Disney fans who are unhappy with the Walt Disney Company might feel validated by this recent article, which argues the Mouse House is “dangerous,” and “hurting itself.”
The Walt Disney Company is an unparalleled media giant in many ways. The Mouse House is a pioneer in the Theme Park sector with its two massive Disney Resorts—the Walt Disney World Resort and the Disneyland Resort—domestically and more like Disneyland Paris internationally. It also owns the Marvel, Pixar, and Lucasfilm franchises and many more pop culture properties that audiences across a broad spectrum consume.
Critics of Disney are now arguing that the company might just have its fingers in too many pies and has now become “the most potent, and problematic, force in pop culture today.”
In the latest criticism of the Walt Disney Company, the AV Club shares a rather harsh take on how Disney affects the properties it buys up,
Disney buys up everything, bleeds it dry, and then finds a new thing that it can aggressively chew the life out of before going out to find something else that will (once again) fail to satiate the bottomless hunger of a big company and its shareholders.
In a pattern that has proved that Disney has become a little too big for its own bag, the article details an interesting pattern the Walt Disney Company has demonstrated time and time again. In the example of Marvel, Kevin Feige created a whole interconnected cinematic universe that meant that every single Marvel movie had to constantly lead up to some big finale which has now led to the unfortunate reality that there can never be an “unconnected” Marvel movie. Disney set itself up to be huge with Avengers: Endgame. It accomplished that. Now what?
Similarly, Disney constantly favors its own in-house studios and distribution networks. When Disney’s own animation house was struggling, Disney completed its takeover of Pixar and highlighted those movies, while working on their own to bring them up to par. Now that Walt Disney Studios found its footing again: think Frozen, Tangled, and Pixar movies are getting direct-to-streaming releases while Disney features get theatrical releases.
It seems that while current Disney CEO Bob Iger’s Disney has bought a lot of properties that theoretically grew the company, it’s not always clear what those purchases have accomplished short of Disney being one of the biggest monopolies in modern-day media.
And if that were not enough, it’s not like the Disney Parks have had smooth-sailing-seas this entire time. Guests, Cast Members, and fans have complained time and again about the maintenance of the Parks, the rides, and Disney’s constant need to keep increasing prices at the Parks. Interestingly, the Parks are one of their best-performing sectors, and yet Disney lost $120 billion last year. While it’s not clear what Disney’s reasoning is for its decision, here’s hoping the 100th anniversary of the Mouse House is the first of many!
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