The Disney Thread | Iger will be with us until 2026

[WittyUsername]

19 minutes ago, Torontofan said:

 

Can you really say a lot of recent disney products were good lol

 

Before marvel was easily averaging good to above avg films non stop

 

Now in phase 4 and 5 only Guardian 3 was universally seen as above avg. 

Believe, it or not, studios typically don’t set out to make bad movies. That would be a really self-defeating business practice. Telling them to “just make good movies” is the equivalent of telling a sports team to “just play better”. 

[Torontofan]

4 minutes ago, MysteryMovieMogul said:

And I'd argue a good portion of those Phase 1-3 Marvel movies were just as average as the Phase 4 & 5 output. In fact, the only Avengers film I've thought was good was Endgame. I was very baffled by how long the Marvel train successfully chugged along without slowing down.

 

I disagree i think most marvel movies in phase 1 to 3 where solid 7/10 films.

 

 

[Torontofan]

10 minutes ago, WittyUsername said:

Believe, it or not, studios typically don’t set out to make bad movies. That would be a really self-defeating business practice. Telling them to “just make good movies” is the equivalent of telling a sports team to “just play better”. 

 

I think they just get lazy and complacent and feel even if a product isnt the best the brand will save the film 

[Mojoguy]

16 minutes ago, MysteryMovieMogul said:

And I'd argue a good portion of those Phase 1-3 Marvel movies were just as average as the Phase 4 & 5 output. In fact, the only Avengers film I've thought was good was Endgame. I was very baffled by how long the Marvel train successfully chugged along without slowing down.

Well think of all the crap NonBatman superhero films released before Iron Man. The early MCU early films looked like masterpieces in comparison. The problem is that after so many good SH films, Antman 3 or The Marvels isn't going to cut it anymore.

[MysteryMovieMogul]

14 minutes ago, Torontofan said:

 

I disagree i think most marvel movies in phase 1 to 3 where solid 7/10 films.

 

 

I mean, I guess I agree with this. I more meant that what they earned at the box office didn't correspond with the quality of the films.

[Porthos]

 

===

 

Meme-ing aside, I really think some people aren't fully factoring in just how disruptive COVID was, how long of a shadow that is gonna cast due to development windows, and how some studios navigated it better than others.  Like, take films and TV shows released in the last year or so.  When do you think they were in the planing/drafting stage where even the most anodyne changes can have long reaching consequences?  People slammed Echo, but that finished filming in 2022.

 

As another example, Fallout, which is dropping TODAY on Amazon, first entered the planning stages in 20*19*.

 

TWENTY. NINE. TEEN.

 

Add in a ramp up in content production at the same time when it comes to Disney?  Well it's not exactly a surprise that "quality control" for lack of a better term became a concern.

 

It may be ancient history to many here, but IMO only now, in 2024 and 2025 have the dominoes really stopped falling from the massive disruption caused by COVID.

 

...

 

Good thing there wasn't a second massive disruption to hit the Hollywood Ecosystem recently! 

(to make subtext text, I suspect the dominoes falling from the dual strikes is gonna last a good long while as well, if affecting different companies differently, depending on how adroitly they navigate the choppy waters)

Edited April 10 by Porthos

[AniNate]

At a certain point the theatrical industry will need to figure out how to adapt to "massive disruptions". Can't just rely on the world being perfect for the next year. That isn't as much an issue for Disney themselves though since their investments are heavily diversified and new movies are just a small part of it. 

 

 

Edited April 10 by AniNate

[cannastop]

4 minutes ago, AniNate said:

At a certain point the theatrical industry will need to figure out how to adapt to "massive disruptions". Can't just rely on the world being perfect for the next year. That isn't as much an issue for Disney themselves though since their investments are heavily diversified and new movies are just a small part of it. 

 

 

Well the pandemic was kind of a once every 100 years thing. I don't think there will be another disruption like that soon.

[Mojoguy]

Also the strikes did a number on Hollywood, but I don't think anyone believes the actors from Wish doing interviews would have saved that movie.

Edited April 10 by Mojoguy

[Porthos]

Just now, AniNate said:

At a certain point the theatrical industry will need to figure out how to adapt to "massive disruptions". Can't just rely on the world being perfect for the next year.

 

You can't though.  Or rather how well each studio reacts to massive disruptions will often point to how well they well do in the medium term.

