m skeptical that Disney+ will ever obtain profitability. Raise prices, lose subscriptions. Make original content to keep people subscribed - but it costs money to make, eats profitability, and so far hasn’t been a huge subscription-saver. Thus the ad-based tier upcoming to try to fix the hole…
Right - domestic is better, but the overall (which matters most) is the number I stated, because Disney+ Hotstar subscriptions in India are a money pit ($0.58 per month!!)
Disney+'s marquee show is The Mandalorian which has been quite great so far but even that can't be stretched for too long. I don't see it going beyond a few more seasons. At least with its competitors like Netflix, it has a fantastic library of so many show like House of Cards, Stranger Things, Dark, Squid Game and a bunch of stuff for almost every demographic possible. HBO probably has an unparalleled library of shows and movies. Disney+ shows don't have the same kind of rewatchability.
Disney+'s marquee show is The Mandalorian which has been quite great so far but even that can't be stretched for too long. I don't see it going beyond a few more seasons. At least with its competitors like Netflix, it has a fantastic library of so many show like House of Cards, Stranger Things, Dark, Squid Game and a bunch of stuff for almost every demographic possible. HBO probably has an unparalleled library of shows and movies. Disney+ shows don't have the same kind of rewatchability. For example, they fumbled extremely hard with the Obi Wan show, which could have been another potential cultural zeitgeist like the Star Wars movies if they probably cut down the filler and did some more rewrites to improve the script and released it as a movie (either in theater or as a Disney+ exclusive)
I wonder how much bandwidth they could save by caching the movies... Disney movies tend to be repeat watched by youngsters. Of course a lot of the streaming hardware doesn't support this.
By the time we are caching movies on clients, it’s almost like we’ve reinvented the Blu-ray disc and the original Netflix mailers in my opinion… without physical media or ownership, but otherwise, not far off…
Because what is a physical disc? It’s basically a cache, physically delivered, but you purchase it once and it’s yours. Don’t want to purchase? Netflix will rotate discs back and forth by mail.
Such a system would be the same thing - just more expensive, less private, no ownership option, and without the physical disc or mailing time…
I don’t know. I get that it’s more convenient than the old system but seems like a downgrade in almost every other respect. Less ownership, less privacy, worse selection (how many streaming services needed?), quite possibly worse for the environment (discs break even with streaming after ~4 plays and last an average of 16 rentals, and far more than that when frequently watched in a home)…
Maybe they can lower the production costs of these shows.
Most media these days is basically all CGI and kind of crappy. Add some Disney cooking shows, talk shows, and stuff like that to bring in grandmas and busy moms. Add some nerd Star Wars podcasts and bring in people like me who want to nerd out on Mandalorian. Don’t always need to spend 50-200m on cgi heavy shows.
I'm less shocked by this than I thought I would be. Chapek was a weird choice to begin with, and the way Iger transitioned out was very unlike him. I've always suspected there was a reason for it we never heard about. My personal theory has been he was trying to broker a merger between Apple and Disney the last couple years, but COVID and Chapek's management made that a bad deal.
I've always wondered why Chapek was picked. It seems that CEO often choose head of the most successful division as successors (e.g. Amazon's Jeff Bezos choosing then-AWS chief Andy Jassy as CEO). Meanwhile, Disney parks invested massively into the struggling initiative of digitization.
Additionally, Chapek's timid personality did not seem as conducive in the people-centric entertainment industry.
Bob Iger was a tremendously successful CEO. CEO’s tend to have big time egos, and successful ones seem to not like the prospect of being outdone by their immediate successor. Perhaps it is similar to the phenomenon of presidential candidates picking lackluster VPs for their running mate?
If you really want to think in a Machiavellian way, perhaps Iger hand picked Chapek to act as a fall guy so that market pressure would hit the stock during his watch and not spoil his own tenure.
The most likely thing is that Chapek was simply seen as failing to maintain all the growth Iger managed to deliver and they want him back in order to try claw some of that stock price back.
> My personal theory has been he was trying to broker a merger between Apple and Disney the last couple years, but COVID and Chapek's management made that a bad deal.
History is muddled due to the last few years, I thought Iger got caught up in a "#metoo" situation. But that was probably someone else.
