Is The Disney Company a hoarder that destroys our favorite franchises?

[JD]

Honest question: does anyone here give a single shit about Mickey Mouse as a character or idea? Have you ever? Because I can't name a single property featuring him that I've seen apart from that one Get a Horse short which was pretty okay, I guess, but not because of anything to do with him.

I was a big fan of the '90s Mickey Mouse Club as a kid, and I love the Kingdom Hearts games, which feature Mickey in a pretty major role, so I give a shit about him.

I agree: changing him to a disillusioned/washed-up Union Army veteran wouldn't have changed the story at all. So, it's all the more telling that Disney didn't consider his Confederate history worth modifying. Again, picture an unrepentant former Nazi officer in a similar role.

Yes, it would have changed the character pretty significantly, because then he wouldn't have been on the losing side of the war, which was pretty important to the whole opening on Earth.

There is zero context in which being a Confederate officer - not even a forced enlistee, mind, but an officer - has "nothing to do with being pro-Slavery."

That has nothing to do with the story being told, and his stance on slavery is never once mentioned in the film.

As a fan of old pulp stories, I'm actually fairly tolerant of outdated and problematic elements and tropes. But, absent significant mitigating factors, of which there were none here, glorifying the Confederacy, even indirectly, crosses a red line of mine. My two cents.

What the fuck are you even talking about? The movie doesn't glorify the Confederacy.

 

[YLu]

If the question is if Disney is ruining franchises by buying them and then remaking them -- as opposed to letting someone else buy/own the franchise, in which case it'd just be a different group doing the remaking -- then no, of course not.

If the question is whether it's creepy and creatively unhealthy that so much of pop culture is in the hands of a single corporation and that it's using its influence to get politicians to extend copyright pretty much indefinitely, basically shredding the concept of the public domain? Then yes, absolutely.

 

[Gov Kodos]

What the fuck are you even talking about? The movie doesn't glorify the Confederacy.

All southerners were evil back then.

Heck, want real historical white washing, Pride and Prejudice. Ever wonder how many poor sods got hung for poaching a rabbit on Darcy's estate instead of starving in respectable squalor like the underclass should?

 

[Delta Geminorum]

Who, meaning what exact person, owns Disney? Ok then, the biggest shareholder?

They're buying up everything. They own ABC, Star Trek is next!

 

[JD]

Disney has owned ABC since the '90s, and as for Star Trek, I can't see CBS letting it go any time soon.

All southerners were evil back then.

I try not to generalize like that, and give people a chance.
Hell, I'm even willing to believe there is a chance that not every single person who fought for the Nazis in WWII was completely irredeemably evil. Maybe....

 

[OCD Geek]

Hell, CBS and Paramount/Viacom are announcing they're getting remarried on August 8th. It isn't the only IP they both have, but honestly it's by fucking far their most lucrative. Yeah, they have Mission: Impossible, but that's strictly a star vehicle. As soon as Tom Cruise retires from the role or dies doing one of his crazy ass "Hey look! I'm actually getting run over by this semi-truck!!!" stunts they won't be the money makers they currently are.

Both companies need Star Trek to remain a force in the industry. No way in hell they're gonna sell it. No matter how much anyone offers them for it.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Disney has owned ABC since the '90s, and as for Star Trek, I can't see CBS letting it go any time soon.

I try not to generalize like that, and give people a chance.
Hell, I'm even willing to believe there is a chance that not every single person who fought for the Nazis in WWII was completely irredeemably evil. Maybe....

You mean every German soldier wasn't taking turns at a death camp? Since when did nuance become a thing?

 

[suarezguy]

Yes yes yes uh ...

Yes but most studios are also similarly, ruinously greedy, going for repetition and/or shock value and in doing so reducing the series or concept to, at best, only a shadow of what it once was.

'vaulting' films to create artificial scarcity.

That's one way Disney is particularly bad.

It's a common response to complaints about a new version that you'll still have the old one-with Disney you probably won't.

 

[Greg Cox]

Honestly, if Disney is "destroying" the Marvel franchise, we should be all be destroyed so much. Hell, most franchises would kill to be "destroyed" this successfully.

Remember the bad old days when Marvel could barely get a decent movie made if their lives depended on it? The James Cameron SPIDER-MAN movie that never happened? The CAPTAIN AMERICA movie that went straight to VHS. The low-budget Roger Corman FANTASTIC FOUR movie that was never officially released? That gawdawful GENERATION X tv-movie on Fox? Or the bad old CBS versions of SPIDER-MAN or CAPTAIN AMERICA back in the seventies? Heck, remember when Marvel had to declare bankruptcy back in the day?