 

Take the last major disruption to the Hollywood Ecosystem before COVID: The Writers Strike of '07 to '08.  How various studios were able to pull themselves out of the rubble of that massive earthquake helped shape the next five to eight years of TV and film production.

 

I might also point out that it may not exactly be a coincidence that certain movie franchise rose to prominence in the immediate aftermath of that strike.

 

If that is a little too controversial, I would also point out that once the shadow of the writers strike was fully past, Hollywood entered the era of Peak TV.  But part of the rise of Peak TV was due to the rise of Netflix in particular and HBO-style prestige TV shows in general.  Part of that rise was because in the aftermath of the writers strike those types of productions were if not easier to make, more in demand.  People were following the leader in successful shows like LOST and Breaking Bad and others which were able to navigate the new landscape.

 

In other words, it's not about things being "perfect" but acknowledging that Hollywood had two massively historic disruptions in very short order and the after effects of those twin 8.0+ magnitude earthquakes are gonna be felt for a long long time.

 

NB: I do not use the term "historic disruptions" lightly since I consider the last one that would be on a similar level would be the 2007/08 Writers Strike.  That we had two in relatively quick succession really ought to show the potential for long lasting consequences.

[Porthos]

19 minutes ago, Mojoguy said:

Also the strikes did a number on Hollywood, but I don't think anyone believes the actors from Wish doing interviews would have saved that movie.

 

I mention the twin strikes to note that some productions that we see in the next two, three, or even four years could be affected by the writers strike that happened last year. Even the actors strike will leave a shadow or two as some productions will have to juggle their schedules due to actor availability or get different actors entirely (which sets a different set of dominoes falling).  Not to mention the possibility of cutting corners/not having as much time to polish the filming of productions due to actors having to rush off to a different job.

 

Again, I note that Fallout first entered the planning stages in 2019. That's five years ago.  FIVE! To take something I'm very familiar with, films over at Lucasfilm that have been tinkered with over the last two or three years that, if they ever see the light of day, might not be seen for two or three or four years from now.

 

To put my thesis simply, the studios and production teams that are better able to handle the.... hmmm... increased difficulty/rise to meet the challenges are gonna be the ones that have more of a chance of succeeding in the next three, five, or seven years.

 

Will Disney be one of them?  Will specific divisions within Disney meet or fail those challenges?  Will specific teams within those divisions rise or fail.  No idea.  But it absolutely is a factor, in my opinion.  And one that isn't given enough consideration at times.

Edited April 10 by Porthos

[AniNate]

I suppose one could make the case that COVID and the new labor disputes are connected, with the former highlighting a bunch of injustices that people might've previously taken as givens and been less impassioned about fighting against.

 

As far as Disney's movies are concerned, it probably did mean a massive revenue hit for everything they released between 2020 and early 2022, but I don't think COVID or the strikes are all that relevant to the poor performances of Lightyear, Strange World, Marvels or Wish. Plenty of movies were able to find box office success before and after they came out, so I think a lot of the onus has to be on the final product somehow in those cases. Disney for its part has been public about addressing perceived creative issues, so from the outside there isn't a whole lot anyone else can say besides echoing the "make better movies" sentiment.

[Porthos]

2 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Not to mention the possibility of cutting corners/not having as much time to polish the filming of productions due to actors having to rush off to a different job.

 

And if people don't think this might be a factor I will note the schedule of one Pedro Pascal who just went from/is wrapping up now The Last of Us to Eddington to perhaps The Mandalorian and Grogu to Fantastic Four.  If you don't think the calendar was slightly compressed thanks to the actors strike of last year?  Well.  Yeah.

 

Even if one wants to poke holes in the schedule of Pascal (especially in regards to Mando), that's one example of a generalized trend:  Actors are having to drop in and out of productions and reschedule their calendars.  Some productions are having to have longer reshoots than normal, not so much because they're reshooting so many things, but because they can't get all the actors together at the same time to shoot the scenes they want to change, so they have to reshoot what they can with the actors they can ply away for a week or two at a time.

 

It would not surprise me one whit to find that some productions just run out of time due to actors having other commitments or deciding to cut corners to rush to meet deadlines.  

 

The compressed calendar might, might, only affect films and shows shot in the next six to ten months or so, but given production times it's plausible that some of the fallout from the actors strike could be felt all the way into 2026, when it is something of a distant memory.

 

These things can leave loooooong shadows/cause dominoes to fall for a looooong time is kinda what I'm trying to get here.  