Bob Iger has had a lot of vanity projects over at Disney. The amount of debt that was put on after Disney acquired Fox (and not even all the parts they really wanted - Comcast got that!) is pretty high.
Which is understandable. 21st Century Fox was a much larger company than any of the other three mentioned companies - with sales offices, distribution deals with other studios, physical movie studios, large television production units (especially that output content in the UK/AU).
21st Century Fox also owned the rights to hundreds of movies (Avatar, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dr. Seuss) and plenty of television (1/3 of Hulu, The Simpsons).
They also had the movie rights to some of the Marvel characters. I don't know how much that was worth to Igor, but it seems that he really wants to get the family all back under one roof.
It's interesting that you mention the ABC acquisition - in today's money that would cost $36.09 billion - just roughly half of the Fox acquisition.
In terms of annual revenue, Disney has $83B against $29B for Paramount Global, $30B for Netflix, and $13B for Warner Bros Discovery. So Disney's debt is 0.6x revenue while Warner Bros Discovery's debt is 3.7x revenue. If Disney's debt is a problem, WBD is drowning.
What did Comcast get other than the 39% of Sky that Fox owned? The Fox Sports RSN went to Sinclair.
I can appreciate the issues around debt, but Disney also acquired a huge amount of IP and market control in entertainment in the deal. They've left the Fox broadcast networks without a TV studio for their content (and first-run is becoming less important in the era of streaming). They've gotten so many of the most important IP franchises out there. They've become by far the largest movie studio. In an era where entertainment is becoming vertically integrated from creation to streaming, it seems like Disney has locked down so much of the future.
We see how others are struggling. Paramount is trying to make the most of Star Trek and is the smallest major movie studio. Warner Bros Discovery is an also-ran with HBO Max - and having trouble figuring out the way forward with HBO Max/Discovery+/(the canceled) CNN+. WBD is also struggling with many of their franchises fizzling out: the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts universe is mired by JK Rowling's problematic politics and Ezra Miller's many issues; they seem to be having trouble getting their DC properties to perform how they'd like having canceled Batgirl when it was almost finished and talking about refocusing the franchise. Sony is an independent studio, but lacks the integrated platform that the other 4 have. Comcast/NBCUniversal is still trying to figure out what Peacock is and having trouble even attracting free users.
Iger talked about making the call to buy the IP needed to really create a vertically integrated company that would be able to support a streaming service without licensing lots of outside content. It started with Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel who gave Disney a huge amount of content and talent. Fox was expensive, but also gave Disney the rest of the Marvel universe (except Spiderman) along with so much more content and a huge amount of control of the box office and TV. Disney is in a very strong position relative to their competitors. I think Disney is going to look pretty good in a decade. The economies of scale of running a large streaming service seem likely to help Disney a lot (having many more customers paying for the same content and allowing you to afford more of it). That's not to say Paramount, WBD, and others can't compete, but it does seem like Disney owns so much more which lets them offer more and secures their position. People got Netflix because it offered more and it's hard to see how Paramount or WBD or NBCUniversal could offer as much as Disney could. Now, Disney will try and figure out what the minimum it can offer while keeping users is, but they have such a depth of content that it puts them in the driver's seat a bit.
Netflix always knew it was a matter of time before the giants understood streaming was the way and changed their business models.
What they didn’t expect was Iger - figuring out the model - building a good streaming app - buying up all the could. Truly a high performance CEO imo and one of the best in the history of entertainment.
It’s funny to read in the biographies of S. Jobs just how blown away he was by Disney’s institutional knowledge of marketing when he got into bed with them with Pixar. From the bios I read I remember it was the first time he realised you could make an effective corporate culture last - Disney will soon be around a century old.
How was Disney able to build a streaming app as good as Netflix, which is supposed to be filled with extremely well paid and presumably, extremely qualified people? I had a friend interview with Disney+ recently and the salary wasn't that good.
I think HBO has shown us that you don't need a streaming app as good as netflix, people just need to be able to watch your content. If you have the content people will pay to stream it.
I dont have the historic knowledge of the parks change but I have been often in the last years as a friend of mine has employee passes. I found them to be exceptionally clean with friendly staff. Leagues ahead of other parks.
