8 ms·
Not surprised this is happening. Disney has had 10 major film bombs in row. Alot of executives must believe it's due to piracy.
by stuckinhell 3y ago
Not surprised this is happening.
Disney has had 10 major film bombs in row.
Alot of executives must believe it's due to piracy.
- baz00 3y agoAs a follower of all things arrrrrrrr, the reason I didn't watch the Disney stuff was because I'm fucking fed up with their fucking garbage. I don't steal it or watch it in the cinema!
- mythrwy 3y agoThey are now producing a product that isn't even worth minimal effort to steal.
- ospzfmbbzr 3y ago> Content so bad it's not worth stealing. Even torrents take time away from something else I could download that's better -- like all the movies made before it all went to shit. Naturally the solution is to erase the past by memory-holing old content so people will not have anything for comparison to make the current content look bad.
- hotnfresh 3y agoLots of the genre TV shows these days—like the Netflix Marvel stuff, or most of the Star Wars or Disney Marvel tv shows—can only be saved by fan edits because of the absurdly slow plotting, used to stretch a bit over a movie of plot to fill three or more movies worth of time. The scripts and editing are beyond flabby, they’re morbidly obese. Even if you’re paying for the service, the best version of the product’s usually coming from pirates.
- kyriakos 3y agoWatched all marvel movies up to endgame at the cinema. After that watched a few at home and gave up. It's not piracy it's repetitive uninspiring plots, bad special effects, and characters that we don't care about. The Critical Drinker has a series of videos about what's wrong with movies these days, even if he's always exaggerating his points are spot on. https://youtube.com/@TheCriticalDrinker?si=IwnFx_y3YCA-zBzU https://youtube.com/@TheCriticalDrinker?si=IwnFx_y3YCA-zBzU
- baz00 3y agoJust watched a couple of those. Absolutely nailed it.
- zlg_codes 3y agoSame. I don't subscribe to any services and honestly, if it wasn't for my SO I wouldn't watch much of anything. They don't know how to appeal to me and I finish most movies wishing I had written some code instead. Even gaming is going that way with the bad business practices and over-reliance on filler content like crafting to extend a game's life. So it'll be funny when these media giants blame piracy, it gets studied, and found that even pirating for their stuff is less common than it used to be. Sometimes markets just shrink. Hollywood wasn't going to bust blocks forever.
- baz00 3y agoYeah gaming is terrible. I just sold my GPU because I don't need it because the games are all shit.
- zlg_codes 3y agoCan't say I'd sell a GPU over it unless it sucked, but I see where you're coming from. Those things sell for over a grand now! I remember when a high end GPU (one or two steps below the best) could be had for a cool $400-500...
- pixelpoet 3y ago100% guaranteed said execs won't be watching South Park: Into the Panderverse, which is literally directly about them. You couldn't pay me to watch that Disney crap.
- jjeaff 3y agoI highly doubt that most of Disney's fan base is actually fed up because their movies aren't "edgy" enough. Perhaps some of the Lucasfilm fans, but Kathleen Kennedy (the target of the South Park ribbing), seems to be doing fine. I believe at least one of her Star Wars movies is the 2nd highest grossing Star Wars movie ever.
- networkchad 3y agoYou're confusing quality with gross revenue. First thing that comes to my mind: Marvel movies gross an absolute shit ton of dollars, but the quality of the story is absolute dogshit. Yeah, she won't lose her job, but the quality of said movies lacks.
- saiya-jin 3y agoYou moved the subject, not everybody cares about 'quality' of movies like movie buffs (like me) do. Marvel is popcorn fun, sometimes better, sometimes worse. These are not even planned as some art-aspiring movies, so as long as expectations are managed everybody is fine, earnings at least says so and if you don't like whole genre then simply skip them. Actually, snobbish bashing of Marvel became such a cheap 'look at me' desperate attention grab attempt of teenagers that I don't take it seriously. In same vein as globalization protesters focus on McDonald for some reason. You have endless line of say family movies that are absolute nauseating crap from cinematography, storytelling, character development etc., among other fails of hollywood, anybody wanting to be actually taken serious would start with those 'gems'.
- sgift 3y agoSure, but the thing that "Into the Pandaverse" seems to make fun off (according to the description in the GP comment, I haven't seen it) doesn't lead to better quality. Edginess doesn't equal quality, even if some people seem to think just dialing up the edginess-meter would make the films magically better. It can be part of a quality experience, such as so-called "woke" content can be, if it's done in the right way. But that needs good content creators, with enough leeway and time to make a good experience, same as everything else.
- jjeaff 3y agoI could see why they might blame piracy for faltering Blueray or streaming sales. But piracy rates for movies still in the theater must be quite low. At least, I assume most people are not watching Cam footage of the screen with its terrible quality.
- sgift 3y agoThe underlying assumption here is that their accusation has to make sense, but that's not the case. It only has to sound reasonable to Wall Street, so the managers can get money for a bit longer, until people are fed up. Unsurprisingly, I think that piracy - whether blueray or streaming - isn't in any measurable way relevant to the current woes of Hollywood or even more specific Disney. They've made their bed, now they have to lie in it.
- autoexec 3y ago> Not surprised this is happening. Disney has had 10 major film bombs in row. Which were they? The last Disney movie I think I saw was Elemental and that ended up doing pretty well in terms of money and reviews.
- angry_moose 3y agoIts not 10 outright failures in a row, but they've been doing poorly for most of 2023. Keep in mind that ~2X the official production budget is roughly the minimum threshold for a movie to break even, after factoring in marketing and the theater take: Elemental was a modest success earning $495.9M against a $200M budget. The Little Mermaid maybe barely broke even at $569.6M against a $297M budget. Indiana Jones bombed hard, earning $384M against a $300M budget. The Marvels is trending towards about $200M against a $274.8M budget. Wish opened terribly this weekend, pulling in $49M in its first weekend against a $200M budget (will likely finish between $120-150M) Edit: Forgot about Haunted Mansion, earning $117.5M against $150M.