[AniNate]

The strikes are a reasonable enough explanation for why this first half of the year has been so anemic at the box office, and indeed why Disney themselves delayed Deadpool, Mufasa, and Elio. But I do think it's a rather flimsy excuse for Marvels/Wish. Whatever was wrong with them wasn't gonna be fixed in five months to the point of making them the kind of hits that would be enough to recoup their budgets.

[JustLurking]

1 hour ago, Torontofan said:

 

Can you really say a lot of recent disney products were good lol

 

Before marvel was easily averaging good to above avg films non stop

 

Now in phase 4 and 5 only Guardian 3 was universally seen as above avg. 

If it was as simple as "just make good movies" no studio would ever put out a bad film.

 

But, believe it or not, "making good movies" is not actually an easy task!

[Torontofan]

1 hour ago, Mojoguy said:

Well think of all the crap NonBatman superhero films released before Iron Man. The early MCU early films looked like masterpieces in comparison. The problem is that after so many good SH films, Antman 3 or The Marvels isn't going to cut it anymore.

lol man of steel was seen as avg but compared to current comic book films its great lol 

[ZeroHour]

11 minutes ago, AniNate said:

I suppose one could make the case that COVID and the new labor disputes are connected, with the former highlighting a bunch of injustices that people might've previously taken as givens and been less impassioned about fighting against.

 

As far as Disney's movies are concerned, it probably did mean a massive revenue hit for everything they released between 2020 and early 2022, but I don't think COVID or the strikes are all that relevant to the poor performances of Lightyear, Strange World, Marvels or Wish. Plenty of movies were able to find box office success before and after they came out, so I think a lot of the onus has to be on the final product somehow in those cases. Disney for its part has been public about addressing perceived creative issues, so from the outside there isn't a whole lot anyone else can say besides echoing the "make better movies" sentiment.

I think Porthos is talking more how COVID (and the strikes) affected the movies/shows themselves, not the impact of releasing movies in a marketplace affected by COVID. It's not talked about a lot, but COVID shaped a lot of the product that was filmed during the pandemic. Look at the last season of Stranger Things, the storyline intentionally split up the characters into separate groups with stories playing out in separate locations and never brought them together physically. That's a production choice shaped by the realities of COVID and adhering to testing protocols. It probably involved a lot of last minute rewrites and changes to shooting locations. How well a production adapted to those sorts of last minute (in terms of the LONG production processes) curveballs shaped how those movies/shows turned out.

 

In the case of Marvel, they got hit with a pandemic requiring a lot of last minute reworking on all of their projects at the same time they had demands from on high to basically triple their output. That's a recipe for trouble. For instance, the director of the first season of Loki has said they basically had to form a new mini writer's room in the middle of production to rewrite all of the finalized scripts because of the realities of COVID. That's a situation where they got away with it, but others appear to have been less lucky. Everything up through The Marvels was a COVID production.

 

Even in animation, suddenly all of these well oiled production machines had to adjust to most of their workforce working from home. That certainly had an impact on movies like Lightyear and Strange World. That doesn't necessarily mean we would have gotten better versions of those films without the pandemic but the pandemic certainly didn't help those movies.

 

We see some studios and productions have handled the pandemic better than others but it has definitely shaped the movies and shows we've seen over the last few years.

[AniNate]

Every production has to deal with some kind of shit happening, whether it's Covid or something less dramatic or public like budget overruns or creative disputes. Bad movies were hardly a novelty before covid, for Disney and for everyone else, and plenty of good ones have still been birthed in its wake. Bottom line is what Disney has been doing recently has not been working as much. I don't know exactly what they need to do to fix it but I don't think it can just be blamed on Covid.

[Porthos]

14 minutes ago, AniNate said:

I don't think it can just be blamed on Covid.

 

My thesis is, in part at least... it can't be blamed on *ANY* one thing.

 

I decided to bring up a piece of the puzzle that folks have discounted a fair too quickly/forgotten about, IMO.

 

(I will also note I repeatedly said that some studios were able to handle COVID much better than others — even within production companies!)

Edited April 10 by Porthos

[AniNate]

I haven't forgotten about it, but I don't even think Disney really wants to lean on that as an excuse. They've let go of Sean Bailey, they laid off Angus MacLane, they're scaling back their Marvel/Star Wars ambitions, they don't seem that reticent about admitting a certain creative stagnation independent of any adverse pandemic influence.