Why All the Vitriol Against Disney?

[chrisbarry]

THANK YOU. You totally get the Disney difference. It's a pity that there are some here who do not, who think adapting a property for movies and giving it Disney magic which in turn develops an audience for it is no different from buying up an already-fully-developed/exploited property with already-established appeal. I'm not sure if those folk really believe that or are lying to themselves. Why do they think Iger/Eisner bought the properties in the first place? They saw it as taking a shortcut to profit and reducing risk. And real creativity always involves risk. Walt accepted that risk. Eisner and Iger (especially Iger) avoid that risk whenever possible.

I absolutely, completely and 100% get the Disney difference. I just don't feel like bashing them for every supposed misstep that they make and I think that's what the OP was questioning.

 

[morningstar]

The company still creates stuff that they didn't 'franchise purchase' and release it to less success financial results than the biggies like Star Wars and Marvel. Some of my favorite Disney films of the past few years were "The Odd Life of Timothy Green" and "Saving Mr. Banks".

Funny thing about Saving Mr. Banks is that one of the main conflicts was about how Disney was getting too original with Mary Poppins for the author's taste.

Very original, very modest box office and the crazy original "Tomorrowland" which bombed badly.

I kind of liked Tomorrowland, but anyway, original? It's about as original as Pirates of the Caribbean, which is to say quite original: based on a Disney park attraction, but only loosely. Still not 100% original.

 

[chrisbarry]

That's disingenuous. Taking a story and reworking it, creating new characters and then creating visuals, creating songs and a soundtrack is a far cry from purchasing someone else's fully packaged movie library. In the case of the Muppets, Disney purchased the rights to use existing puppets, theme songs, etc. For Pixar, they even bought most of the people behind the studio.

If you want to make the "nihil novi sub sole" argument, then fine. But the degrees of magnitude between creating a movie around a classic fairy tale and making a new Star Wars movie that can even use some of the pre-existing cast are inescapable.

I think the company is capable of doing both. I think Tangled is one of the best Disney films of the modern era and it followed that old school process that you speak of and the results, in my opinion were extremely impressive. But I think there's also room for purchasing Star Wars and retooling things a bit and also having great success. Same with Big Hero 6. If they can do both at the same time, then why not? If they can produce an awesome film based on a fairytale like Tangled, a more original idea like Zootopia - which I think was an amazing completely fleshed out world - and take an obscure comic like Big Hero 6 and do something great with it, and also hit a home run with a retooled Star Wars - which let's face it, is one of the best in that universe and I'm a rabid Star Wars fan - then how can we say they're not still brimming with creativity? I think it's still there. I think they still have it and I think there are many, many fans that just don't give them a break out there on the Internet. Sorry. That's my opinion.

 

[RobidaFlats]

I think the company is capable of doing both. I think Tangled is one of the best Disney films of the modern era and it followed that old school process that you speak of and the results, in my opinion were extremely impressive. But I think there's also room for purchasing Star Wars and retooling things a bit and also having great success. Same with Big Hero 6. If they can do both at the same time, then why not? If they can produce an awesome film based on a fairytale like Tangled, a more original idea like Zootopia - which I think was an amazing completely fleshed out world - and take an obscure comic like Big Hero 6 and do something great with it, and also hit a home run with a retooled Star Wars - which let's face it, is one of the best in that universe and I'm a rabid Star Wars fan - then how can we say they're not still brimming with creativity? I think it's still there. I think they still have it and I think there are many, many fans that just don't give them a break out there on the Internet. Sorry. That's my opinion.

You took the time to quote a post 100% devoted to debunking your previous statement:

I'm sorry, acquiring Star Wars, Marvel and Muppets as opposed to Snow White, Cinderella, Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Winnie the Pooh, Mary Poppins...I could go on and on and on. What they do now isn't all that different then what they've done before.

Yet nowhere in your response did you address the point of my post. You made an assertion. I explained why that assertion was disingenuous. You ignored that explanation entirely.