By far the worst part of the experience was that it was too crowded. Raising prices or limiting annual pass holders would help solve this but I feel like that falls into the penny pinching category. Lower attendance cap would also help but would be surprised if they did that given it is capping your income.
Starting to charge for parking at the resorts, continuously increasing food prices, still requiring park reservations, and the virtual queue[0] are some of the biggest downsides of the past few years attributed to Chapek.
0: which was instated to prevent 4+ hour wait times for Rise of the Resistance
It just seems like these complains have a "Its too crowded no one goes there anymore" vibe. I feel like maybe the nickel and diming is not worth it - but fundamentally it seems like they need to lower the daily attendance and probably the easiest way to do that will keeping income stable is to raise ticket prices.
I do think this is the best option. Disneyland is cramped but it appears they will be given land to expand soon.
I think they are worried a third US park would eat into the brand - but have always been a bit surprised they haven't tried to do one in Texas. There is a lot of land there that is cheap and geographically could serve different audience.
You don't even need to do that. A gate can be in Anaheim or in Orlando (or both), It doesn't require a new location.
Disney is already freeing up more space in Anaheim, and they still (aFAIK) have a huge interest in land around long beach (a bit more problematic). And they have huge tracts of land in Orlando.
Where are you seeing the Long Beach stuff? I know they once thought about opening Port Disney but as far as I can find that land was given up almost two decades ago.
The Anaheim expansion is limited. They are pretty much just taking over the parking lot. The city council has made it very difficult (fair enough) to just expand onto property they already own so I imagine an expansion into land they acquire would be even more challenging
I don’t think it will since a lot of these changes were started under Iger. Chapek became CEO at the worst possible time and had to deal with park shutdowns and staffing issues. Of course there were going to be service cutbacks. My visit last weekend was markedly better than the week prior etc.
> Iger has been noted for his kindness by David Geffen, who said: "I have never heard one person say a bad thing about him and I have never seen him be mean".
I obviously cannot verify this, but I hope it's true because I like the idea that it's not unthinkable how someone can get to the top of the corporate world while also being a nice person.
He was able to convince Steve Jobs to sell Pixar, Lucas to sell Star Wars, somehow get Marvel and Sony to co-produce Spider-Man (with the help of Kevin Feige), and also to buy 21st Century Fox from the Murdochs. That requires some skill and even empathy when required. For example, it had become very obvious Lucas wouldn't be able to direct his long desired sequel trilogy, so I am sure he must have used empathy as a part of his negotiation. Allegedly,he was able to get a handshake deal that they would use Lucas's script ideas for Ep VII (which they dropped once the deal was done)
That link editorializes in its URL that the plan was awful, but you can read it yourself.
(I felt it pretty easy to speculate that its quality might not be great in reading George Lucas' book adaptation of A New Hope, personally, and guessed at some of the answers he later gave in interviews. Though it would have been a fun spectacle/drug trip.)
As someone with some knowledge, I can share that it's moslty true. Bob has a knack for managing people...especially people on the creative side of the industry who are notoriously sensitive to feeling managed. It's why so many people expected him to jump into politics when he departed from Disney.
He gets away with this and is still an effective CEO because he gets others in his circle to play the bad cop and take bad press.
I say all this as someone with huge respect for Iger and all he's done.
I don't know about the "political" part, but as a parent to young kids, I'm a bit frustrated that they mix up the age ratings throughout the Marvel franchise.
Eternals has a scene with two characters having sex on a beach. Spider Man Homecoming has a gag where Ned says he's watching porn on his laptop. In She Hulk, a key plot point is she's filmed having sex and the video is then broadcast.
If they want to make Marvel for teens and older, then by all means. But they clearly market the franchise to the under-10 crowd, and the content above was not subtle. It wasn't written to go over the little ones' heads... it's in their face.
I'm always surprised that a smidge of sex, that would probably completely fly over the head of a child anyway, is more concerning than the glorified extreme non-stop violence of these films.
Be that as it may, the violence is inherently part of every single Marvel movie. Parents who object to violence in movies would know to not show them to their kids.
