> I respect their ability to make a ton of money, but I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees.

That's a really good summation of my views on Disney. It's obvious they know how to build consistently polished stories that will be consistently enjoyable to a wide audience. I respect that.

But it's not clear to me that's a goal worth pursuing, or that the artistic value of their movies has gone up because of that. It's good to have some media that's safe and predictable and that is primarily motivated by market trends. But when that's all a company is making, then behind that nice facade lies a deeply cynical way of looking at the world, where creative choices are calculated for broad appeal rather than for their inherent value.

I'm not going to say that's all Disney makes. Just that the percentage of films Disney is making that fall into that category is growing at a rapid clip.

It's a jaded view in the sense that I'm cynical about Disney, but it's really not me trying to crap on popular things. There are a lot of popular things that are really, really good. But I know when a movie actually feels special and honest to me, when I feel like the author genuinely had a good reason to make it, and made it because they loved it. And Disney movies don't feel that way to me. They're glossy, and pretty, and impressive, and they know the right things to say, but they're made of plastic instead of flesh.

I've noticed both Disney and Nick do this. Whatever they produce will always do ok because of their marketing muscle. They target children who are not jaded yet and parents either tolerate it or don't notice. I suspect most don't notice until their more experienced parents and by that time most parents are done with small children. I have 6 kids so this has become more noticeable to me.

They cartoons and shows my oldest 18 year old watched are totally differnt from the ones my 8 year and my 4 year old watch. They churn through things quickly and market things very slickly. For example, they produce something for 14 year olds, that most parents think is ok for 12-14 year old kids, but most of those kids aren't really that interested in. Then they drop the marketing into their 8-10 year old programs and boom, it's a hit for them.

These companies, especially Disney, are very insidious and clearly manipulating young minds. We should be disturbed, but I find very little buy in from other adults.

The insidious thing is that Disney is making an increasing share of all the things, too.

I don't understand why they were allowed to buy 20th Century Fox.

Because when you objectively analyze it, they don't have anything close to a monopoly on content.

How can you even say that? I’m dumbfounded. Only in this era of complete erosion of antitrust could this statement be made. Standard Oil would have been awed by this cornering of the market.

https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/money-finance/comp...

Pretty much all movie/TV content comes out of:

Disney

Comcast

AT&T

Amazon

Apple

Netflix

CBS

Sony

Fox Corp

It’s a get big or get crushed world right now. Of the latter 4, I wonder who Microsoft/Google/Verizon/Facebook will buy.

Well, seeing that you actually put Apple in that list shows a skewed perspective.

As far as getting big or getting crushed - both Blumhouse and Tyler Perry Studios make movies that get wide releases with budgets between $5 and $10 million.

Yes, there will probably be roles for small companies serving smaller demographics, but I meant to point out the weakening position of standalone media companies. The power is in the hands of the owners of the infrastructure, except for Disney who I think has an exceptional ownership of desirable content.

Apple I put on there because they can afford to burn so many dollars, it puts them in league with Comcast and ATT and Disney. The other media companies don't have a rent collecting cash cow to lean on.

The media companies don’t “own” the infrastructure. Anyone who can get the money can buy the equipment, hire the people and make a movie. Tyler Perry Studios and Blumhouse or proof. You don’t even need to put your movie in theaters.

There are plenty of streaming services looking for exclusive content. Barring that, you can sell your movie yourself over the internet or through any of the video on demand services.

You can even probably get Redbox to stock it.

Speaking of Tyler Perry, he started “distributing his content” decades ago by doing stage plays.

People complaining about big media keeping smaller players out is about like people complaining about not being profitable because of a dependence on Amazon Retail or Google ads. If your entire business model is based on being a sharecropper for big media/tech, you’re statistically going to be disappointed.

There are also small religious studios who are able to find an audience.

I wasn’t clear, but I was writing from the perspective of an investor. No one is stopping anyone from making content, but for purposes of investing, I’m claiming that what used to be many media companies available to invest in, are down to a few, and they will need help from a different business line to stay afloat.

They own an astounding chunk of the popular culture. They dominate the list of top-grossing films. There have been times over the past couple years when I couldn't see a movie in my local megaplex that Disney didn't own.