I must be going insane because this exact scenario has replayed repeatedly with different posters in the past few days.

 

[216bruce]

Funny thing about Saving Mr. Banks is that one of the main conflicts was about how Disney was getting too original with Mary Poppins for the author's taste.



I kind of liked Tomorrowland, but anyway, original? It's about as original as Pirates of the Caribbean, which is to say quite original: based on a Disney park attraction, but only loosely. Still not 100% original.

Sort of true, but simplified, on Banks. Tomorrowland wasn't based on a ride or a land at all. The park and a ride were shown in it but they were totally ancillary to the film as shown.
OK...so is anything original in your opinion?

 

[chrisbarry]

I must be going insane because this exact scenario has replayed repeatedly with different posters in the past few days.

I think the point is, I don't think my comment or the meaning behind my comment was disingenuous. You think so. I don't.

 

[CRO-Magnum]

My four children feel Disney World is too expensive for the value delivered. Not just tickets either; but also hotels, food, and other events. They view Disney as money-grabbing profiteers who are out to make a buck by catering to the wealthy. Certainly I've made comments about how expensive it is, but they came to us and asked for other vacation options. We cut our trips from 2 per year to 1 every 3-4 years starting in 2008 (we went in 2011 and 2015). I'm a former cast member in reservations (CRO), former consultant to Disney, and was raised as a Disneyphile. Yes I find issue with several of their management decisions, but as a strategy consultant I don't think they thought through the long term impact of their strategic shift from guest lifetime value to maximum spend per trip. My kids dissatisfaction is the net result. For a 50% increase in spending per trip (when indexed for inflation), Disney cut their revenue from our family by almost 90%. Worse, my children believe Disney parks are a once in a lifetime vacation at best, whereas I was raised to believe an annual pilgrimage to WDW or Disneyland for an extended week was a fundamental part of a happy family. As a stockholder it changed my opinion on Disney from a long-term growth stock to a short-term return stock.

 

[SorcererMC]

The company still creates stuff that they didn't 'franchise purchase' and release it to less success financial results than the biggies like Star Wars and Marvel

And here I think you've identified why I find acquisitions like Star Wars and Marvel cumbersome - Disney is essentially competing with themselves for family film entertainment. They've prioritized those 'blockbuster' IPs over their own 'original' content - cutting off their nose to spite their face. I like SW and Marvel films. But it's the opportunity cost, like I'm missing out on something great that they could have made but didn't b/c they're not budgeting for it in the same way or they simply aren't developing it and green-lighting it....so I look elsewhere.

Well, I guess there's always the live-action remakes.

 

[DreamTogether]

Along with that thought.... there are so many arm chair quarterbacks that know exactly what play should have been called to win the game. Or who should have been taken out and replaced. Sitting here at the keyboard there are millions of people who know exactly what Walt would have done, or what moves Eisner or Iger should have made, or today what changes would make Disney the utopia playground they envision it could and should be. Its easy to vocalize anger online, but not so easy to make the hard decisions in the boardroom that can satisfy everyone.

You hit the nail on the head for me. So many people seem to know Walt's exact desires for every single facet of the park. I've seen the phrase "Walt wouldn't have wanted this" or "Walt is surely turning over in his grave at all the changes being made." The fact is that 99.9% of people who say this never knew the man. They never spoke to him to know these desires. But by the way they talked, you would think they were the best of friends. It just grinds my gears to no end to see people make this statement when they don't know what Walt wanted completely, or what he would do in this same situation if he were still around today. Stop putting words in Walt's mouth. Regardless of how many times you've been to the park, you cannot speak for him.

 

[Matt_Black]

And here I think you've identified why I find acquisitions like Star Wars and Marvel cumbersome - Disney is essentially competing with themselves for family film entertainment. They've prioritized those 'blockbuster' IPs over their own 'original' content - cutting off their nose to spite their face. I like SW and Marvel films. But it's the opportunity cost, like I'm missing out on something great that they could have made but didn't b/c they're not budgeting for it in the same way or they simply aren't developing it and green-lighting it....so I look elsewhere.