But the sexual content is unexpected and random. She Hulk is "hulk for girls"... and one episode is about revenge porn. As a parent, that's pretty awkward.
Note that my complaint isn't about movies having sexual content. It's that 95% of Marvel movies don't have overtly sexual references, and then a couple suddenly do, within the same sub-franchise. The right way to go is like Jessica Jones (on Netflix), which was a Marvel series but it was very clearly marketed for adults.
She-Hulk is “hulk for everyone” and is also clearly targeted at adults. This is clear because it’s rated TV-14 but sets the tone pretty early that it’s not a children focused show.
That the protagonist is a woman doesn’t mean it’s for girls btw.
If you’re looking for a more child focused Marvel series with a female protagonist, Ms.Marvel would be it.
The Marvel episodic content is (with the exception of Falcon and the Winter Soldier) is a lot more diverse in style content than the films, and unapologetically so. This is where Marvel is experimenting and providing a more varied range of content.
> That the protagonist is a woman doesn’t mean it’s for girls btw.
Yeah, I didn't really mean that the show is "for girls", but just that here was a new female-protagonist show. Ms. Marvel was fantastic, by the way (for many reasons).
I didn't notice the TV-14 on She Hulk at first, but did catch on pretty quick that the series leaned more mature. Still, the Avengers movies dropped all the overt sexual references after Iron Man 2 and became more "kiddie-friendly", so I find it odd (and frustrating) to have the maturity level vary within the same set of characters. That is my problem. In the other mega-franchise brands (Star Wars, Pixar, Disney) you know the maturity and sensibility to expect.
Why would you expect the same set of characters to be one dimensional? And you’re not concerned with your kids being exposed to violence but you are concerned with them being exposed to sexual innuendo?
I think really the big thing is that the films are very high budget and therefore Disney/Marvel are scared to do anything in the least offensive because they want the most return. So it’s not so much intentionally kid friendly as just as vanilla as can be for safety.
Streaming/episodic is much lower budget so they take more risks to try and bring in a different set of audiences that their films weren’t pulling in. My wife for example doesn’t care at all for the films, but really got into Wandavision and She-Hulk because the premise was more interesting to her.
I think the safety of the films might also disappear soon too as China and a few other countries recently rebuffed them. Marvel has tried very hard for years to be very China friendly because it’s a huge market, but recently with Shang-Chi they got blocked. So now they’ve stopped pandering to a more conservative market.
Coincidentally the big up and coming market is progressive youths and I think you’ll see a lot more topics that speak to them (or at least what a Disney exec thinks does). I don’t think Disney gives a crap about being progressive for the morality of it, but after they’ve had a pretty bad few years at the hands of conservatives (China, Florida gay rights etc), they’re now realizing this progressive market is ripe for the picking.
I think She-Hulks tone comes firmly from that pivot. So I suspect what is traditionally seen as child friendly values will see a down turn in their big projects.
That said, media is both a reflection of us and we are a reflection of it. So I think what topics will be considered child friendly will also change dramatically over the next few years.
Well it’s certainly not for boys, unless boys like being considered incompetent idiots who can never understand why they’re toxic. At least that’s true of every straight male character in the show.
Wong, the Sorcerer Supreme, was reduced to watching trash tv on a sofa with a vapid drunk club girl, because he’s a sorority girl now.
Matt, i.e. Daredevil, was reduced to carrying his shoes in his hands in a “walk of shame” (his shoes are uncomfortable heels? He feels shame after sex with a fellow lawyer?), because he’s a sorority girl now.
Bruce, who spent two decades learning to control his inner Hulk and multiple times watched friends die in service of a higher calling was upstaged in 5 seconds by a girl who told him what real anger is because she gets catcalled and asked out on dates by people she doesn’t find attractive.
Whatever boys are supposed to get from this show, they’re probably not getting it. Or perhaps boys are getting exactly what the writers want them to get.
Wong made a friend. He’s also been the butt of jokes in every male protagonist marvel film with him in it. This is the most I’ve enjoyed his character in a while.
Matt had a good time and then they made a casual joke that you’re reading far too much into.
Regarding Bruce, they had to short circuit her origin story. Nobody wants to see her go through the exact same motions.
Regardless, it seems the show was not your cup of tea. That’s fine.
