Let’s take a break from the drama of the 2024 election, the great struggle to rule the American imperium, and talk about another empire dealing with turmoil and self-doubt: the almighty Walt Disney Company, the House of the Mouse, which is currently poised somewhere between cultural hegemony and internal decay.
The hegemony is easy to see: The most successful movies of the summer, with a cool billion in domestic gross between them, are “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2,” Marvel and Pixar remixes that prove that rumors of either Disney subsidiary’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. In the feast-or-famine landscape of contemporary cinematic box office, Disney is gorging itself at the high table once again.
The decay and self-doubt, meanwhile, have a lot of different manifestations — enough to inspire a new podcast series from Vulture and Vox Media as well as many other what’s-wrong-with-Disney ruminations. There are the recent stumbles into culture-war controversy and a related impulse to blame the fans when self-consciously diverse content disappoints commercially. There’s the stagnant stock price, the big layoffs last year and the smaller ones this year.
But really, the problems can be summed up in a single sentence: The old stuff still sells, but nobody likes the new stuff. Disney’s summer proves that it can still make bank by dragging Hugh Jackman out for yet another round as Wolverine and spinning up a new set of emotions for a Pixar sequel. But when it comes to new content and new storytelling, the Mouse is struggling to connect.
The attempts to advance new Marvel story lines haven’t gone particularly well. With a few exceptions, the “Star Wars” shows and sequels, last year’s “Ahsoka” included, are mediocre, polarizing and unloved — so much so in the case of the regrettable sequel trilogy that there hasn’t been a new “Star Wars” movie since.
Meanwhile, Pixar has descended from inspired to middling and Disney’s core animation department hasn’t produced a really good kids movie since “Moana” launched in 2016. Last fall’s “Wish,” promoted with some fanfare alongside the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company, was pronounced to be a dud by my tweenage daughters as soon as I picked them up from the movie theater, and its utter lack of a cultural footprint bears them out.
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