Well, I guess there's always the live-action remakes.

Aside from POTC, Disney doesn't really DO big budget blockbuster films, or they've generally not been successful at it. Most of their live-action output is family fare or "based on an inspiring true story" which, when done correctly shouldn't take up much of the budget.

And let's remember- before buying Star Wars, Disney brought us the incredibly bloated budget films John Carter (which I liked, though I'm apparently in the minority) and The Lone Ranger, a western film that cost over a quarter of a billion dollars to make. How many projects got sidelined for those, I wonder?

 

[SorcererMC]

My two cents worth: Put yourself in "The Wayback Machine". You are Walt Disney, it is the 1930's and 1940's and 1950's and you are developing ideas for animated and live-action feature films, even theme park attractions and TV shows . Where can you acquire (ooooh....horrible word) familiar, popular or at least 'known' characters and stories for family audiences from so you can make successful product? Well, books are far and away the source of those things in a popular form back then, so you do it. Not just public domain fairy tales like "Snow White" but recent works like "Bambi" and "Dumbo", "Old Yeller", "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", "Zorro", (I could go on and on) and even a franchise of sorts with "Mary Poppins" that has multiple books and a lot of characters in it. If you are Walt, you really don't have anywhere else to acquire stuff from. Your company is pretty much inventing family entertainment as you go, there aren't any 'franchises' as we know them today in film for families so you do a 'back in the day' version of what the company is doing today- buy the stories, characters and rework them in most cases into 'the Disney version' from books. Again...there weren't any franchises to buy in films, so we don't know if he would or wouldn't have bought them, given the chance. He DID buy other peoples work and use it. That's obvious, traditional and fine.

The company still creates stuff that they didn't 'franchise purchase' and release it to less success financial results than the biggies like Star Wars and Marvel. Some of my favorite Disney films of the past few years were "The Odd Life of Timothy Green" and "Saving Mr. Banks". Very original, very modest box office and the crazy original "Tomorrowland" which bombed badly. It's fine to not like that the company is purchasing franchises and just releasing their 'bought' output but it's unfair to say the company doesn't still make new stuff and it's inaccurate to say that the company used to be different in how they 'got' ideas. The scale and mediums have changed...not the process.

This distorts history; the creative process was indeed different. Did Walt Disney buy the rights to stories and characters to use, based on books? Yes. Did he stick to a 'fairytale formula'? Yes. But it was his fairytale formula and quite different from the original fairytales (not even close to the feel-good endings we usually think of now). For example, before 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves', there were several other live versions of Snow White. Walt Disney introduced his own ideas, changing the stories sufficiently to make the stories his own, and not merely derivative of the source material or just an adaptation.

TWDC has yet to do that with SW and Marvel IMO - the difference lies in how much new material and new characters are introduced and not just 'copied', or made as a composite of other characters or within the same mold (eg R2-D2 and BB-8). It doesn't mean that they can't or won't....but they have to stick fairly close to the source material and its intent or audiences will reject it and they won't make big money on it.

 

[Goofyernmost]

And here I think you've identified why I find acquisitions like Star Wars and Marvel cumbersome - Disney is essentially competing with themselves for family film entertainment. They've prioritized those 'blockbuster' IPs over their own 'original' content - cutting off their nose to spite their face. I like SW and Marvel films. But it's the opportunity cost, like I'm missing out on something great that they could have made but didn't b/c they're not budgeting for it in the same way or they simply aren't developing it and green-lighting it....so I look elsewhere.

Well, I guess there's always the live-action remakes.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but, if Disney cannot compete with itself isn't it wise to just have all those things be theirs so that whatever happens the money comes to Disney? If they are unable to compete all that revenue goes to someone else. This to me is a can't lose! Unless the object is to make Disney fail then it is a very wise idea to own it all. Every department (I.P.) will have it's own unique genre and all the money comes home. So, they took the opportunity, when they had the cash (power) to make sure that the cash flow never stops. I'd like to have that option. I'd take advantage of it every time.

