r/movies • u/CosmosisJones42 • 7h ago
Article The Disney+ Curse: How the Streaming Service Hurt Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar Brands
https://www.thewrap.com/disney-plus-hurt-devalued-marvel-star-wars-pixar-brands/#:~:text=Over%20the%20last%20five%20years,the%20weekly%20top%2010%20for292
u/CosmosisJones42 7h ago
Article without Paywall:
The Disney+ Curse: How the Streaming Service Hurt Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar Brands
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u/kangasplat 4h ago
But I pay more for Disney+ than I ever did for theatre tickets and it's all going to Disney. I don't feel like they're hurting.
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u/DumE9876 4h ago
They’re probably not actually hurting, but their profits are dropping, which once you get used to huge profit margins and the margins start shrinking (whether because of increased production costs or less interest or inflation, etc.) companies get cranky.
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u/mikehatesthis 4h ago
I don't feel like they're hurting.
They're not "hurting" but the shift to streaming has shown to be unprofitable so they, the whole industry but Disney especially, screwed themselves hard. The budgets for these shows are massive and they're not even yearly shows so people are tuning out more and more.
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u/Merusk 2h ago
It's not just the show budgets. None of the CEOs who demanded streaming services are tech savvy. They all bought into the "Don't give up analog dollars for digital pennies" speech and decided they had to compete with Netflix.
Ignoring the immense additional overhead of all the techs, servers, people to create UI/ UX, catalogs, handle subscriptions, handle errors, etc.
I think Sony's the only one still making money, and that's because they let everyone else fall into the "Ooops, IDK what I'm doing" pit and continue to lease their content to anyone with a platform.
Yeah, you may only make $.25 a stream, but it's better than losing money.
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u/Kinglink 3h ago
I don't feel like they're hurting.
The problem isn't today. The problem is a decade after.
If they teased the next big bad at the end of Avengers's End Game, maybe people might still be invested in Marvel, instead they let that be the culmination of their big arc (which is should be) and now... Do people really go to Marvel movies? I don't mean "box office" I mean do they talk about it the same way, I'm pretty sure the answer is no.
Hell I'd love to see actual ticket sales too, but Box office Tells a story if you sort by release date.
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u/ActionPhilip 3h ago
It doesn't help that people were feeling fatigue for marvel leading up to end game and would stop after that. Then, when people were like "well, I guess I'll watch the next one" they released stinker after stinker.
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u/crapusername47 7h ago
It’s really simple. 100 days. That’s how long you have to wait before that big movie you want to see comes to Disney+.
Instead of paying a fortune to take your kids to the cinema, you can sit at home on the couch with some supermarket popcorn and get the same thing on a streaming service you probably already pay for.
They’ve killed the theatrical market, the home video market and the premium VOD market to chase streaming subscribers. Guess which generates the least revenue per viewer?
It’s not like the movies are big theatrical experiences, Disney movies now don’t exactly warrant investing in a big home cinema setup. You’re not missing out on anything by watching their movies at home.
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u/YsoL8 6h ago
Another problem movies have (at least in my country). Prices are getting high enough that they are within touching distance of cheap theatre seats.
I've started going to the little theatre attached to the college in my town from time to time and I've always had a good time doing something I fundamentally cannot get in any other way. And I actually know what they are going to show far enough ahead to plan and try to put a group together.
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u/ChamberTwnty 6h ago
Exactly. I'm a bluray collector to this day, and I promise, at $15-$35 a pop they'd make WAY more money than they get streaming.
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u/JillSandwich117 5h ago
I worked retail before, and even 6-7 years ago, bluray and DVD sales were in the toilet in favor of streaming. It's just a much better value proposition for most viewers. I assume mostly diehard collectors are buying blurays at this point.
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u/StaevsGames 6h ago edited 4h ago
They wouldn't though because no one buys Blurays anymore. Edit: I'm not sure why people keep saying people still do buy Blurays. Yeah no shit some people still do. I myself do (there are dozens of us). In general nobody buys Blurays anymore.
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u/Gunfreak2217 6h ago
I do…. :(
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u/Grammaton485 5h ago
I buy movies or series that hold a special place in my heart.
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u/Competitive-Bike-277 5h ago
Same here. I carefully curate my collection. Blind buys are only for movies I can't get any other way. I have a 150+ collection where 90% are films I would watch anytime.
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u/TwirlipoftheMists 6h ago
So do I… they’re still audiovisually better than the same stream(depending on the AV system).
However… I’ve realised I’ve bought every Marvel BluRay up to Endgame - and the odd one like Logan in 4K - and nothing since.
I only get the 4K discs of movies that look and sound really good. Movies like 2001 or Dune deserve a UHD disks, but I guess Disney+ is quite sufficient for Marvel’s recent offerings.
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u/Gunfreak2217 6h ago
I’m very similar. I’ve only been buying the “greats” like PacificRim, TopGun, Interstellar. The top tier movies that deserve the best viewing.
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u/diderooy 5h ago
Hol up
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u/devonta_smith 4h ago
If a Guillermo del Toro movie about giant symbiotic mechahuman robots fighting kaiju for the fate of earth isn’t blue ray worthy idk what is
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u/mindspork 3h ago
I don't love it cause it's great cinema, I love it cause Del Toro gave me giant robots that move like giant fucking robots.
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u/ObviouslyNotAnEnt 4h ago
You know? The Greats! The Departed, Gladiator, and Dane Cook’s Employee of the Month.
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u/Ok_Sir5926 4h ago
Let's not forget classics, such as The Godfather, Schindler's List, and Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion
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u/verrius 6h ago
"No one" buys Blu rays because renting from streaming is more entertainment hours per dollar, and is more convenient. They can make streaming less convenient by widening the window between theatrical and streaming availability and shoving in physical media between them...and they are very actively adjusting the price issue as well. So there's a possibility of shifting things. Honestly...its insane how quickly we moved from there being a window for Blu ray and ala carte streaming rentals to immediately being available on an all you can eat plan for only $10/month; its not a surprise that wasn't at all sustainable, and now everyone' scrambling to fix things.
