The Marvels , you know that new superhero movie

[gbaji]

Disney has been particularly victimized by this strategy because the high-profile franchises they control, Marvel and Star Wars, necessarily demand huge upfront outlays, to the point that even a well-received and critically acclaimed production like Andor simply costs more than it can possibly make back. This can be contrasted with something like Paramount+'s Frasier reboot, which is basically a traditional sitcom and can be made for cheap aside from whatever inflated salary they needed to throw at Kelsey Grammar.

Disney also has a lot more limited set of stuff on their D+ streaming service than most do. I pay for the service, but I don't watch the kids targetted stuff, so it's pretty much marvel and star wars stuff. So once someone like me has watched everthing of interest to me in their library, it becomes a questionable cost/purchase just due to this. I could probably purchase physical media for everything I care about that they release in a year for pretty close to the same cost as the service for the year. And then I actually own the media, not just rent it. It's just barely worth doing, and Disney has to keep producing content just to sustain that "just treading water" level.

The innate problem with streaming is that it's a big up front revenue gain initially. You take an existing library you own, put it on a streaming service, and lots of people sign up. That's a big bump. Certainly, the number of people who will go out and subscribe to the D+ service will generate more revenue than that same set buying DVDs of old product in any given month. But, once the numbers of subscribers stabilize, those numbers become baked into the equation. Now, any calculation in terms of spending money on a new streaming product has to assess the number of subscribers if you don't add it to your service versus if you do. Which is tricky to calculate.

And for Disney, it's a double whammy IMO, since every film they produce for theatrical release now has to also calculate the number of tickets that wont be sold because of subscribers who will simply wait for it to arrive on the service instead. I mean, if I'm already paying X dollars per month for the service, and I pay for a ticket to a film that will be included in the service in a few months, that's really me being a sucker (well, unless I've got kids pushing me to watch it now rather than in a few months).

So yeah. To make money, and keep existing subscribers, they have to keep releasing content. But the more content they release, the higher their cost becomes. A new subscription has a higher "value", than an existing one, so there's a taper effect on the product itself. I suppose one could argue that this isn't that much different than having to constantly make new content for traditional release anyway. But it does absolutely introduce a new cost/revenue factor into the equation that isn't as easy to calculate.

Which brings us back to "how do we know how profitable a film was?". I suppose ticket sales are still useful in a relative sense, but it's not the absolute valuation that it used to be.

[Tyndmyr]

What are people even arguing? I do not recall anyone believing Disney is going to be Bankrupt, and pretty much everyone agrees Disney is doing several shifts.

So what is being contested here? Is it just vibes?

Essentially, people are citing Disney's financial troubles as evidence that their creative direction is lacking. Not that it necessarily dooms them as a company. They've changed direction before, they could change again.

One can argue that reviews aren't everything, or that money isn't everything, but a long chain of generally agreed mostly dodgy films mostly losing money is a fairly strong argument for the fact that they're going in the wrong direction on average.

Disney also has a lot more limited set of stuff on their D+ streaming service than most do. I pay for the service, but I don't watch the kids targetted stuff, so it's pretty much marvel and star wars stuff. So once someone like me has watched everthing of interest to me in their library, it becomes a questionable cost/purchase just due to this. I could probably purchase physical media for everything I care about that they release in a year for pretty close to the same cost as the service for the year. And then I actually own the media, not just rent it. It's just barely worth doing, and Disney has to keep producing content just to sustain that "just treading water" level.

I would agree. There's a surprisingly shallow pool in D+. MCU, Star Wars, and kids films. Probably a decent option if you need to keep the kids busy, but far less adult targeted content than most channels.

That gets into why they got Hulu, and are so set on their Hulu/ESPN bundles. Those three together provide a much more balanced set of options...or two together for people like me who don't care for sports.

Putting the movies on the streaming has some value, but it's clear that it only accounts for a slice of their streaming money, and they are losing money on streaming overall, so the slice of value that the movies add is probably not anywhere near what they are trying to claim it is.

[Lemmy]

100% seems to be a vibes thing, mainly though every time I see "is Disney in financial trouble" arguments it feels like it's a lot of proxy arguing about whether the direction Disney has been taking the MCU in general with pushing stories like the first Captain Marvel or She Hulk is actually popular or not.

Well, the two subjects are definitely connected. Disney wouldn't be in financial woes if all of their franchises were still as popular as ever... Clearly, whatever changes Disney made to their movies and series has cost them a lot popularity and, consequently, billions of dollars.

