Disney expected to earn $35 million on opening weekend from their newest animated movie “Wish”, but in reality, they only earned $19.5 million. This might seem unexpected for The Walt Disney Co., a company that has, according to Business Insider, produced 29 films grossing over $1 billion. However, it shouldn’t be the shock that it is, when considering how Disney’s most recent movies have been doing at the box office.
For as long as I can remember, Disney has had the Midas touch in the theaters, as almost every movie that was released between Disney’s founding and 2019 grossed on average $100 million, according to the movie data tracking website The Numbers. However, Disney’s inspiration and artistic touch have since faded as they have released movies in a post-pandemic world. The most recent Disney movies have been struggling to perform well at the box office. This list of recent disappointments includes films like “Wish”, “Haunted Mansion”, “The Marvels”, “Indiana Jones 5”, and “Elemental”. The challenges at the box office worry people about the future success of the Disney empire. According to The Baron, many people think that the recent Disney movies lack creativity, artistry, and act as cash grabs for the company. Several sources, including articles from Variety, Fox Business, and The MV Current, have confirmed the accusations and are concerned about the future of the Disney company because of the lost quality of their films.
The struggles to make successful movies often revolve around poor writing and how the SAG-AFTRA strikes have affected the production speed of the movies. These strikes affected the animation of Disney movies because Disney was on a tight schedule because of the pandemic, and the subsequent delays prevented the animation studios from continuing to create their movies at the same speed. The unsuccessfulness of the films also led to many workers at Disney being let off, which then in turn led to the loss of animators for the movies, affecting the creativity and animation of the films, and potentially leading to the unoriginality of the films.
The rise in popularity of modern-day streaming services has impacted the box office success of Disney’s theatrical releases. According to the New York Times, Disney has experienced $11 billion in streaming losses since the release of Disney+. With audiences shifting their preferences towards streaming services, Disney is still trying to figure out how to keep the public invested in seeing the movies in person at the theaters. Although Disney has tried using Disney+ to boost the popularity of their movies, it has resulted in people preferring to wait and watch the movies on the streaming platform instead. Therefore, it is not just the movies themselves that are being affected, but also how people choose to watch them.
However, streaming service popularity isn’t the only reason these movies are doing poorly, as the recent movies from Disney’s film catalog have been critiqued as “watchable but far from fabulous” by the Red Leger and “stuck in a subside of mediocrity” by MV Stampede. These critiques represent how the viewers feel about the failures of Disney’s newer films. Many Disney critiques are about the downfall of Disney’s live-action remakes of classic movies. This includes adaptations of “The Lion King”, “Aladdin”, “Beauty and the Beast”, and “The Little Mermaid”. The quality of these adaptational films has been negatively impacted by the creative choices made, the loyalty to the original movies, and the challenges of adapting animated magic into the live-action world. The criticism of these live-action movies mentions the problems in the execution, storytelling, and character portrayal of these adaptations. Despite their large budgets and star-studded casts, I agree that the live-action remakes of movies didn’t meet my expectations of what I expected the movies to be like. The live-action remakes shouldn’t be only about milking the franchise to make more money, they should be about sharing the classic story in a new way.
In animated films, several sources provide a critical perspective on the latest movies from Disney Animation Studios and Pixar. These animation studios have started to be judged by the public as “lacking creativity” and as “over-relying on familiar tropes”, like having an animal as a side-kick and having deceased parents. Even though these studios have made masterpieces, like “Inside Out” (2015) and “Frozen” (2013), it’s clear that the public isn’t accepting these new films and believes that the quality has gone down. I believe that the reason for this is that, with the release of some of the new films, you can almost tell that they were just making the movies to be able to make money. The atmosphere of the film seems like it was only created to be able to sell merchandise.
Most of the substantial criticisms of recent Disney movies are about Disney’s most recent animated flop, “Wish”, which makes me question the studio’s ability to regain creative momentum and create new films that could become hits. The poor performance of “Wish” in theaters has become a big topic of discussion, with people wondering about the factors that might have contributed to it. These speculations range from bad storytelling choices made by the filmmakers to the odd character choices when making the villain. People believed that the actions of the villain in the movie were too ambiguous and not written as well as other villainous characters from Disney, which led to horrible box office scores.
Music is a crucial part of Disney’s animated movies, but recently, the studio has been struggling to create the right balance and creativity in this way, which could have contributed to the studio’s most recent troubles. The quality of “Wish” also decreased because of the songs in the movie. The songs in “Wish” are not as good as previous songs from Disney films. The lyrics in their songs are bland and unoriginal and sometimes don’t feel like they match up with the melody. The songwriting in Disney movies is essential because hits like “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Encanto (2021) and “Let It Go” from Frozen (2013) made their movies all the better.
Some could argue that Disney is just trying to get back into the swing of things since the pandemic has ended. The viewers are well aware that Disney is capable of making good films in the post-pandemic world because “Encanto” was very successful, with “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” being almost as popular as “Let It Go” was. The success of Encanto proves that Disney can make unique and creative films and that maybe the creativity just wasn’t perfect in “Wish”.
The decrease in popularity of Disney movies proves that Disney may be losing its popularity and imaginativeness. Luckily, we don’t have to worry about losing all the good films because while Disney may be lacking, other animation studios, like Illumination Studios and Dreamworks Animation, haven’t lost their spark yet.