There’s plenty of straight men out there who enjoyed it, and we have enough shows pandering to our male egos that having one fun show focused on a woman isn’t going to upset my balance of whatever it is you think one must get from a show.
> we have enough shows pandering to our male egos that having one fun show focused on a woman isn’t going to upset my balance
That's disingenuous. I reject this show for the same reason women reject a show that fails the Bechdel test. It's full of caricatures of men that exist only to confirm the protagonist's (i.e. head writer's) view that men are either toxic leering creeps, oblivious privileged mansplainers or idiotic adult children.
I really doubt it. Source: I was a kid. Sex scenes definitely did not fly over. It was something I did not understand and somehow affected my behaviour more than violence between robots.
> If they want to make Marvel for teens and older, then by all means. But they clearly market the franchise to the under-10 crowd, ...
TBH I'm a little confused by this claim, why do you think any of the marvel movies or shows are targeted to kids younger than 10? I'm pretty sure basically every MCU movie has a PG-13 rating, which is definitely a deliberate choice they made. Certainly the ratings are just a suggestion, but I don't feel like they're making any attempt at targeting kids younger than 10, they have completely separate shows like Spidey that target that demographic and (AFAIK) have nothing to do with the MCU.
Like I mentioned there's other ways for kids to learn about these characters. Until just a few years ago there was both an Avengers animated series, a GOTG animated series, and various other series all targeted at kids. Any kids who watched those shows would know all the Marvel characters without needing to watch any of the MCU films.
Beyond that, many of those things are also collectables, so a lot of that stuff is not _just_ for kids. But kids who know the characters will enjoy them even if they don't specifically know the MCU versions.
> No f-bombs in the films, no blood, no sex, etc
I agree to an extent, but you basically just listed the requirements for a PG-13 movie, not whether a movie is for ages younger than 10. They definitely earn a PG-13 rating, many of them have (sometimes less than subtle) sex jokes, a few have brief sex scenes, they do have some blood and a few gruesome character deaths (for kids), and all of them have a fair amount of swearing (much more than I'd let my young daughter watch). I feel like you've just equated anything that's not R rated as "targeting kids 10 and under", ignoring the middle area that is PG-13.
> Merchandise targeted at little ones. Toys, costumes, Lego…
You might be shocked that there are action figures for a mass murdering vigilante (The Punisher), a homicidal maniac (Joker), a guy who literally killed dozens of kids (Darth Vader), etc
What political sermon? Do you just mean the diversity of the cast and crew, or did you find something in the story itself that sent a more coherent political message than, "If your boss tells you to blow up the world, say no."
Well, he just introduces rudimentary technology to ancient humans and then stands back for thousands of years to watch it evolve.
He feels guilty that the chain of technological progress eventually leads to Hiroshima, but I don't think everybody would agree that it's his responsibility.
You should watch she-hulk. That show is something, Disney is not just wasting money, they are burning bridges along with the rest of the real estate that they bought.
That’s quite subjective. I thought She-Hulk was pretty entertaining, and actually really clever and subversive in its writing. You may however not be the target demographic for it, which is fine, but it’s important to note it isn’t just firing into a void for no reason.
Ditto, it ranks as one of the best Marvel series in my book - it's different, just like Wandavision was different - more light hearted, but still poignant. A lot of subtext that is spot on. The lead actor (Tatiana) was awesome. The ending was a bit too odd to match the rest of the show, but I enjoyed it. I loved their take on the crossover superhero they included!
Personally I am not the right demographic for marvel movies, period. My marvel viewing experience is driven by my kids. However, it is very hard for me to envision large group of people(let alone a whole demographic) that could truly enjoy latest marvel if those shows/films were not backed by established characters/franchise
I’d say most people in my social circle liked it. I’m not sure what we have in common given we’re a fairly even mix of genders and ethnicities but I’d say we’re all fairly progressive (not saying you’re not, just postulating about ourselves) and enjoyed having fresh content. Many of us are tired of the usual marvel action affairs.
What we all seemed to like about the show was that it was lighthearted and funny, without overly dour world ending scenarios. It was clearly written with women involved because a lot of the humour was both targeted and different, which as a guy, I enjoyed because there were a ton of really great subversions of traditional male tropes in writing.
