Hacker News Reader

Comment by gsatic | Hacker News Reader

Iger has said Disney has built enough capacity to generate more entertainment than the world has cash to consume. The mega machine has become so efficient, they can produce a new marvel level movie everyday if they wanted too. But there aren't enough customers for it.

So the question is, once your corporate mega machine has become this efficient what do you even do next?

View on HN

I think the whole industry has degenerated to producing uninspiring grub. No wonder they have mastered it. Everything coming out of the company is CGI+emotional response maximization with little new themes. They should revert to making things that don’t scale, hire screenwriters with original ideas that are difficult to translate to movies, etc.

A friend of mine regularly compares Quentin Tarantino’s early movies to today’s mass produced boredom. Calling it MBA filmmaking. It reminds me of an industry running on Amazon’s recommendation engine, only making derivatives of existing successes.

100%. While we are at this, I am happy to share my heuristic for sifting "uninspiring grub" from quality shows. Two words: theme song. If the protagonists wander around in silence on a CGI generated background, that's a hard pass right away. Unfortunately, most of Netflix originals fall into this category.

Could you give an example of such an intro? I'm not entirely sure what style you are referring to and am quite curious.

Dur dir duh, der der der. duh duh duh, dih dih dih dih dih! - Indiana Jones

Duh.. Duh.. Dih dih dir! Dir Di dih dih dir dir du du duh! - Star Trek - Next Gen

dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead aaaaaaaaaaaaant

The Bourne Identity, Skyfall, Game of Thrones, Pirates of the Caribbean, and so on.

It does not have to be original. And I don't mean only the intro but the entire soundtrack. Often, the theme song is reused over and over during the film with many variations to set the tone of a scene.

Bad movies skimp on soundtracks.

As someone who lives in Los Angeles and is mostly surrounded by people in film/tv, the indie film industry is a LOT bigger than many people outside of the know realize. And I’m so thankful for that, because that’s where the “things that don’t scale, … original ideas that are difficult to translate to movies, etc” flourish. In a way, the indie movie scene is in better shape than it ever has been— with well-known big name actors even hopping in now and then.

You could argue the indie scene is similar to the startup scene in SV. You have investors/producers pretty much funding these films based on team/talent and a pitch alone, with the festival circuit (could be considered an analog to SV demo-days or investor powows) essentially serving as a way to get bought by big studios for potential wide release, limited-release runs (which can still make a lot of money for those involved), or teams hired/screenplays bought and adapted by other studios. You can even make it big right out of college (or in college) [1] with little-to-no connections, though of course even more-so than SV a name and pedigree gets you further faster.

There’s so much in LA (and NYC) that gets released in theaters only locally, and the city is better for it. It’s the wide-release that, almost by definition, must serve lowest common denominator in order to make its 8/9-figure budget back in a span of months (tech companies get years!!). It’s sad that SF and LA, so close geographically, have industries so socially polarized to each other in every way, since there’s really a lot of overlap when you get down to it (and each industry could definitely learn things from the other)

[1] https://variety.com/2022/film/news/apple-cha-cha-real-smooth...

> There’s so much in LA (and NYC) that gets released in theaters only locally, and the city is better for it.

There are arthouse movie theaters throughout that play the same movies that you think are only locally shown in LA/NYC. You just need the right context (near a university, for example).

Yes! Exactly. You can find glimpses of the indie scene in many places, if you know where to look for it. But they’re not as pervasive/all-encompassing outside those two cities. Chicago/Austin have scenes, but they’re smaller; Georgia sort of does, too, but it’s more corporate/extensions of big Hollywood studios than an independent community.

What I'd really personally like to see is space opera with better storytelling. But the impression I've got is that the sorts of films that do best as indies are ones where the props are cheap. So in other words, mostly contemporary or maybe historical settings. There are a handful of exceptions I'm aware of, but only a handful.

Am I wrong about this? Anything I'm missing?

The Expanse

Unfortunately this one seems polarizing. I loved it from the first scene, but there seem to be more than a few people who find it slow and boring to start, and don't come around to it.

To be fair, it is a little slow and boring to start :) I still liked it, but it’s not representative of where the show goes later on

Seriously watch Andor. Best sci fi show I’ve seen in years, SW or not.

Does one need to be up to date on the recent Star Wars movies?

No, in fact nothing in particular relates it to any other SW content.

It’s just a sci fi show set in that universe, that’s the way I see it. Takes the universe seriously, sets down rules for how it could work and it operates within that space.

But it’s better written, acted and art directed than most TV I’ve ever seen.

Id rank it as high or higher than Chernobyl. I’d say it’s must see TV.

I’m enjoying it! Thanks for the recommendation!

What's disappeared isn't the small independent super-low budget movie... as you said, that market is more active than ever. It's the >$10 million movie that everyone in the country can enjoy, has a name brand actor or two, but isn't just some recycled comic book tripe. Forrest Gump. The Big Sleep. Kramer vs. Kramer. Three Men and a Baby. Four Weddings and a Funeral. Terms of Endearment. etc.

Indie movies can range anywhere from $100k-$15M+, it’s a big range.

But I understand your point— mid-budget studio movies (romcoms especially) have been hit the hardest by the pivot to Marvel mania and cinematic universes. Unfortunately that’s as much because of audience preference as it is studios.

