Can MatPat Save Disney?

Disney is falling down. People have been saying it for awhile now, but they’re often accused of being right-wingers who want to get rid of minority and women characters, when the “woke” bit is only part of the larger problem. As the former Walt Disney Company has grown more corporate and buying up other media companies for their libraries they’ve fallen away from Walt’s dream and his reminder to always remember “it all started with a mouse”. As modern Disney pulls away from their animated heritage by passing it on to other studios outside of the occasional CG movie not made by Pixar, and they do acquisition after acquisition (anybody remember when Maker Studios tore out Blip for the assets only to be absorbed and vanish into the Disney system never to be heard from again?) they add to the studios that have lost the ability to be creative in favor following demographics, algorhythms, and other statistics. This is a company founded by an animator who wanted more control over his own creations and founded an empire…an empire now in big trouble.

Even Matthew “MatPat” Patrick of Film Theory is seeing the flaws in current Disney operations: the obsession with Disney+, the overblown budgets, and the questionable writing (though he doesn’t call out stereotypes pretending to be representation over good character of a certain group and one-sided sociopolitical perspectives) that all has been leading to Disney’s current failures even at the theme parks. I was originally going to make this a daily quickpost but I found I had quite a bit to say in addition to the video, so it became tonight’s feature instead.

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Another part of the budget issues is advertising, which MatPat only addresses in passing. People forget that ads cost money. I’m not sure how cross promotions work and who gets what from; for example. Star Wars putting items into your Lucky Charms or Marvel themed Kraft macaroni & cheese. Regular merchandising, “where the real money from the movie is made” to quote a different green guy…sorry, he’s more of a golden color, may help pay the bills but if nobody wants to see the movie they aren’t going to want your merchandise cluttering up their collections. (I know a little something about clutter.) So all those TV and YouTube ads, movie posters, and print/banner ads all cost moolah on top of the budget for the actual movie, which goes even higher when you reshoot over half the movie due to following the charts or hiring people right for the project from the start.

MatPat did bring up the heroes of previous works becoming jaded and depressed when we see them again, but what he missed is that often the goal is to use them to push some new character. Taking down Luke and company was supposed to benefit Rey and company, but what we got was a terrible passing of the torch while later seasons of Clone Wars made the Jedi look like total jerks. Indy has to be “fixed” by Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character. Fans are taking notice. It makes sense to attempt to pass the torch. The Indiana Jones movies tried that with Mutt, Shia LaBouf’s character, then killed him off to introduce a new girl. The Terminator franchise had Skynet succeed at killing off John Connor so Sarah Connor had to move to fixing his girl replacement. Fans notice the mistreatment of beloved characters and are finally starting to respond accordingly given how burned they’ve been in the past. It took until Bumblebee to get a GOOD Transformers movie. It doesn’t help when they don’t get a character from other material right either physically or in terms of their personality and role in the universe. The MCU producers don’t want anyone who knows the comics so what you get are terrible adaptations by people who actively being kept from knowing what they’re doing.

I’m still waiting for David Hasselhoff to play Samuel L. Jackson’s dad like in the comics.

That’s leads to namesakes that are just new characters wearing old names and nothing else that fits. That’s been going on before the whole “woke” discourse but it has gotten worse when things are done for sociopolitical reasons rather than the needs of the story. I grew up with plenty of heroes of not-white-maleness growing up but they won’t acknowledge those so they can pat themselves on the back and be the first rather promoting actual minority characters over replacing the white people either for their own egos or for apolitical marketing purposes (“we’re first so give us your money and push us on your activist social media pages”)…but that’s just a recent symptom of a large problem. Nobody calls Battlestar Galactica “woke” but it bears as little in common with the original series as Ron Moore could get away with. Now it’s just become an epidemic. Beast Machines showrunners and writers weren’t even allowed to look at the previous show, Beast Wars, to get the Transformers universe right and Michael Bay just tossed random references in like beads in a Mardi Gras parade.

I can at least understand Disney’s obsession with their streaming service because everybody is obsessed with streaming right now. They only owned one third of Hulu until they bought Capital Cities and NBC said “forget it, we’ll make our own service where we aren’t outnumbered”. The pandemic keeping everybody home combined with growing lack of interest in the theater going experience due to movies being way too long so you miss part of it to go to the restroom (no longer needing to switch reels means no intermissions and with a Peter Jackson film that’s a long time to sit in uncomfortable seats), bad attitudes by theater goers riffing movies out loud or distracting everyone with lights from their cellphones rather than watching the movie, the prices for the movie and snacks, and going all the way out of a movie that now will appear at home next month on streaming rather than wait for the home video and HBO airings to happen after the second chance theaters get their shot has caused everyone to just stay home. It’s cheaper, allows you to pause the movie to use the restroom or yell at people in the room to shut it, and your couch or recliner is more relaxing than even the current style movie seats that have to be a general fit rather than a custom one.

Streaming versus the theater is a topic in itself mind you, but prioritizing the streaming service and paying a form of lip service to the theaters is only another reason the theaters are failing and may go the way of their drive-in brethren at this rate. Going to the movies is not the fun family experience or romantic date night it used to be at a time where family togetherness seems scorned and what qualifies as “romantic” is debatable from a Hollywood more interested in pitting men and women against each other.

Disney as a company has forgotten its creative and animation heritage, sending even their TV shows to be made by other companies and handling distribution or airing. Milo Murphy’s Law and Hailey’s On It are two shows I really enjoy on Disney Channel and Ducktales, though leaning more on the comics than the original show, was an example of a reboot mostly done right. Meanwhile Gravity Falls has a strong fanbase as do a bunch of other shows I could mention. However, none of them match Disney’s tossed aside “house style” in any regards, or were technically made by Disney themselves. Even the current Mickey Mouse shorts, which now includes an early pop shot at “Steamboat Willie” entering public domain with a story where their current ugly designed Mickey dealing with duplicates of his original design, don’t feel like Disney cartoons. Ironically the Disney Junior uses of the characters are still their classic designs and personalities, with at best Donald’s anger toned down a bit because it’s still Disney Junior.

Disney has abandoned it’s legacy, replaced creativity with demographics, and done the same to Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, and their various IPs that they wanted so badly to push their company and their streaming service. MatPat laid out some great ideas and it’s a start but they have a lot to do to regain the success of Walt’s days. It all started with a mouse but if they keep going they may end up meeting the exterminator.