Over the past few years, many people have become disappointed with the quality of Disney movies due to several measurable factors, and Disney is starting to lose money. People have had a lot of different opinions on the animation quality that has been going on lately, the lack of creativity, Disney’s increasing political correctness, and also have other streaming services like disney+ available for viewers.
Poor Animation Quality
Over the past few years Disney has been doing poorly at the box office with their animation movies like wish. According to Forbes, last year disney has only released one animated movie called Wish. Wish had a gross of about $19.5 million at the box office on opening weekend, when it cost over $200 million to make. Wish did worse on its opening weekend than nearly every other animated Disney movie, except for two movies. One movie review website criticized the animation style of Wish. The style of animation in wish was a mix of 2-D and 3-D animation, but it ends up looking cheap. The characters’ faces don’t match their bodies, it looks like they’re floating, and it overall looks bad according to Forbes. Another critic observed that Disney tried following this new animation trend in Wish, but executed it poorly. Overall, Wish did not do well at the box office due to fan disappointment.
Lack of Creativity
Additionally, according to the fans, Disney has been lacking creativity with making shows, spin offs and live action productions. These Disney productions include the Marvel franchise, Star Wars, and Wish. One critic for The Guardian stated that there are too many Marvel movies. Many of the movies don’t have storylines or a purpose, describing Marvel as a “content mill, churning out stories.” The critic went on to say how more recent films, such as Thor: Love and Thunder and Antman: Quantimania haven’t done well in theaters because people are experiencing what he calls “Marvel fatigue.” Another article was written by Martin Scorese, who is famous for directing movies. He said “that cinema should be creative, but superhero movies are not creative, namely, Marvel.” He also gives a list of different directors that he thinks of their films as more enjoyable.
Another article talked about how Disney is remaking their old classics into live action movies, such as The Little Mermaid, Pinocchio, and The Lion King, to name a few. Over the next few years, Disney also plans to release live-action remakes of Lilo and Stitch, Moana, Hercules, and Tangled. back to wish going back to the forbes article. Fans notice that it’s not original enough, it’s just trying to put the old Disney movies in one big movie.
Streaming is More Popular Than the Movie Theater
According to the Hollywood reporter, “Disney has lost over $387 million due to streaming services since 2023.” There are two reasons for this: 1) people prefer to wait for Disney movies to come out on Disney Plus instead of paying money at the theater and 2) Disney is not doing as well compared to other streaming services that are more popular than Disney Plus. According to Screenrant, other streaming services like Netflix are doing better than Disney. Netflix also has been hosting a lot of good animated movies, like Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Screenrant also said other movie platforms like Universal are doing better than Disney, like the Super Mario movie that had $1.35 billion at the box office worldwide.
Political Opinions are Hurting Disney
A lot of Disney movies try to have representation in their movies for everyone to feel like they are part of something special, but some viewers can be political about them. For example, when the live action version of The Little Mermaid came out, several fans were mad about Ariel being African American because it’s not what they wanted and they are not used to it. According to The Wrap, this has happened before in many Disney movies when an African American character comes in. People start being racist towards the movie and don’t care about racial equality. Another thing that some fans hate is when there is an LGBTQ character in a movie. Recently, there was a teacher in Florida who showed her class A Strange World, which is a new Disney movie where one of the main characters is a gay teenager. The teacher wasn’t thinking about the gay character and simply wanted to show the movie to her class because it was related to the curriculum on ecosystems and the environment. However, parents complained that there was a gay character in the movie, and so the families got mad that their children saw this movie in school. There have been several Disney fans upset that recent Disney movies include LGBTQ characters and characters of color.
Why is This Important?
Disney is a large part of American culture, but it’s changing, and people are becoming unhappy with it. People are going to the theater less because a lot of streaming services are starting to be more popular than the movie theater, people are unhappy with representation and equality, and they are unhappy with the quality of the movies. Box office sales are lowering for Disney. Not as many people want to watch Disney movies anymore. Disney has been one of the biggest industries in the past 100 years, but kids right now who are starting to watch the new Disney movies don’t get to feel the magic that it once had.
