The 'Fuck You, Disney' Thread

[Phil_A]

So what you're saying is, Disney makes things people really like?

To answer your question about Fox: they recently announced that they had plans for Alien sequels, Deadpool sequels etc and that they would continue to be released under Fox, so I expect that Fox will continue as normal for all intents and purposes and be free to release "adult" material, like Miramax did for example.

I'm assuming West Side Story is going to be a big summer film geared towards families so the smoking thing doesn't surprise or bother me.

I don't mind their streaming service either - at first I selfishly got annoyed at the thought of Netflix getting shitter and other studios copying the idea and pulling their material from Netflix and Amazon too until only the largely abysmal Netflix originals remained. But actually if anyone's concerned about monopolies, it's a good thing that Netflix and Amazon take a kicking. The more competition the better. It could also be a lifeline for physical media - buy what you specifically like rather than spending a fortune on multiple streaming services which you rarely have time to watch anyway.

Really, I think other studios just need to up their game. The likes of Sony and Universal have been gash for years.

Don't worry children, the free market will save us! This has never gone wrong before!!

Well said. Couldnt agree more.

There is no point in smoking in movies. I hope in a few year there wont be any films with smoking in it. In all the examples given how cigarettes can visually inform someone about a character can easily be substituted for something else. Its just a cheap method indeed and a weird argument to defend. No smoking in (family) films is a good rule.

What, weirder than blind loyalty to a giant corporate conglomerate whose ultimate aim is to absorb and control every form of media in existence?

The grotesque peasants stalk the land
And deep down inside you know everybody wants to like big companies

[Replies From View]

The issue of Disney as a giant corporate conglomerate is separate from the issue of smoking in films targeted at children.  You can despise the latter without unconditionally loving Disney with all your heart.

[colacentral]

Don't worry children, the free market will save us! This has never gone wrong before!!

What's that got to do with anything I said? Just meaningless snark.

[madhair60]

So now Dumbo is going to be holding a feather in his trunk for no particular reason.  Bravo, Disney.  Bravo.  Oh, and...

Fuck you, Disney.

This isn't going to happen. They won't edit that out. It's Fake News sir.

[madhair60]

"since when did Disney make art, snoot snoot nyErrrRRRRR" - thats what you sound like. genuinely shut the fuck up.

Tell you what though I'll join in, the live-action remakes of their "Disney Classics" are like if cancer gave autism AIDS. Just uniformly terrible, cynical shit for idiots.

I remember as a kid my Fantasia VHS said "Disney's Masterpiece" on it and I was like "not sure that's really up to you"

[madhair60]

Disneys good

[Shit Good Nose]

Their increasing market takeover is rather worrying and if it continues mainstream Hollywood is basically going to be owned by Disney.  Which, for a company that was about this [ ] close to going bankrupt not that long ago, is quite something.

On the other hand, The Jungle Book (their '67 cartoon) is both the first film I remember seeing at the cinema and my earliest quantifiable memory, so they'll always occupy a very special place in my heart.

[Phil_A]

What's that got to do with anything I said? Just meaningless snark.

Are you not arguing that Disney's expansionist tactics are basically fine because other big corporations will be forced to compete on the same level?

I'm not an economist but I don't think that works so well when one company already has a massive advantage over  all the others in terms of reach, influence etc and has a known history of acquiring it's competitors.

And you'd still have a situation where only s few giant corps control almost all media distribution across the entire world.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

The issue of Disney as a giant corporate conglomerate is separate from the issue of smoking in films targeted at children.  You can despise the latter without unconditionally loving Disney with all your heart.

It's fine anyway. Spielberg can just replace all the cigs with walkie talkies.

[Shit Good Nose]

It's fine anyway. Spielberg can just replace all the cigs with walkie talkies.

Be funny if he replaced the cigs with guns.

"Guns don't kill people, cigarettes kill people."

[mothman]

When the Sharks & Jets start snapping their fingers at each other, half the cast crumble to dust.

[Old Gold Tooth]

Addictive personality / person who is stressed / someone who is working class (or someone who is well to do if they're smoking a cigar, or posh if they're using a cigarette holder).

Haha bloody hell. Them working class and their cigarettes, eh.

Anyone who sees someone smoking a cigarette and assumes they are working class needs to grow up.

[Shit Good Nose]

Can the working class even afford fags these days?  How much is a pack of twenty - about £15?

[madhair60]

When the Sharks & Jets start snapping their fingers at each other, half the cast crumble to dust.

Great gag, stole it from you and used it on Facebook. Soaking up the Likes rn.

[Dex Sawash]

Been waiting to quote one of you and respond with

That's so Raven

but I lost interest.
Consider yourselves collectively so Raven'd

[Gerald Fjord]

Yeah, yeah, Disney makes lukewarm, inoffensive, smirk to camera, PG13, family fun-a-longs, but it's not their fault all you stupid cunts go and watch them. Hollywood movies have been dogshit for years anyway. You know what? Star Wars is shit. Star Wars is now, was before, has always been total dogshit. I liked them when I was a kid because I was a fucking idiot, but any adult who gets exercised about Star Wars should have the fucking vote stripped from them. Oh, did the character development of Durka Tal-Windkins in Star Wars Episode IX: Force on a Horse not live up to the subtle characterisation of when Luke wanted to go to the Tosche Station to pick up some power converters? Get in space grave, pal.