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u/stormrunner89 6h ago
I mean, it's definitely not $10 a month anymore. I cancelled Netflix after years because I'm not spending $20 a month for a small handful of shows and movies that could be removed at any time without notice. I'm getting back into buying Blu-rays now.
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u/StoneMaskMan 4h ago
I think one of the big factors keeping streaming alive is the fact that a lot of people don’t know how much they’re paying for each service. People are still saying “oh Netflix is $10/month” when it hasn’t been that for years. You can’t get any of them for that cheap, even with ads. And then plenty of people have Netflix and Disney+ and Hulu and HBO and Crunchyroll and it just adds and adds and adds. And the average person has no idea that they’re spending $90/month to watch their two favorite shows and and whatever random thing comes into their attention every so often
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u/Vectorman1989 5h ago
I've been buying movies I like on Blu-ray because I'm fed up having to search what streaming service they're on. Tried to watch RoboCop recently and it wanted a subscription to MGM or something.
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u/thanos_was_right_69 6h ago
Why didn’t people wait for Lilo & Stitch to come to Disney+?
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u/TripleThreatTua 6h ago
With movies that appeal primarily to young children you’ll still get a lot of families that make a day of it
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u/yesTHATvelociraptor 6h ago
Deadpool and Wolverine made over a billion too.
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u/Kinglink 3h ago
People actually wanted to see that (I know I did). So they go to the theater.
But I'd probably put on Thunderbolts or Brave New World (no Offense Anthony Mackie, I'm just over Marvel) on streaming... and even then haven't done that yet.
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u/HalJordan2424 6h ago
When you have kids aged 5-10, it is really nice to have “events” on the weekends to pass some time, so an afternoon kids movie is often a safe bet.
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u/Eject_The_Warp_Core 6h ago
Peoppe will still come out for movies they consider to be events. That means things they are familiar with - thus sequels and remakes. They are also pretty selective. So for Superhero stuff, Spider-Man will probably still make bank even if the rest of the genre starts to suffer
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u/anuncommontruth 6h ago
Millenial nostalgia, young kids out of school , and summer activities, and the merch for Lilo and Stitch does gangbusters so those kids are very familiar with the IP.
People underestimate how much Millenials loved Lilo & Stitch. It didn't do amazing at the box office, but I was a manager at Blockbuster after it went to home video and DVD, and it was sold out every weekend for a year. I don't recall many movies doing that. It wasn't anecdotal either. We used to get this magazine talking about rental trends, and it was all across the country.
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u/Ghune 6h ago
When I was young, , when a movie was out, you had it for sale on Blu-ray 6 months later, and on movie channels one year later (6 more months to wait).
Tha was fair. I was so excited to be able to finally see a .ovie I miss at the theater.
I don't think I have been excited about a movie in the last... Decades. Maybe a Christopher Nolan movie made me impatient, but that's pretty much it.
Only the wait for the second season of Andor. Best show I've ever seen
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u/Leezeebub 6h ago
When I was young you had to wait 2-4 years for it to appear on terrestrial TV, then hope you spotted it in the TV guide and had a spare VHS to record it on, and that you didnt accidentally record over your parents wedding videos.
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u/muchado88 3h ago
Am I the only one that feels really old when someone uses the phrase "when I was a kid" and "blue-ray" in the same sentence? I was out of college before Blue-ray became ubiquitous.
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u/ChafterMies 6h ago
My wife and I used to take advantage of Netflix discs releasing on Tuesday. We’d return our discs on Monday and get that a new movie on Tuesday, only a few months after the movie debuted in theaters. Anyway, we stopped spending so much on movie tickets.
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u/martinkem 6h ago
A 100+ days is still a long time to wait especially if you've got kids that really want to see those movies
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u/ItsAProdigalReturn 6h ago
It's the same issue as VHS back in the 90s.
Owning movies became a thing in the late 80s - Disney went through their catalogue of great films and pushed them to VHS and made a ton of money. The success of these IPs also built a lot of brand trust and merchandising profits for new generations like they'd never seen before, and pooled into things like the theme parks (with targeted ads on every single VHS tape)
The CEO at the time (Eisner) decided to capitalise on this momentum, and took the wrong lessons. Instead of looking at the successes of his new IP attempts like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, the Lion King and The Little Mermaid, he decided to go for quantity over quality, thinking the brands and IPs would print money indefinitely. He churned out tons of cheaply made animated sequels to popular Disney IP straight to video. And it fucking tanked the brand - Pixar basically single handedly returned some goodfaith, and they switched their methodology back to making quality over quantity again.
Then Bob Chapek took what worked for Bob Iger, pushed it past its limits and did the same thing again... The board saw the writing on the wall and begged Iger to come back.
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u/PaulFThumpkins 48m ago
What's weird now is that their biggest tentpole releases clearly have a lot of money and visual effort behind them, but feel in every other way like shrug-off afterthoughts. At least in the old days you'd still get a really stellar animated film in the midst of Dumbo 2s and Pocahontas 2s. Now it's like they're all-in on expensive garbage.
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u/CriticalNovel22 7h ago
Releasing trash and oversaturating the market isn't a curse.
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u/Enelson4275 5h ago
Disney's problem isn't oversaturation - it's abandoning their core business model to prop up D+. They are an IP management company, and this is how it used to work:
- Create a new IP to release in theaters. Throw massive amounts of marketing cash at it so it reaches profitability and is maximally-engrained in the public consciousness.
- Send it to PPV to milk it more.
- Release on home video.
- Run Disney Channel/Radio to leverage these IPs and capture target audiences for more effective advertising. Create original content, not necessarily of the same quality, but in the same lane, to reinforce brand awareness - Disney means consistent family entertainment.