Maybe I'm naive, but what stops indie studios from creating cinematic universes? The props, sets, visual effects, etc. are primarily what's expensive, not the size of the (in-your-head) universe. If anything, I would expect indie universes to be more consistent and to have more meaningful/powerful plots, because these things tend to be labors of love rather than the more cookie cutter process we see in the big films.

I think the big thing is the financial risk of committing to a series, but it seems like if you take the films one at a time, you get to see how the last one is doing before you get too far along making the next one. Can't be that much worse than making everything a one-off.

They do! The largest one right now (which is also receiving a wide release, even) would be X (March 2022), then the prequel Pearl (September 2022), and the soon-to-be-sequel in 2023.

They spent probably less than $5M total on the 3 movies (and filmed all at once), and the first two have already brought in $25M at the box office. A pretty good indie success story.

The casual audience isnt stupid. Just lacking patience. New, Solid and well written themes are hard work to follow. Aint nobody got time for that.

But then theres also the insidious observation. My generation are now senior writers and also the majority of the audience and between us is as much creativity as a fart.

…Good Will Hunting. At the time that movie (and the ones you listed) came out, they were the talk of the country. They were THE zeitgeist.

Is there much in the way of indie action/adventure movies? What I miss most are movies oriented around action that aren't just derivative blockbusters. Compare something like Jackie Chan's Chinese movies or The Matrix to today's generic shaky cam fight scenes.

Even movies like Big Trouble in Little Chinatown or Predator, while not necessarily having plots worthy of the next Great American Novel, at least had interesting memorable ideas.

Quite a bit; just it's mostly living in the direct to video bin, as it were. There's a whole world of pretty decent action flicks out there[1]. Scott Adkins, who's mentioned in that article, makes just about anything he's in worth watching and directors like Jesse V. Johnson, John Hyams, and Isaac Florentine[2] are solid. Oh, and there's a whole cache of good French action movies on Netflix -- Lost Bullet is a good place to start.

As a discovery mechanism, I'd recommend following Vyce Victus[3], who writes reasonably well about action movies.

  [1] https://letterboxd.com/journal/direct-action-scott-adkins-dtv-film-evolution/
  [2] https://www.rogerebert.com/features/the-real-vulgar-auteurs-three-great-directors-of-direct-to-video-films
  [3] https://letterboxd.com/vycevictus/

i think a lot of the indie action has gone to the YouTube vfx studios

Have you seen this year's "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once"? If not, I highly recommend it, it's amazing and bonkers and moving and clever. Just an utterly fantastic movie all around. The budget was $25 million—which is not small—but it still feels a lot more indie than most other movies.

Are there any streaming services that distribute these? It would be a shame if they were lost to locality.

They're definitely available for those who are interested-- Criterion is probably the most well known. But a lot of successful indie movies also get picked up by regular streaming services, too. They're just usually not heavily promoted (usually little to no marketing budget).

To clarify: Does your friend mean that Tarantino’s early movies are also mass produced boredom or the opposite?

Tarantino movies are anything but mass produced, really.

I agree but the sentence could be read either way. It’s early morning here and I was confused about the point that GP was making.

No, he uses them as examples of how quality storytelling on a budget outcompetes the opposite. The problem with the “MBA thinking” is that it can’t quantify that quality beforehand, and makes the safer but more expensive bet on incremental development.

Yes.

I showed my 12 year old son Die Hard for the first time the other day.

He absolutely (...) loved it.

Unprompted, he talked about how good all the effects were - they didn't look like the bland CGI he is used to.

And he absolutely loved the movie. Zero political correctness. So incredibly liberating.

(A few scenes had me question the parenting choice of showing DH to a 12 year old, but it'd been at least a decade since I saw it last).

I think watching DieHard with your kid is a good choice. The journey to adulthood isn't instantaneous at 18, parents should help to guide the kids there. Introducing them to adult cultural experiences at home, and then talking about it, is an awesome thing to do.

Plus DieHard is one of the best movies ever made!

(Have an 8th so not reached that stage myself yet)

It was an amazing bonding time actually, so yes very good points. There were quite a few things to explain.

All the best for the journey ahead!

Back to the Future seems to resonate well with modern youth too.

Showed BTTF and BTTF2 to my 9 year old twins a few years ago. They loved the films. Not sure what they didn't get - even the concept of alternate timelines seemed fairly well absorbed.

The main things missed are probably all the various in-jokes, but that's not really important to the story.

Also "we'll travel to the FAR FUTURE" being when they were two years old has to be amusing (and sobering, to us olds).

Even a lot of people who lived in that era don't get the Pepsi Free joke since it was a only know by that name for part of the 80s and overshadowed by the larger themes of the Cola Wars.

it does not hurt that the first Die Hard is one of the best movies ever made.

Next watch Aliens (the second one) together and you are gold.

need the SE version though. Probably best to watch alien too. great example of a limited budget helping a film

Not the SE. The theatrical release. The SE is the worst director's cut I have ever seen. It gives away way too many things that are better kept secret from the viewer (all the Newt backstory is better left unseen).

True! The Wikipedia entry makes for really good reading, so much went into its making: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Hard

Aliens: My son suffered from night terrors in the not too distant past - I'd rather not reboot those just yet! :) (Would have to watch them in order, and the first is absolutely terrifying).

Will do them when he's 14.

I’m was on the fence with DH with my kids but your comments have changed my mind!

Been there, done this, and yea, I sort of forgot why it had its rating. Not something I completely think was the worst mistake ever, but perhaps could have been better addressed with a pregame primer of what was in the movie.

