41–50 of 59 posts
It's somewhat terrifying that a single company will effectively own the majority whole market for blockbuster films in NA. Disney has always been a juggernaut but sheesh it's enormous now.
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What's more movies get privileged in a weird way over other things. Avengers: Endgame brought in $2.7 billion and is the highest grossing film of all time. Only 5 films ever have broken $2 billion. Phantom of the Opera the musical has made $6 billion, blowing Avengers out of the water. Wicked the musical has grossed $3 billion, more than any movie ever made. Same for Mamma Mia! . Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) m…
> Yet none of those things enter conversations about cultural affinity in the same way movies do. Really? What cultural affinity is there for Avengers? For Force Awakens? I would argue movies have built an establishment of critics around itself, the disclosure surrounding it does appear to be more sophisticated and intellectual. But that doesn't mean the it is shaping the audience's perception the same way.
The Avengers is a part of a comic franchise that is almost 50 years old, and Star Wars basically invented the science fiction movie blockbuster over 40 years ago. Both have been deeply influential on generations of people and on the way their respective genres have been portrayed in all media.
To question whether there is cultural affinity for either is to fundamentally misunderstand modern Western pop culture, because these properties are more influential to it than the Bible and Shakespeare.
I disagree with this article that this is all about their ability to "tell stories", as much as management that's really good at identifying which company to acquire next so they can squeeze every last cent from consumers for whichever IP they are pushing at the time. Most people I've talked to DON'T believe the star wars series has gotten better from a story telling perspective, as this article proposes. I don't thi…
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."
I disagree with this article that this is all about their ability to "tell stories", as much as management that's really good at identifying which company to acquire next so they can squeeze every last cent from consumers for whichever IP they are pushing at the time. Most people I've talked to DON'T believe the star wars series has gotten better from a story telling perspective, as this article proposes. I don't thi…
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 :(
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> 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 d…
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.
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.
I have so much respect for Disney and Bob Iger in particular. But something feels lacking about a single company controlling all the best-loved stories in a culture. It’s like a monopoly on sentiment. Until the last 100 years or so it’s been the case that a given culture’s stories — folklores, mythologies, and religions — were in the public domain. And while they were at times subject to tight control, e.g., non-vern…
Which is why incumbents tend to welcome onerous regulations once they are big enough to deal with them. It locks the young upstarts from coming up behind them and potentially overtaking them.
Amazon wasn't for having to collect state sales tax until they figured it out. Facebook didn't start talking about regulation being a good thing until they were big enough to easily absorb the impact.
Whats even better - you get to blame the regulations as the gatekeeper, not your own sleazy behavior.
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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…
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.
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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.
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.
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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…
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.
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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…
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.