There's always the "it's super-hero fatigue" cop out, of course... But while that is indeed a factor, it isn't some magical unexplained phenomenon that just comes out of thin air, and no one could have predicted or prevented, no matter how good their products are. That's just Hollywood's copium to avoid admitting their own failings.

What caused said "fatigue" was a series of terrible products. And it isn't the only factor in play... we have movies such as ItSV and even the middling success of GotG3 to prove that there's more to it than "super-hero faitgue".

[VampiricLongbow]

Unless I am really into a particular character, I do not bother going to see Marvel movies in theaters anymore. They come to Disney+ 45-ish days after their theatrical release. Very few Marvel movies are "must see ASAP" (especially post-Endgame). Why spend a bunch of money on going to a theater when I am already giving Disney $14 bucks a month?

I do not believe "Super Hero Fatigue" is real but I do believe people are pretty genre savvy now and it is much easier for them to suss out which films will actually be good and which will be pretty bad or mediocre.

I also believe COVID killed a lot of people's mindless theater going habit, which means companies actually have to fight to get people to come out and see the films in theaters. The best way is to make genuinely good films. The other way is to create a lot of buzz & excitement either by starting a new franchise (Mario) or by generating internet hype (Sonic, Barbieheimer, etc.).

[pendell]

Well, the two subjects are definitely connected. Disney wouldn't be in financial woes if all of their franchises were still as popular as ever... Clearly, whatever changes Disney made to their movies and series has cost them a lot popularity and, consequently, billions of dollars.

There's always the "it's super-hero fatigue" cop out, of course... But while that is indeed a factor, it isn't some magical unexplained phenomenon that just comes out of thin air, and no one could have predicted or prevented, no matter how good their products are. That's just Hollywood's copium to avoid admitting their own failings.

What caused said "fatigue" was a series of terrible products. And it isn't the only factor in play... we have movies such as ItSV and even the middling success of GotG3 to prove that there's more to it than "super-hero faitgue".

Who is 'superhero fatigue' a cop-out? Here's my understanding of a franchise:
-- First movie. If it succeeds, it sets the bar for the franchise.

The problem at this point is that the next movie in the franchise has to set the bar higher. If it doesn't, fans will be attracted to the tie-in to the first but they will start to lose interest. Consider Matrix: Reloaded.

The problem, of course, is that if movie #2 hits, then #3 has to set the bar even higher to maintain audience interest.

There's just no way you can keep this up long-term. Especially not in -- how many is it? 32 movies in 5 years?

When the movies hit the bar repeatedly or come in under the bar, audiences will start ignoring them as 'mediocre' -- despite the fact that they may all be, as a group, better than the originating movie of the franchise.

Think Star Wars -- Ep IV was a phenomenon but, let's face it, as far as production values et al go it's nowhere near the best the franchise has to offer. But it made a splash. ESB was the gold standard of the franchise. Ep 6, in my view, was the first step in the decline. I didn't like it as well -- my literal reaction as an eleven year old when the movie came out in theaters was "Another death star? But we already did that! Why did the Empire build another?" Also "Wait, Darth Vader really was his father? That wasn't a total lie? Of all the harebrained silly twists..." followed closely by "I'm a science fiction fan. I don't watch sci fi movies with spaceships and lasers to watch the coolest army in the galaxy lose to teddy bears with sticks". Yeah, not a fan of Ewoks.

The prequels suffered from this too. Now that there's twenty years between them, I actually think they're really not all that bad, and would perhaps have been more favorably received if they weren't following in the footsteps of the previous franchise which had set a really, really high bar." Same with the ST -- whatever their merits as standalone movies, at least part of the hate is because those of us older fans see it in the context of the previous trilogies, feel that they're assassinating the old characters in favor of the new, and that the decades of the war in the OT/PT are entirely free of consequence, since they're wiped out in less than fifteen minutes in the first movie.

The franchise giveth, and the franchise take it away.

So I think the answer here is, in part, stop making so many gorram movies. There's no way 32 films can have the same impact as 3; all it does is saturate the market and make people sick of the project, like the kid who eats his way through the entire shelf of candy at the convenience store and, afterwards, can't look at a Snickers bar ever again.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Lemmy]

Who is 'superhero fatigue' a cop-out?

It's a cop out because

1- It isn't the only factor. Yes, overexposure is one factor. But it's not even the biggest one.
2- It isn't "super-hero fatigue"... It's "crappy movie fatigue". There's a reason the MCU isn't the only Disney franchise in the gutter.