It’s often been posited that there are only seven plots that all stories are based on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

That being said, I just saw Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. I thought it dealt with personal issues very well. She Hulk as much as it was derided, was also a different type of MCU show and it was self aware enough to know that Marvel had gotten too formulaic.

I find singling out Tarantino kind of odd here. He's an indie-style filmmaker who attracted a lot of attention and now makes big-budget movies with very big stars.

Which is great, for those who like his particular films. But there are literally thousands of other filmmakers making films every year who don't attract the kind of attention Tarantino does. His films aren't better than theirs -- he's just famous enough that we've all heard of him, and he continues to produce exactly the kinds of thing that you specifically like.

There are tons of things to dig into if you want. Netflix does a better job than most of surfacing small filmmakers (because they can get them cheaply). Film festivals have even more -- more than you can possibly watch in ten lifetimes. Most of it, of course, is dreck -- same as everything else.

I'm glad your friend likes Tarantino, but it just feels a bit like saying, "Gosh, I wish they made more stuff like Tarantino." What I want is an alternative to both Tarantino and the major studios -- and it exists. It just takes more effort.

I find the Marvel movies boring and insulting to my intelligence. Which isn't really surprising since they are made for mass appeal and I generally don't like that sort of stuff.

However, and this statement is made with no actual knowledge of the economics of Disney content creation budgets, but I like to imagine that one positive thing that comes from the monetary success of the Marvel movies is the Pixar Shorts that are being made for Disney+ .

If you haven't seen them I recommend them. They are these original ~4 minute short films that are pet-projects by various creatives working at Disney/Pixar. The shorts include a small interview from the creator where they discuss their inspiration and the fun they had working on the project.

I remember a line from the Daily Show when it was still Craig Kilborn. The show had just gotten a nice newly renovated set, and Kilborn thanked South Park for the money to pay for it.

I suspect (again with no real knowledge) that the Pixar Shorts are financed from the success of the Marvel movies. Or maybe it's just Disney+ subscriber fees.

The Marvel movies are awful, but from my understanding, they are made for mass audiences++. That is, they want to make movies that are easy to sell in China and India. That means less dialog because most people don’t want to read lots of subtitles, broad humor because it has to make sense in all cultures and languages, and themes that won’t offend the sensibilities of the various cultures.

The Disney shorts are a good suggestion. I will track them down. Thanks.

Within limits. The new Black Panther didn't release in China; neither did Shang-Chi. China's an important market for Disney but they're not afraid to ignore it from time to time.

that may be more political than business driven

Right on. I can't much stand Marvel anymore, nor many of Disney's recent releases.

But the shorts took me by surprise. They were so deep, content packed, and beautiful. I sat and watched them all with my daughter, by accident really - both of us completely silent just watching, one after the other. A couple made us choke up, at different points. Probably the most beautiful television I've ever seen.

I'd probably pay megabucks to watch such a collection of shorts on the big screen, and that's from someone who hasn't been to the theatre in a decade.

I dislike the marvel movies for the same reason I dislike comic books: The focus is on making sure there is a next episode in the series, which means status quo above all else. This prevents pretty much anything interesting from happening, because significant changes have to be reverted, or previously interesting stories in the extended universe become retconned when a big budget version is made that removes any interesting elements and replaces it with generic action for "mainstream" audiences.

It's remarkable that the most controversial thing disney has done in decades is making main characters not white.

For example, in star wars, instead of doing something interesting or different, they just magicked the "first order" or whatever into existence so they could have big bad empire again, before eventually just saying "fuck it palpatine is back". They also took a back story that was left untold (getting the death star plans), rejected the expanded universe version that was about a usually ignored population having a big impact and sacrificing much for the good of the universe, and replaced it with a super generic "one important ideologically pure character plus one clearly ideologically evil villain" story with basic action.

Meanwhile in the marvel universe, they've adapted the comic book tactic of saying "multiverse and time travel and alternate realities exist" because then they can keep using popular avatar characters. This of course also means nothing freaking matters, because you can literally retcon in universe. It's so boring, nothing matters.

For example, in star wars, instead of doing something interesting or different

While I agree with everything you said as such, the Andor TV show (and Rogue One to lesser extent) indicates that they are at least capable of doing interesting things in the Star Wars universe, beyond Good space wizard vs Evil space wizard. I fear however that most fans don't actually want that and that Andor will be an aberration.

Vertigo comic books, in my experience, are a lot less guilty of this than Marvel, or even the classic DC variant. But then, Vertigo is specifically geared toward adults.

Kids will, if left to their own devices, watch the same movie over and over again (my VHS copy of Land Before Time just about wore out by the time I was 6). Producers realize this, so they just reshuffle the same story over and over again and sell it to them, over, and over, and over again. Adults tend not to be quite so easy to amuse.

Marvel isn’t infallible. Their latest phase is an example of that. Their numbers are great when compared to other studios, but it has not seen the level of critical success that it once did, despite being somewhat more inventive in its the stories being told. I enjoyed quite a bit of their movies, like the latest Black Panther movie or the third Spider-Man movie, but overall, its really taken a step back in terms of quality in almost every other project they have made. They also lost one of their biggest creative auteurs, James Gunn to their biggest rival, as well as the guy who made their Spider-Man movies and the Russo who made the previous two Avenger movies (though it could be these guys return). Ryan Coogler doesn’t seem interested in doing the penultimate (?) Avengers sequel, they aren’t going to trust Taika Waititi or Sam Raimi or Joss Whedon with that movie. They have resorted to getting Hugh Jackman back for a final (?) paycheck as Wolverine for the upcoming Deadpool sequel and apart from that don’t seem to have a plan on bringing their other most famous IP into their franchise, the X-Men.