You realize that none of the marvel characters besides Hulk were household names before the MCU? Marvel characters again aside from Hulk were never household names like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.
Eternals was in production since 2018. Its filming was mostly complete by February 2020, when Chapek took over. It’s also Marvel and under Feige’s purview.
“The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” is a story about talking magical animals, and is for kids. And therefore obviously has no hidden motives behind the story.
Does a sermon instantly make it bad? Is Captain America: Winter Soldier a sermon? To me its a pretty clear stance against drone strikes and general over-securitizing(?) Of society, and I thought that was fantastic movie and message.
Let's go further back to any of the old Disney films, came from fables, moral tales of old. In fact what piece of media outside of the most boring and bland ever
are not a tale to learn, think or expand your thoughts? Is that not a sermon?
I think it does when it's "in your face" like the latest movies. It feels like a kind of propaganda that I'm not interested in. I just want to enjoy my time and watch a f*** good and entertaining movie not a jehovah witness sermon or a diversity soup.
> Hopefully Disney will cut the political sermon from the next movies. I've just watched "Eternals" and couldn't believe it's a Disney movie.
I'm not sure why you expect Iger to do that, he is 100% responsible for Disney movies and animations cultural shift and decided that one group of people are the audience they want to focus on and pander to, probably because it makes them more money than the alternative. Purely a profit driven decision. This is just the way it is, at the end of the day, money talks.
Chapek is no different, but "optics" were against him as he mishandled the PR aspect of the pandering.
That kind of preachiness is there to stay, at least until there is yet another cultural paradigm shift.
It would be cool if he fixes ESPN sports streaming. I subscribed to watch some college sports. The content is there but impossible to find. The UI is beyond awful, it's incomprehensible.
I don't know if a fifth gate is the solution to overcrowding: Induced demand would likely mean that more people would go because it was less crowded until it reaches peak crowds again fairly shortly after opening.
IMO they're struggling to open and maintain enough lasting attractions and park atmosphere areas in the existing parks, and they're making lots of money from inflating queue times and sending people to the shops so I don't really see what they'll do.
The stock has been under performing the S&P 500 since 2015, when Iger was CEO. There was a bit of out performance when Disney+ was released, but then resumed under performance. Chapek wasn't the only reason for this.
I wouldn't want to own it. All content producers seem to be performing poorly.
Disney has experimented with VR since the inception, and there’s reasons they haven’t made a play. There’s no home market, and the costs and throughput of doing it in the park don’t have the economics.
It's not a Jack Dorsey situation where they're just throwing old CEOs at the wall to see what sticks -- Iger ran Disney incredibly well and no one wanted him to leave.
True, it was Iger who spearheaded acquisition initiatives. In an age of increasing media production, consumers are more confused to pick what to consume. Iger consolidated many strong franchises (e.g. Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars) under Disney, and box-office charts are full of Disney-owned studios.
Nah, Iger's got this. He just wants to retire, though.
Iger put Disney on the right path after Eisner. He fixed a lot of the issues animators were having and put creative decision makers in the right places. Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney+ are just a few of the highlights of his bigger impact. He fundamentally understands the direction of the business. (So long as it doesn't get disrupted by AI/ML, which could cannibalize franchises.)
Iger wanted to retire, and he picked one of his subordinates to take over. He picked very wrong.
Kevin Mayer and Peter Rice were other picks that got snubbed. Meyer became the short-lived CEO of TikTok US (and left after the Trump admin threatened to shut it down), and Chapek got rid of Rice.
Chapek bungled LGBT / Don't Say Gay, and for the former head of Parks didn't seem to manage COVID right.
Iger's biggest mistake was Chapek.
It's good to have Iger back. But he has to find a new replacement.
> Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney+ are just a few of the highlights.
How much of the absurdly poor quality content that made to screens, were projects left in the pipe by Iger though? Iger is also the CEO that failed to reign in the woke agenda at Disney which has become the guiding principle of most of Disney's content.
