Riot's Rants: Disney Has Lost The Plot

So this will be my first foray into offering the unpopular opinions I promised at the inception of the blog. “Taking on” the media giant that is Disney entertainment may not be the most well advised endeavor, but after consuming a few of its most hyped titles recently, I felt like the best way to address my grievances would be a more generalized overview. Timeline wise, I am way past due in reviewing most, if not all of these titles. It’s simply getting to the point that Disney’s oversight of basic storytelling principles is egregious at best. To be sure, I won’t be addressing every title that I disliked from the past year or so, but I’ll hit on all the ones that certainly stood out. Let’s start with a film that absolutely had everything needed to be a slam dunk but inevitably was found wanting.

Cruella: There’s absolutely no denying how incredible the acting/performances were from this film. Yet as I’ve noted in previous reviews, all the best acting in the world will not ensure that a film maintains the cohesiveness or character development that cements a movie in the “greatness” category. To be sure, Cruella is by far the least offender on my list, but for the sake of a timeline, this is where it feels like Disney started to push messaging that sacrificed sensical plots. While I can appreciate the higher-ups desire to create a live-action version of their classic cartoons that features an original plot, I very much do not understand who would possibly think that starting with a puppy murderer would be a good idea. Having re-watched the OG 101 Dalmatians, to think that anyone would attempt to provide justification for that monster is baffling. The film’s events attempt to haphazardly convince the audience that each person holds the key to their own destiny, only to abruptly reverse course at the end to imply that evil is somehow inbred and inescapable. If a script is going to make the point that a villain is inherently evil, there’s zero reason to spend the majority of the film trying to say otherwise. A final and less important point, spending insane amounts of money on clothes/fashion design seems antithetical to Cruella’s attempted commentary on the “evils” of the fashion world.

Eternals: Whoo boy, where to start? It’s truly a task to try and think of anything redeemable about this film. The entire premise of the Eternals existence in the current MCU made little to absolutely no sense. I admit, I am fairly unfamiliar with the original comic book source material, but a quick Wikipedia search reveals how far the film makers strayed in their creative licensing. At its simplest, it’s nonsensical to have half of this group maintain powers that have no practical application to their supposed sole purpose in life, to kill the monstrous deviants. The special effects and CGI were the farthest step back the studio has taken to date and the film’s reliance on the cheesiest of deus ex machina ensured any positives one could point out are immediately cheapened. An early title for the next generation in the MCU ended up being a complete waste of time and money.

Encanto: There is something about Lin Manuel Miranda’s music stylings that I simply cannot get behind. As a longtime fan of musicals, I understand the effectiveness of using musical numbers and their lyrics to advance the plot of the story. Miranda simply stuffs waaaaaaay too many words into too short of tracks. Vocally, you can literally hear when great singers are hindered by the overabundance of exposition in their scenes. Encanto also started a trend that I certainly hope will end quickly, introducing insufferable minor characters like the coffee kids. (I’ll touch further on this, as Disney decided to up the ante in its next animated atrocity). Encanto, even after my complaints, has so much going for it but what really drove the film out of the “greatness” category was its laughable lack of villain. I’ve argued with co-workers on this point, who attempted to “educate” me on the dynamics of a Latin family lorded over by a toxic matriarch. Certainly, there’s no denying this exists, but it seemed strange revisiting the overbearing matriarch story so soon after Coco addressed this family dynamic in a far more well-rounded and succinct way. Story development wise, like the Eternals, the audience is left questioning what this family’s powers are actually for. There hasn’t been an external threat to the family or the society they guard in literal generations, so to have the entire plot conflict be centered around the family’s loss of powers comes off as hollow and unrelatable. In short, “grandma is mean” isn’t nearly enough of a conflict motivator.

Turning Red: This film gave the Eternals a run for its money as the worst recent title pushed out by Disney. As stated earlier, Disney decided to take the insufferable coffee kids from Encanto and roll their entire persona into Abby, one of the pre-pubescent squad members in desperate need of the South Park “treatment.” I was desperate to find any redeemable qualities of any of the main characters and was baffled that Disney would dive back into the overbearing matriarch storyline yet again. This time, the only difference seemed to be moving on from Latin families. Historically, Disney got a bit of a sick pleasure from killing mothers off in their stories and now, leaving the mothers alive only ensures storylines where their parenting methods create a negative family dynamic that inevitably gets “solved” through the course of the story. Turning Red made a go at this in the most non-sensical way and highlighted a real-world culture in which kids are allowed to run wild for the sake of allowing them to “be who they are.” Turning Red made sure to promote the idea that traditions and authority can be nothing other than disruptive or suffocating to the next generation that supposedly “knows better”. Adolescent rebellion is what it is, but to pretend it is something that needs to be fostered or simply unchecked is poor messaging that went along with even poorer script writing.

