Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther • Hacker News Board

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#41

Post by hinkley » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 5:15 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #28

hinkley wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the term, "The Disney Vaults". Am I right in thinking this policy started under Eisner, or has it been going on longer? Nobody else locks their old content up like Fort Knox, Disney.

Disney has used the "vault" for theatrical showings since 1944, when they reissued Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, though the last film actually re-released in theaters was The Lion King almost a decade ago. (Nowadays, a film is "released" from the vault to a reissue of home media (like Bluray). Eisner was mostly responsible for changing vault releases to home media sales (like VHS or DVD) instead of theatrical rele…

It's an interesting thing to me that I/we don't want to blame anything bad from Disney on Walt.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#42

Post by gamblor956 » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

orloffm wrote: post #40

gamblor956 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to remember the diversity in the most recent Hollywood WW2 movies: THERE WASN'T ANY. 1917 was completely white. Dunkirk had two minority characters, both in extra roles. Jojo Rabbit had no minorities, though Hitler was played by a New Zealander of 1/4th-Maori ancestry. Overlord had 1 black character in a supporting role. Midway's cast was 1/4th Asian, and only because 1/4th of the movie is told from the Japane…

1917 wasn't completely white. There were multiple black soldiers in the trenches here and there, which was obviously done just because someone was uncomfortable with "completely white" cast. There is no other reason to do that. With the same logic there should be a white guy somewhere in the background in Wakanda, but there weren't any. That's what the parent comment wants to say.

With the same logic there should be a white guy somewhere in the background in Wakanda, but there weren't any. That's what the parent comment wants to say.

He was complaining about a strawman that existed only in his head. There were multiple random white guys in the background in the city scenes (Wakanda and elsewhere), and multiple named and speaking white supporting characters in the foreground, including Bucky Barnes, and whatever characters Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis were playing.

Re-watching 1917, I realized that there is exactly 1 minority character with a speaking role in the movie: a Sikh soldier during the caravan scene. I rewatched the trench scenes, and there are no black characters. There are white guys covered in ash and dirt that might look black but are clearly white when viewed in 4k, and can be confirmed during the battlefield run scene. (1917 was attempting to be historically accurate; Sikh soldiers made up a larger portion of the British army than did black soldiers.)

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#43

Post by monadic2 » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #26

monadic2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elucidate the material difference?

Theaters require a license to show a movie. Disney does not generally grant licenses to theaters to show its films second-run (meaning after their initial box-office run) except as part of re-release initiated by Disney. They make extremely limited exceptions to this policy; the Rocky Horror Picture Show is basically the only film in the Disney/Fox vault that they allow to show second-run. In this case, the theater a…

You described the semantic difference, not the material difference. Materially, disney is preventing screens of the movie.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#44

Post by monadic2 » Wed, Sep 02, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #37

manicdee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is to say Disney stopped the theatre from showing the movie. The reason the theatre couldn't show the movie is because Disney wouldn't allow it to do so.

Which is to say Disney stopped the theatre from showing the movie. The reason the theatre couldn't show the movie is because Disney wouldn't allow it to do so. No, theaters can't just use any copy of a film to show a movie; those copies are jealously guarded by the distributors and are subject to strict controls, especially by Disney (and Fox too, before the acquisition). Generally, each copy of a film reel must be a…

I don't think you understand the meaning of "can". It's not a legal term. The use also occludes the active role Disney and other license holders play in the prevention of screening movies.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#45

Post by manicdee » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #24

marcosdumay wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that is stopping theaters from screening the movie. Ok, they do do that by policy, not by exception. But the title is correct.

No, they never stopped the theater from screening the movie. They simply never gave them permission to do so in the first place.

Getting into a pedantic argument of the semantics of "stopped" is missing the point that Disney has a vault into which they put their movies so that they can extract more revenue from their IP by trickling it out on a seasonal basis, stopping anyone screening movies that Disney don't want on rotation.

It's especially pertinent here since the purpose of screening the movie was to commemorate the life of Chadwick Boseman, the lead actor of that movie. Disney didn't even make an exception by unvaulting a popular movie on the occasion of the lead actor's death.

But when it comes to the pedantry…

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stop

… remember that "stop" used as a transitive verb means "to make impassable," or "to keep from carrying out a proposed action." There doesn't have to be an action in progress to stop it. The theatre proposed a course of action, Disney stopped that course of action by not giving access to the resources required to proceed.

There are eight senses of the word "stop" when used as a transitive verb, and your pedantic argument relies on choosing one sense of the word and ignoring the others.

If you are going to be pedantic, do it properly.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#46

Post by dang » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 6:39 AM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #9

I was hoping that they were reneging from their racist decision to have an almost entirely black cast and crew, but this makes more sense. (edit: I'm probably wrong here, see gamblor956's comment. Leaving it here so others can learn from it)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24345234.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#47

Post by TheAdamAndChe » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #38

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is true, then I learned something and I appreciate you telling me. I'll verify in a couple hours, and will probably change my perspective of the movie because of it. What I don't like is the personal attack. I got my information not from Fox News or something, but from mainstream media news sites going on and on about how progressive it was that their cast and crew was almost completely black(or at least that…

I got my information not from Fox News or something, but from mainstream media news sites going on and on about how progressive it was that their cast and crew was almost completely black(or at least that's how I remember it). I made the post I did because I wanted to push back against racism. Citations required. I read the mainstream media sources too, and I don't know of any that characterized the Black Panther cre…

You are right about the news. I went back and looked, and they only discussed the cast, not the crew(except for some fringe sites that don't warrant discussion). This is most likely a result of my insecurities and biases warping my memory or perception of those articles.

Thank you for discussing this with me. It's easy to assume bad faith and ignore people, but your engagement taught me a lot.

Re: Disney Studios stops theaters from screening Black Panther

#48

Post by tessierashpool » Thu, Sep 03, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #46

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #9

I was hoping that they were reneging from their racist decision to have an almost entirely black cast and crew, but this makes more sense. (edit: I'm probably wrong here, see gamblor956's comment. Leaving it here so others can learn from it)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24345234 .

thank you!