...And most importantly:

3- it isn't some arcane phenomenon that couldn't be foreseen or prevented, an unavoidable act of god, like a lightning that just-so-happens to hit the poor oblivious movie producers walking on the streets on their way home. Nope. They were the ones branding a copper pole in the middle of an empty field during thunderstorm and insulting anyone who told them it wasn't a good idea.

Disney (and others) made very conscious choices about the products they were releasing, their marketing strategies and how they interact with anyone who dares to criticize said products. Those choices led to the situation they are in.

[Tyndmyr]

Who is 'superhero fatigue' a cop-out? Here's my understanding of a franchise:
-- First movie. If it succeeds, it sets the bar for the franchise.

The problem at this point is that the next movie in the franchise has to set the bar higher. If it doesn't, fans will be attracted to the tie-in to the first but they will start to lose interest. Consider Matrix: Reloaded.

The problem, of course, is that if movie #2 hits, then #3 has to set the bar even higher to maintain audience interest.

There's just no way you can keep this up long-term.

And yet the Fast and Furious franchise is doing just fine, and it isn't because of finely crafted stories, each better than the last.

Especially not in -- how many is it? 32 movies in 5 years?

I hate to tell you this, but the MCU is fifteen years old now. The year 2040 is almost as close to the present day as the birth of the MCU.

It wasn't too many movies in any real sense. Infinity War was generally considered to be pretty great, and it was the capstone of Phase 3, the largest phase, in which 11 movies were released. GotG 2, Spiderman: Homecoming, Thor:Ragnarok, and Black Panther all came out in the year leading up to it.

These were generally very well received, well liked films. The period during which the MCU films were the most frequent was also when they were most popular.

So, it's not overload. Hell, a few weeks after Infinity War released, people were lining up for Deadpool 2. In 2018, we clearly wanted all the good superhero movies the studios could give us. Something changed. I think the average quality of the entries has gone downhill, and the focus on the miniseries has possibly split attention and dropped quality.

[VampiricLongbow]

So, it's not overload. Hell, a few weeks after Infinity War released, people were lining up for Deadpool 2. In 2018, we clearly wanted all the good superhero movies the studios could give us. Something changed. I think the average quality of the entries has gone downhill, and the focus on the miniseries has possibly split attention and dropped quality.

I think not planning ahead for what would happen after Endgame, being forced to produce a bunch of Disney+ shows and COVID really rocked Marvel to its core.

[Tyndmyr]

Yeah, that was most definitely a mess. A lack of a plan post-Endgame seems to be a pretty decent agreed on problem. Covid sucked, but sucked kind of equally for all studios, the MCU probably wasn't really singled out there.

[gbaji]

It's a cop out because

1- It isn't the only factor. Yes, overexposure is one factor. But it's not even the biggest one.
2- It isn't "super-hero fatigue"... It's "crappy movie fatigue". There's a reason the MCU isn't the only Disney franchise in the gutter.

...And most importantly:

3- it isn't some arcane phenomenon that couldn't be foreseen or prevented, an unavoidable act of god, like a lightning that just-so-happens to hit the poor oblivious movie producers walking on the streets on their way home. Nope. They were the ones branding a copper pole in the middle of an empty field during thunderstorm and insulting anyone who told them it wasn't a good idea.

Disney (and others) made very conscious choices about the products they were releasing, their marketing strategies and they interact with anyone who dares to criticize said products. Those choices led to the situation they are in.

Pretty much this. Everyone talks about Superhero fatigue and films not doing as well. Eh. There may be a tiny bit of that, but I tend to agree that Disney's actual problems rest farther into their core business and decisions they have made there. But yeah. Much of that we can't discuss directly on this forum. I will say that Disney has had a long series of family oriented projects that have flopped far more spectacularly than anything related to their star wars or marvel stuff.

For a company like Disney, that is a far far bigger problem for them than that a couple of side franchises aren't making quite the absolute bank today that they were making 10 years ago. While folks on this forum focus on the geek side of things, it's actually arguable that that stuff is more or less propping up Disney and making up for their much larger failures in other areas, and not at all the other way around. Most folks who are SW and MCU fans don't care about those other aspects of the Disney brand (I certainly don't), so we're "bonus money" to them. It's the other areas that they are sufferening the most IMO.

[Zevox]

I think not planning ahead for what would happen after Endgame, being forced to produce a bunch of Disney+ shows and COVID really rocked Marvel to its core.

