Disney has been a huge part of my life and they’ve always been a company that has supported the idea of films for everyone to enjoy. Prime Example : Show Mary Poppins to a six year old and they’ll laugh at the dancing penguins, show it to a sixty year old and they’ll cry during “Feed The Birds.” That’s the power of Disney and that’s why this article exists. Naturally throughout almost 80 years of films there will be a few duds. To get to the brilliance of Frozen and Zootopia you had to get through things like Herbie : Fully Loaded and Flubber. Now, I might be stepping on some toes due to what I just said but that’s the interesting part; even films that aren’t great have a following because of a nostalgia factor, which is something else that Disney thrives on. But aren’t most of these films targeted towards a family setting? Why should you enjoy the Marvel and Star Wars buyouts? Well that’s what this article is for.
Let’s go about this chronologically : Around 2006 or 2007 Marvel realized that the characters they owned made up the main members of the Avengers. So, they decided to try and make their own film studio to gain complete creative control over what they were making but they knew they would need a solid backing company and they would need to show what they could do. So, Kevin Feige made some major moves to make this a reality such as : getting Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Focusing an entire film on the World War II origin of Captain America and getting Joss Whedon to do the biggest film of the entire project. As we know, it paid off and everything worked out really well. But where does Disney fit in? Well, After the massive success of the Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America : The First Avenger, Disney decided to buy the company in a merger and allow them to create Marvel Studios. Avengers was the first film to officially be created under Marvel Studios and it’s been going strong ever since.
Marvel wanted to create their own studio because they wanted to show that they could make films that were by comic fans and for comic fans that could still appeal to the wider audience. Obviously it worked because we just recently were given Civil War and it was easily one of the greatest examples of why the Marvel Cinematic Universe is close to perfect. Now if we could just get the X-Men in there…another problem for another time.
Now what about Star Wars? Well that story is a bit different but it has a very similar ending. Basically Disney bought Star Wars in 2012 and immediately began preparations for a new series of films. It had been 29 years since the original trilogy and 8 years since the prequels. In that time we had different areas of Star Wars such as The Clone Wars cartoon, multiple comic book series(Done by Dark Horse) and multiple books series which were all a part of the expanded universe. Now, here’s where the divide happened : When Disney bought the company with the intention of making a new series of films and books they said that most of the expanded universe were no longer part of the canon(Considered to be part of the main story) and that really upset a lot of people and to an extent I can see where they’re coming from. Imagine that you’ve spent 20 years reading these books and following these characters and really enjoying the stories only to be told that they never mattered. I can see where they’re coming from but they’re still getting more Star Wars movies and I’ve never heard an official word on if the books set before the films were or were not canon. Many of the books which were now useless were good but there were quite a few that weren’t and I don’t blame Disney for wanting to make their own stories because of it. There was one factor that left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths though and that was George Lucas.
When Lucas signed the company over he initially seemed pretty cool about everything, he was getting older and wanted to allow a new generation to take over but then after the new film came out he went on and said that Disney was awful to him. This would’ve upset me due to Disney kicking him out until he said “They wanted to do something for the fans and i just wanted to tell a story”…Now, I have to make a statement about this because I understand artistic vision but I also understand being selfish. When you put something out there, it’s not 100% yours anymore. It becomes something else entirely and you have to understand that there has to be a balance between what fans want to see and what you want to create. This was one of the biggest problems with the prequels which didn’t focus on fan wants at all and instead forgot everything about the basic structure of a story. These are my issues with George Lucas.
Since Disney has taken over we’ve received one fantastic entry in the main saga, 2 really good seasons of Rebels, a plethora of books which were critically acclaimed and a few different comic series which have been some of the best that Marvel has been publishing. This leads me to believe one thing, that Disney knows what they’re doing. Many people made jokes saying that Disney was going to make it too kid friendly but as we’ve seen : 1. Darkness doesn’t always equal greatness. (See: Revenge Of The Sith, Punisher : War Zone, Spawn, Batman V. Superman : Dawn Of Justice.) 2. Disney can maintain a solid balance of light and dark. It’s one of their best traits and I knew that they would knock Star Wars out of the park.
In conclusion, there is a definite difference in Pre-Disney Marvel and Star Wars and I stand by the fact that it only got better after the fact.
Know why? Because we can get pictures like this:
If you don’t know why that’s awesome then you need awesome lessons.
Agree? Disagree? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