I would also argue that Chapek didn't bungle the Parental Rights in Education Act, he just inherited a company that is extremely aligned with a single political party in the US, and those values don't translate well outside of that one political party. Do you think Japan or China disagree with Florida's stance on the issue for example? Those two countries represent 3 of Disney's resorts, literally half of the entire portfolio.
Don't get me wrong, Iger has ran Disney for decades and importantly, he's ran Disney through business cycles that aren't just Congress and the Fed going nuts with stimulus. He knows what it means when consumers are suddenly squeezed for pennies and you know it's bad when the de-facto Prime Minister of Canada uses cutting Disney+ as an example of consumer cost-cutting[1]. What I'd be worried about, is that he's not necessarily the best person to reign in the woke and return to universal values, which is a key pillar of why people consume Disney.
Is this whole "woke" thing like an actual, serious problem for Disney? The box office for Disney movies since Iger took over in 2005 indicates people don't actually care.
More than that, it shows that people care in a positive way. The people crying about wokeness are the loud minority.
Coco , Black Panther, Turning Red, Soul all did phenomenally well.
If you look at media embracing diversity, they’re largely doing pretty well when compared to projects of equivalent quality, because they’re bringing in new demographics AND giving something new to existing fans.
You can't deduce that people don't care about the "woke" aspect because some movies are still popular, Disney could have made other movies that weren't "woke", that may or may not have been more popular.
Others in this thread have mentioned that China's kept some Marvel movies out due to "LGBTQ representation". Suggesting that they omit that goes against my own biases.
But I don't see how a CEO could make the financial case that doing so wouldn't be worth catering to those large foreign markets.
I dunno. My wife and I used to insta buy/ take our kids to see Disney movies, but now we double check what sorts messages the movie has in it.
For example, Turning Red. It seems to have a message of… never listen to your parents? Rebel against authority? I’m not sure exactly. It’s a weird movie.
Which is interesting because Moana is, as an adult, possibly one of my favorite movies of all time. The messaging of the heroes journey, venerating your ancestors, but being able to look toward the future and find a new way that sometimes faces resistance is a perfect tale. Then there’s also the subtext of Maui and Tefiti being the archetypal divorced couple, with Maui stealing her heart which causes severe emotional trauma until she is healed by Moana, the archetypal child mending the family.
Frozen is a weird one, I could write a book about it.
Princess and the Frog is great.
It’s so weird! I never know if a mainline Disney movie is going to be good or terrible. I don’t really know what’s going on over at Disney right now.
Turning Red isn’t about rebelling. It’s about finding out who you are. In the film she only really rebels against her mom about one thing, which is the same number of times Moana defies her dad. The rest of the movie is about her desire to venerate her ancestors while still being true to herself. In many ways it’s similar to Moana.
I’m unsure how any of these are “woke” so much as messages you disagree with. Which is fine, but I would encourage reflecting on it further.
Disney has had tons of rebellious characters over the decades. Ariel is rebellious. Simba is rebellious. Belle is rebellious. Mulan is rebellious. Lilo is rebellious. Aladdin is rebellious. Tony Stark is rebellious. Peter Parker is rebellious.
Interesting characters tend to be rebellious. Luke is literally a rebel who doesn’t listen to his father after all.
It was good and bad. Disney had basically two hyper loyal bases throughout the last 20 years. Parents with young children…especially daughters, and the LGBT community. The woke stuffed appealed to one of those groups, but not the other.
The group it didn’t appeal to has immense political power in Florida and this threatened Disney’s control of the RCID, which Disney really needs to control…there was a lot of speculation about how this was a loser for Florida, but it wasn’t. It’s a loser for Disney because they need to maintain a specific standard both for grounds and roads, but also control for future development needs. Especially with the parks busting at the seams.
I am willing to bet in the next two years there is some political repair happening between Iger and Florida.
The kiss scene in Rise of Skywalker felt particularly pandering and purely a marketing thing. The scene was two unnamed characters that were easily edited out for more restrictive markets. Though I suppose that's the opposite of general woke based criticisms.
Disney uses its IP and theme parks to print money. Sure, it could have been doing better, but as long as people keep paying to see more of Star Wars, MCU, and Pixar, it would take almost intentional mismanagement to actually be in trouble.
So the question is, once your corporate mega machine has become this efficient what do you even do next?