Black Panther was a much bigger success with the critics than with the fans...
"Creators lost sight of what their No. 1 objective needed to be," Iger said at the DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday. "We have to entertain first. It's not about messages."
Iger has recently pushed to improve the quality of Disney films in 2024 and beyond. He is cutting back the number of movies Disney makes to focus on making better films. Earlier this week, he told Disney employees at a town hall that creating hit movies is the best way the company can change perception for investors and employees.
Iger said Disney's prioritization of messaging over storytelling peaked "while [he] was gone" in 2022, alluding to the 11 months he left his job as Disney's executive chairman. Iger had been in charge of "creative endeavors" in 2020 and 2021, even while Bob Chapek ran the company as CEO.
"We have entertained with values and with having a positive impact on the world in many different ways. 'Black Panther' is a great example of that," Iger said. "I like being able to entertain if you can infuse it with positive messages and have a good impact on the world. Fantastic. But that should not be the objective. When I came back, what I have really tried to do is to return to our roots."
Black Panther did gross fairly well, but it was not the most popular movie of the Marvel franchise. It also (in my humble opinion) was not necessarily one of the best Marvel movies. I prefer most all of the Avenger movies, the Gardian of the Galaxy movies, and many of the Ironman and Spiderman movies over Black Panther. Heck I probably even enjoyed the original Antman movie more. But Black Panther was the first of any of the Marvel movies to win a whole bunch of awards.
The reasons why Black Panther won those awards isn't likely because it was the best Marvel movie or the most deserving. It was because the cast being all black, the political messaging, and because it slide right into the woke ideology of Hollywood. I mean this was a classic woke messaging film about how there is a secret black community where everyone is smarter and much more technologically advanced than the rest of the world. I guess this is perferable to the actual reality where the African culture was never as technologicaly advanced as most of the rest of the world. 180 degree change in thinking, huh?
It would be a little like creating a movie where all of the best NBA players were under 6' tall, weigh under 180 pound and just happened to be White, Hispanic and Asian. Of course, in this movie, no black people are good enough to make the teams. Meanwhile the starting roster of the Lakers includes Gustufson, Rodriguis, Garcia, Wong, and Li, The prime time Lakers are current NBA champs and building a can't miss dynasty! Oh, and nobody ever dunks! Cause they can't! People will love it... or would they? Probably not.
Either way, it was nice to see the critics actually give some awards to a superhero movie (after all, are they not almost always the top grossing movies?). But the reasoning behind it was likely flawed and the lesson to be learned was that making an entertaining movie that people like and garners you lots of cash is all fine, but if you want the rest of Hollywood to give you props, you better have a good politically woke message. It seems that Disney must have used this reasoning to justify their all in. Eveyrone wanted to make the next Black Panther and become adored by the rest of Hollywood.
Just a few weeks ago, Disney was literally forced by the powers to be to include a disclaimer in their stock filing that warned investors that their vision of including political messaging in their movies was likely causing the company to struggle and that it created a risk to buying the stock. I am sure that was quite humiliating for them. But what is true is true.
Time will tell if Disney will change the atmosphere and start making movies that everyone likes again (instead of deciding who to suck up to and who to offend). I would like to think that Disney has learned a lesson, but I find it hard to believe in my heart of hearts.
In this week's episode of "Treasonous Leftist Ideas" Dick-head Bin Al Durbin wants to allow criminal illegal aliens into the US Military as a 'path to citizenship.'
Two BLM rioters were convicted for setting an Atlanta Wendy's on fire at a BLM riot in 2020. As I wrote in my book, the Wendy's area was transformed into an autonomous zone & a child was shot dead. The two were sentenced to a $500 fine & community service.
$500 fine and litter patrol, unbelievable