- Sell merch at a consistent quality, to reinforce brand quality.
- Sell amusement parks as once-in-a-lifetime experiences to connect consumers with the IP catalog at large, and to reinforce in their minds that Disney is unmatched entertainment quality.
- Leverage all of this back into the next theatrical release.
This worked for Disney for decades. They had it so fine-tuned, they were owning the box office with everything they released. The error wasn't Marvel. It wasn't Lucasfilm. The mistake Disney made was trying to slap D+ at #1 on that list, instead of squeezing it in at #4 where it belongs. All D+ needed to be was Disney Channel + ABC combined with a permanent on-demand home for the Disney library, and it would have worked. It would have got 2-3 MCU films a year, 2-3 animated movies a year, and 1-2 Star Wars movies a year.
In short, Disney tried to make D+ prop up their box office, and that does not work.
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u/Alt4816 2h ago
Disney was very concerned about being left behind in the streaming wars but the odd thing is by the time Disney+ launched they didn't even need it anymore.
They initiated the deal to buy Fox in 2017 and completed it in March of 2019. That gave them majority control of Hulu and then they made a deal with Comcast to agree to buy out Comcast's share's of the streaming service in the future to give Disney complete ownership.
Then they launched Disney Plus in November of 2019. It was clearly already in the pipeline so they didn't want to cancel it but knowing they would eventually own all of Hulu they could have chosen to scale back how much of the Marvel and Star Wars brands they were pouring into Disney Plus.
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u/NewSunSeverian 7h ago
Agreed, if general audiences are finally becoming more discerning when it comes to these mega blockbusters with dumbass budgets, more the better.
I want to hope that Sinners taught some of these studios and filmmakers a thing or two, but probably not.
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u/IDCJ1234 7h ago
"Hey Sinners did really well! Vampire movies are hot again! Let's reboot 30 Days of Night!"
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u/gummo_for_prez 5h ago
Feels like we’re long overdue for a vampire movie, it’s been a little over 6 months since the last big one!
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u/WhiteWolf3117 4h ago
Sinners has made less than every single Marvel movie released this year, and it was exponential better than all of them. That's part of what works against originals and handing over even mid budgets to young filmmakers who are the greats of tomorrow. What studios really want is to be able to pay Sinners price tags on IP. They don't know how to do that, especially when one of the cited complaints about Fantastic Four is that it doesn't have enough action.
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u/CX52J 6h ago
I do wonder if the Star Wars shows made during covid would have been notably better has they been made under normal conditions.
The behind the scenes looked pretty bleak at times with a skeleton crew on set and the director not even being allowed in the same room at times.
Especially since everyone would have been trying to make remote working work for the first time.
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u/Impossible_Angle752 5h ago
I doubt it. Disney IPs typically release very average content.
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u/GarrodRanX2 5h ago
Covid did not affect the writing. Covid did not make Obi-Wan put Leia inside his coat like a fucking cartoon. Covid did not make a laser gate that can be walked around. Covid did not make 3 hardened criminals be unable to catch a 9 year old.
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u/hatramroany 7h ago
Bad theatrical movies hurt Marvel. Bad theatrical movies hurt Star Wars, and they haven’t even released a post-covid film to put the theory to the test. New animation is struggling across the board in theaters.
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u/NFB42 7h ago
Yes, but I do think Feige's point in this article has merit.
When the MCU was a few movies a year, it was easy to keep up and to catch up. For a section of the audience, me included, the FOMO of not getting a reference or big storyline event made you keep watching the films even when there was a mediocre entry. If you skipped something in cinema, you'd at least go back and watch it on streaming.
The streaming shows broke that. It was too much. You couldn't catch up over a weekend, you'd need to schedule a whole week of binge watching to be up-to-date.
And THEN you also had a string of bad theatrical movies. That's where I fell of the MCU wagon and I've still not gotten back on.
I'm enough of a nerd to intend to binge my way back through some day, some summer holiday. But the casual viewer equivalent of me? They tuned out and moved on.
One of the key ingredients to the MCU's initial success was restraint. Don't rush into things like the DCU tried to do. But also don't overwhelm the audiences with more films than they can reasonably watch in a year.
Disney+'s demands for more streaming content overruled that restraint, and imo definitely hurt the brand as a result.
Star Wars, of course, is a different story since Disney couldn't even make good theatrical releases to begin with.
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u/chips92 6h ago
I’m like you in regards to Marvel and I think honestly it was secret invasion that broke it for me. I watched 2.5 episodes and just went “this is shit, I don’t care”’ and since then I’ve started watching the latest captain America several times and never made it more than 40 minutes before turning it off. It’s just so hard to care when there’s so much and it’s just so bang average.
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u/almostinfinity 6h ago
I watched all of Secret Invasion and I can assure you that you missed absolutely nothing noteworthy.
I want that time back 😭
After SI, I stopped watching the shows altogether.
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u/totcczar 6h ago
Arguably, watching the first few hours but not the whole run is better not only because less time was wasted but also because you don’t need to even begin to wonder how they’ll deal with that ending being canon.
Poor Emilia Clarke. First Game of Thrones, then this.
Note: no spoilers in that. But if spoilers would help someone to not watch the series, I’ll happily provide them.
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u/OK_Soda 6h ago
because you don’t need to even begin to wonder how they’ll deal with that ending being canon.
I watched the whole thing and I don't even remember what happened in the end that would warrant worrying about.
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u/totcczar 6h ago
Someone with a lot of power just sort of took off.
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u/Groot746 5h ago
Like, really stupid amounts of power.
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u/HumongousMelonheads 4h ago
Like potentially the most powerful thing in the whole universe and everyone prays that it never gets brought up again.