Indeed. Endgame felt like an ending - unlike Avengers before it, it didn't tease anything new to come after, it instead provided finality and closure to two of the series' biggest characters, Iron Man and Captain America. That it also came out in 2019 probably really helped reinforce that feeling, since aside from Far From Home releasing at the end of that year, everything after it had to get pushed back a whole year. And then when they did start coming out again, it was a year of Black Window, an awkward prequel whose main character died in Infinity War and wasn't resurrected in Endgame, plus Shang-Chi and Eternals, two films introducing entirely new characters that also didn't set up any new thing for the films to build up to.

So the series had what felt like a solid end point, then when it returned didn't really do much to grab attention back. Makes it no wonder if a lot of people just started tuning it out after then, irrespective of discussions of the films' quality.

[Mechalich]

And yet the Fast and Furious franchise is doing just fine, and it isn't because of finely crafted stories, each better than the last.

Did you forget the blue text? The F&F franchise, much like Marvel, is dying. It's been suffering diminishing returns since at least F8 (counting Hobbs & Shaw in there) and Fast X appears to have lost money at the box office. It grossed 715 million on a 340 million dollar budget and the gross was primarily international which has worse studio splits than domestic returns. Fast X also made less money than F9 (even before adjusting for two years of significant inflation) while costing an extra 140 million to make. Seeing as it will only be more expensive for Hollywood to make movies going forward as a consequence of new labor agreements (which I support, but that is going to pump up the costs), F11 is liable to struggle to get made at all and will probably be the last film in the franchise.

Indeed. Endgame felt like an ending - unlike Avengers before it, it didn't tease anything new to come after, it instead provided finality and closure to two of the series' biggest characters, Iron Man and Captain America. That it also came out in 2019 probably really helped reinforce that feeling, since aside from Far From Home releasing at the end of that year, everything after it had to get pushed back a whole year. And then when they did start coming out again, it was a year of Black Window, an awkward prequel whose main character died in Infinity War and wasn't resurrected in Endgame, plus Shang-Chi and Eternals, two films introducing entirely new characters that also didn't set up any new thing for the films to build up to.

2019 was also the high-water mark in terms of total box office. Worldwide box office hit 42.3 billion that year, only to be absolutely obliterated by Covid in 2020. It is very important to recognize that it has not recovered. 2022 global box office was 26 billion, which is roughly the level of 2007. 2023 will probably beat the 2022 number, but not by that much. Considering that because of inflation and increases in production costs even a flat total revenue level would represent a shrinking movie pie, this scenario is really bad for everyone in the movie business.

[Carl]

2019 was also the high-water mark in terms of total box office. Worldwide box office hit 42.3 billion that year, only to be absolutely obliterated by Covid in 2020. It is very important to recognize that it has not recovered. 2022 global box office was 26 billion, which is roughly the level of 2007. 2023 will probably beat the 2022 number, but not by that much. Considering that because of inflation and increases in production costs even a flat total revenue level would represent a shrinking movie pie, this scenario is really bad for everyone in the movie business.

This is the big problem. When the pool of money that can be spent on a movie shrinks, the earning are going to shrink no matter what the other factors. It's also plausible that the people who are still going are a completely different market segment to the traditional superhero movies big es market. At that point your going to struggle to match prior revenues even if everything is high quality, and there's definitely been some weak entries.

A real issue has been pacing. Quantomania aside from just not handling MODOK well had a real issue with the emotional beats just falling flat because there was no time for them to really happen in. 95% of the movie was either action scenes or exposition.

[Psyren]

Did you forget the blue text? The F&F franchise, much like Marvel, is dying. It's been suffering diminishing returns since at least F8 (counting Hobbs & Shaw in there) and Fast X appears to have lost money at the box office. It grossed 715 million on a 340 million dollar budget and the gross was primarily international which has worse studio splits than domestic returns. Fast X also made less money than F9 (even before adjusting for two years of significant inflation) while costing an extra 140 million to make. Seeing as it will only be more expensive for Hollywood to make movies going forward as a consequence of new labor agreements (which I support, but that is going to pump up the costs), F11 is liable to struggle to get made at all and will probably be the last film in the franchise.

2019 was also the high-water mark in terms of total box office. Worldwide box office hit 42.3 billion that year, only to be absolutely obliterated by Covid in 2020. It is very important to recognize that it has not recovered. 2022 global box office was 26 billion, which is roughly the level of 2007. 2023 will probably beat the 2022 number, but not by that much. Considering that because of inflation and increases in production costs even a flat total revenue level would represent a shrinking movie pie, this scenario is really bad for everyone in the movie business.

