The Quickening: The problems modern Disney has to deal with · 2:52pm Oct 26th, 2018
It was the 80's, Disney was going through one of its darkest times in its animation department and the company lacked the same fame that it had decades ago, but all that term when 3 men entered the company.
Michael Eisner: an entrepreneur with a new vision and business ideology drawn from the wet dreams of Ronald Reagan.
Jefrey Katzenberg: an animator with ideas to renew the animation division of the company and raise animation as an art. Also known as the guy who almost ruined Toy Story by trying to make it edgier.
Frank Wells: the newest studio president who managed to save Disney during the end of the 80's and mid 90's.
But everything changed when Frank Wells died sadly in a helicopter accident after his mountaineering practices in 1994. This caused a battle of powers between Eisner and Katzenberg; the result: the latter resigned and went to cofound Dreamworks. Without the interference of Wells, Michael took several of his most famous tendencies that would cause the company a new black age in the 2000's (especially in the animation department), with Eisner pushing the production of bad direct-to-video sequels and cheap Live-actions (with the only exception being 101 Dalmatians, which is still better than most recent remakes, in my opinion) which ended up devaluing the brand.
After Michael left the company, Bob Iger rose as president and gave a policy change among them to revalue the Disney brand and improve relations with their studios. One of his first steps was to acquire Pixar and appoint John Lasseter as head of the animation divisions, among these steps was cessation of several productions direct to video. In 2009 under this new direction the company acquired Marvel. In 2012, he acquired Lucas film and by 2019 he will acquire 20th Century Fox... I begin to notice a pattern, we'll come back to this...
Another step was to get rid of the more adult productions and brands such as Touchtones pictures and Hollywood pictures, and decided to keep the image of Disney as family friendly, although this may not seem like a bad thing at first glance I actually disagree. This strongly affect Fox in the long term, the puritanism of Iger can affect the franchises that they acquire. Acquiring Fox doesn't mean simply acquiring X-Men and Deadpool as some may think, it also means that the company will have franchises like Die Hard, Alien, Predator, Lethal Weapon, Pocahontas in Space with giant smurfs (aka Avatar) and Planet of the Apes. Was it really necessary to acquire a studio that would give them 40% of the film market?
This would be so bad if Iger gave more independence to the acquired studios to do what they want with their franchises, as did the Eisner era, something I doubt he would do with his Puritan obsession. I'm not saying that Eisner was a saint and could have treated him better, since his behavior in the late 90's and early 2000's demonstrates the reasons why he was kicked out. Even keeping what I said, I still recognize the legacy and good things that Iger did in the company.
Disney has been producing original material that goes from failures after failures in division for live action movies, like Pirates of the Caribbean 5, John Carter, The Lone Ranger and Tomorrowland. I feel that the culprit is that, in this division there is no creative such as John Lasseter and Kevin Feige, although they aren't perfect, these are people who truly know what they do when telling a story.
The only successful thing that the live action division does is their fairy tale adaptations, which are based more on nostalgia than on the quality (I don't say they are all bad or anything like that, I just want to make a point). Many of these adaptations feel like soulless, cynical works that are only there to justify their existence. like Pyscho's remake:
They are unnecessary and don't take risks, they would be more liked if they were re-adaptations that give a new perspective but instead we have poor, charmless imitations. They see and promote these remakes as the true definitive works, seeing the originals as errors or BETA versions. The vast majority are made in mind to please the most toxic corners of the internet, like the fussy pedants who say Raiders of the Lost Ark is crap because "the Ark of the Covenant could have killed the Nazis anyway."
The announcement that motivated me to make this post was the announcement of the unnecessary remake of Lilo and Stitch... just no. And it doesn't end here, we'll have the remake of Mulan, Aladdin, the Little Mermaid, etc., all probably emulating the same formula as their predecessors. So far the only live-action remake that I have hope is The Black Cauldron, which will be more faithful to the books, especially because the animated film failed so badly that Disney preferred to pretend that it didn't exist.
In summary, although you may think the opposite; I don't hate Disney. The company made great movies, animation series, comics and helped to elevate animation as an art form. But the main reason for publishing this is to at least manages to raise awareness about the behaviors in more recent years of the company leaders that have led them to make stupid business decisions, that if they continue this way it could reach horrible consequences and horribly affect the brand.