And also the other big development is that they have lost the Chinese box office marker, though this seems largely out of their control as China is an aggressive geopolitical adversary of the US and is also strictly against LGBTQ representation, and Marvel is (rightfully so) not budging on the edits suggested by Chinese censors.

And then there’s also the case for superhero fatigue, and I am saying this as a fan of most of these movies, (I watched most of their previous movies during high school and college almost religiously), but the amount of content they dumped on Disney+ which was of varying quality was too much for me to really watch. I skipped half their shows and most of their movies (waited for Disney+ for most of the movies except for Spider-Man and BP2). I genuinely don’t feel interested in most of their upcoming lineup, except maybe GoTG 3 and Captain America 4 (if it’s any good). I might be speaking for only myself here, but I potentially see that happening more so in future with general audiences.

I liked the earlier movies, but to me the biggest problem is that they are now all connected and thus all required to watch. I skipped a bunch of them and had no idea what was happening in the latest Avengers. There were so many characters popping up that i had no knowledge of and weird sideplots that i hadn't seen. It just ended up confusing and frustrating.

The Avengers being a crossover is okay with me, but when the solo movies require in depth knowledge of previous unrelated projects is where I need to draw the line. The biggest failure for me was the Doctor Strange 2 movie, where the Scarlett Witch became a murdering sociopath off screen,though I was able to enjoy the movie regardless.

>I might be speaking for only myself here

I'm confident you're actually behind the curve here. The term 'capeshit' has been around for years to express annoyance with the oversaturation of the market with superhero content.

An individual may feel fatigue, but when the general audiences start to feel the fatigue, that’s going to actually make a difference. If there was a superhero fatigue for years, Endgame couldn’t have made nearly grossed ~2.8B USD.

Considering that Marvel movies are not making “all of the money” and are instead making “most of the money” in the eyes of its investors, they may be thinking that the head winds are changing and might want to forestall such a thing.

Of course, there were other reasons that Chapel may have been sacked as well, such as the “Dont say Gay” bill fiasco, as well as having lost their tax free status in Florida,the Mulan controversy, the previously mentioned issues at Marvel, alienating creatives (including publicly fighting one of its biggest stars),underwhelming Star Wars and Disney movies and shows, (possibly) losing the streaming rights for the IPL in India (cause Hotstar in India had a decent chunk of the streaming market in India cause of it).

I think this is why I and so many people have enjoyed Andor. He's not some hotshot or hero. He's just some guy who'd rather live his life in peace, but the Empire keeps standing on his neck. In comparison, Obi-Wan is still a master Jedi knight even in hiding. He can't not be that. It was still better than most of the others where the characters are heroic in stature and skills if not always in behavior.

There is no such thing as superhero fatigue or Star Wars fatigue or X fatigue. It's all just excusing bad content. The drive to fill out the Disney+ catalog with a bunch of series where constant release was the main focus and not quality or coherent stories made people stop watching. It was also a mistake to make the series contain relevant events for the movies to build from as well, since once a series was missed you could be out of the loop on key details for the next movie, but if there actually was widespread positive reception of all these shows it wouldn't be a major issue.

They may have thought viewer engagement for the shows like Agents of Shield, Agent Carter, the Netflix shows (https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/luke-cage-iron-fist-cancel...) and the execs may have assumed audiences weren't interested as they weren't tying into the movies (though this might be a part of their decision to go for churning Disney+ content like clockwork). If you browsed social media threads for those shows at the time the earlier seasons were airing, it definitely seemed that way (though this is anecdotal)

> And then there’s also the case for superhero fatigue

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/world/

4 of the top 10 grossing movies of 2022 are super hero movies. Black Adam is #12

This is what happens when you have a guy from the parks division at Disney suddenly responsible for the whole company. How Bob Iger was even allowed back after making the decision to appoint a successor from the parks division speaks to just how panicked they all are right now.

Diversify. Not everyone is a fan of Marvel. But I would happily watch a new episode of Silicon Valley or Friends level show every day.

I wish Mike Judge made a show about FTX and crypto. :) that would be hilarious.

Wow brilliant idea, Silicon Valley needs a reboot.

Yeah, the script wrote itself. You simply can't make this stuff up.

Recent twitter story would make great comedy someday.

Someday?

Nah, I am glad it ended.

Some characters were well written, others were pretty much a excuse for racism.

For sure. I remember really liking Gilfoyle as a character for his deadpan no bullshit and high skill personality. But then I watched a supercut of his "best moments" (at least according to one youtuber) and it was chock full of insults against Dinesh's masculinity, which is both gross from a racism point of view (I have been told that foreign men are often considered less masculine as a kind of racism) and gross from a healthy masculinity point of view (It's okay for men to cry, and have diverse interests, etc). Of course they could update the characters, but they could also just leave that story to rest.

All the things we grew up loving were once original stories, and I would love to see more new original content rather than this machine that "efficiently" churns out smoothed over copies of the same hits from last year.

Jian Yang's character is a pretty offensive depiction of Chinese people.