 

[216bruce]

And here I think you've identified why I find acquisitions like Star Wars and Marvel cumbersome - Disney is essentially competing with themselves for family film entertainment. They've prioritized those 'blockbuster' IPs over their own 'original' content - cutting off their nose to spite their face. I like SW and Marvel films. But it's the opportunity cost, like I'm missing out on something great that they could have made but didn't b/c they're not budgeting for it in the same way or they simply aren't developing it and green-lighting it....so I look elsewhere.

Well, I guess there's always the live-action remakes.

I guess my point is that the product is there but largely ignored. Is it marketed as much/as well? There's a legit gripe there...another example "Their Finest Hours". It wasn't bad at all...based on a great/true story and in theaters for a week, maybe two. No one even knew about it.

 

[SorcererMC]

Aside from POTC, Disney doesn't really DO big budget blockbuster films, or they've generally not been successful at it. Most of their live-action output is family fare or "based on an inspiring true story" which, when done correctly shouldn't take up much of the budget.

And let's remember- before buying Star Wars, Disney brought us the incredibly bloated budget films John Carter (which I liked, though I'm apparently in the minority) and The Lone Ranger, a western film that cost over a quarter of a billion dollars to make. How many projects got sidelined for those, I wonder?

Yes, you're right about doing blockbuster films and not being successful at it. I depressed my self with that post. Thanks for bringing up the successful POTC. Based on an attraction, original story, original characters, great film score, innovative CGI, and well-received by audiences. (maybe b/c there hadn't been a good pirate movie in decades?)

So I think the issue is making a low-budget film $20-50 Mln and making a profit or 2x on gross, vs. big budget ($100-200 Mln) that underperforms at the box office (or outright bombs), eg Tomorrowland, The Lone Ranger, Oz: The Great and Powerful, John Carter, Tron: Legacy, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

FWIW John Carter woefully underperformed. I think it was a marketing issue as word of mouth seemed to be good for it, just not enough for it to have legs.

 

[SorcererMC]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but, if Disney cannot compete with itself isn't it wise to just have all those things be theirs so that whatever happens the money comes to Disney? If they are unable to compete all that revenue goes to someone else. This to me is a can't lose! Unless the object is to make Disney fail then it is a very wise idea to own it all. Every department (I.P.) will have it's own unique genre and all the money comes home. So, they took the opportunity, when they had the cash (power) to make sure that the cash flow never stops. I'd like to have that option. I'd take advantage of it every time.

I think what you are getting at is - isn't a monopoly on the market a wise business decision? Yes, yes it is. My lament is based on wanting 'original' or unknown stories from them vs. what I would call 'pre-packaged'. And there is the question of marketing budget as @216bruce said. My concern is that original works will be 'drowned out' by their big-budget 'cousins', if that makes sense.

 

[216bruce]

This distorts history; the creative process was indeed different. Did Walt Disney buy the rights to stories and characters to use, based on books? Yes. Did he stick to a 'fairytale formula'? Yes. But it was his fairytale formula and quite different from the original fairytales (not even close to the feel-good endings we usually think of now). For example, before 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves', there were several other live versions of Snow White. Walt Disney introduced his own ideas, changing the stories sufficiently to make the stories his own, and not merely derivative of the source material or just an adaptation.

TWDC has yet to do that with SW and Marvel IMO - the difference lies in how much new material and new characters are introduced and not just 'copied', or made as a composite of other characters or within the same mold (eg R2-D2 and BB-8). It doesn't mean that they can't or won't....but they have to stick fairly close to the source material and its intent or audiences will reject it and they won't make big money on it.

