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Notes -
Disney is back where it started:
Disney’s Boy Trouble: Studio Seeks Original IP to Win Back Gen-Z Men Amid Marvel, Lucasfilm Struggles
But we've been here before. Around the late '00s, Disney felt that it was shackled by its perception as a girl brand, and needed some boy-friendly properties. There were some that had had some success - Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars - but it wanted more. (Article 1, article 2 on marketing research in 2009 about this.)
They took a few gambles on intellectual property they already owned (or at least that wasn't too expensive) - Tron, The Lone Ranger, John Carter
of Marsand so forth - but those didn't give them the wins they wanted.So they bought Marvel and Lucasfilm and, over the 2010s, got a good many billions of dollars in box office returns from them both. But now both Marvel and Star Wars are sputtering at best, so it seems they think it's time to start up the search anew.
The obvious question is what happened to their last investments. The polite answer is that they stopped producing acceptable stories, or overexposed or overextended their franchises with TV shows and the like beyond general audiences' interest. But is that all? "To lose one strategic franchise may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness." What's to say that they won't make the same mistake again, whatever it was?
So there are less polite answers. That link leads to the /r/saltierthancrait discussion of the article (taken down now, by the looks of things. Too impolite even there!) where the poster summarizes their take on the story as "1. Buy new IP to have something for boys 2. Alienate them by pandering to girls 3. Repeat."
And even if it's so that both franchises' declines followed girl-power (or other identity-politics) pushes, that's still not a correlation that one's supposed to draw in polite company, not without a lot of throat-clearing. And true: the orthodox explanation of quality decline and overextension has much truth to it, and it's even possible to explain any alienation of target demographics as being due to such overextension: the same ambition that led Disney to want to give itself some appeal to boys also could lead it to try to make Marvel or Star Wars appeal more to girls. Maybe pure greed is the only explanatory factor needed.
Still, though, I have my doubts. I feel like there's a cultural undercurrent, much broader than just Disney, that it's a problem whenever anything is enjoyed by boys(/men) and not girls(/women). Perhaps there's an element of blank-slatism here: the belief that gender differences are all due to socialization, and in a perfect, prejudice-free world, male and female tastes would be the same.
That is: if there were any value to [something], then girls would see it. If they're not there with the boys, then either they're being kept away by something toxic or exclusionary, or there isn't any value to the thing and the boys shouldn't be having fun with it, either. Anything with predominantly male enthusiasts therefore should be either integrated or banned. (Going the other way, it seems much more easily accepted that boys are at fault for not being interested in something that girls are, for example.)
But if it's not true that, but for patriarchy, boys and girls would have the same interests, then the pursuit of this equalization can result in feeding a whole lot of interests or fields or value in general into the void. If lightsabers and starfighters appealing more to boys than to girls was not a problem that needed fixing, and Disney doesn't realize this, then they'll slide right back into this pit every time they try to escape. And if it is true, well - they'd better hope that they can somehow find fixes that work.
I saw on Twitter someone comment that the idea that the company that owns Marvel, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones would need to look for a new IP to help draw in young male audiences in their teens & 20s is pretty hilarious and absurd. You could probably have put any random 8th grade boy in charge of any one of these franchises back when Disney acquired them and turned them into at least good draws for that crowd, if not great. Yet the actual executives in charge appear to have less competence than that (or, perhaps, different incentives than making the best product or most money).
Makes me think there could be a modern remake of Big where he becomes a studio exec instead of a toy store VP and greenlights hits over the adult execs. Would have to be a longer timeframe and also, I'm guessing Big probably won't get a remake anytime soon given the implied statutory rape.
You know it's fascinating. If the movies were actively actually bad (like worst Transformers movie bad) and you ran that for 20 years it would still be easier to recover from than what we got.
It's worse than bad.
Truly one of the most epic bag fumbles of all time.
Anecdotally - I was a kid who grew up a Star Wars nerd and it was a big part of my identity, establishing my interests, and so on. I spent a ton of money on it when I didn't have a lot of money to spend.
Now I'll never spend another cent not just because its bad right now (it is), not just because it hates me for demographic reasons (it does), but because it's associated in my mind with all the extremities and terrors of shitty social justice and all that did. I've seen too much fucked up stuff, lost friends, etc and Disney dropped their flag on that behavior.
Lots of people are never coming back and they didn't really connect anyone new.
Disney lost a bunch of parents pushing gay shit too. Like toddler movies that aren't good is recoverable from- they're toddler movies, after all- and probably doesn't even make a difference. But the people writing their preteen sitcoms being in charge of pixar wasn't the thing that pissed people off. It was GayBC agenda pushing.
Yeah, idk when the realization hit exactly, but the day was odd when it occurred to me that we would no longer be allowing Disney anything in our home. At least nothing made after the year 2000, with the occasional ad hoc exception.
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Yes, it's this exactly. I used to dream about the prequel and sequel trilogies coming out. Had one where I found the sequels in the store and was gobsmacked that they'd made it to home video without me hearing about their release, etc.
Then the prequels came out and I was fairly disappointed but fundamentally tolerant. Then the sequels came out and, well, I still haven't seen the last one, and should be surprised if I ever do.
Rogue One scratched the itch though.
I feel so seen haha. I also refused to watch the last one. Can't even remember its name if I'm being honest. Total fundamental drop off of interest.
You know I also thought Rogue One scratched the itch - interesting. Lots of the more traditional non-woke critics hated it.
Andor was actively incredible though (although I have yet to see the second season, just timing issues).
Haven't looked into it at all. I know redditors who enjoy it immensely so I assumed it was pretty soy.
I can only speak to the first season as I mentioned, but it's one of the best seasons of television of the last ten years. Full stop.
Now admittedly it's not to everyone's taste, it's a slow and deliberate Cold War spy thriller living in the most Star Wars feeling Star Wars since the original trilogy.
If you are the kind of person who liked Better Call Saul as much or more than Breaking Bad you are 100% going to love it, but I don't fault people for needing a faster pace etc.
Put another way it reminds me of Winter Soldier which duct taped an excellent non Marvel script to Marvel IP and kept the advantages of both.
It does have some woke elements but they are chiefly background casting stuff that isn't too annoying when it's drowned in quality. It is also explicitly anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian but not in the childish modern politics way so it shouldn't chafe too much.
It's much less Wolfenstein haha kill the nazis and much more Das Leben der Anderen this is the reality of these systems. Sure the woke end up liking it but that's by accident.
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