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Okay, now I’m really in trouble. Don’t get me wrong, I love getting extra Star Wars content as much as the next guy, but Obi-Wan Kenobi brought many of the moments longtime fans have been waiting to see whilst seemingly abandoning all sensical plot points/structure. Much of it was legitimately laughable, ex. Obi-Wan walking through an imperial base while hiding young Leia under a large coat. They might as well have paid out Mike Meyers for the rights to his Austin Powers ideas. Between an inexplicable on-foot chase scene and a human trafficking tunnel that made less than no sense, Obi-Wan did its damnedest to hang its hat on dramatic scenes to distract the audience from its lack of cohesive storytelling. The entire premise of the show, the untold relationship between Obi-Wan and Leia, toed the line of acceptable interpretation of original canon and made me wonder what even was the purpose of shoehorning the young Leia into its story. I’ll admit, canon-wise, I haven’t seen much of the animated series that touched heavily on the time periods between the various Star Wars trilogies. (I’m mainly talking about Clone Wars and Rebels here). But even without that knowledge, Obi-Wan Kenobi felt cheapened by Disney’s recent insistence of using “the force” as the penultimate deus ex machina. (See the final battle of the show or literally anything involving Rey from the last trilogy). Unfortunately, Obi-Wan also falls victim to some pretty atrocious performances as well, but at least Ewan McGregor still comes out swinging for the fences, as expected.

Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: Essentially, this title is what pushed me over the edge and made me want to write this post. The MCU of late has taken everything that made the first phases great and turned them on their heads. Multiverse of Madness took a concept that was cleverly explored in Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home and made it immediately boring. Not only did Strange visit barely any universes through the course of the story, but he proved himself so inept that it’s laughable to think he was ever in consideration of being Sorcerer Supreme. At every step in the film, he is either emasculated by more powerful female characters or simply too stupid to realize the solutions that are right in front of him. Multiverse also took a turn that I couldn’t remotely understand, wasting all of the legitimate character development that took place in WandaVision and absolutely throwing it out the window. Now I understand that there are multiple stories in the comics where the Scarlet Witch takes on the mantle of villain. But evaluating the timeline forces the audience to pause and ask how Wanda is pushed so abruptly past the point of reason, in such a short amount of time, toward a storyline in which she is an absolutely monstrous murderer. And sure enough, like many of Disney’s recent titles, the resolution comes down to a person getting all of “the feels.” Infinity War and Endgame were great because the vast MCU universe was concisely brought together. If new MCU titles are going to completely ignore the development that happens within the context of the “television series,” then it simply begs the question of why they are done at all. All I can say at this point is, I hope Thor: Love and Thunder does not cheapen what happened in Loki. It would be a shame to watch Disney waste their best title so far.

Wrap Up: It’s impossible to ignore the stories in the news today that concern Disney. Whether or not the degradation of their content is due to the culture war, I cannot decisively say. I also can’t ignore how coincidental it is that messaging in each title is certainly starting to play a much bigger role than legitimate storytelling is. Disney, quite literally taking over the world of media, appears to be in a bit of an identity crisis. Could we be seeing just the growing pains that come along with these recent changes? Possibly. But I sincerely hope this company isn’t relying on the “too big to fail” mentality, in which there would be little hope for a turn-around. Beloved nerd-culture titles left on this path are bound to be ruined completely as I see it, so I certainly hope Disney does whatever soul searching that might be needed for them to reclaim the quality it once had. I’ve always considered their titles to be the most re-watchable content in film. Unfortunately, whatever path they are currently on leads me to believe this is no longer the case and inevitably delegitimizes the monthly Disney+ payment coming out of my account every month. The plethora of streaming services ensures there is a competition in quality that Disney is certainly behind the ball on and time will tell how much it will really affect their bottom line. With money being as tight as it constantly is nowadays, I’m more often left wondering how long it will take before I can no longer reasonably offer it up to the Mouse. I’m pretty sure that limit has been reached, I just haven’t made peace with it yet.