because disney movies have never had messages before. its not like messages are the whole point of fairy tales.
Yeah. Superhero stories and Star Wars are also obviously morality plays even at their most simple.
Famously apolitical guy Walt Disney
He also said The Marvels sucked due to not enough interference by execs lmao. Rich white guy completely out of touch with reality, more at 11.
I’ve actually heard good things about The Marvels from sources I consider reliable. I’m not going to support Disney by buying a movie ticket but I do think I’d enjoy it just because of Iman Velani who I adore.
We’ve gotten to a point where fucking Disney is considered too subversive.
Then they scratch their heads wondering why ‘you can’t say anything anymore’, CHUDs are more politically correct than we can ever dream of being.
Nothing but good, clean entertainment with that lovable scamp Jim Crow.
entertainment
messages
It isn’t “woke” or “messages” geeze - I mean how much queer subtext is in OG Disney? These hand wringing idiots are the same karens that go transvestigating for any “subliminal messages” or hidden boners in animation. I remember them organizing boycotts in the 90s because Disney wasn’t completely terrible to the gays.
Stop pissing on your writers and maybe they won’t deliver such sloppy lazy uninspired writing.
And as for “messages” - do they have any freakin idea what the Marvel properties were? Or any of the IPs they hijacked for that matter?
I mean how much queer subtext is in OG Disney?
I don’t know how much of it was subtext and how much of it was simply the mapping of certain classic characters (particularly villains) onto historical figures who also happened to be queer. If Divine hadn’t been a queer icon, would she have still made a brilliant physical and performative model for an operatic octopus woman? Absolutely. In the same way, they had a jazzy crab person sound iconically Jamaican, not because they were making some veiled comment about the origins of popular music in America but because they were likely listening to a lot of popular music and fixating on these signals when designing the character.
This has much more to do with queer people and poc being at the forefront of American culture than Disney subtly insinuating LGBTQ themes into their media. It is an impression left on the Disney creative staff, not an impression they intended to make on others.
Stop pissing on your writers and maybe they won’t deliver such sloppy lazy uninspired writing.
The original formula for the Disney franchise was to reimagine these short, pithy morality tales familiar to the Boomers as feature-length musicals. The writing wasn’t particularly inspired. The art wasn’t particularly original. But the time and labor invested in these projects was substantial, and that produced a piece of media that was far more polished and engaging than the more-cheaply and quickly churned out media of their rivals.
The art wasn’t particularly original.
I’m gonna have to disagree here. The stories themselves were not original obviously, but old school Disney genuinely did innovate and pioneer new techniques for filming animated cells that when paired with the distinct Disney style of art and animation did make a unique and honestly pretty beautiful style. Most people would be able to pick it out of a lineup no question. Fantasia to this day is an impressive collection of animated shorts put to classical music where artists had an opportunity to interpret the music as they saw fit. Modern Disney is garbage, but old Disney is worth watching with a critical view as there are still tons of brain worms in them.
old school Disney genuinely did innovate and pioneer new techniques for filming animated cells that when paired with the distinct Disney style of art and animation did make a unique and honestly pretty beautiful style.
Fair enough. Although, I’m more thinking of the character modeling and background art, which tends toward basic when compared to the old Rankin/Bass cinematic style, Miyazaki films, Lucas/Spielberg, or even Hanna Barbara. The fluid animation technique is notable, but the underlying artwork tends to be much simpler and more geometric.
Modern Disney is garbage
Idk. You could say a lot of the same things about how Disney has deployed CGI and other digital editing techniques. Moana and Frozen were both visually gripping. But its clear why the acquired Pixar. They really like their nude, smooth models. Very minimalist.
Good points all around especially
You could say a lot of the same things about how Disney has deployed CGI and other digital editing techniques. Moana and Frozen were both visually gripping. But its clear why the acquired Pixar. They really like their nude, smooth models. Very minimalist.