They are apparently also licensing the Nintendo reality-distortion field technology.

I'm a SW fan, have been my entire life. Not one of the fans that go super-deep into lore and nit-picking every aspect of every movie and debating it all (although I do respect that level of fan too, and think they create some interesting discussions/content), but I've watched every movie a few times, read a heap of the books, play all the games, collect the Lego, etc etc.

I think that Disney is doing to SW what they do to everything... they make it appeal to the maximum possible audience for the maximum possible profit. There's no deep desire to create amazing stories, there's no attempts at making something special, they're just the McDonalds of entertainment. The stuff they make is "good". You'll still pay for it, and enjoy it, but you'll always end up feeling like they could've done better. It's all just formulaic mass-produced share-holder stuff now, but it does the job.

> there's no attempts at making something special, they're just the McDonalds of entertainment.

They used to be much more experimental as an animation studio but some of those projects didn't do as well. It'd be great if they could alternate between telling "safe" stories and passion projects like Fantasia or even films like Tron but I guess it's hard to pitch something risky when you can get a guaranteed hit by doing it by the numbers. The last movie I think they really took a chance with was Treasure Planet and that movie was pitched over and over for more than a decade before they agreed to make it.

I wish they'd done a live-action remake of treasure planet, The art direction would really lend itself to Disney's animation capabilities.

The absence of competition reinforces conservatism.

Bluth leaving Disney was the best thing to happen to them.

> I think that Disney is doing to SW what they do to everything... they make it appeal to the maximum possible audience for the maximum possible profit. There's no deep desire to create amazing stories, there's no attempts at making something special, they're just the McDonalds of entertainment. The stuff they make is "good". You'll still pay for it, and enjoy it, but you'll always end up feeling like they could've done better.

For Star Wars, at least, that's a pretty solid step up. I paid for Episodes 1-3, but didn't particularly enjoy them. Episodes 7 & 8 at least left me feeling good about what I just watched, and I quite liked Rogue One (I didn't see it in the theater, though).

I have the same feelings as you. I LOVED Rogue One though. It definitely brought out the child in me.

Side not, smuggler's run did the same thing. I triggered my inner child.

The new movies are hit or miss.

Rogue one was good, Episode 7 was okayish as a introduction to new arc and characters, Episode 8 was killed by playing it safe - it was such a wasted potential.

We don't talk about Solo. That move does not exist.

> Episode 8 was killed by playing it safe - it was such a wasted potential.

I get that, although I'll be honest—a bit part of what I liked about 8 Ep. 8 was that it killed off all of the dumb hanging threads from Ep. 7. Episodes 4-6 had huge surprises, but they mostly came out of nowhere, not with giant neon signs pointing at them "GEE DON'T YOU WONDER WHO REY'S PARENTS ARE IT'S A HUGE MYSTERY!". Episode 8 just threw all of that out the window and I loved it for that.

The scene i think is the most wasted was the death of Snoke.

There are myriad ways to go forward in interesting directions(Kylo and Rey could go both dark jedi, gray jedi, swap sides(i think that it will come to that) or even go for a 3rd way, or even destroy the concept of jedi itself) yet they basically returned to status quo.

It also felt like it was heavily edited - like there were two drafts, and someone mashed them together.

Disney's genius, more than anything else, has always been an oscillation between kid-comprehensible and parent-intriguing. In the same work.

You can see it in the details of their animated films, presumably where the workers were given a bit more artistic license.

20 years from now, there'll be people pointing to now as the Disney golden age, saying, "I don't like all the isekai genemod content they're making these days. I just don't get the appeal of giant catgirls learning to live in an alternate dimension. Disney was better when it was all superheroes and Star Wars."

Not sure about that. I remember that in the late '90s - early 2000s people were really hyped up about the animation movies of that era, and rightly so, we're talking about the early Pixar movies, Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away", Satoshi Kon's "Paranoia Agent" and "Perfect Blue" or about "Cowboy Bebop", people knew that they were contemporary with really, really great animation movies/series. Almost 20 years have passed since then and nothing similar is being done anymore, at least not in the mainstream.

