Just fold the studio into Disney and kill it already. Make Toy Story sequels till the sun fucking burns out. Love how this shift conveniently happened when more woman/POC were really pushing to direct their own stories. Defining their experiences as not "universal" is saying the quiet part aloud.
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This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Luca and turning red are brilliant movies. You don’t have to be gay or Asian to “get” them. I am neither!
Disney will look back at this time (I hope) and realise it's the 1960's revisited.
The fired the last CEO for a reason.
How did we not make more money it must be the wokeness.
As an elder millennial, my physical therapist recommended sleeping with a pillow or stuffed animal to prop up my shoulder and it is the perfect size. So. Perfect merch for older millennials 🤣
They could have brought back some kitschy weird Y2k tech and aesthetic stuff (like fake flip phones, music players, etc) and Gen Z'ers would have absolutely ate that shit up.
I mean, if anything, Encanto shows that Disney's animated hits have nothing to do with "universality" or "common experience" dogwhistles.
I really feel like this movie was sabotaged intentionally, at least by marketing 😔
Whoever is behind Disney merch does not believe that women characters matter, or that personal experiences of women matter, even when they are the heroes.
I mean no, of course this movie is awesome, who's f***ing advice was that from ??
https://www.britannica.com/art/tragedy-literature/Theory-of-tragedy
Purely anecdotal, but I saw people bouncing off Elemental because it looked by-the-numbers. Not because it was a new IP
I don’t really think the ‘anti-gay’ thing factors in. Reactionaries make examples out of movies after they flop, and ignore successful movies with queer characters
Wall Street be damned
I gave them the benefit of the doubt when they sent things straight to Disney+ in the Covid era. I'm not doing that again, especially after watching them do their best to sabotage Elemental's performance
They really just want to maintain the damn status quo and appeal to your average American who's allergic to anything that doesn't conform to their comfort zone.
And INSIDE OUT? Spectacular omg.. Why the fuck....
And in a few years time it'll be "why is nobody watching our movies any more?" and "why is everyone cancelling their subs?"
Capitalism really does suck the life out of everything.
Billionaires and money monkeys only value profit. They do not possess, understand, or value creativity. Most of them are literally incapable of having an artistic experience.
It's also useful to remember that the money monkeys are 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘶𝘴. They don't care about art unless it displays their wealth or make them wealthier.
The point I'm making is that we're responding to this negatively because we're fundamentally different from the 'big bad corporate man.'
It's easy to vilify the big bad corporate man because he is evil and too powerful.
(please note: the board has determined that all future iterations of 'Big Bad Corporate Man' must now be presented as 'Big GOOD Corporate Man.' Any portrayal of 'Bad' will likely not generate significant profit.)
Even Walt Disney almost bankrupted his studio with Pinocchio and Fantasia. You can’t make art if you don’t make money.
There's the quotes mentioned but then stuff like "we're doing new things!" "We're focusing on tested properties" "we want it to be universal" "this is based on the director's daughter"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-30/disney-s-inside-out-2-could-hold-key-to-pixar-restoring-movie-magic
Red was crazy antics and had my kids laughing their asses off?
Is this just because “universal appeal” must mean “aimed at boys and male experiences because girls can identify with boys but not the other way around?”
FFS
Differing perspectives, relatability, or creativity in the products of billionaire-backed movie studies are only worth the $$$ they generate and nothing else.
God forbid movies should center a Canadian-Asian teen, an Italian boy, or a Black jazz musician from New York. How dare they tell stories about people who aren’t American and white!
Regressive and shameful.
Companies often execute their programming through people, but they do not possess human values, despite often pretending to
Theoretically... it'd be awkward if Docter had ever based a character on his own daughter or something
I turned into a giant red panda, that was crazy - Domee Shi
"..dude, did you even READ what you were basing yourselves on?"
"We never do, why?"
Oh so like, the good ones?
Movies exist to tell stories, I genuinely don't understand them saying "less of that please."
In the original script Wade's mom was a racist city councilman or something that tried to kill firepower with the leak purposefully and WOW glad that was changed
So they are very easy to trick.
Elemental moved me to tears; who can't relate to a story about family lore and love? (And, as a great-grandchild of immigrants, I found commonalities in my family's lore.)
Also? It was not marketed correctly AT ALL and *that's* on the studio.