This is exactly what I mean when I say modern Disney is garbage. It pains me to see POC representation only at the point when it’s pretty clear Disney have absolutely checked out of doing any good work anymore. Moana was decent enough I think, but I didn’t like either Frozen very much. I think it’s more of a personal taste thing rather than those movies being worse than any other cgi Disney movie.
It pains me to see POC representation only at the point when it’s pretty clear Disney have absolutely checked out of doing any good work anymore.
If anything, including POC representation is the only thing that’s keeping the franchise alive, as it forces them to source art and culture from beyond the six Bavarian townships responsible for 90% of their content before The Lion King. Encanto was another really sold film, in no small part because of how heavily they cribbed from culture outside the Western European mainstream.
I think it’s more of a personal taste thing rather than those movies being worse than any other cgi Disney movie.
Frozen felt very “D&D nerds take over the studio”, with lots of story beats and visual elements that just looked like it came out of a TTRPG. I liked it in large part because it subverted a bunch of the traditional Disney tropes. The conflict was between protagonists, with the villain having a very secondary role. There was lots of drama built around simply surviving the elements, rather than punching monsters. And the conclusion was that classic “Waking the Princess with a Kiss” trope wholly inverted into sibling affection, which really warmed my heart.
Onward got me for similar reasons. A bunch of classic Disney elements subverted into a very sweet story.
But Disney isn’t doing anything particularly daring. Plenty of studios have been making movies like this for as long as I’ve been alive.
Character modeling yeah. But watch Pinocchio it’s beautiful.
Damn this post is FIRE
This has much more to do with queer people and poc being at the forefront of American culture than Disney subtly insinuating LGBTQ themes into their media. It is an impression left on the Disney creative staff, not an impression they intended to make on others.
articulated something I was only nebulously aware of and couldn’t quite put my finger on
Right i have to fast forward part of every Disney movie made before I was born when watching with my kid because there were no messages back then
THANK YOU. Finally someone has the guts to say it. I’m glad we’re finally going to get a Disney PRINCE story set in the CONFEDERACY where they regularly say the N word. My household will finally feel represented.
the primary job is the entertainment
iger is unable to conceive of entertainment, stories, “messaging”, politics, and culture as all being interwoven threads of our lives. the attempt to apply the concept of ownership to intangible cultural products requires us to chop it up, separate out individual components, sever them from the whole so that they can be sold off at market rates. entertainment is what sells, and so entertainment must be somehow extracted, refined, and repackaged for retail. iger was selected especially for his ideological commitment to eternal copyrights and the idea that disney can somehow own our shared experiences and sell them back to us at a reasonable markup.
We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.
~ Michael Eisner, in 1982, two years before taking over the company as CEO and running it for two decades
I prefer the honest ones. It means they have at least one virtue whereas the ones who pretend otherwise don’t even have that.
Disney films, famous for not having a message in literally every single movie they have ever made.
“I leave The Audience at the premiere of Avengers 73. One always finds one’s favorite franchises again. But The Audience teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises stocks. They too conclude that all is well. This universe henceforth without a message seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each frame of that movie, each sequel of every desiccated IP, in itself, forms a -Verse. The passive consumption of 2.5 hrs of loud noises and bright colors is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine
SisyphusThe Audience happy.”I know that the answer is “because ‘without thought’ is how most words are spoken”, but can you even imagine the movie this guy wants? What is a message-less movie? Is that possible? Does a story that entertains without one exist?
the primary job is being able to show increasing profits for shareholders
Did Disney fold to the fascists moaning about the slightest non-fascist things being represented in their films? Is he serious? So what now, we’re getting some weird conservative messaging in these films now to appease them?
Weird conservative messaging NOW? Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Secret Invasion are TV shows about the dangerous sneaky outsiders destroying the world.
Those shows are lead-ins for the upcoming Captain America: New World Order, featuring Sabra, the IOF supersoldier hero that’s definitely not named after a massacre of Palestinians.
You know what I mean 😭 I should’ve phrased it better. I meant that they’re getting rid of the hand wavy liberal nonsense in place of what exactly, no “messaging”? It just seems like Iger is going to turn the slop into even worse slop based on this statement.