For the past decade, Disney has been the Teflon movie studio, remarkably adept at withstanding the tectonic changes impacting the film industry, and well fortified by its arsenal of key properties such as Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar.
But this year, the long-reigning titan of the box office has shown cracks as four of its biggest releases from those brands and others have struggled in theaters..
Disney Pixar’s animations are no longer the ones to watch like their time before Toy Story 3. Look at the Pinocchio showdown they had with Netflix. Absolute polar opposite. And now Nimona is Netflix’s latest great hit after they picked it up from Disney’s scrap pile because it’s too gay for Disney.
I feel Disney has been going downhill ever since they made their first move to buy up other companies and their subsequent decision to milk every IP dry regardless of quality.
I feel that Disney is very much a bad thing for the entertainment industry. They own so many huge IPs and have proven that they by and large, can’t actually make good use of them. Just look at what they did to Star Wars movie wise. It makes me wonder how a monopoly is actually defined.
I wish they’d get broken up into smaller companies to help fix the entertainment industry.
There should really be a cap on the percentage of a national (or the global) economy that a single company can directly influence. Otherwise they get too big, start doing hellish stuff, and it's very difficult for consumers to respond to their choices. If every choice in an aisle at the store is owned by like 3 companies, that's a problem.
My biggest gripe is how everything needs to be connected to each other. I noped out of MCU after Endgame, really don’t want to get suckered into another “phase” or whatever they call them. Too many shows, too many movies, and most of it is not interesting at all.
Theyre only connecting series together because Disney wants to ultimately do their rendition of Secret Wars (happened in the comic series in 2015). They threw the hints by including the concept of incursion in the multiverse of madness. Its also why fantastic 4 is getting a reboot, despite the countless number of times it failed. Dr Doom is essential for Secret Wars to happen.
Comics being super interconnected in big events is indeed not a Disney invention, and it makes sense for movies to follow that format. BUT both comics and the MCU initial phases only worked out because the heroes’ standalone comics/movies stood on their own feet. Disney fucked up when they started making interconnected movies without setup (Eternals, I liked it but no one else did) or making standalone hero movies that are clearly just there for a future mash-up (compare recent movies to first Iron Man or first two Captain America movies). Doesn’t help either that repeating the same formula for new hero movies over and over gets boring with time and today’s Disney (and overall mainstream movie market) is deathly afraid of creativity. When was the last time you saw a movie that isn’t a remake/sequel, adaptation, or documentary?
Im pretty sure its the other way around. Disney paid good money for the Fantastic 4 and theyll reboot it like Sony on Spiderman if thats what it takes make the IP pay out. The specific movie plots involved in doing this are all secondary concerns.
Also, they've really doubled down on the interconnectivity. You used to be able to follow the main arc without difficulty if you saw most of the movies, but now you have to watch absolutely everything including the TV shows or you have no idea what's going on.
They were always connected, but how they were connected has changed a lot.
Iron Man had a post credits scene. The Winter Soldier had Black Panther a core part of the plot. Stark had a lot of cross movie connections that didn't overstay their welcome.
After Endgame the crossovers are mostly junk. Guardians in Thor 3 was a lame follow up to the going out together because it was a summary and one scene, not core to the plot of the movie which could have been neat. Several were not memorable and were just exposition that the movie's characters could have handled on their own. It is more of an overall hit the plot points and move on as scripts instead of each scene being its own thing ad part of a bigger whole.
On top of that the overuse of green screen settings, quips from every character, and the overuse of world ending threats in almost every movie and series has made most of the movies bland. Yeah, early on they had a few duds but now they are mostly duds with a few gems and it feels like that is the result of trying to rush so much out at once while trying to connect them all at the same time.
Here is a visualisation showing just how big is Disney (I can't spot a couple of companies that I know are owned by Disney in this, so the list is actually even bigger).
Damn it, that’s insane. I knew they were huge, but I had no idea the scope of their holdings! Someone print out a huge poster of that graphic and show congress or whoever needs to decide that they’re faaaaar too large and are negatively impacting many industries.
There’s no way this shit is tax optimal, so many companies with super-specific purposes… unless it’s all to trigger specific tax regimes. Maybe they should simplify the corporate structure instead of axing creative staff they clearly need
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