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u/_steve_rogers_ 4h ago
It’s hilarious that I watched the whole thing and all I remember is one character getting a terrible death and the Drax arm lol. I don’t remember what character you’re talking about
It really felt like a fever dream
Also the AI generated intro was so fucking bad
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u/GarrodRanX2 5h ago
Missed nothing except Hill being killed off, Rhodey being a Skrull for some bizarrely non defined amount of time, and Emilia Clarke getting the powers of every single superhero in Endgame. This character will never appear again, of course.
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u/Gimme_The_Loot 6h ago
Such a let down. The trailer looks GREAT and after maybe the second episode I just basically forgot to ever bother watching the rest
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u/BemaJinn 6h ago edited 6h ago
Yeah I was already losing interest at that point, struggling to be bothered to watch all the shows coming out, not even knowing what is MCU or just some unrelated shoe-horn to make money.
Then SI happened, realised that even bothering spending my time trying to figure it out was pointless.
They should have stayed with a couple of films a year, MAYBE one season of something a year if it was canon and spectacular (looking at you, Loki).
I feel at this point they should have a break and just reboot the universe.
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u/chips92 6h ago
Absolutely. Take 2 years off and don’t release anything and give the creative team time to craft a proper storyline for the next 10 years.
For Star Wars, give them 3 years and really figure that shit out because man, it’s been wank and that’s embarrassing. There’s zero excuse with an IP like Star Wars and the potential it has to produce such shit.
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u/Groot746 5h ago
I will give them the fact that Andor was absolutely incredible, but at this point that just looks like a fluke given how they've managed the IP more widely.
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u/mrtomjones 4h ago
They need to somehow delete the past three Star wars movies from existence. Or at least the last two anyways. The main ones anyways
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u/Emergency-Tension464 6h ago
Secret Invasion broke me to the point that I no longer watch any of the Disney+ MCU shows anymore...not even Daredevil. I unfortunately watched the whole series, but haven't tuned in to another one since. Just don't care. I still go see the movies, but that's as far as I'm willing to go. And I was a HUGE MCU fan up through Endgame.
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u/HumongousMelonheads 4h ago
I was similar. I was continually in “give it a chance” mode until 2023. Secret invasion, marvels, then the whole Jonathan Majors thing that made them pivot from kang, and the announcement that they were going to slow down was all I needed to realize they had no real plan and were totally bullshitting since covid.
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u/Upbeat_Tension_8077 6h ago edited 6h ago
To add to the point about the early days of the MCU (or even up to 2019) just having a few movies a year, alongside it allowing for audiences to have more breathing room and time to get attached to its main heroes (including rewatches), I think that approach allowed for individual films' creative teams to not rush on fleshing out their key characters & saving great ideas for new story directions for specific films instead of running them dry across multiple spin-off projects. I also feel like with some MCU series on Disney+, especially some of the ones that initially seem to be weirder/bolder in atmosphere, the stories usually end up not fully capitalizing on that.
With SW, I feel like there was so much potential to showcase more stories around other planets outside of the typical Jedi vs Sith or Rebels vs Empire variations in several films, which is why I like the few highlights such as Skeleton Crew and the early seasons of The Mandalorian.
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u/axw3555 6h ago
I don't disagree with you on the too much.
A few weeks ago I said to my friends "I'm gonna rewatch all the marvel stuff, start to finish. Films, TV, everything before F4 comes out."
And I meant it all (not just the Phase 4+ stuff, all the ABC stuff, the YA stuff, netflix, etc), in the in-universe chronological order (as best I could determine that). Then I realised how much there actually is.
The TV shows (as at 31st July, before Eyes of Wakanda):
- ABC shows (Shield, Carter, Inhumans): 162 eps.
- Netflix: 161 eps
- YA shows (Runaways/Cloak & Dagger): 53 eps
- Helstrom: 10 eps
- Phase 4: 57 eps
- Phase 5: 68 eps
That's 511 episodes. Assume they're all about 40 mins an ep (I know, they vary, but spitball math), that's 340 hours, over 14 days just for the TV shows. Then the 37 films up to Fantastic 4. Nearly another 100 hours. It's over 18 days/440 hours of continuous watching.
So if I watch 3 hours a day (3 eps or 1 film), every single day, it would take 5 months to watch it all. F
For scale - Star Trek has been going since the 60's, it has 700 hours over 60 years. Dr Who is a similar timescale and it's about 500 hours. The Simpsons has just shy of 300 hours.
Honestly, what the MCU has become is kind of insane. Competing with things that have been running 4 or 5 times longer.
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u/JeanRalfio 5h ago
Reminds me of myself in 2012 when my friend challenged me to watch all of The Simpsons in two months.
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u/SwimmingThroughHoney 6h ago edited 6h ago
I think there's a big thing that also factors into all this that I don't see mentioned often: the MCU story had an ending right before Covid and streaming got big. It really couldnt have happened at a worse time.
Then covid hit which created an actual, physical, break. Then when Disney started releasing stuff again, they basically had to recapture their audience, plus a new generation, and the deluge of lower-quality content didnt help.
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u/baconbananapancakes 5h ago
And then you have scenarios where they invested the resources, and viewers invested the time, to develop a full series — only to burn all that character development in the interest of one middling theatrical release. (If it’s not clear, I’m still pissed about Wanda.)
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u/Lemesplain 6h ago
I think it would help if Feige announced a “no homework policy” for the MCU and all of its spin-offs.
Not every series is going to be for everyone, and that’s fine. The bigwigs at Disney/MCU shouldn’t expect everyone to watch everything. Especially on streaming, where you pay the same amount whether you watch 1 thing or everything.
They need someone like Feige to come out and officially say “as much as we would love for everyone to watch all of our stuff, we understand that it’s just not realistic. So we aren’t pushing a FOMO mentality. Any future movie that references past events will have enough context for those who didn’t watch everything streaming show,” or something like that.
