The phrase “woke Disney” is certainly a controversial term in and of itself — as is the word “woke,” for that matter — but apparently industry experts and film critics are laying the blame for Disney’s recent (and very, very expensive) financial losses directly on the doorstep of Disney’s inclusivity efforts!
Disney’s audiences have actually been openly asking for new Disney movies that include a wider representation and include characters like trans Disney princes or disabled Disney princesses (and in fact, one of those requests actually came directly from someone prominent in the Disney camp), so logically, Disney’s decision to make the 2022 movies Lightyear and Strange World should have been a good one.
Audiences want to see more same-sex relationships if recent public outcries are anything to go by, but for some reason, both Lightyear and Strange World did so badly at the box office that Disney actually lost almost one-quarter of one billion dollars!
Experts like film critics, film industry veterans, and even the CCO of Pixar all weighed in on the idea that the two Disney films’ colossal failures might have stemmed from one factor: same-sex relationships between characters.
According to The Western Journal, “the common theme between these movies and the reason that they both lost more money than any other animated film in Disney history is the showcasing of woke ideology that permeates both films.”
In an interview with The Wrap, Pete Docter (the Pixar CCO) directly addressed the failure of Lightyear and said that “what went wrong is that we asked too much of the audience.” Docter focused on blaming the film’s “science fiction” setting for the poor performance, however, and avoided mentioning the same-sex kiss.
Film critic Christian Toto, on the other hand, did seem to think that Disney’s progressive plot points were the problem. “Hollywood doesn’t fully grasp the ‘go woke, go broke’ mantra, but some executives are getting the message. We’ve seen woke regrets at Netflix and Warner Bros.,” Toto explained, adding that “Disney may soon realize that woke isn’t a money-making position.”
Hearing about two big box office failures from Disney might not be too shocking — after all, this is not the first time that Disney has lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to a movie’s failure at the box office — but hearing experts’ theories about the reason for the Walt Disney Company failures is certainly more unsettling!
Did you see Strange World or Lightyear? Why do you think that these Disney movies performed so poorly?