- slickdork 3y agoI looked up their meta critic scores out of curiosity: Elemental - Metacritic score of 58/100 The Little Mermaid - Metascore of 59/100 Indiana Jones - Metascore of 58/100 Wish - Metascore of 48/100 Haunted Mansion - of 47/100
- tyfon 3y agoCould perhaps also be due to them charging a subscription and demanding extra money to view the movie in addition. Just an idea..
- plagiarist 3y agoI think you might be on to something. People already paying $XX/mo. might be more inclined to wait for the streaming release. I'd love to see some stats on viewership split by streaming subscriptions.
- gspencley 3y agoThat's me. I would have watched Wish already if it was a simultaneous stream + theatrical release. I don't think it's worth taking the family to the theatre to see it but (despite lukewarm reviews) I'm still looking forward to watching it on Disney+ nonetheless.
- jimbob45 3y agoAlot of executives must believe it's due to piracy. A lot of people think it's because they're woke. It's not even that - they're just bad movies. I watched Moana a few times and realized they're making fundamental story mistakes. Characters never resolve their conflicts, jokes are prioritized over theme, and important character traits are shown too quickly to the point where you can miss it if you blink. We really need Disney to slow down and understand that the story comes first with these movies and that good stories take a long time to develop. Frozen took like fifty years to finally make. BatB took four plus numerous failed iterations over decades. I highly recommend that everyone read the Katzenberg memo[0] from the 90s that was sent out right before Disney went from middling studio to international powerhouse. [0]https://sriramk.com/memos/katzenberg.pdf https://sriramk.com/memos/katzenberg.pdf
- whatshisface 3y ago"Woke" movies end up being greenlit like sequels are, on the basis of something about them not on their individual strengths. That's why spiritually correct movies (Lionsgate makes them too, it's not just Disney) and sequels are often worse than one-off productions that slip through the extremely challenging filtering process. If you combine ideology and sequels, you get some of these remakes. The only thing saving us from a live action remake of Chronicles of Narnia is that it was live action to begin with.
- gamblor956 3y agoWhat was woke about the Chronicles of Narnia movies? The books are famously super-Christian, and the movie adaptation was produced by Walden Media, owned by the ultraconservative Philip Anschutz.
- danShumway 3y agoI don't think this is actually what most people really think when they throw out accusations of films being "woke", but if you take GP at their word: > "Woke" movies end up being greenlit like sequels are, on the basis of something about them not on their individual strengths. Then pretty much any Christian movie that is primarily marketed on the basis of being a Christian movie would be woke, and Narnia was heavily marketed in Christian circles and I remember Christians at the time certainly feeling that this was a Christian fantasy movie that was made for them that was going to serve as an alternative to more secular fantasy movie series. Modern Christian cinema is basically the definition of prioritizing a message and a demographic over any other cinematic feature or quality; these are films that get greenlit because they espouse a Christian ideology and because a subset of the market will pay to see any movie that explicitly espouses a Christian ideology regardless of its quality or how obviously the film is shallowly pandering to them. The broader Christian entertainment market even captures the sense of cynicism in that definition. A lot of Christian media is made by non-Christians not because of some holy purpose but because it's easy and profitable to pander to certain Christian denominations. If you don't know how to make good movies, a good fallback is to quote some Bible verses in a bad movie and then see if you'll get support from an audience that mostly just cares about being represented on a movie screen. ---- Again, I'm not saying that I think this is a great definition to use. I think it's kind of reductive: good movies have themes, that's part of what makes them good. And good movies get made because people care about the themes and care about the finished product and how it will affect viewers. The idea that films having a message or political point of view is intrinsically counter to their quality -- it's just not a great way to approach film criticism. Theme/telos can't be fully separated from a film's quality. But if we're talking about message over substance, it's not at all surprising to me that someone would call a Christian or Conservative movie woke. It's only surprising because we know deep down that generic criticism of "message over substance" is not really what most people mean when they call a film "woke".
- paul7986 3y agoI think it's due to TikTok and YouTube as well superhero movie fatigue. I personally canceled all streaming services and binge YouTube and some TikTok /reels when not socializing with friends or family.
- ReptileMan 3y agoHonestly they are so dull and lifeless they are not even worth pirating. Like the recent Assassin's' creeds.
- LordDragonfang 3y agoIt's not even piracy - it's their own streaming services. Why would I pay to watch a mediocre Disney movie in theatres when I already pay for the streaming service I know it's going to end up on in a few weeks? On demand, in the comfort of my home, without having to spend my precious non-work time making plans to drive to a theater?
- inglor_cz 3y ago"Disney has had 10 major film bombs in row" Excuse me, I don't follow movies much, which are the 10 bombs? I would like to learn more about what happened.
- mullingitover 3y agoBlaming piracy is just lazy, and I'm embarrassed for those execs. We're in the middle of a historic glut in entertainment options and there are only so many hours in a day to consume it all. Profits have collapsed over the past decade[1] as a result. > Professionally produced film and TV has more competition for attention than ever before. People spend more time (and money) on video games than they do on movies, and they spend more time watching YouTube than any other TV network. > This is fine for the business of culture since we’re all spending more time consuming media. But it’s bad news for the legacy players and for people who like to make traditional scripted programming. It’s harder to justify spending $200 million on a TV series when people can also watch a bunch of TikToks that cost nothing to make. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-06-25/film-and-tv-profits-have-collapsed-over-the-last-decade https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-06-25/film-a...