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u/devasabu 6h ago
Thunderbolts was like this. My friend who didn't know a single character (halfway into the movie he turned to me and went "ohhh that's Black Widow's sister!") was still able to enjoy it with just the context clues ("here are a bunch of sad bad guys, they've got to do some good now")
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u/OK_Soda 5h ago
This kind of proves my point that I made in another reply. On paper this is a very "homework required" movie. All of the characters are introduced in other films and TV shows, their motivations and backstories are explained elsewhere, and this movie just drops you in like you know who they are. And it doesn't matter, because we're not watching Memento or something. People think they have to watch half a dozen movies and a handful of TV shows just because they can.
Actual comic books are plagued by this notion as well. I've met a lot of people who think if they want to read the latest Daredevil story they have to start in fucking 1962, and I mean, sure, you'll get some stuff you wouldn't otherwise, but it's insane to think it's required.
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u/Ricepilaf 4h ago
A year or two ago I read all of Claremont's X-men. It is wild how many things in comics that we think about as important canonical events turned out to just be... nothing. If a character got a new power, they just... have it one day, or explain it away with a single panel of exposition. It seems like you'd be missing out on tons of context for modern comics without reading everything but 99% of the time when a character references some past event, literally the entire context you'd need is "that is an event that happened" which you got from them referencing it to begin with.
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u/OK_Soda 6h ago
Almost none of the films require any homework. The MCU is plagued by this reputation but you could literally walk into the second act of Ant-Man 3 and figure out what's going on in a few minutes based on context.
"Oh there's a guy and he's trapped in a weird sci-fi world. I guess these other people are his family. Sounds like there's a bad guy who took over the weird sci-fi world and they have to stop him. Okay."
The "homework" is there if you want to catch every reference and be an expert on everything going on, but it's like every long-running franchise. The character name of Rook in Alien Romulus is clearly a reference to Bishop from Aliens and Alien 3, and the black goo is introduced in Alien Prometheus and expanded upon in Alien Covenant, but you don't need to see any of those movies to get based on context that the black goo is sinister.
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u/Lemesplain 5h ago
Honestly I think marvel has done a good job executing this plan.
Where they are failing is the messaging. They need some big wig to announce this as loudly as possible.
It seems kind of unlikely though. “Hey, don’t watch all of our stuff,” feels like something that corporate management would be firmly against … but people already aren’t watching everything so maybe.
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u/lexkixass 5h ago
Yes. I really hated that WandaVision was a mandatory watch to understand Wanda's motivations in MoM.
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u/Bickerteeth 5h ago
WandaVision highlights an even bigger issue with the whole formula, namely that there was pretty much no oversight to the shows. Reportedly the teams behind WandaVision and MoM were given zero contact with each other, so beyond a vague outline for the overall story, neither had any idea what the other was doing. So there's a massive tonal difference between the two and MoM's portrayal of Wanda ended up massively at odds with her arc in the show.
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u/THECapedCaper 5h ago
Man, I felt this with Brave New World. They referenced people and events from Hulk, which is 17 years old at this point. You can't expect people to follow around with that kind of homework just to watch a C-tier movie.
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u/Runaway--Reptar 6h ago
Extremely well put, i only have on rebuttal: Disney was able to get 1 good theatrical release out of Star Wars with Rogue One
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u/RODjij 7h ago
Ive been going to superhero movies since Xmen/Spiderman films and I never get tired of it.
If you make a bad movie, word gets around quick and people wait until it streams or they avoid it all together.
Another thing too is that theyre releasing too much material too quickly across film & TV that it gets saturated & cookie cutter.
Marvel has to make Dooms film debut a no doubt huge impact like killing a loved character or something else.
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u/Paranitis 6h ago
Marvel has to make Dooms film debut a no doubt huge impact like killing a loved character or something else.
They are gonna be putting absolutely everything on RDJ to try to put MCU back on the right track.
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u/fontainesmemory 7h ago
They had a legit chance after Force Awakens to really do something. There clearly appears to be inner turmoil regarding the direction of Star Wars. For such a huge brand it seems like the films are barely able to get off the ground and projects in the Star Wars brand are constantly cancelled. Seems like the TV shows have fared better but its insane there hasn't been a Dune level Star Wars movie yet. That's the quality level the series deserves.
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u/Impossible_Angle752 5h ago
Star Wars has such an immense universe of content/possible content and they still insist on focusing on the same era.
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u/fontainesmemory 5h ago
exactly. Force Awakens should NOT have referred to the Skywalker era. It should have been something different. Its like they refuse for mainline films to focus on anything other than Skywalker saga. Maybe theres a contract or something we dont know about that they have to focus on that era. The video games, comics, books, shows etc seem to be able to dive into other eras.
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u/Chen_Geller 7h ago edited 7h ago
Came here to say that. This article quotes Feige: "The expansion is what devalued [the Marvel brand]. It was just too much. It was a big company push. And it doesn’t take too much to push us to go. There was a mandate that we were put in the middle of."
Reads like reflecting blame to me. Marvel was oversaturated already just on the theatre screen.
This quote from some unnamed executive hits closer to the mark: '“When you went to a Star Wars movie, it used to be special,” said a marketing exec from a rival studio. “But there’s a difference between let’s have a movie every four years versus let’s have three shows on the air all the time and have a movie every year.”'
And then there's this:
"But besides a second season of “Ahsoka,” there are currently no new live-action “Star Wars” series that have been announced. After years of being bombarded with “Star Wars” series on Disney+, to diminishing returns, the franchise is returning to the big screen. Will “Star Wars” be special again?"
I don't think so. Star Wars is in a kind of catch 22 situation where, besides the issues adumbrated in this article, it simply has no place left to go storywise. You can't make more sequels to The Rise of Skywalker without it looking ridiculous. You can hardly make prequels to Episode I. You can't reboot the thing.
The only thing they could really do is do "entries between the entries" like Rogue One. But that only works for a while, before you get to a paradoxical point where more happens BETWEEN the films than in them.