Your facts and logic have no place here! How on earth can this fit into the unassailable narrative of one single movie studio floundering entirely on its own? Avaunt!

[Tyndmyr]

Pretty much this. Everyone talks about Superhero fatigue and films not doing as well. Eh. There may be a tiny bit of that, but I tend to agree that Disney's actual problems rest farther into their core business and decisions they have made there. But yeah. Much of that we can't discuss directly on this forum. I will say that Disney has had a long series of family oriented projects that have flopped far more spectacularly than anything related to their star wars or marvel stuff.

There is also maybe a side order of finances at play. Disney prices are *expensive* for a lot of things these days. For instance, the *cheapest* four day cruise in the forseeable future on Disney starts at $576/person for a four night, and escalates extremely rapidly from there. I booked a four night cruise on RC a few weeks back, and it was about $250/person.

Obviously, both will have additional charges, but most of those, such as gratuities, scale on base price. Others, like port fees, are pretty flat. The parks are likewise pretty pricey. Inflating prices might help boost revenue for a while, but it has limits.

At some point, even if the branding is still somewhat popular, people will cut back on buying Disney just because it's pricy. Plenty of other theme parks out there, yknow?

Did you forget the blue text? The F&F franchise, much like Marvel, is dying. It's been suffering diminishing returns since at least F8 (counting Hobbs & Shaw in there) and Fast X appears to have lost money at the box office. It grossed 715 million on a 340 million dollar budget and the gross was primarily international which has worse studio splits than domestic returns. Fast X also made less money than F9 (even before adjusting for two years of significant inflation) while costing an extra 140 million to make. Seeing as it will only be more expensive for Hollywood to make movies going forward as a consequence of new labor agreements (which I support, but that is going to pump up the costs), F11 is liable to struggle to get made at all and will probably be the last film in the franchise.

Fair, they're also seriously suffering from runaway costs in making these movies. The original film cost $38 million to make, the new films are very, very different.

Perhaps James Bond would have been a better example of a successful long running franchise, though it appears that Hollywood is also out to murder that. In any case, audiences certainly seem to be alright with a great many entries, so long as quality does not fall off, but when that happens, well... Hell, plenty of third movies in a series were incredibly weak, and audiences panned them immediately.

It's perhaps fair to say that this is not just a Disney problem, even if Disney is a very large, obvious example of it. But it's also not universal. Lionsgate is bleeding money, but Universal Studios is doing fine. In fact, profits for it in 2022 hit an all time high, and with hits like Super Mario Bros, 2023 is looking pretty great for them too.

[warty goblin]

I'd also note that the Fast and the Furious and James Bond run on a one movie every couple of years model, rather than multiple films per year plus TV shows. If a new Bond comes out I'll think "hey cool, haven't seen one of those in a while" because a new Bond every couple years fills my appetite for Bond pretty thoroughly.

There's been four MCU movies alone in roughly the last calendar year. Unless somebody really loves superheros on principle - and I suspect most moviegoers are much more interested in specific characters than the existence of another schmuck in spandex - that's a lot of superheroes. I like hamburgers, I don't eat them every night, or every time I go out to early, you know?

Yeah sure people could go for buckets of superheroes around Infinity War and Endgame, but those had mega-hype that simply isn't sustainable and definitely hasn't been sustained. Given two decent movies a year, with a strong core cast that shows up repeatedly, and a sense of going somewhere instead of being more content, and the thing may be quite sustainable. But at current levels it clearly isn't. Because current levels are completely insane.

[Psyren]

Plenty of other theme parks out there, yknow?

This is contingent on the perception that those other theme parks are an adequate substitute good for Disney's offering. I'm personally not a theme park buff but I can see mileage varying there.

It's perhaps fair to say that this is not just a Disney problem, even if Disney is a very large, obvious example of it. But it's also not universal. Lionsgate is bleeding money, but Universal Studios is doing fine. In fact, profits for it in 2022 hit an all time high, and with hits like Super Mario Bros, 2023 is looking pretty great for them too.

And I'm happy for them, but since stock price was brought up earlier, Universal is around half of Disney's. They'll probably appreciate on the basis of this good news, but they've got a ways to go.

[gbaji]

There is also maybe a side order of finances at play. Disney prices are *expensive* for a lot of things these days. For instance, the *cheapest* four day cruise in the forseeable future on Disney starts at $576/person for a four night, and escalates extremely rapidly from there. I booked a four night cruise on RC a few weeks back, and it was about $250/person.