West Side Story? Shit for thick fucking idiots. Oh no, is the remake shit, too? Of course it's shit. You fucking infants. Not one of us deserves better than Disney. Not one. If you look in the mirror you'll see that Mouse gurning back at you, making one of those shit Marvel movie quips. "Hey Cap, don't you wanna let your hair down??!!!" (Iron Man says it as he throws a wig at Chris Evans)

[mothman]

Great gag, stole it from you and used it on Facebook. Soaking up the Likes rn.

Allow it, I like my jokes to run free, unfettered as it were.

[St_Eddie]

I agree that other studios are no good as well, but sets Disney apart and makes them worse for me is the fact that have an allegiance to squeaky clean family entertainment. Which there isn't anything inherently wrong with, but it certainly imposes more limits on artists than other studios. I'm not sure exactly how they'll handle the Fox properties, if they'll continue putting out more adult films under the Fox label, but the announcement that the library of Simpsons episodes are going to be exclusive to their Disney-branded streaming service does not bode well to me.

I personally believe that Disney is a key part of the infantilization of culture. I don't know how to sum this all up in a way that makes sense because I'm stupid and don't really want to be writing anything right now, but I'm sure you're all familiar with the Tumblr/certain parts of Twitter mindset that if a film presents something, it is therefore endorsing it? And thus, the film overall is bad/cancelled/whatever? To me that's the product of a generation of minds flooded by Disney movies. Regardless of the quality of most of their films, you have to admit that they're simplistic and represent an extremely unrealistic view of the world. This would be fine if the only people who took these films seriously were the audience they were made for, children. That is not the case.
Adults fucking LOVE Disney. And it's not always a case of simple nostalgia. If you meet a grown person who REALLY likes Disney, they get fucking LIVID if you disparage the company (at least this has been my experience, growing up I had a close friend whose family went to Disney World twice a year and had a house covered in Mickey Mouse garbage, the fucking sinks had Mickey Mouse printed on the inside of them). This has gotten worse now that Disney owns Marvel and Star Wars, because people who love Marvel and Star Wars are also fucking insane. That's why the Disney brand is so insidious to me. They have an army of diehard fans, growing larger the more properties and therefore fanbases they acquire, who will do anything for them, and deflect any criticism. And thus, personal expression dies a little more.
Most children grow up watching Disney films. I did not. As a child I grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons. The plots of most Warner Bros cartoons, usually, involve an animal trying to murder another animal. This is why I'm so unhappy.

Great post.  I agree.

On the other hand, The Jungle Book (their '67 cartoon) is both the first film I remember seeing at the cinema and my earliest quantifiable memory, so they'll always occupy a very special place in my heart.

I've got a lot of affection for a great deal of Disney's past output too.  However, that company is not the same one that exists today.  They had to outsource the traditional animation in Mary Poppins Returns because they no longer have anybody in-house (or should that be 'in-mouse') who can do that.  Walt Disney must be spinning in his grave cryo chamber.

Haha bloody hell. Them working class and their cigarettes, eh.

Have you never watched The Royle Family or some of Mike Leigh's films?  Why are you assuming that when I used that as an example, that there was an inherent negative implication in regards to the working class?  I smoke cigarettes, so I'm hardly being snooty because if I were, then I'd be being snooty against myself.

Anyone who sees someone smoking a cigarette and assumes they are working class needs to grow up.

I don't see someone smoking a cigarette and assume that they are working class.  That's real life though and film is not real life.  Cigarettes have been used to indicate that a character is working class in film.  Why hate on me for pointing out a trope?

[Jerzy Bondov]

Tell you what though I'll join in, the live-action remakes of their "Disney Classics" are like if cancer gave autism AIDS. Just uniformly terrible, cynical shit for idiots.

Yes. I would say the exception is Pete's Dragon (2016), but Pete's Dragon (1977) has never been billed as a Disney Classic. However, Pete's Dragon (2016) is brilliant, earnest, sincere, heartfelt and warm.

[thecuriousorange]

Which cartoon classic is next for the "Live action reboot" treatment then?

[Old Gold Tooth]

Never seen The Royle Family or some of Mike Leigh's films?  Why are you assuming that when I used that as an example, that there was an inherent negative implication in regards to the working class?  I smoke cigarettes, for fuck's sake.

Yeah, I have seen those things.

You listed things that smoking cigarettes is a visual shorthand for, and one of them was "being working class". I disagree.

[St_Eddie]

Yeah, I have seen those things.

You listed things that smoking cigarettes is a visual shorthand for, and one of them was "being working class". I disagree.

How many times have you seen a character who's a builder in a film or TV show, cigarette in mouth?

You can find the trope distasteful and think that it needs to die out but that doesn't mean that the trope itself doesn't exist.

[Gulftastic]

Which cartoon classic is next for the "Live action reboot" treatment then?