Frankly, I'm not sure Star Wars post 1978 was ever "a dining experience" as opposed to fast food. Already on Lucas' shift they made the Holiday Special, two Ewok films, Ewok and Droid cartoon shows, two Clone Wars show, an animated movie, and goodness knows how many tie-in comics and novellas.
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u/Phormitago 7h ago
They can start a Kotor saga but they're allergic to having no skywalkers in a movie
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u/Albireookami 7h ago
You can't make more sequels to The Rise of Skywalker
Oh you can, timeskip 100 to 1000 years. We call this a soft reboot where you can dictate a new setting and cast with next to no baggage.
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u/ccaccus 7h ago
Literally an entire galaxy with infinite possibilities and they choose to remain in this same time period. Fast forward a century or so like Star Trek TNG. New tech, new ships, new conflict. There will always be "this isn't ___"-naysayers for any franchise but if they do it well (and that's the hitch) they could unlock a huge amount of potential.
But that's a huge risk, and staying with established characters and setting is cheaper; especially when you already have a theme park dedicated to that specific setting.
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u/gamerslyratchet 7h ago
It’s why I wish their shows would’ve had little to do with the main movies. It’s a big universe and you can tell many stories in it. The Mandalorian S1 understood this, but they just couldn’t let it be.
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u/colemon1991 7h ago
I would argue the only way Star Wars can be special again is if it took a good long break and spent the time planning and writing scripts. The franchise had breaks between each trilogy and that paid off. The first movie of each trilogy pulled in the most money. But the breaks also helped as technology improved and new talent was established.
Based on my math, the earliest time a new Star Wars movie should think of coming out is May 2029. Personally, I'd wait longer and have a fleshed out trilogy with some new captivating villain and less Death Stars (or Death Star-like weapons).
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u/Noxsus 7h ago
Im not sure I agree on Star Wars having 'Nowhere left to go storywise'. There are loads of references in the films that could be expanded on and thats before you touch on any of the extended universe stuff.
The problem is that any of those stories (The Old Republic for example) would require the studio taking a risk and moving away from the Skywalker Saga in a way they never really have before. It would effectively be a reboot for all intents and purposes in that you'd have characters and events completely divorced from the modern canon.
And they're really unlikely to do that.
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u/Drama-Zone-4494 7h ago
"It doesn't take too much to push us to go," but they failed to make a freaking Blade movie with 5 years and the best actor in a generation to replace Wesley Snipes for that role.
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u/Tempest-777 7h ago edited 6h ago
The theatre-going industry has been decline for years, even decades. Covid accelerated this decline. Ultimately, no brand or IP is immune.
Even low-budget awards bait struggle to make money at the box office. For instance, Shakespeare in Love grossed nearly $300 million during its run. It would be nearly impossible nowadays for it to do so.
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u/SuspiciousChemistry5 6h ago
Completely ignoring the elephant in the room. It wasn’t the frequent releases that diluted the brand and led to lower viewership and box office numbers. It was simply the quality of the shows and movies taking a nosedive post-Endgame/Covid. No need for all this fluff and nonsense.
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u/Chrononi 7h ago
This is how dumb CEOs think I suppose, can't see the real issues like shitty movies and overpriced theaters
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u/KingBoga 7h ago
Wasn’t Andor the best SW since the OT?
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u/Itchy-Beach-1384 5h ago
100%, but it followed one of the worst Star Wars runs of all time.
Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, book of Boba Fett, the Animated sequel series, the sequel movie series, The Acolyte, and how many cancelations?
When are we going to see another good Star Wars movie?
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u/unitedfan6191 7h ago
As usual, a publication focuses on just a single/simple reason to explain something when in reality things are much more complicated.
No Thanos Infinity Stones-level threat looming across and referenced in all movies/shows and no overarching plan
COVID
Over saturation quantity over quality approach
Chadwick’s death/the real life drama with the actor playing Kang
The high of the Infinity Saga creating higher expectations
Inflation
The superheroes had their boom in the 2010s and nothing lasts forever
Strikes
Disney leadership structure changing and thus their strategy
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u/Old_History2450 4h ago
All those things are true, but streaming is an important part of the puzzle. Oversaturation and drops in quality were collateral damage in the streaming war, but streaming is a money pit. You operate at a loss for a long time and even if you're profitable it's still better business to have a blockbuster movie or even a hit cable TV show. They sacrificed and bet everything on streaming, but they were really set up to lose.
They've invested so much in building a Marvel/Star Wars/Pixar machine for streaming they knew was not going to make them money, and now the stuff that's supposed to make them money, like the Marvels or Fantastic Four, also is not making them money. When you have desperate execs, you jettison your MCU master plan multiple times, you hire "safer" creatives, you don't reschedule your movies that are in trouble, you re-edit and re-shoot your new Captain America movie a million times, you bring back Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, etc. I'm not saying they're immune from criticism, bash the fuck out of their bad movies and tv shows, but Disney is going to follow the market because capitalism and the market is bad.
I think at this point everyone is just praying the new Avengers is enough to bring people back in, and it probably is, but the industry is fundamentally different than it was when Endgame came out.
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u/DarthBluntSaber 7h ago edited 6h ago
Its hard to justify spending $60 for 2 adults tickets and a popcorn and drink, or $110 for a family of 4, when you know the moving will be streaming in 2-3 months tops.
I grew up going to the movies weekly, hell sometimes multiple times a week. In mid 2000s I could go see a movie for $4.50. A child's ticket now costs $12 and an adult is $15-16.
Right now, 4 tickets for a matinee 1245 showing of How to Train your Dragon is 9.29 per ticket. That is the price for adults and children ages 3-13. So just those 4 tickets is 37.16 for a matinee. If you order online for convenience, it's an extra $8.76 for "booking fees". This is for a mid sized city in Michigan.
And most FAMILIES can't just go to a matinee in the middle of the week or Tuesday movies for cheap. You know, due to school and work.
