Yes, but they also brought back piracy, eroded faith in the brand, and while Disney+ is making money…
Disney’s newer efforts are kinda showing it’s not the powerhouse it used to be. With the only thing they really have going for them are the legacy media that they’re holding hostage on a platform, they arbitrarily removes things from time to time for seemingly no reason (the Willow series for example, which makes very little sense since that was original to Disney+ to begin with and for some reason Buzz Lightyear of Star Command isn’t on the platform despite all the other Toy Story media being present… and there are several episodes of The Simpsons that are just straight up memory-holed; most infamously the Michael Jackson episode)
If this trend continues, Disney will be left with people pirating the legacy media that people at home have shaky access to at best (Monthly fee for content that may be removed with no notice and for no reason), especially as prices soar and wages stay the same, and interest in newer project dwindling.
Or to be blunt, one of the most classic blunders: High short term profits at the cost of being unsustainable in the long term.
Sure it’s easy to think of Disney as laughing its way to the bank, but… think of it this way.
Disney’s been king of the world, especially in animation (Which has been getting sidelined in favor of live-action. I guarantee if Mufasa was animated it’d be running neck and neck with Sonic 3 instead of lagging behind). They’re a luxury limousine running fast on a road that has no other cars (because Disney bought those cars), and the tank’s running out of gas. You won’t know it’s running on fumes until it comes to a complete stop, but at the speed it’s going it will take awhile…
And the second it stops, a simple fuel service isn’t going to get it running again. It will get running again, too many people need it to run. So they’ll call a mechanic, and it will take to the streets once more.
Is Disney cooked? of course not, but they will see a return of their darkest days. A decade or two of the Disney brand no longer being that shining seal of quality people take it for.
I see it comparable to Nintendo’s Wii-U days when the company was a joke with no 3rd Party support and consumers who weren’t even sure what the Wii-U was even supposed to be. (Too many passed on it, believing it to be an overpriced gimmicky tablet add-on for the Wii… The launch title being NSMBU instead of something fans hadn’t already seen before I think is a big part of the blame for that.)
Nintendo didn’t wind up in bankruptcy, but they’d need to reinvent the wheel via the Switch, win back 3rd Party Support, and rekindle the faith of the fans, to get back to being a power house.
Given Disney’s stranglehold on animation and general lack of interest in high quality 2d animation it’s been quite interesting seeing the market for high quality foreign animation grow so much. At one time Studio Ghibli relied on Disney for distribution in the US, but now they’re a name that can stand on its own (and with the gkids acquisition/merger we should be seeing more Japanese animation hitting American screens and theatres)
I have to expect foreign and indie animation studios to continue to grow in market share as Disney continues to ignore 2d animation and continues it’s overly rapid production schedules that don’t allow for the quality.
Simply put, you watch a non-disney animated film or even just any of Disney’s animated films from before they killed hand drawn animation and there’s so much quality lost, where you go from every single frame being it’s own masterpiece of artwork to just enough set dressing to not look out of place but good luck finding a still you’d want to hang on your wall.
I give it about 10 years before Disney is forced to course correct. Just long enough for kids who haven’t seen a good animated film released by Disney their entire childhoods to become teens/adults and start paying to consume competitors content instead
Don’t forget another thing in common between Nintendo and Disney: lawsuits. And obsession with intellectual property. Not required to be against their own fans, but it is preferred.
I love that IGN reviewed both movies and gave Sonic a 6 out of 10 despite saying it’s the “Best movie of the franchise” and that Jim Carey was amazing as both Dr. Robotnik and Dr. Robotnik. (For the record Sonic 1 and 2 were given a 7)
And that Mufasa was given an 8 out of 10 despite IGN’s review struggling to come up with anything nice to say.
It not only validates my own (low) opinion of IGN and their track record of hating on Sonic just because it’s Sonic, but it makes me laugh. We’re seeing big corporations slowly losing control.
They can’t tell us what we should like and not like anymore. The market has never been freer to decide what movies they like and what games to play. (Balatro being the only real game at the Awards with Remake, DLC, and Tech Demo being the other options is kind of hillarious)
Also it’s kinda weird, a movie inspired by Hamlet that demands to be taken seriously is considered low grade shlock, and an adaptation of a twenty year old old video game who’s greatest literary contribution is children’s comic books made to promote games, toys, and t-shirts is considered the PEAK of Cinema… Especially when such a thing is actually a sign of society recovering from brainwashing and not falling deeper into it.