I get what you are saying, to a point. But, consider that if anyone at TWDC 'messed' with SW and made it in the style of Walt or for argument's sake...Lasseter or anyone, they'd be pilloried. It would be financial suicide to do that. Was VII a pretty close remodeling of IV? I sure thought so, but making it radically different would have turned off a lot of moviegoers who, IMO, wanted it to be the same yet different, which judging by the box office it did is exactly what they wanted and got. The company doesn't shoot for 'art' or 'edgy' or even 'daring' in it's mainstream big releases. It's hard to find any studio that does. Sadly, that's the business now. Yeah, mighta been different under Walt but he's been gone 50 years.

 

[Bob Harlem]

It's not hatred for Disney, it's not even being able to afford it or not, it's just not worth what they are asking for right now. And that's really it. That threshhold will be different for some.

 

[SorcererMC]

I get what you are saying, to a point. But, consider that if anyone at TWDC 'messed' with SW and made it in the style of Walt or for argument's sake...Lasseter or anyone, they'd be pilloried. It would be financial suicide to do that. Was VII a pretty close remodeling of IV? I sure thought so, but making it radically different would have turned off a lot of moviegoers who, IMO, wanted it to be the same yet different, which judging by the box office it did is exactly what they wanted and got. The company doesn't shoot for 'art' or 'edgy' or even 'daring' in it's mainstream big releases. It's hard to find any studio that does. Sadly, that's the business now. Yeah, mighta been different under Walt but he's been gone 50 years.

Yes, my point is that if they mess w/ SW or Marvel too much, they will fail (and they won't make George Lucas' mistakes). I don't think that the movie business is so different now that companies like Disney can't take some risk with their own creative content; Walt Disney was certainly taking more of a risk in that regard, and many, many people thought he would fail (but he knew what audiences wanted and delivered more often than not).

It is a question of degrees, or a spectrum between 'original' vs. 'derivative'. It's like the difference between directly copying text for a term paper, vs. paraphrasing vs rewriting in your own words.

 

[216bruce]

Yes, you're right about doing blockbuster films and not being successful at it. I depressed my self with that post. Thanks for bringing up the successful POTC. Based on an attraction, original story, original characters, great film score, innovative CGI, and well-received by audiences. (maybe b/c there hadn't been a good pirate movie in decades?)

So I think the issue is making a low-budget film $20-50 Mln and making a profit or 2x on gross, vs. big budget ($100-200 Mln) that underperforms at the box office (or outright bombs), eg Tomorrowland, The Lone Ranger, Oz: The Great and Powerful, John Carter, Tron: Legacy, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

FWIW John Carter woefully underperformed. I think it was a marketing issue as word of mouth seemed to be good for it, just not enough for it to have legs.

I actually thought "John Carter" was fantastic and enjoyed it more that SW VII...not even close. I'd have felt the same about "The Lone Ranger" if they'd have given the characters the respect that they gave the ones in 'Carter'. Playing them as goofs irked the hell out of me. At times it felt like a huge budget "Apple Dumpling Gang" but with fantastic visuals and action scenes. Solid story, lousy character interpretation.

 

[216bruce]

Yes, my point is that if they mess w/ SW or Marvel too much, they will fail (and they won't make George Lucas' mistakes). I don't think that the movie business is so different now that companies like Disney can't take some risk with their own creative content; Walt Disney was certainly taking more of a risk in that regard, and many, many people thought he would fail (but he knew what audiences wanted and delivered more often than not).

It is a question of degrees, or a spectrum between 'original' vs. 'derivative'. It's like the difference between directly copying text for a term paper, vs. paraphrasing vs rewriting in your own words.

Just remember it's 'show BUSINESS'. When you are budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars you get pretty conservative in your creative choices. Can things still be original? Great? And 'huge'/epic? Yeah...but rarely, especially nowadays. When Disney pulls a 'Walt' like they did with "John Carter" or "Tomorrowland' and do something original or book-based and IMO very much in the spirit of Walt for both of those movies, and it tanks...heads roll, people stop taking risks and you end up with more 'big n safe n repetitive'. Sadly the days of a filmmaker or storyteller running a studio are pretty much done. Miyazaki may have been the last at Ghibli.