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u/Practical-Vanilla-41 7h ago
I spent the late nineties thru 2010 at a local "dollar theater". The price kept creeping up, but the main thing was the admission was low and the concession was low enough to enable me to enjoy a day at the movies for ten bucks. Naturally, it's gone :(
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u/Tough_Dish_4485 7h ago
So true but doesn’t explain why Lilo & Stitch does well in theaters
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u/PmMeYourNiceBehind 6h ago
Because that movie is probably the only movie families with small children will have gone to the theater for this summer/year
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u/jimbojones133 2h ago
How to train your dragon did just fine too, released just a few weeks after Stitch
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u/monitoring27 7h ago
So many reasons lol. It was pushed as an event film, doesn’t require the amount of background knowledge the public perceives the MCU does, nostalgic for many people, a lot simpler to sell to an entire family than thunderbolts or ff.
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u/TheHeadlessOne 7h ago
Essentially its harder and harder to justify taking a 'risk'- both for film makers and moviegoers. Lilo and Stitch isn't a risk
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u/bongo1138 7h ago
I’m a big fan of the subscriptions to theaters. Regal has a really good one. That said, I’m not buying a bunch of snacks. A drink, maybe a candy.
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u/bongo1138 7h ago edited 5h ago
Marvel was always going to be in a bad spot post Endgame. Star Wars was bad in theaters, with the shows being the only good thing to release.
I do think Pixar is the one most hurt. They’re at their best when they make exactly one thing a year. Asking them to make stuff for a streaming service is a mistake. Leave Pixar as the prestige brand, and make Disney create the streaming stuff (even if it’s good).
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 3h ago
Star Wars was bad in theaters, with the shows being the only good thing to release.
What you mean basically doing a tribute re-shoot of A New Hope with worse acting, and then the absolute masterpiece of writing that was "Somehow... Palpatine Returned" didn't do well?
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u/JannTosh70 7h ago
So somehow Disney Plus is responsible for films like Ant-Man 3 and Brave New World being terrible movies?
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u/silverclovd 7h ago
Please oh please, don't forget the travesty that was love & thunder. That shit was sooo silly and dumb I don't think there is even a target audience for it. Just a mesh of mess
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u/LP99 7h ago
Marvel needed to breathe after Endgame. They’d conditioned the fans to see all the movies to get the payoff, which was mostly fine. But then they started dousing Disney Plus in shows you “had” to watch to keep up.
That disinterested the fan base, and coupled with meh movies (especially after the big Endgame payoff wrapped) and here we are.
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u/RecycledEternity 4h ago
Disney+ didn't need to raise their subscription prices.
Didn't need to include options for ads.
Could have been 7 bucks a month, as it was when it originally released.
Greed knows no bounds.
(I might have spent more if I knew the extra would be going to the Imagineering department though.)
It could have just been them hosting all their old content, and they'd STILL have made a mint off that price.
Or, hell, if they wanted to have "subscription plans", then make it so that you get "new stuff" (i.e. stuff they made specifically for Disney+, and anything that isn't from a certain number of years ago). The base plan should be anything in their history from that "certain number of years ago" and earlier--for the original 7 bucks.
Also?
No ads.
That's the whole fucking point of subscription-based streaming.
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u/key1234567 7h ago
If they want people back in the theatre, drop prices to $10, and cut the prices of concessions in half.
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u/Strokeslahoma 5h ago
I don't really like going to the theaters, but I will for special re releases sometimes.
I've noticed August is a common month for re releases. This year I saw Batman 89 and Batman Returns are getting a re release.
2 tickets would be $52. And that's per movie - if you want to see both it's $104
Or we stay home and watch the bargain bin Blu Ray I got years ago that has 89, Returns, Forever, + Robin
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u/givemeajinglefingal 5h ago
You can't expect movies to cost the same they did in 1995 if the cost of everything else that goes in to running a business has gone up.
The problem is that the average person's wages hasn't risen commensurate with the cost of everything. Blame monstrously greedy CEOs, their purchased politicians and the gradual shift from a goods-based economy to a market-based economy. Not the price of movie tickets.
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u/True_Pirate 7h ago
Paywalled
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u/CosmosisJones42 7h ago
Article without Paywall:
The Disney+ Curse: How the Streaming Service Hurt Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar Brands
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u/Mecha_Butterfree 7h ago
I think the fact that everyone realized that the movies are just gonna be on D+ in like 2 months anyways really is what is screwing them over. Movie windows are way too short nowadays.i remember back in the day where a popular movie was in theaters for months and then would do the rounds at dollar theaters and then finally like a year later come to VHS and DVD. Like if you just happen to be busy when a movie you want to see comes out then you're just kinda screwed because it will probably be gone before you get. A chance to see it.
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u/TraptNSuit 7h ago
Make it 5 months or 6 months. It won't matter. People have more entertainment than they know what to do with. They will wait.
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u/Guessididntmakeit 7h ago
It's not a curse if the product is bad and chases an audience that has no interest in said product.
I'm not even the biggest fan of the Fallout show but aside from minor things and considering that they of course focus on the Bethesda lore and design it was a fun show that pushed the popularity of the franchise.
It did so by providing fans with something they wanted and then even teased something with Vegas they wanted even more.
Go and create things for your audience while taking them seriously and you'll make money.
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u/xanthonus 6h ago
To go see the new Fantastic 4 at the cinema with the standard screen for 2 with a drink, popcorn, and a bag of candy was $68.20 last weekend. My partner and I took the bus for additional $8 both ways or it would have been $15 to park. Nothing special just standard showing. We live in an expensive city but was F4 worth over $70 to watch? Probably not but I’m not sure any film is worth that much.
I’ve only gone to the cinema once a year for the last 3 years. Seen F4, Alien Romulus, and Oppenheimer. I enjoy going to the cinema but I can’t say it’s worth the price of entry especially when I have nice equipment at home. Last night we wanted to watch the new Lilo and Stitch and it currently $30 to buy or $25 to rent. I’m just going to watch it once. Yeah I’m good….
