258. How Would We Restore Disney Film Franchises?
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“Fallen, fallen is Disney the great! The Mouse has become a dwelling place for cringe, a haunt for every unclean secularist agenda, a haunt for every flopbuster franchise, a haunt for every unclean and detestable remake.” Yes, we know the line. But after facing fairy-stale adaptations, flippant super-capers, and the adrift vessels of “Stalled” Wars, how could we restore Disney?
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1. How to unmake unmagical Disney remakes
- Much of this chapter is about all of The Walt Disney Company proper.
- Disney likely can’t apologize or officially throw its people under the bus.
- That would be bad business as well as illegal (NDAs) and dishonorable.
- However, Disney can certainly signal it’s learned a lesson from fans.
- Stephen offers several big steps for the Mouse to re-earn its good graces.
- Halt all remakes and all Disney-branded movies after Lilo and Stitch.
- Re-release and celebrate Disney legacy films exclusively in theaters
- Not a cheap re-release either; presentation matters here!
- The point is not a cash grab. It’s to show fans healthy pride.
- Isn’t that the point of the cheesy “believe in yourself” canard?
- This can relieve the “Disney is embarrassed of its legacy” charge.
- Cut prices for Disney+, theme parks, anything else that they can
- Delete (not just modify) all the “content warnings” on Disney Plus
- Add new programming to honor expressions of traditional values
- For U.S. relations, it wouldn’t hurt to join in with “civil religion” events like next year’s Quadricentennial (Hall of Presidents?)
- Quietly cancel plans to bulldoze Rivers of America for Cars stuff
- Ad campaigns, then stories, specifically about traditional families
- Bonus: release all the Muppet Vision 3D legacy show on streaming.
2. How to repair the stalled Star Wars saga
- Finally and truly retire Kathleen Kennedy with her gold C3PO watch.
- Appoint Jon Favreau in charge or else Tony Gilroy, with creative freedom.
- Ignore (or quickly wrap up plots from) shows that were utter failures.
- Make more films like the epic Andor that treat Star Wars more sincerely.
- Perhaps most important: rehire Gina Carano with some kind of apology!
- Consider spinning off the brand for its own “studio” with independence.
- That way, if something goes south, Disney can simply disavow all that.
- Models: a studio like A24, with emphasis on directors, not directives.
- Appoint a brain trust to maintain continuity and voice, then back off.
3. How to bring back the Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Recently the MCU revealed big(?) cast members for Avengers: Doomsday
- A few are names Stephen doesn’t recognize, from Disney Plus and such
- The most notable are X-Men actors, all the better to honor their legacy
- This goes a long way toward repairing relations, same with the Russos
- Simple moving-on from the Mary Sue-perhero will also help matters.
- Fantastic Four looks good, but we need more originality in the stories.
- Honor specific directors, artists, composers, not just actors/plotlines.
- That’s another step toward making all this feel much less corporate.
- Meanwhile, put an end to Disney Plus series, other than one-off specials.
- Make it special again to see a live-action superhero only on big screens.
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Top question for listeners
- If you had an Infinity Gauntlet, how would you try to fix Disney?
Next on Fantastical Truth
While superheroes might go stale and franchises flounder, guess what’s big on the streaming-service menu, boys? Hard to believe, but it’s biblical fiction! From the giant-smash hit House of David on Amazon Prime, to The Chosen and its planned Bibleverse, to even more adaptations from Old and New Testaments, these creations are winning millions of fans but also some evangelical enemies. None of them seem apt to ask: what is biblical fiction?
Is it OK if I give something of a minority report? In my experience, if anyone says anything good about an unpopular Disney movie they get called a shill for the company. I’m not. It doesn’t really matter to me if the Disney company collapses. (Any entertainment they’ve made that I enjoy will just go to another company or enter the public domain or something.) I just believe in calling things as I see them and sometimes that means liking things the internet doesn’t like.
I’ve honestly enjoyed many of Disney’s recent nostalgia bait movies. Not all of them, mind you, but I’ve seen more good or OK ones than bad. And the even the ones I’ve disliked I don’t hate with a passion. I think they’re just mediocre. Some plot points in them I honestly think are improvements on the originals. For example, in the 1989 Little Mermaid, the when the sea king rails against humans, the heroine just responds that she loves her human prince as if that justifies anything. In the more recent movie, she argues that she’s seen evidence he’s a good person. And I think it makes more dramatic sense to have her be the one to kill the sea witch rather than the prince since it was her fault the with came to power and she needs to redeem herself. (It’s not because I have a problem with the hero rescuing the heroine. For the record, he does rescue her at one point in the remake.)
I didn’t feel like seeing the Snow White remake because it didn’t look that good-which is actually kind of exciting because it used to be so rare for there to be fairy tale movies, not played straight ones anyway, that I’d go see them whether they looked good or not! Fans of superhero movies and science fiction get lots of movies but fairy tale fans like me get barely anything. I kind of love that the line of Disney nostalgia bait has made fairy tales movies a regular thing. Mind you, my preference would be more adaptations of fairy tales that haven’t been adapted very often. But, hey, sometimes frequently adapted stories are adapted because they’re good. And as someone who felt growing up that so many fairy tale movies were either too cutesy and childish or too dark and adult, I’m happy to see so many made for eight-to-twelve-year-olds (even though I’m now much older than that.)
I also find some of the online comments I’ve seen (not comments on this podcast) that Disney would be fixed if only they made original content again to be really short sighted. Disney made a lot of attempts at non-Disney nostalgia bait, such as John Carter, The Lone Ranger and The BFG, and they all flopped at the box office. What’s more they weren’t loved by critics either. (Of course, some people like them. I think E. Stephen Burnett liked John Carter. I loved The BFG myself.) If their movies are going to be considered bad either way, I can’t totally blame Disney for deciding to only do “bad” movies that were making money. Here’s a mild defense of the nostalgia bait trend I wrote a while back. https://theadaptationstation.com/2022/05/a-mild-defense-of-disneys-recent-line-of-nostalgia-bait/
(And while you’re on my blog, check out a post I did about adaptation of some lesser-known fairy tales. https://theadaptationstation.com/2021/09/the-storyteller-and-his-sources/)
Also, I don’t really get why people say Disney shouldn’t apologize for or make fun of their old movies. It used to be that the company was ridiculously self-congratulatory and overly reverential toward their legacy. And, honestly, I don’t really care about disclaimers about dated content on old Disney+ movies (except that they’re long and a bit of a pain to sit through.) They’re not that different from MPAA ratings that appear before movies, warning viewers about content that might offend them. I think it’d be nice if Disney put disclaimers in front of their movies with LGBT content.
I still haven’t seen The House of David, but I’d really like to do so.
Also, as I wrote on my blog recently, while, being conservative, I can’t help but take some satisfaction in the drama over Snow White meaning Hollywood will try to avoid being overtly liberal in the future, there’s also a small part of me that feels sorry for liberal artists who now feel like they have to hide their cherished beliefs. Who know the frustration of that better than a conservative writer like me who doesn’t want to only write for a conservative audience?