Jungle Burger.

[colacentral]

Are you not arguing that Disney's expansionist tactics are basically fine because other big corporations will be forced to compete on the same level?

I'm not an economist but I don't think that works so well when one company already has a massive advantage over  all the others in terms of reach, influence etc and has a known history of acquiring it's competitors.

And you'd still have a situation where only s few giant corps control almost all media distribution across the entire world.

No, not exactly. What I think is that the worry over Disney's acquisition of Fox is a bit overblown. They don't own the news arm of Fox, as far as I'm aware. It's a much different situation to Murdoch trying to obtain Sky, where it's quite obvious what he means to do with it, and he already has undue political influence. What have they really obtained by buying Fox (which cost them a massive wedge): Alien franchise which no one cares about anymore; Simpsons which no one cares about anymore; X-Files which no one cares about anymore, and new Marvel characters, which it's really all it's about, presumably. It's a big gamble just to get some characters for films which could begin to flop and fall out of fashion in ten years. It's an exaggeration to say they own everything and have a disproportionate level of influence from the purchase - it looks like buying Hannah-Barbera in the late 70's to me.

What I mean when I talk about other studios is that it's defeatist to think that Disney owning a stable of superheroes and Star Wars really amounts to a huge advantage. They're in the business of making high budget but disposable family films, and they could easily have a few high profile flops. There are other studios producing blockbuster animations like How to Train Your Dragon and the Minions films, but the fact is they're just worse than Pixar by a mile so don't have the same resonance. The same with Warner Bros and their comic book films in comparison to the MCU as another example. It's less that Disney have a monetary advantage over other big studios, and more that they are just being managed well and producing things people want to see.

In the 80's Disney was struggling after a run of mediocre films, but what made them huge again was just making better films - Little Mermaid, then Beauty & the Beast, etc. Rather than complain about Disney being behind too many successful but disposable blockbusters, I think it's worth pointing at their competition and asking "why is Minions the best you can come up with?", and why can't we get any new, original sci-fi / action / adventure films instead of the tried and tested franchises. Disney have their advantage in large part because the other studio heads are terrible at their jobs; that doesn't somehow mean I'm endorsing neoliberal economics.

As an aside: people complain about superhero films taking over the box office, but what have they actually replaced? In the 90's we were getting things like the 97 Godzilla; Schwarzenegger's run of crap like Eraser, The Sixth Day, etc; Lost in Space; Jurassic Park sequels. It's as if there was all this lovely original and inventive stuff being produced as big summer Blockbusters, and then the MCU came and killed it all off. Nonsense.

[Replies From View]

How many times have you seen a character who's a builder in a film or TV show, cigarette in mouth?

You can find the trope distasteful and think that it needs to die out but that doesn't mean that the trope itself doesn't exist.

It's absolutely irrelevant that some working class people smoke in films when the tobacco industry also use films to promote smoking as

Sophisticated/glamorous/sexy
Rebellious
Otherworldly
The action of someone extremely popular
The action of a loner
Sensible/smart
The action of someone stressed out (smoking is for people who want to calm down)
The behaviour of someone who is extremely chilled (smoking is for people who are calm by nature)
Wistful


The list goes on and on, by the way.  Your key point was that cigarettes in films can be used to help us understand something about that character, but you are wrong - all it tells us is that that character smokes.  And the tobacco industry wants influential films to train people that smoking is for every type of person in any possible situation, alone, socially, everywhere.

Furthermore the tobacco industry needs to reach young people to recruit new lifelong smokers.  How anyone can take umbrage that there are rules in place to prevent this is baffling, and actually pretty disgusting to be honest.

[St_Eddie]

Your key point was that cigarettes in films can be used to help us understand something about that character, but you are wrong - all it tells us is that that character smokes.

I'm sorry but no, this is patently not true.  A director doesn't decide to have a character smoke just because.  Filmmakers make creative choices for a reason.

...the tobacco industry wants influential films to train people that smoking is for every type of person in any possible situation, alone, socially, everywhere.

Are you implying that every time that a character in a film is seen smoking, it's due to shady dealings between the studio and tobacco companies, so that the latter can further their reach to a new generation?  If so, then that's some next level conspiracy nonsense.  Of course, that's not to say that it doesn't ever happen (even though it's illegal) but in the majority of cases, in today's world and climate?  Hell no.

[Swoz_MK]

<---------- Steamboat Willie is funnier than anything WB put out. Mickey is a right little fucker in it.

[Replies From View]

<---------- Steamboat Willie is funnier than anything WB put out. Mickey is a right little fucker in it.

Have you seen the "redux" version?  https://youtu.be/Y6P8T_IWVUw

[Gulftastic]

The complete series of Fraggle Rock has been released on bluray last year. There are talks of making a new series for their streaming network.

Which country's lighthouse inserts will they use?

[colacentral]

The Dumbo edit is a non-issue too as it's not for physical releases, it's just the streaming version, which amounts to it being an edit for TV. You don't see Sean Connery's Bond slapping the shit out of women on ITV anymore either. As long as it's retained for physical releases I don't care.