I can hear Ebert rolling in his grave and I’m here for it.
I’ll also say this, Sonic 3 is a god damn masterpiece. It got me to take Maria’s death seriously.
In the games Maria Robotnik is such a shallow one-note character who I don’t even dislike, because there isn’t enough of her to form an opinion on one way or another.
Now sure, I’m happy to slap the shit out of anyone who’d dishonor her memory, but… I’m doing that as Shadow, to SHADOW she’s the only real friend he’s ever had. To me, she’s just a cheap attempt to get invested to take a story trying WAY too hard to be grimdark when all I really wanna do is go fast and eat ass grab rings.
Most Sonic characters serve a gameplay function, so all you really need is their archetype. Flying tech guy, Punchy boy, Lovesick Hammer Girl, Kicky boob lady, Skatebird with a skateboard, Trunks-from-DBZ and his crazy physics engine! (Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Rouge, Jet, and Silver)
Shadow however needs his narrative to back him up or else he’s just “Emo Sonic”
So I’ve seen Maria die many, many times, and honestly it keeps getting funnier as she slowly devolved from “Cheap tearjerker bait” to “Meme”
Sonic 3 gave Maria a character, actually showed her bonding with Shadow, and took her so seriously that if she were in any other movie franchise; This would be a film about a girl who makes friends with an alien and with the power of friendship is able to show everyone that he means no harm, and that it doesn’t matter what you look like, and all that with everyone singing a silly song over a campfire…
Sorry Maria, but this aint your faerie tale, it’s Shadow’s grim fable.
So when she died, she did something no Maria story, not in games, comics, or anime has ever done before. Even though I knew it was coming she made me feel, shock, anger, and misery to such an extent that it was all too easy to sympathize with Shadow’s pain.
I can’t prove the data wrong, but I will say it’s not particularly uncommon for businesses to move money around in an effort to make new product seem better or more profitable than it is. Tons of incentives to do so, little reason not to.
Disney Plus generated $8.4 billion revenue in 2023, an 13% increase year-on-year.
lol
Yes, but they also brought back piracy, eroded faith in the brand, and while Disney+ is making money…
Disney’s newer efforts are kinda showing it’s not the powerhouse it used to be. With the only thing they really have going for them are the legacy media that they’re holding hostage on a platform, they arbitrarily removes things from time to time for seemingly no reason (the Willow series for example, which makes very little sense since that was original to Disney+ to begin with and for some reason Buzz Lightyear of Star Command isn’t on the platform despite all the other Toy Story media being present… and there are several episodes of The Simpsons that are just straight up memory-holed; most infamously the Michael Jackson episode)
If this trend continues, Disney will be left with people pirating the legacy media that people at home have shaky access to at best (Monthly fee for content that may be removed with no notice and for no reason), especially as prices soar and wages stay the same, and interest in newer project dwindling.
Or to be blunt, one of the most classic blunders: High short term profits at the cost of being unsustainable in the long term.
Sure it’s easy to think of Disney as laughing its way to the bank, but… think of it this way.
Disney’s been king of the world, especially in animation (Which has been getting sidelined in favor of live-action. I guarantee if Mufasa was animated it’d be running neck and neck with Sonic 3 instead of lagging behind). They’re a luxury limousine running fast on a road that has no other cars (because Disney bought those cars), and the tank’s running out of gas. You won’t know it’s running on fumes until it comes to a complete stop, but at the speed it’s going it will take awhile…
And the second it stops, a simple fuel service isn’t going to get it running again. It will get running again, too many people need it to run. So they’ll call a mechanic, and it will take to the streets once more.
Is Disney cooked? of course not, but they will see a return of their darkest days. A decade or two of the Disney brand no longer being that shining seal of quality people take it for.
I see it comparable to Nintendo’s Wii-U days when the company was a joke with no 3rd Party support and consumers who weren’t even sure what the Wii-U was even supposed to be. (Too many passed on it, believing it to be an overpriced gimmicky tablet add-on for the Wii… The launch title being NSMBU instead of something fans hadn’t already seen before I think is a big part of the blame for that.)
Nintendo didn’t wind up in bankruptcy, but they’d need to reinvent the wheel via the Switch, win back 3rd Party Support, and rekindle the faith of the fans, to get back to being a power house.