Warner bros: in so much f*cking debt, after canceling several upcoming animated projects for tax write off along with gutting hbo max and cartoon network entirely.
Domee Shi has been working at Pixar so long, she is in all the videos explaining Pixar story development to kids. I can't believe how dirty this is doing her. They finally let someone who isn't a white dude direct a film, and then do this. Puke.
wait...
And “Commonality of experience” sure as hell sounds like “nothing wrong with strong white cowboys and astronauts”
It was the DEI question.
The panel with a cis-het-male gender rep got upset when I was impassioned about diversity and picked the dude bro over me.
also, best dragon in any Disney/ Pixar film, yes I'm counting Maleficent's kaiju form
But fuck, the first ten minutes always has me crying, and I FEEL so many elements of the story.
Not….. starting with vague “commonalities”
Great directors have always used their personal experiences as a guide to their craft. Guess what? Many times, these experiences are "universal."
An impersonal, corporate-driven conglomerate of homogeny does not achieve anything but failure.
People relate more to your work when it's specific and personal, even if it's not a total recreation of their experience. When they try to make it appeal to everyone, that's when it feels vague.
Yet I related to Turning Red because I know what it's like to feel stifled and I get parental estrangement.
I also had Tim Horton's in my home town and got excited to see it in a movie lmao
yeah they weren’t massive cultural hits because you made them both direct-to-streaming amidst the pandemic! we know this! get your heads out your asses!
Turning Red was fun, not as much my thing but said kid (then 6) loved it.
Disney took the golden goose, made a shitty mayo from the eggs, and spreads it over too much bread.
and their hollow, substance-less stories will be forgotten and left behind in the annals of human culture.
If they desire cheap, disposable products,
then that's all they'll produce
And all cause the alternative is giving women, LGBT, and POC folks a voice.
Or is directing now reduced to “Brand Management and Strategic Product Placement” (“How can we maximize this for toy sales?”)
I'm frankly bored of movies with "broad appeal."
What a way to shoot yourself in the god damn foot 🫠
And hey, I’m a CIS-het white dude. All it takes to relate is a little fucking empathy.
Our descendants are going to be fishing those toys out of the oceans for centuries!
Like literally prevent Pixar from ever having a hit again?
Are they just trying to kill the studio?
You made some great dad, movies, you really did! But your audience is not exclusively dads.
Just make a good film and market it properly?
Can't help but notice that their animated shows by LGBT+/women/PoC creators with non-white male leads keep getting shafted and cancelled way too soon despite popularity and critical acclaim.
but to make every movie about only common denominators of life? MORE THAN ONCE?!
Women will literally make the second most-streamed movie of 2022 rather than go to therapy, amirite fellas?
/rhetorical
/sarcasm
Heaven forbid there's a movie about a girl going through puberty, though apparently. Not like boys can't relate to puberty in general
(I was referring to the "first universal caption" referenced in this article) https://itsbrianlarue.com/2021/09/08/the-fifth-universal-new-yorker-caption-almost-positive-youre-in-the-wrong-panel-my-guy/
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt6587046/
The same Disney that saw fucking incels screeching after Star Wars Episode VIII
ACTUALLY ATTEMPTED SOMETHING, ANYTHING
But no, gotta listen to the fucking manbabies
And so we got that IX slop that I don't even want to acknowledge
The other points everyone is bringing up here I agree with.
Still agree with the rest of the points, however.
Everyone not male/white/cis/straight: Hey, you need to include our stories too
White guys: haha, why would we do that?
Everyone else: because we have money too?
WGs: ok, I wrote a side kick
EE: urgh, that's nothing like us
(Cont)
EE: :does so, is successful:
WGs: no way this is awful. I can't see myself in this at all
EE: duh, that's what we said
WGs: We're going to protest and complain and roll back your rights
EE: You could try learning empathy for others
Which is a slur by the way.
EE: There are literally centuries worth of those autobiographies. Your stories are so last century
That’s literally why movies are made, *every* director finds catharsis in telling their story from their perspective. But if it’s POC doing it, suddenly it’s too indulgent and unrelatable 🤷
Do they want a world without The Iron Giant?
Did that mean me as a caucasian raise in Euro-centeric view point, did understand it? Heck no, and what's more it let me ask questions of my partner and learn more about here chinese heritage
Everyone talking about Luca makes me want to check it out too
Almost everything in this entire country is going ass backwards, this shit included, and I'm effing tired of it