Compare that to today where even DR. STRANGE and BLACK PANTHER and ANT-MEN are getting their own hit movies, which are critical and commercial successes. Take it from one who remembers, we're living in the Golden Age of Marvel movies and TV series.

Getting "destroyed" by Disney was the best thing that ever happened to Marvel.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Disney hasn’t destroyed anything.

 

[fireproof78]

Disney hasn’t destroyed anything.

But, isn't Disney evil?

 

[suarezguy]

Remember the bad old days when Marvel could barely get a decent movie made if their lives depended on it?

At the same time it also had very successful animated television shows.

Heck, remember when Marvel had to declare bankruptcy back in the day?

I believe that was mostly due to it having engaged in over-expansion and Marvel doesn't seem to have learned a lesson from that, if it did it has quite forgotten it.

 

[Awesome Possum]

But, isn't Disney evil?

They’re building a Tron roller coaster in Florida, so no. No company that keeps trying to make Tron happen is evil.

 

[Delta Geminorum]

Yes, this is the Golden Age of Comic Books becoming movies.

 

[Greg Cox]

Honestly, if I could go back in time and tell my teenage self back in the seventies that one day THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and CAPTAIN MARVEL and BLACK PANTHER would be a major motion pictures, that the Scarlet Witch and Loki and Cloak & Dagger and Legion would all be getting their own TV series, I would have thought you were crazy. Compared to the old days, when maybe we got an okay Dr. Strange tv-movie once in a blue moon, we are living in Nerd Nirvana.

I'm loving it.

Mind you, I'm not going to be completely happy until DC/Warner gives us THE SPECTRE movie I've been waiting my whole life for.

 

[Professor Zoom]

At the same time it also had very successful animated television shows.

Yeah. I’m sure everyone at Disney and Marvel would trade and go back to those days. Lol

 

[plynch]

Iirc the German Army and Navy with their existence before Nazism, often were at odds with party leadership. Hence that assassination attempt of Hitler in a meeting with generals.

As to Disney, why would anyone not expect them to act in a way that maximizes shareholder value? They don't exist to bless the universe, but to make money.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Honest question: does anyone here give a single shit about Mickey Mouse as a character or idea? Have you ever? Because I can't name a single property featuring him that I've seen apart from that one Get a Horse short which was pretty okay, I guess, but not because of anything to do with him.

I love Fantasia to bits, and as a kid the Sorceror's Apprentice was part of why. As an adult, I don't care for it as much anymore because it's annoying that it's the first and often only thing people think of when you talk about Fantasia, but... It's the first and often only thing people think of when you talk about Fantasia.

Luke was a hell of a lot more interesting in the last film because he was truly weathered by life.

Yep.

Also, Hamil's performance was much better than his younger days.

This times 1000. I will never understand how the internet gives so much shit to Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson for their first movies when they were literally 11 when they started, yet the cast of the original star wars just gets a total free pass.

As to Disney, why would anyone not expect them to act in a way that maximizes shareholder value? They don't exist to bless the universe, but to make money.

Profit motive doesn't excuse everything under the sun, and just because something isn't illegal doesn't make it moral. Disney's anti-public domain lobbying damages society for their own selfish gain and is accomplished (like so many things in American politics) through the unethical application of corporate financial pressure which essentially amounts to legal bribery.

 

[BK613]

Given the uneven performances of Trek films over the years, I can't be the only one that sometimes wishes that Disney would buy CBS/Viacom/Paramount/whatever and commence to "ruining."

 

[Sci-fi fan]

It is true that fans tend to hate anything that remotely strays from expectations

Wait a second, there is a difference between straying from expectations and rewriting a story that already exists to become total nonsense. If you truly want "new", stop milking an old franchise because it has fans that automatically buy anything and everything from it, be honest and create a new saga altogether (maybe even if it's on the same franchise, but at least don't make characters not make sense).

e.g. the Luke Skywalker character was in my opinion re-written to make absolutely no sense: he went from someone that insisted the most evil person in the galaxy can be redeemed to someone that almost killed a child because he suspected it might turn evil. That's pure hypocrisy there by the defenders: if they truly promote "new", they shouldn't ruin the established, promote new sagas.