Obviously, both will have additional charges, but most of those, such as gratuities, scale on base price. Others, like port fees, are pretty flat. The parks are likewise pretty pricey. Inflating prices might help boost revenue for a while, but it has limits.

At some point, even if the branding is still somewhat popular, people will cut back on buying Disney just because it's pricy. Plenty of other theme parks out there, yknow?

Yup. People have traditionally been ok with spending more for a Disney Cruise, or a Disney Hotel, or Disney Park, because of the brand. Kids love the brand. Parents love the brand (cause they were kids once too). Disney has been losing that positive brand identity over the last decade or so, and the results have been steadily more harmful to their bottom line. I certainly know people who used to be silly level Disney fanatics (always had yearly passes, keys, whatever), and have cancelled them in recent years. Doesn't help that for the last 5-6 years or so, most actual Disney films have had tepid results at best.

And too be fair, Covid really killed them too. They had literally just spent huge bank on the whole Star Wars refit stuff (and super expensive themed hotel(s)), and then had to basically sit on that debt for a couple years. I'm also not sure what to think about their theme park numbers either. It's strange because the official reports are always that their numbers are down, attendance is down, profits are down, but if you actually try to go to one, it's like they're sold out constantly, super crowded, etc. Used to be, I could drive up to Disneyland on any random Tuesday, park my car in the overflow parking across the street, walk up to the gate, buy a day pass, and go in. Now it's like if you don't reserve your tickets online 3 months or more in advance, you have no guarantee you'll even get into the park (ok, maybe you can on a Tuesday). I knew lots of people who just had yearly passes and would just show up mid afternoon because they felt like it and spend a few hours in the park. That's pretty much gone now. Yet, somehow, they're still not making as much profit margin on the parks as they used to.

It almost feels like they overbuilt on attractions, and underbuilt on actual space to hold the people who need to physically be in the park to see those attractions. Not sure. But something is just off with their numbers. When the number one complaint long time Disney attendees have (admitedly totally anectdotal and from personal observation here) is "it's too freaking crowded", while at the same time Disney is reporting low profits from park attendance, something is wrong.

[Tyndmyr]

This is contingent on the perception that those other theme parks are an adequate substitute good for Disney's offering. I'm personally not a theme park buff but I can see mileage varying there.

Conveniently for my argument, Universal Studios also runs theme parks, and happens to have the Harry Potter IP. Their attendance grew more than Disney's in 2022.

And I'm happy for them, but since stock price was brought up earlier, Universal is around half of Disney's. They'll probably appreciate on the basis of this good news, but they've got a ways to go.

Being big is not the same as doing well, and share price is not the same as market capitalization in any case. Disney is *very* large compared to competitors, not merely twice as large. It is over 100 times the size of Universal Studios, though the latter is still a billion dollar enterprise.

The mouse is extremely large, which makes its poor performance interesting.

It almost feels like they overbuilt on attractions, and underbuilt on actual space to hold the people who need to physically be in the park to see those attractions. Not sure. But something is just off with their numbers. When the number one complaint long time Disney attendees have (admitedly totally anectdotal and from personal observation here) is "it's too freaking crowded", while at the same time Disney is reporting low profits from park attendance, something is wrong.

I have not been to Disneyland in many, many years, so I have no personal anecdotes to contribute, but the Disney fanatics I know do complain of this. They say you basically have to get the "skip the line" premium passes to do anything. There is apparently some $5k/year membership program where you have to know people to get in to really enjoy the park. To me, this does not sound particularly fun or relaxing. They seem to be very enthusiastic and want everyone in on the house of mouse, but the rest of my friend group is uninterested.

At some point, even if the idea sounds attractive, one can only shell out so much for a family vacation. Disney might simply be pricing a lot of people out. How they manage to do that and still be crowded and have trouble with profits is quite an interesting conundrum. That shouldn't normally be happening at once unless something else is going very wrong.

[Psyren]

Conveniently for my argument, Universal Studios also runs theme parks, and happens to have the Harry Potter IP. Their attendance grew more than Disney's in 2022.

They've licensed it you mean (and a fat lot of good it did), so they're paying a TERFtastic royalty for the privilege. Disney is the one that actually owns their park IP.

Being big is not the same as doing well, and share price is not the same as market capitalization in any case.

I didn't bring up market cap because the disparity is hilariously large, but I appreciate you doing so.