Gilfoyle being a grumpy sysadmin is probably an accurate depiction of a sysadmin. They're all grumpy.

The grumpyness is what I love about him. But in the supercut I watched, he is constantly specifically attacking other men's masculinity in a way which felt super toxic. There's plenty of healthy ways to present a grumpy character but Gilfoyle's behavior with regard to masculinity just sucks.

Why would you expect a character in a comedy show to be a good role model? All of the characters have pretty obvious flaws and the show is better for it.

It's not just his behavior, but how the writing and presentation of the show frame those behaviors. You can have a sexist character, but how the show treats that behavior reveals what the people creating the show want the audience to take away. The show can present bad behavior as leading to negative consequences. But Gilfoyle's sexism is presented uncritically as comedy, with no negative consequences. It is the framing of this behavior that I take issue with.

> I have been told that foreign men are often considered less masculine as a kind of racism

Not defending him, but Gilfoyle was foreign as well? I've known plenty of people like that, and they are just pricks.

Yeah think he's Canadian

Well a Canadian man in the USA making fun of a Pakistani man in the USA could easily be racism, even if it is subconscious. White men are the socially dominant group in the USA, and it is people of color who have told me about this issue with masculinity. A man from Pakistan and a man from Canada get treated very differently in our society.

But the behavior is also just plainly sexist. The implication of racism is just extra bad.

I'm not American, but he just seems like he is rude and unpleasant to everyone.

Dinesh gets it the most because he has the most interactions. Of course it could just be racism, veiled as general cuntishness.

What's ironic about this comment and some of the replies, is that it seems like people WANT this show and other shows to be "Disney-fied". Nothing uncomfortable, no awkardness, no real-world grit or problems, nobody is the but of the joke, nobody struggles, etc

Its fiction friend. Just fiction.

It's a good opportunity to right the wrongs and double down on the good stuff. In case of FTX, there are SBF, misters Wong and Singh.

Imagine a second coming of Erlich Bachman as a crypto bro. Who would not wanna watch this? For the feminists out there, there's emancipated miss Ellison.

Final season of the expanse.

Oh my God. With Disney money we could have all three last books on streaming. Disney could pick up the show ten years from now and the aged actors wouldn't even matter. What a dream.

You would think with Bezos money we would too. I don’t understand why he bought the series then didn’t bring it to conclusion. I’ve read they didn’t want to deal with aging the actors, but that’s kind of absurd given the state of the art.

Check out Andor. It's under the Disney Star Wars umbrella, but it's nothing like the rest of star wars. Made by the same people that worked on House of Cards, Game of Thrones, the Bourne series, Nightcrawler, and others. It's smart and subtle and insanely entertaining, though it is a slow burn that focuses on character development rather than action. But it has action too... But no light sabers or Jedi. Yet...

> It's smart and subtle and insanely entertaining

I disagree, I feel like its the same as all the rest but the writers in the board meetings are like.. We need to make Star Wars for 25-40 year old men to feel like adults watching it.

> slow burn

planned that way not because it is a slow burn high pay off scenario. But because it is planned to drag on so you just keep watching it consistently. Most of these garbage shows in the last 5 years or so have embraced this 'pseudo-slowburn' style to make baby men feel more sophisticated while hooking them into consistently watching.

I feel like the writers and decision makers saw all the funko pop marvel watching 30 year open mouth beard consumers and wanted to 'blow their minds' with 'slowburn' to remind them that consuming childrens movies are actually sophisticated and adult

>30 year open mouth beard consumers and wanted to 'blow their minds' with

No one said anything about blowing minds.

>But because it is planned to drag on

Unfortunately all shows are infected with this garbage. You end up grading this stuff relatively on a spectrum (“don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” etc) . This the “ads” of the streaming era. It is so ubiquitous people either build a tolerance, tune-out during the interval, or stop watching tv all together in protest.

>to make baby men feel more sophisticated while hooking them into consistently watching

A more sophisticated show with better writing and actors would indeed make people feel more sophisticated…yes. If, to take another example, somebody pitched me “Better Call Saul, but in space,” I’d probably watch that as well. Frankly, Dune is more a children’s movie than Andor, so you might as well say that 25-40 year olds have no business amusing themselves with science fantasy or sci-fi at all.

The litmus test for this seems to be: Make the exact same scifi show (space etc) but without the Star Wars branding. Will it be considered a children’s move? My answer in this case, no. Will it still be decent? Yes it would.

Mandalorian, Boba Fett, Obi-Wan are all magnitudes more juvenile than this attempt.

A quasi-spoiler perhaps, but I personally find it hilarious that a subplot involves a workers revolt in what could be a Tesla gigafactory 20 years from now…in a tv show produced by Disney.

> The litmus test for this seems to be: Make the exact same scifi show (space etc) but without the Star Wars branding. Will it be considered a children’s move? My answer in this case, no. Will it still be decent? Yes it would.

The thing about Andor is that the Star Wars setting is entirely unnecessary. That series could be set anywhere; the setting is just a cash grab.

What you call a cash grab an executive would call “target market”. You are not going to get funding to make a sci fi show (100+ million I assume) without integrating it into some kind of pre set market that will eat it up. In that sense it’s just product market fit.

There’s nothing sci-fi in that story. It could have been set in Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, Qing China, or anywhere else.

Except it would need to compete on a different field, and wouldn’t fare as well.

Lol yeah getting people to see it is part of the point, I guess?

