Disney’s franchse should be top tier, but this year, they have fallen into the deep end. It’s especially sad for Disney’s 100th anniversary, becasue they have released flop after flop. With only one, or two mediocre movies released this entire year, fans are wondering if this is it for Disney.
Starting off in February, Ant-Man Quantumania made its debut. This movie where ants kill the next big villain, Kang the Conqueror. After Kang went back to kill the next villain for the franchise. They made an end credit scene where there was an arena full of Kangs, for the future heroes to fight. Really, there’s no need to fear, because we could just sick the ants on them too, because Marvel is unable to make a villain who can beat ants. Long story short, fans were not impressed with the lazy storytelling, and bad decisions that went into making this movie.
To follow it up, was probably the best release of the year, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume Three. This movie wasn’t outstanding by any means, but it was great compared to its competitors. Unfortunately, Marvel’s CEO is in such a need to be in control of all of the content that goes out, that he didn’t share the creative process, so the director of the Guardians movies left Marvel completely.
Then there were the forgettable movies of this year. These movies are Peter Pan and Wendy, Indiana Jones, and Haunted Mansion. Peter Pan and Wendy went straight to Disney Plus, so it didn’t even have time to shine in theaters, like the other two. Indiana Jones was a cash grab, because they went and reopened a story that had a closed-book, good ending. Then Haunted Mansion had potential, but I think after so many letdowns, fans didn’t want to go to the theaters to pay to watch a movie that is mediocre.
In this year full of releases, there were only two films that came out that had the real charm of a Disney movie. First being The Little Mermaid which was released to controversy. When put to the test, it still held a lot of the best moments from the original, and brought new bits to the movie.
The second, Once Upon a Studio, was probably the best surprise of this year. When they got together all of the characters from the past and present, and made a 12-minute short, it was just really sweet. They didn’t make it longer than needed, and by the end, would still have you tearing up. This was what Disney should have been releasing, but instead, it was clear they were way more focused on quantity over quality.
The one Pixar movie that came out this year Elementals was good, but nothing incredible. This is sad because Pixar is usually great at getting us good quality movies, with new, and exciting plots. It was released in theaters, but the traction only came once it was released on Disney Plus. The story behind the characters was the best part about the movie, because it dealt with the trauma of immigrating from your home country to a new place. It was written by Peter Sohn, who is a Korean immigrant, and you could tell he did a lot to do the story justice. It had points where you saw the pain of those characters from stereotypes, which was good to see that problem being brought to light in a children’s movie.
Marvel released one final movie for the year, and it was their worst release of all time to date. The Marvels had a combination of bad writing, and characters no one cared about, even die-hard fans passed on seeing this one in theaters. Marvel has officially hit rock bottom in a year, that statistically, they should be climbing in.
Disney had one last shot for this year, Wish. This was supposed to be their 100-year celebration movie of the year. Even that fell through. This movie only has a half-finished animation style, bad music, and annoying characters. Fans are questioning if this is the end of Disney as we know it.
Hopefully, Disney can refocus their attention to things that matter, such as making stories for their audience that means something, and not the gain for the company. Hopefully when they realize that making good, heartfelt movies is more important than cash, they will start making their money back and not just breaking even.