[gbaji]

I have not been to Disneyland in many, many years, so I have no personal anecdotes to contribute, but the Disney fanatics I know do complain of this. They say you basically have to get the "skip the line" premium passes to do anything. There is apparently some $5k/year membership program where you have to know people to get in to really enjoy the park. To me, this does not sound particularly fun or relaxing. They seem to be very enthusiastic and want everyone in on the house of mouse, but the rest of my friend group is uninterested.

Yeah. Some time ago, Disney replaced its yearly pass program with the "Magic Key" program. You can buy a variety of keys, with different price points and different benefits. There are supposed to be a limited number of magic keys total, and at any given level. Which, yeah, is for folks who intend to go to the parks at least 3 or 4 times a year minimum for even the lowest level keys. The problem is that they seem to have oversold on these as well. Lots of keyholders became really upset when they realized that even after having purchased the keys (which come with black out dates, but the higher cost ones obviously have fewer), they would still find the day they wanted to go was sold out. But... If they simply purchased a ticket for the same day online without using their key, there were still tickets. So the number allocated for keyholders (and only keyholders) was sold out. And they limited the number of keyholders who could attend per day, because otherwise they could not sell as many "normal" tickets (I guess?).

Which is just some really odd accounting by Disney going on there IMO. I mean, I get making sure that normal folks can buy a ticket to the park, but screwing over your subscription folks to do so just seems like an odd move. From what I heard, no one could get any firm numbers from Disney in terms of how many total key holders per day would be allowed to use the park, or what percentage of the total keyholders that represented, or well... anything. There were apparently a few lawsuits over this too (though some of them, when I heard the details, seemed like entitled iditots wanting their keys to be actual magic, so there is that). But at the end of the day, there's a lot of folks who are getting some serious buyers remorse from this process.

At some point, even if the idea sounds attractive, one can only shell out so much for a family vacation. Disney might simply be pricing a lot of people out. How they manage to do that and still be crowded and have trouble with profits is quite an interesting conundrum. That shouldn't normally be happening at once unless something else is going very wrong.

Yup. Even setting aside the keys, just normal "I bought a set of tickets to go to the park" for regular folks is odd. Unless you literally go in the middle of the week during an off season time (like say February or something), it's always crowded. And yeah, they've created a bunch of "jump the line" tools for people to use, which IMO, hasn't really fixed anything (and in many cases makes things worse). I recently had a few friends spend a day at Disneyland, and they were quite happy that they managed to get into like 4 big attractions in the course of the day. Four. You basically have to put in a reservation for them now, and then show up when it's your time (kind of a virtual line thing). Which seems like a great idea, except that these lines are now massively long (cause it costs you nothing to be in it), so trying to schedule these resesrvations in the time period of a single day means you can only get on a few (I think they only allow you to reserve a spot on one line at a time).

It used to be that a 45 minute to an hour wait was "massive". But that would still allow you to see 8 or 10 big attractions in a day if that's what you wanted to do. And sometimes, you got lucky and walked by at the right time, and the line was short and you got in 15-20 minutes later. Never knew. Usually, it was somewhere in between. Now? You sign up for a big ride, get a reservation for 3+ hours later, then wander around looking at little stuff while waiting, then go on the one ride, then sign up for another one, and wait another 3+ hours, then maybe repeat that one or two more times if you have the stamina to go all day long at the park. It's crazy. And if that ride breaks down? You just spent that time in that virtual line for nothing.

And heck. Maybe part of the perception of the park being more crowded is exactly because instead of people all being packed in standing in lines somewhere tucked off on the side of an attraction, they're all wandering around the park waiting for their turns? Dunno. Maybe. But that's definitely been the one thing every single person I know has said about the park in the last serveral years.

I'm thinking they should incorporate some kind of ticket book system. Maybe label them from A to E? Just a thought...

[VampiricLongbow]

It used to be that a 45 minute to an hour wait was "massive". But that would still allow you to see 8 or 10 big attractions in a day if that's what you wanted to do. And sometimes, you got lucky and walked by at the right time, and the line was short and you got in 15-20 minutes later. Never knew. Usually, it was somewhere in between. Now? You sign up for a big ride, get a reservation for 3+ hours later, then wander around looking at little stuff while waiting, then go on the one ride, then sign up for another one, and wait another 3+ hours, then maybe repeat that one or two more times if you have the stamina to go all day long at the park. It's crazy. And if that ride breaks down? You just spent that time in that virtual line for nothing.

