Blogs and Ends: The Disney Downward Spiral Edition
The hits keep coming for Mickey the Great and Terrible. Their resources are huge and their stock prices are ludicrously over-inflated but they are too far down the Woke rabbit hole to be anything other than the biggest failure in the history of American entertainment. The only thing that has happened to Disney in the past year that wasn’t their fault is Rona-chan. Everything else that is collapsing on the House of Mouse they brought down on their own heads.
Let’s start
FIRST
This has been a fairly brutal week for Bob Chapek. Remember how Bob Iger always had that cheesy weatherman’s haircut and smile plastered on his face? Because he started off as a weatherman?
Poor old Cheapek doesn’t have that smile, not since Iger announced, “we’ve hit an iceberg. You’re the Captain now.” As he sailed off into one of the lifeboats. Mostly Budget-Cut Bob looks like he has the kind of thousand-yard-stare you get from months of prolonged high-intensity combat.
He had to do the Q1 Investor Call this week and it was a hideous fiasco. Once a year the Disney CEO has to open the floor to questions from the small fry investors. The institutional investors (ie the real owners of Disney never have to bother with this), they have his home phone number and can let him know they are unhappy whenever they want. But the Mom and Pop stockholders only get to do it once a year. And Disney has to do this.
Normally, it’s no big deal. They may ask if Disneyland is going to reopen a favorite ride that was closed. (The answer to that is always, no, BTW). Or will Dole Whip ever be available at my local grocery store? (Also, no).
But this year Chapek had a very unpleasant time of it. The peasants were asking him unpleasant questions and were acting like they deserved answers just because they had a legal right to them. Was he going to fire Kennedy and replace her with Favreau or Filoni? Why was Gina Carano fired? Is there a blacklist?
Chapek did a terrible job with the questions. He treated these investors like reporters. When a reporter asks you a question it’s better not to answer it. Just make a statement of your own regardless of the question. Which is what Chapek did, he read pre-written statements that were only tangential replies to the questions asked. But these weren’t reporters these are the owners of the company.
Chapek was audibly angry by the end of this session. Clearly resenting the fact that he was required to do this.
His inept responses to these questions was yet another unforced error on his part.
My only real regret here is that the questions were so poorly constructed. I would happily have written questions for them that would have left Chapek no wiggle room.
NEXT
Speaking of the Carano firing.
There was a new poll out this week that Daily Wire had commissioned. And the results speak for themselves.
73% of adults believe Gina Carano was wrongly fired.
77% of adults hold a positive view of The Walt Disney Company (a low number considering Disney primarily is known for making wholesome family content).
64% opposed Disney removing Splash Mountain’s current Bre’r Rabbit theme, which is the only theme based on African American slave folklore.
61% believe Carano was fired as part of a negative “cancel culture”.
84% oppose Disney’s filming near Concentration Camps in China. The poll didn’t query about opinions on Disney thanking the governments that run said concentration camps.
47% of adults said they were less likely to engage with Disney content as a result of their bad behavior.
Given how poorly that Raya and The Last Dragon is doing compared to Tom and Jerry, I think Disney has suffered a critical level of brand damage. Complaints about Disney in the past have generally come from a place of affection for the company. That affection is now gone.
NEXT
The EPCOT Stargate and Death Taco floats for the HarmoniUS water show have been an eye sore since they were first hauled out on to the lake like so much wrecking yard scrap metal.
Their hideous appearances were supposed to be obscured by beautiful fountains that would run during the day.
This week they were fired up for the first time. And the results speak for themselves.
On a windy day this is going to leave park goers soaked.
This is the first project that the new #StoriesMatter generation of Imagineers has inflicted on an unprepared public. They have naturally responded to all criticism with Woke sneering on Twitter. This is the generation of vipers that Bob Chapek held to his breast and nourished during his tenure as the head of Disney Parks. This one is completely on Budget-Cut-Bob. It actually manages to look worse than opening day at California Adventure and that’s saying something.
Next
The Eternals now have an official poster.
Look at it.
LOOK AT IT!!!
That. Was. Awful.
This movie has reportedly been in the can for about a year. And this is all we’ve seen of it. No stills, no trailer, nothing.
It was a questionable idea to start with. The rumor is that The Eternals was only green-lit because Kevin Feige was worried about DC launching a New Gods movie (although given their track record I don’t know why he would be worried).
But at this point it’s obvious, Marvel Studios is hiding it. They know it’s bad. They know it’s an embarrassment. They know it will fail if it goes into theatrical release. And the timing couldn’t be worse for failure. The A-Team went down in the mountains and they are having to play the big game with the prep-squad. Marvel cannot start Phase IV with a box office bomb and they must have little doubt that The Eternals will detonate upon launch.
Marvel was way overdue for a flop but the timing couldn’t be worse, so they are keeping this deformed child locked in the attic for the foreseeable future.
LAST
Speaking of Marvel:
Heyward did nothing wrong
Seriously, what did Director Heyward do that lead to him being the one dragged off in cuffs?
I mean think about it.
Wanda Maximoff is known to have been a member of the most long-standing terrorist entity in the history of the world. She killed the king of Wakanda. She is an escaped felon presumably still in fugitive status. Her sex life indicates severe mental instability (she married her sex doll for god’s sake). And she has near godlike powers.
This foreign national has taken an entire American town hostage and is subjecting the inhabitants to extreme mental torture. The status of the town’s children is completely unknown.
Heyward was perfectly justified in using any means at his disposal to sanction her. I’ll grant that using her sex doll to eliminate her could be viewed as “staggeringly tactless.” But it was very likely to get the upper hand on her via the element of surprise. In fact, this nearly did work.
Three charges that have repeatedly been laid against Director Heyward are:
(1) He didn’t help Vision when he was trying to escape the Nexus.
Why should he have done that? He knew that that wasn’t the real Vision. He had the real Vision in a trunk somewhere. The thing trying to get out of the Nexus was a construct of Wanda Maximoff’s mind. Who knew what it was going to try and do once it was out?
(2) He shot at Wanda’s children.
Again, these things were known at the time to be constructs of Maximoff’s mind before the shooting incident occurred. The fact that they were dissolved shortly after this incident proves that weren’t humans, to begin with. Also, these constructs were known to have superpowers, making them incredibly dangerous in their own right. Again, who knew what they were going to do?
Director Heyward’s discharge of his weapon at a known inhuman threat is completely justified.
(3) He faked evidence that Wanda tried to steal Vision’s body.
Okay, this one is actually kind of serious. It’s potentially a felony. The question here comes down to motive.
Why did he do this?
To make Wanda look evil? She did that all by herself by enslaving an American town.
The real motive was most likely to establish SWORD as the lead agency. Clearly, the FBI was jockeying for that slot. The use of superpowers to invade an Exclusion Area with the intent of removing Exclusion Area Materials probably would have automatically established SWORD as the lead agency, depending on how the law is written.
An agency director who knows that his people are the best for a given job will often do what he has to keep poachers out. I know that a lot worse has been done in the real world, without consequence for the director in question.
So, what else did he do wrong?
Apparently, the worst thing he did was not obey the orders of a SUBORDINATE when she was a Diverse Woman of Color, being Stunning and Brave. And oh yes, Agent Rambeau was known to have been under the direct mental control of Wanda Maximoff for weeks. He would have been within security protocols to have her confined, particularly when you consider she was refusing a physical examination.
Not listening to Doctor Darcy was perfectly understandable on the grounds that she had turned into a fucking snot.
In short:
Heyward did nothing wrong!