I thought this at first, but it's arguably that Rogue One and Andor are the only Disney properties that deeply tie in to the universe. They really set up the events for the original trilogy and make them feel more filled out and real. The tone is one of sacrifice and hope, and intentionally plays as a counterpoint to the powerful space wizards in the films. It feels like the creators respect the narrative.

I have a particular distaste for rogue one, because it took a story that didn't need to be officially told, and gave it an official movie that was stupidly boring, uninteresting characters, no real value in the grand scheme of things, and generic as all hell.

"A bunch of bothans died to bring us this intel" is literally a more compelling story than rogue one.

Did you like The Last Jedi?

I like watching all this garbage sometimes so I am not putting anyone down without putting myself down but it is what it is and the latest Dune movie might as well been a star wars or marvel movie, and that was the point when they watered down the smart parts, cleaned the politically dubious parts/swapped characters for representation, and added all the CGI summersault action

Have you watched it?

1.5 episodes

Definitely need to watch a bit more! It gets a lot better post episode 3, but your complaint still holds true in general with the series about the slow-burn. It's written well enough that you are engaged with each episode, excited about where the show is going. But then each episode ends, and for most of them, you do a recap of what happened during the hour you watched and the actual plot and character development is thin. It feels like it was written in 3 episode arcs, where small stuff happens for the first two episodes and then in the third episode the plot really advances.

Yes, Andor has been the most decent Star Wars throwaway yet for me, and that's including all the new movies and tv vehicles that came before. Understated, brooding, solid acting, and free of the stale plot and shoddy writing in the others that becomes apparent once the atmosphere wears off. Proof in this era that you can create something decent without giving the left and right cultural attaches too much to whine about (though I'm sure they'll find something).

I was very positively surprised by Andor. I really like the way they show the empire side of things and how one (presumably) "advances" in such a system.

The thing that has most worn me out of all the star wars, marvel, etc. franchises is their simple moral framework pitting good vs. evil. There is basically as little moral ambivalence as possible. I find myself inhabiting a world full of moral ambivalence, and so these types of movies and shows just don't offer me anything to take away.

Does Andor break that formula? Does it paint the empire / the rebels in a less cartoonish light than other star wars?

The main theme of Andor is moral grey areas, you'll love it.

I think we saw a little of this with The Mandalorian. In the episodes where we first meet Cara Dune, and she talks about being a "dropper" shock troop. It definitely gives you a much grittier, Machiavellian view of the rebellion, and it seems like the Imperials view droppers as savages whose conduct is beyond the pale.

Also, in the episode where she and Mando are (kidnapped/stowaway whatever, can't quite remember) on the Imperial shuttle. The Imperial pilot makes it clear that his hatred of the rebellion is deep, personal, and 'moral'. "Do you have any idea how many millions of people were on that battle station?" Not that he has exactly seized the moral high ground, working for the Empire, but I definitely saw that as a "rebellion ~ al Qaeda" moment.

Does Andor break that formula?

Yes. One of the main themes of Andor is showing all the downright 'evil' stuff you have to do to successfully lead a 'good' rebellion.

To me, even if he was a good CEO, that reeks of hubris. Nobody likes films that feel like mass-produced corporate affairs, where the jokes were decided by committee instead of by two brothers writing a script. As for a Marvel movie a day, CGI artists as an industry are overloaded with work right now and it’s even showing in Marvel movies. There aren’t enough workers in the machine for something as ludicrous as that claim.

Entertainment lost something when it just became “content.” Bragging that you are excellent at churning out “content” is not something I would be proud of. Are you good at churning out movies that are original, interesting, unique, and creative? Or are you good at producing a dozen Marvel spin-offs and various movie sequels?

Disney now owns Searchlight Pictures (formerly Fox Searchlight). They have an incredible legacy of unique high quality creative films. Go watch Shape Of Water or The Favorite. They just came out with The Menu, which I’d recommend (saw it in the theater just today). Seeing adult oriented original screenplays is just heavenly. You literally couldn’t pay me to sit through a Marvel movie.

Honestly, I think it has more to do with the gutting of Pixar and Disney studios after Lassiter was forced out. I believe I heard that that Encanto was the last Lassiter idea that he pitched to Lin Miranda before he left. I think that probably helps explain why it seems cohesive. Versus almost all of the more recent Disney and Pixar stuff feels like poor copies or overly targeted identity flicks. Disney studios is kind of a mess, almost all of the innovation is now happening outside of Disney. Lego movie, spider verse, etc.

It’s a shame that he was both a genius and an inappropriate / abusive boss.

Next focus on quality instead of quantity. Less She-Hulk and more Loki. Maybe every single Star Wars character doesn’t need a six or ten episode backstory. Maybe Cars doesn’t need four sequels. The Lone Ranger has kept his mask on since 1933, the Mandalorian couldn’t do it five episodes.

Short term? Continue squeezing money to appease your shareholders. Find ways to maximize profits at your theme parks, increase subscribers to your streaming platform, and find to make making movies cheaper.

Long term? Impossible to tell. If you'd asked anyone 20 years ago what Disney would look like today, nobody could've imagined Marvel or Star Wars being the way they are, both under the Disney umbrella. And with streaming to boot.