That is a terrible, awful system. Wow.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

The Pitch Meeting Came out!

[Trixie_One]

I have not been to Disneyland in many, many years, so I have no personal anecdotes to contribute, but the Disney fanatics I know do complain of this. They say you basically have to get the "skip the line" premium passes to do anything.

https://youtu.be/9yjZpBq1XBE?si=ocwO_EHVGq1rw0rU

Defunctland did a full history of how that came to be. Genuinely one of the best documentaries on any subject that you'll find on youtube. It's really good. I'm also not in the slightest bit a Disney fanatic. Only time I went to one of the parks was due to my parents taking my younger brother when I was a teenager.

The Pitch Meeting Came out!

“im gonna bring hala back, girl” was so dang good though I can't believe he did a whole Pitch Meeting without mentioning the villain once.

[Doug Lampert]

“im gonna bring hala back, girl” was so dang good though I can't believe he did a whole Pitch Meeting without mentioning the villain once.

Who?

Is it sad that while I have some slight interest in this movie, I'll probably not watch it, but I immediately clicked the pitch meeting link?

[Zevox]

Is it sad that while I have some slight interest in this movie, I'll probably not watch it, but I immediately clicked the pitch meeting link?

Nah, I do the same thing all the time. Well, usually with movies I have no interest in, but there's been a couple where I have non-zero interest but realistically will never actually watch them, like the Mario and Sonic movies.

[Psyren]

Mario was pretty good, I'd recommend giving that a watch. It's an easy popcorn-muncher / background film while you're doing something else too. Certainly I'd rank Barbie over it though.

As far as the Pitch Meeting, as always Ryan raised great points, like how the film glossed over Kamala's disillusionment with her hero in favor of the goofy musical planet and the cat scene (I take that back, the cat scene was the best scene, keep it in!), and I really hope we move on from the Kree after this because they're such a nothingburger race of antagonists. But I don't think those things contributed to the movie doing so badly financially either. The perception that audiences are having to do homework, the lack of promotion, and the... let's call it vocal sentiment about the main cast remain my top 3.

[Ramza00]

King of Space, King of Space

Kree are like Bobby Drake from the X-Men, they can be interesting but you actually need a different character to make them interesting via proxy, something the Kree are “responding” too. Kree are just generic Martian space empire, mook soldiers you would expect from a 1930s to 1960s Flash Gordon and adjacent sci fi, the mooks you bowl through.

One of the innovations of 1970s Star Wars is the stormtroopers were incased in so much armour they feel alien, strange, unsettling, aka triggering the uncanny. This is a human, but due to the armour I can not trust them for I can not see their eyes and they wish me harm.

[Lemmy]

There's no "vocal sentiment" about the cast, the characters or the movie. Quite the opposite, actually. It's apathy.

Most people don't care about Captain Marvel and don't even know who the other two are. Brie Larson is the only well-known name, and she's definitely not the most popular person in Hollywood... i suppose we also have Samuel Jackson, but Nick Fury has been so thoroughly humiliated in the MCU, that he's basically a joke at this point, no longer the coolest character around.

The lack of promotion is also overstated. Everyone knew this movie was coming out and what it was about. I doubt a few scripted interviews in late night shows would change much about its failure... Not to mention that Barbie and Oppenheimer (as well as a bunch of smaller movies) did pretty well, despite the strike.

The big factor here is that, after a long stretch of bad products, people simply don't care the MCU anymore... At least, not nearly enough for a studio to justify a 300 million movie budget.

(It also doesn't help that reviews consistently ping The Marvels as bad-to-mediocre).

It's almost poetic that the first Captain Marvel came out at the apex of MCU popularity and was a huge success despite being mediocre at best, and then its sequel comes out at the exact opposite point in time and is as much as a failure as the original was a success.

[Ramza00]

I am sorry but I am going to disagree

With past MCU movies per opinion surveys where they ask people individual movies have you seen it (in theatres and other places like cable and streaming)

The US penetration factor for 20 to 54 is 1/3rd+ for any of the MCU movie, and with the Avengers movies it is 1/2+ of the 20 to 54 range.

Do you have a clue how mass market this is? A few nerdy fans is not who is watching these movies, it is pretty much everyone to some extent. All those free publicity with talk shows and so on help make Disney money.

Now it is unfalsifiable to know whatever The Marvels would make opening weekend if they were to do all those promos without a strike. All I know is Disney itself thinks these forms of publicity is a value add, and it is a big deal to Disney’s marketing arm, they believe it works even if it may be all hype,