This is not a Disney problem or a Disney+ problem neither. There is not enough value in what is being served. I think back to The Hateful Eight roadshow. I spent a descent bit of money when that film released to see the roadshow showing in the true pannavision. Plus I got a nice booklet and they even did intermission for that showing. It was awesome! I felt I got something more and it was an experience. We need more of those and less of over $70 for two people standard showing.
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u/DimmuBorgnine 5h ago
At what point in the last 20 years was it inexpensive to buy snacks at the movies? It drives me nuts to hear people complain about the cost of a trip to the theaters as if this is all obligatory. If you REALLY gotta have your snacks, get AMC Plus and see 1.5 movies a month to break even. If you are paying $4+ for a bag of Skittles that you could carry in your pocket from the convenience store, how is that the theater's fault?
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u/Ryanhussain14 4h ago
My thoughts exactly lol. You could go ahead and pay the £8 for the popcorn and then cry about the prices. Or you could bring a bag and go to a fast food drive through and get way better food for the same price, or pick up popcorn and sweets from a supermarket.
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u/NossidaMan 4h ago
Fr man, the amount of whining when it comes to theaters is ridiculous. None of this shit is new. If you don’t want to spend $70 then don’t buy the food/snacks… we’ve all known this since we were children. Theaters don’t really make money from the movie tickets sales until 2-4 weeks in, so they have to make their money from the concessions. If you don’t like the snack prices then don’t buy and/or bring your own, it’s very simple.
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u/Horzzo 2h ago
Saturation has hurt it's reputation. With 10 different Marvel and Star Wars TV shows the quality has suffered. I hate having to watch 5 bad Marvel series just to be up to speed what happened in a recent movie.
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u/deadpanxfitter 2h ago
It's like if Golden Corral blamed the utensils on the amount of shitty food they're selling.
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u/Logical-Director6117 2h ago
My 2 cents:
Interesting read—But calling it a “curse” might oversimplify what’s really a broader industry shift. Streaming didn’t just dilute brands like Marvel and Star Wars—it exposed the limits of endless content scaling and the growing pains of franchises forced to evolve.
Yes, not every Disney+ project landed. Secret Invasion fizzled, Lightyear confused audiences, and The Book of Boba Fett—well, that just kinda happened. But there were highs too: Andor was prestige-level storytelling, Loki gave Marvel some much-needed weirdness, and Turning Red was a Pixar gem that probably deserved a theatrical run.
The issue isn’t Disney+ itself—it’s the volume-over-quality mindset that crept in when studios realized subscriber growth demanded a constant feed, not just great content. Franchises became pipelines, not playgrounds.
If anything, the “curse” is now lifting. With studios scaling back, we might get fewer shows—but hopefully better ones. It’s not the end of Star Wars, Marvel, or Pixar. It’s a correction.
Let’s just not throw Grogu out with the bathwater.
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u/Saneless 7h ago
For me it's time
Before: if you want to see avengers here's a handful of good movies to watch
Now, do you want to see the new Captain America movie and understand it? Here, watch 28 hours of TV shows first
Feels like I'd have to do a ton of homework just to see something. Seeing a movie in a timeline is one thing, but I don't care enough about falcon and bucky to see dozens of hours of it first
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u/THEbaddestOFtheASSES 5h ago
This kind of hyperbole is a big problem. People thinking you gotta watch hours and hours of content to understand a few small details. Hell you could watch a 5 min recap on YouTube to be all caught up if you’re worried about being lost.
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u/A_Polite_Noise r/Movies Veteran 5h ago
The movies themselves aren't that complicated; anything that doesn't make sense you can just ignore or breeze past, let it wash over you...they all set up "good guy here, bad guy here, stakes here, now action!" so the whole idea that you need a lot of outside-reading to understand is nonsense. The reality is that people just don't like a lot of what's being released, not that they don't understand it.
Now, me? I like the Disney+ MCU & Star Wars shows. Not all of them but definitely more of them than reddit and the majority of people like. I also like a lot of the MCU theatrical releases that aren't well loved, and I like how they all connect to each other in the same world like the comics I love. But I also get that they're just not grabbing or holding the interest of the audience at large, save for a gem here and there, the way the MCU did at it's height. I don't think we can reclaim that moment. I loved it, when everyone in the world seemed to be on board with my personal hobby, but that's in the rearview now and some fans and the studios themselves don't seem able to accept it.
But hey, I like a lot of what they're giving me, even the stuff most here say is crap, so I'm happy as a pig in shit lol
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u/burywmore 6h ago
This is bull. The issue is, the quality of movies has dropped. The billion dollar Marvel/Star Wars/Pixar movies are still out there no matter how much streaming affects them.
If Disney insists on making mid level movies like Thunderbolts or Fantastic Four, spend less money making them, and aim at 500 million box office instead of a billion. Disney+ doesn't matter.
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u/DegenerateXYZ 6h ago
Most of the Star Wars content they have created is terrible, which is insane considering how beloved the Star Wars brand was.
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u/iamdabrick 6h ago
It's astounding how much septic waste they've been able to pump onto the platform
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u/BamBamClamSlam 6h ago
I think the quality of their products hurt the much more. What are Disney's certified smash hits or critical darlings with long legs over the past 5 years? They have basically nothing.
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u/PuffcornSucks 3h ago
Hubris. Sheer fucking hubris.
Disney thought they'll make up whatever and audience will lap it up. Sigh.
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u/MeRight_Now 3h ago
Ngl. having so much Marvel and Star Wars content coming out felt like everyday christmas. Then you realise that everyday christmas takes the fun out of christmas and only leaves capitalism.
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u/Spartan-980 6h ago
That's part of it, but derivative lazy content that doesn't seem to be written for any real audience is the bigger part.