I think this strategy - the milking of every single possible dollar out of the parks, and the grow at all cost Strategy of Disney+ are pretty much at an end. the surveys coming out of Disney the last year have gotten more and more desperate as Disney tries to understand why things like the Star Wars hotel and the elimination of fast pass and magical express are deeply unpopular. Disney’s managed to piss off an incredible number of clients on both sides of the isle in Florida - their biggest state for Disney World. Managed to alienate people who were reliable ticket holders with the constant nickle and diming at the same time as Universal is pouring money into their parks and threatening Disney’s Orlando dominance. Disney Managed to charge more for a bit for their premium products even while they have been horribly maintained. A YouTuber recently had an unbelievable video on the state of cleanliness at one of Disney’s most expensive resorts. This kind of short term gain long-term cost is a sickness in American business strangely. Disney in particular seems to go into these patterns. Michael Eisner fell into the same trap before Bob Iger replaced him.

The good news for iger is that the bar is set low. He could bring back fast pass or the magical express and roll back some of the planned costs increases and the fans will love them for it.

Disney does also risk the Netflix too much crap not enough content problem as well. Marvel has lost its cultural relevance for some of its core audience with the end of the infinity war saga. Everything since it’s been a mess.

As a sidenote, Disney just bought the biggest cruise ship ever built for the Asian market. I suspect interesting things are afoot there.

>As a sidenote, Disney just bought the biggest cruise ship ever built for the Asian market. I suspect interesting things are afoot there.

It reminds me a bit of KFC, which for a variety of reasons has left it's North-American presence to flounder while focusing on the rest of the world and Asia in particular. This has been effective so far thanks to their existing scale and being one of the first fried chicken joint to enter the market, but has gone on other domestic and local brands have entered. I have to wonder if Disney is maybe 10 years earlier on this curve and is starting to cash out on NA to some extent.

Also as a point of pedantry the Global Dream was intended to be the largest ship by passenger count at 9000, but is being scaled back to 6000 by Disney. By tonnage it will 7th, close behind Royal Caribbean's Oasis class ships and MSC's new world class so while it is quite large, the industry in general seems to be moving that way also.

https://robbreport.com/motors/marine/disney-global-dream-sev...

If what they were doing is a commodity product, I would agree - but it's not - it's much more upmarket, in which case being in the USA is essential to their long-term success. Disney cruises are 3x their competitors cost-wise, for example (as I learned the painful way recently).

Shanghai and Hong Kong Disney are also being held hostage to the Chinese communists and their covid and anti-western policies. The contract with the oriental land company is very limiting on Disney.

I suspect we would see expansion in Brazil before anything else at this point

It's not impossible to tell - they'll buy and takeover more and more of your culture and existing competitors and IPs, enter other venues of entertainment and expand their empire of protected content to encompass as much as what you daily see and consume as possible.

Considering how much they've squandered Star Wars video game IP, or video game IP in general, probably leaving billions on the table. That said, maybe it's to prevent cannibalizing other divisions, but it's hard to imagine type of media more extractive than micotransctions. IIRC Fifa + Madden made like 1.5B revenue last year.

> microtransactions

I think Disney got soured off of gaming when the fan and critical response was so harsh against Battlefront 2. They tried microtransactions and ended up going down as the most downvoted comment in reddit history.[1]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b...

I remember. IMO they tried outrageous microtranstions on fanbase who were demographically resistent which TBH some practices are more acceptable 5 years later. Disney also has other women oriented franchises that seems to have big mobile potential. Also never too late to acclimizate the young, the parks already nickle and dime like crazy. Of course I don't want this, but I think it's something they can milk. Video games compete with sleep, casual games with everything.

giving big exclusive contracts was a huge mistake by Disney for video games. It's easy to just sell everything to EA, but it doesn't actually result in good publicity for them, which they learned the hard way with Battlefront 2. When you have a massive IP that has tons of different periods and openings for various games, you really need to license out smaller chunks all over the place. Games Workshop is a really good model that Disney should have followed.

If it turned out 3 years ago Disney developed an AI that writes and generates Marvel Phase IV movies all “in-machine” with no human input, writers, directors or actors whatsoever nobody would be surprised. We’d be impressed but not surprised.

They actually made this joke on She-Hulk ... K.E.V.I.N. (totally not GLaDOS) is an AI that leads the MCU storylines.

Side rant: Worst fourth wall break in history. If they really wanted to do the K.E.V.I.N. storyline they should have made the show a grittier legal/detective thriller (a la Jessica Jones) with a season long conspiracy arc about K.E.V.I.N. taking over Disney by infiltrating Marvel.

Bonus woke points if they imply that K.E.V.I.N. is a sexist AI made by SV techbros that’s sabotaging She-Hulk’s series.

Kevin Feige didn't want this whatsoever.

https://www.cbr.com/she-hulk-wanted-kevin-feige-cameo-mcu-bo...

You can imagine how pleased he was with any of the K.E.V.I.N stuff in the show at all.. or the show itself.

Develop AAA games, build a Disney metaverse with Mickey Mouse, lightsabers and Captain America, stuff like that ....

I thought Disneyland was the original "verse," but a metaverse sounds enticing.

Disney was quite early in MMPORG scene, with their online game Toontown (which was sunset a couple of years ago).

There was a more recent example with a scene in "Wreck-it Ralph 2" that showcased a Disney metaverse. Furthermore, Disney did collaborate with Skylanders. Perhaps expand on that?

> Furthermore, Disney did collaborate with Skylanders.

I don't think that's true. They had their own toys-to-life game called Disney Infinity.

That was a mixup. Thanks for the correction.