Given Disney’s stranglehold on animation and general lack of interest in high quality 2d animation it’s been quite interesting seeing the market for high quality foreign animation grow so much. At one time Studio Ghibli relied on Disney for distribution in the US, but now they’re a name that can stand on its own (and with the gkids acquisition/merger we should be seeing more Japanese animation hitting American screens and theatres)
I have to expect foreign and indie animation studios to continue to grow in market share as Disney continues to ignore 2d animation and continues it’s overly rapid production schedules that don’t allow for the quality.
Simply put, you watch a non-disney animated film or even just any of Disney’s animated films from before they killed hand drawn animation and there’s so much quality lost, where you go from every single frame being it’s own masterpiece of artwork to just enough set dressing to not look out of place but good luck finding a still you’d want to hang on your wall.
I give it about 10 years before Disney is forced to course correct. Just long enough for kids who haven’t seen a good animated film released by Disney their entire childhoods to become teens/adults and start paying to consume competitors content instead
I give it five
Don’t forget another thing in common between Nintendo and Disney: lawsuits. And obsession with intellectual property. Not required to be against their own fans, but it is preferred.
But mufasa IS animated
It’s also shit. Animation only goes so far.
Say what you will about Sonic. No one involved in those films is having a bad time. There’s a lotta heart there and it shows.
Mufasa is shlok incarnate.
I love that IGN reviewed both movies and gave Sonic a 6 out of 10 despite saying it’s the “Best movie of the franchise” and that Jim Carey was amazing as both Dr. Robotnik and Dr. Robotnik. (For the record Sonic 1 and 2 were given a 7)
And that Mufasa was given an 8 out of 10 despite IGN’s review struggling to come up with anything nice to say.
It not only validates my own (low) opinion of IGN and their track record of hating on Sonic just because it’s Sonic, but it makes me laugh. We’re seeing big corporations slowly losing control.
They can’t tell us what we should like and not like anymore. The market has never been freer to decide what movies they like and what games to play. (Balatro being the only real game at the Awards with Remake, DLC, and Tech Demo being the other options is kind of hillarious)
Also it’s kinda weird, a movie inspired by Hamlet that demands to be taken seriously is considered low grade shlock, and an adaptation of a twenty year old old video game who’s greatest literary contribution is children’s comic books made to promote games, toys, and t-shirts is considered the PEAK of Cinema… Especially when such a thing is actually a sign of society recovering from brainwashing and not falling deeper into it.
I can hear Ebert rolling in his grave and I’m here for it.
I’ll also say this, Sonic 3 is a god damn masterpiece. It got me to take Maria’s death seriously.
In the games Maria Robotnik is such a shallow one-note character who I don’t even dislike, because there isn’t enough of her to form an opinion on one way or another.
Now sure, I’m happy to slap the shit out of anyone who’d dishonor her memory, but… I’m doing that as Shadow, to SHADOW she’s the only real friend he’s ever had. To me, she’s just a cheap attempt to get invested to take a story trying WAY too hard to be grimdark when all I really wanna do is go fast and
eat assgrab rings.Most Sonic characters serve a gameplay function, so all you really need is their archetype. Flying tech guy, Punchy boy, Lovesick Hammer Girl, Kicky boob lady, Skatebird with a skateboard, Trunks-from-DBZ and his crazy physics engine! (Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Rouge, Jet, and Silver)
Shadow however needs his narrative to back him up or else he’s just “Emo Sonic”
So I’ve seen Maria die many, many times, and honestly it keeps getting funnier as she slowly devolved from “Cheap tearjerker bait” to “Meme”
Sonic 3 gave Maria a character, actually showed her bonding with Shadow, and took her so seriously that if she were in any other movie franchise; This would be a film about a girl who makes friends with an alien and with the power of friendship is able to show everyone that he means no harm, and that it doesn’t matter what you look like, and all that with everyone singing a silly song over a campfire…
Sorry Maria, but this aint your faerie tale, it’s Shadow’s grim fable.
So when she died, she did something no Maria story, not in games, comics, or anime has ever done before. Even though I knew it was coming she made me feel, shock, anger, and misery to such an extent that it was all too easy to sympathize with Shadow’s pain.
You know what I mean
I can’t prove the data wrong, but I will say it’s not particularly uncommon for businesses to move money around in an effort to make new product seem better or more profitable than it is. Tons of incentives to do so, little reason not to.
Also since you quote revenue not profit, they were still net unprofitable as of 2023 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/streaming-profit-report-netflix-disney-warners-paramount-nbcu-1235868631/
Didn’t Xbox do something like this? I heard they converted all remaining Xbox Live subscribers to Xbox Game Pass.
And they somehow just became profitable… while also already legacy owning thr vast majority of content