People absolutely talk about great more recent animated movies, like Your Name, Into the Spider-Verse, and Kubo and the Two Strings.

Princes Mononoke is actually my favorite movie, I obviously agree that it's really excellent, but objectively I think Spider-Verse is just as good, even if it doesn't fit my preferences quite as much.

For TV series, Mob Psycho 100 is absolutely top tier, I'd put it against Cowboy Bebop easily. Loved Bebop, but I think MP100 is the better series overall, both for story and animation quality.

This is a combination of rose-tinted glasses, plus things accumulating social value over time. Eminem didn't rap about playing N64 games until long, long past the N64's heydey; it wasn't cool to mention that back in 1998. Pokemon is mainstream with adults now, but it was for real (young) nerds and dorks back when it started. Retro games are currently cool with those who scoffed at them when they were new. This phenomenon is especially prevalent with 'cult hits', like Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, which has a much more positive reputation now than it did at its own launch.

>Almost 20 years have passed since then and nothing similar is being done anymore, at least not in the mainstream.

Bear in mind that over 20 years, a lot of what was groundbreaking in terms of animation quality has become mainstream, so it's not surprising that people wouldn't be as floored by Toy Story 4 as they were by Toy Story. Anime was a relatively new phenomenon for many in the West back then as well - Cowboy Bebop was one of the "gateway drugs" into anime for a lot of people.

I wouldn't assume that work of high quality is no longer being done - I've heard people talk about Your Name as if Makoto Shinkai were the next Hayao Miyazaki for instance - it just doesn't stand out in a crowd the way it once did, now that anime is no longer as niche and people have services like Crunchyroll.

I think it's fair to say that Disney is large enough that it's not only hard to quantify what impact the company itself has on the storytelling that gets done, but it's also hard say how much of the company is doing storytelling at all anymore.

They've still got animated features, some TV cartoons, some live action sitcoms, but also theme parks and resorts, a video game studio, a theatrical group, a cruise line, a radio station (and a line up of recording artists), cable channels, retail chains, a timeshare program, and a publishing company. Storytelling factors in some of those somewhere but Disney has moved way beyond it's storytelling roots.

I can't even say there's a strong central vision driving their films these days like when Walt was still alive and they were primarily an animation studio or even during their renaissance. When they are storytelling, their successes and failures seem to come down to who they hire or what companies/properties they pick up.

I will say that at least on the animation side they seem to stay out of the way of the creative types and give them the freedom to do what they need to. Disney has some terrible business practices, but they do manage to get their hands on some incredibly talented people who have done some really good work over the years.

> star wars series

Ouch. Good point. Even The Last Jedi trainwreck (RT 44% audience score, record $150M drop after first weekend) STILL made the top 20 all-time grossing films (ignoring inflation).

But nerdy stuff is cool, remakes are cool, rebels are cool...it's got fundamentally popular qualities. Put that into a good marketing engine, check the boxes and you've got a money maker.

I think you missed a key section in the article where he talks about how miss-steps with a franchise can build, and that Disney made many miss-steps with Star Wars. He wrote a whole article about it [0], which he claims they:

- rushed the films out

- lacked singular vision to keep them consistent

- subverted audience expectations in a bad way, re Luke Skywalker

- retread too much of the same old ground leading to inability to generate momentum (ie. killing off characters in Rogue One).

0 - https://redef.com/original/star-wars-fatigue-is-a-myth-but-d...

> I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees.

The contrast to this is stark after having watched "Imagineering" on Disney+ the other night. It reminded me about why I was a rabid Disney fan growing up - the values that Walt insisted on and why these days I'm more "meh"; what they have evolved into the longer Walt hasn't been around to keep people grounded on what really matters.

It's pretty sad you can go from a company where employees invested their own money to keep construction of Disneyland going to the exploitative mess of a company that exists today :(

Well, if “most people you talk to” think it isn’t good and all of the new Star Wars movies (except for Solo) have done well, have you thought that your anecdotal survey of people you know may not be relevant?

Considering the last iteration of Star Wars (the prequels), i'd say it's very hard to agree with you.