I'm honestly not sure if this was said in jest or not, but that sounds absolutely miserable.

Disney Infinity is pretty much this, which has since been cancelled.

>Iger has said Disney has built enough capacity to generate more entertainment than the world has cash to consume.

In other words, they have distorted the market because over-capacity should let prices fall.

But even if they keep their prices, cash doesn't have to be the limiting factor. The available cash is not fixed. If they spend their income instantly, 'new' cash is available to the market, and Disney can sell more entertainment.

>So the question is, once your corporate mega machine has become this efficient what do you even do next?

Expand to other markets. They know everything about human perception. They can leverage that to make more games or VR applications. They can build better education platforms or even create new cities. They could even try to convince Apple, Amazon and Google to open up the declining personal assistant market [1].

However, stable diffusion threatens their position. Who needs Disney's capacities if other algorithms can do it better? Disney will have to enter the AI race and spend all their money on developers and researchers. Unfortunately for them, they haven't used the last 20 years to create something like an online Cinderella university to globally identify young geniuses and funnel them into their company.

[1] Amazon Is Gutting Its Voice-Assistant Alexa

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33680904

> Expand to other markets. They know everything about human perception. They can leverage that to make more games or VR applications. They can build better education platforms or even create new cities. They could even try to convince Apple, Amazon and Google to open up the declining personal assistant market

An extremely well-oiled movie-making machine is not a good games-making machine, VR or not.

And while there may be some cross-over with game-making, there is certainly no cross-over with voice assistants, where did you even think of that? Home assistants don't actually assist you in the home, they are mostly a device you buy to serve you ads (and occasionally switch the music when your hands are dirty).

> However, stable diffusion threatens their position. Who needs Disney's capacities if other algorithms can do it better? Disney will have to enter the AI race and spend all their money on developers and researchers.

You really don't understand the AAA movie business if you think Stable Diffusion is anywhere near threatening Disney.

They just explained that they've gotten so good at making blockbusters, they don't have enough clients for how many blockbusters they can make. Even if Stable Diffusion was any good at making AAA movies (they're a few decades away from that), someone trying to use it to compete with Disney would quickly find they have no power whatsoever to actually market their movies - that is where Disney truly shines.

And it's not about movie posters and reviews, marketing in the business is greatly tied to creating stars. People arent just coming to see Iron Man, they're coming to see Robert Downey Jr, or Chriss Pratt etc. AI-generated movies have no hope to compete with the marketing power of a big-name celebrity.

Very thoughtful. Thank you.

>there is certainly no cross-over with voice assistants, where did you even think of that?

Disney Land is a beautiful environment where the technical details are hidden. That's what they can replicate with assistants outside their parks.

>Home assistants don't actually assist you in the home

That's the point. Unlike Amazon, who hasn't managed to integrate their home automation with Alexa (see comments in [1]), Disney could approach assistants more holistically like they approach their parks and create a blissful experience of their clients' lives.

Voice assistants are voice assistants because the system doesn't know position, movement and other signals yet. People trust Disney so they can collect all data to react to movements or whatever else is possible.

Additionally, they are skilled in stories, in decision-making. Right now, assistants are servants who fulfill commands. A good assistant supports beyond that. The system has to know what people care about, what moves them, to turn their complex life into a linear, beautiful story.

*edit: If Disney does know everybody's location, they can use their movies for the ultimate gamification of work: You can only watch the next episode of your favorite series if you complete your milestone at work.

I don't care about Marvel. What I dream about is a steady stream of new, original science fiction movies, self-contained, without sequels.

Pay dividends. When investing back into the business doesn’t provide a meaningful return for shareholders, you give the money to the shareholders.

Go off-script and make something that actually feels new and original? If they really have turned art and entertainment into an assembly line they definitely have the bandwidth to try some weird stuff.

Although it would be hilarious if they just started releasing a new superhero movie every week. The Marvel universe is pretty deep.

Return cash to shareholders so they can invest it in other enterprises. Increase efficiency. Pursue other revenue streams.

Disney has Universal breathing down their necks in Orlando right now. They have to finish up major expansion projects in Asia as well as in France. Now is not the time to return capital.

What is happening in France?

There is a major expansion of the park near Paris in progress.

https://www.disneytouristblog.com/walt-disney-studios-park-p...

You develop an AI to automate the process and expanding on this process eventually the company is essentially a bunch of code running in the cloud that generates a film on demand that fits the needs of each customer perfectly. (Obviously you separate out the real world business like Theme Parks).

You should watch She-Hulk ;)

No one should have to watch She-Hulk.

The process of developing the AI will have bumps in the road but I am talking about the end state not the journey.

> generate more entertainment than the world has cash to consume

But the world doesn't have will to look at it.

Except that they produce rubbish.

Obviously they’ll start building customers. Soon the robots will out-shop you.

Buying a GPU is very much a competition vs bots...

Hopefully release more movies on Disney+ that remain high quality. I just quit Netflix because their relative output is higher but quality is complete garbage. We need something better.

I think they’re priced out most consumers though with a day pass a $120+. I’d imagine a theme park less than $70 per day could attract a lot of people.

You start to conquer another sector/industry. You can see that with Apple, Amazon..

I think I cut undercut their price for producing a movie nobody wants to see every day.

That doesn’t really agree with Disney+ It can improve along several dimensions

Build a spaceship and leave this planet for Mars.

Focus on increasing quality?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com