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[Heimdall_Xtreme]

To Disney's surprise, their latest animated, family adventure film, Strange World, bombed at the box office this Thanksgiving weekend. Strange World follows the Clades, a family of explorers who must set aside their past differences to save their home from impending ecological crisis. The animated, pulp-action film stars several notable actors including Jake Gyllenhaal, Lucy Liu, and Dennis Quaid. Strange World was praised by critics for its diverse cast and featuring Ethan Clade, an openly gay character played by Jaboukie Young-White.

Strange World bombed at the box office over the holiday weekend, with Variety reporting that the film raked in a disappointing $18.6 million. Disney had projected a $30 to $40 million weekend over the 4,174 North American theaters showing Strange World. The international box office release failed to make up the difference as well, only earning $9.2 million, bringing the total for the opening weekend to $27.8 million. Strange World has a $180 million budget that it is now unlikely to recoup in the following weeks, leading to another massive loss for Disney. The studio, whose animated films had been a consistent box office draw, have struggled to find their footing since theaters reopened after the pandemic.

Strange World is expected to cost Disney $100 million if it fails to pick up momentum in the coming weeks. This follows a recent trend of box office duds for the studio, including Pixar's Lightyear which bombed earlier this year. Lightyear, a film based on the titular character from the widely popular Toy Story franchise was expected to perform well as Pixar's grand return to the movie theater. However, the film grossed a measly $226 million against a $200 million budget, a shocking upset for Pixar which has long been considered the gold standard for animation. Encanto, which premiered Thanksgiving weekend 2021 to a mediocre $40.3 million, managed to stir up buzz from critics and fans alike that it eventually surpassed $100 million worldwide.

https://screenrant.com/strange-world-box-office-opening-weekend-bomb-failure/

In summary.

-The movie is a fiasco, one of Disney's worst disasters.

-It's boring.

-Force you to put ideas of inclusion.

- What a mental patient, it occurred to him that it would be a good idea to put a 3-legged dog in the movie.

- It makes you believe that the comfort zone is better than self-improvement.

- Animation too repetitive and tired.

-The characters are disgusting, they even make you want to punch this character.

I think it will be the first time that Disney will not be at the Oscars.

 

[kunonabi]

Yeah, the movie looked awful at every turn. Whoever signed off on those character designs should be fired.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Does any animation fan want to see Disney movies with realistic shading CGI? I dont know. I'm just asking. It's like they are trying to make them look like real plastic and cloth toy figures.

It's like Mulan being real actors. Or Lion King being photo realistic.

Then again Wiki says Lion King 2019 made $1.6 billion at the box office. So maybe realism isn't the issue.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Seems to be a big pushback against Disney. Flop after flop. I haven't cared for any of their recent output. Their live action films of their animated classics are uninspired and boring. The latest Pinocchio was so mediocre. And Pixars output have been middling at best. This movie looks like shit with subpart animation. How the fuck did it end up with a 180 million dollar price tag? I wish Disney went back to traditional animation again. Maybe it's time to reinvent. The last one was Princess and the frog and that was 2006.

 

[GymWolf]

Completely Bailing out from cg movies after half of shrek 3 and never looking back continue to be one of my best moves ever...

 

[wvnative]

I literally never heard of this movie until these articles about it bombing started coming out, I suspect I'm not the only one.

 

[Skyfox]

Such a shame!

Anyway..!

 

[SlimySnake]

Completely Bailing out from cg movies after half of shrek 3 and never looking back continue to be one of my best moves ever...

Well, yeah we dont watch these cartoons. It's for kids. Thats why this is so surprising.

Are parents keeping their kids away from these movies on purpose? If its because of the openly gay character then why didnt the ever increasing gay audience save it? same goes for the diverse cast. they must have been banking on minorities to show up and they clearly stayed home as well.

 

[GymWolf]

Well, yeah we dont watch these cartoons. It's for kids. Thats why this is so surprising.

Are parents keeping their kids away from these movies on purpose? If its because of the openly gay character then why didnt the ever increasing gay audience save it? same goes for the diverse cast. they must have been banking on minorities to show up and they clearly stayed home as well.

Lol what?

Cg movies are watched by a lot of adults, if you think that only childs watch the various ice age etc you are severely wrong.

Every time i watched one of those movies in a movie theater there were more adults than childs, and i doubt that things changed since shrek 3.

 

[Rran]

There are probably a number of factors at play here, including sci-fi stuff traditionally not doing well with Disney (Stitch excluded) and Disney+ itself competing with the theatrical releases.

But at the risk of over-simplifying things via political lines, I think Disney is struggling to appeal to two different groups here: more conservative families, and a more liberal online crowd. A lot of families simply feel their young kids aren't ready for LGBT elements in films, and the earlier announcement that abortion-related travel expenses would be covered by Disney probably didn't help either. A mouse house divided cannot stand.

 

[anthony2690]

I genuinely never even knew this existed till now, was it even advertised?

 

[Guilty_AI]

who

 

[DeaDPo0L84]

Disney "our movies are family friendly".

Parents watching the latest Disney movie:

 

[Rest]

Never heard of it.

 

[jason10mm]

My son has a STRONG preference for cg animation over hand drawn. There was a point where he wouldn't even watch a traditional cartoon but he is slowly coming round. So I don't necessarily blame disney for sticking with CG almost 100% like they have done though I prefer hand drawn with maybe some CG assist.

One thing I think disney has forgotten is doing "morality tales" using non-human characters. They can side-step a lot of their criticism about inclusion if they went back to anthropomorphic animals. Heck, so many of their classic movies used that to dodge direct comparisons between the characters and real life. Plus it usually makes for a more interesting visual presentation that can entertain kids while the dialogue goes for the adults.

Their upcoming slate of films is a host of live action remakes of their own stuff, some new IP animated films that, to be honest, seems like more of the same introspective "family drama" stuff we've been seeing from them for the past 4-5 years. Pixar has definitely lost their shine in my eyes, and Inside Out 2 isn't likely to improve it. I'm not optimistic for their MCU stuff either but I'm curious how well they integrate the new cast with what's left of the old. GOTG save us!!!

 

[Zathalus]

Went to watch it with my daughter, wokeness is not the problem in this movie, it's just really boring and had about zero jokes.

 

[touchfuzzy]

They've already conditioned us parents to just wait the 4-6 weeks to see it for free on Disney +.

 

[jason10mm]

Well, yeah we dont watch these cartoons. It's for kids. Thats why this is so surprising.

Are parents keeping their kids away from these movies on purpose? If its because of the openly gay character then why didnt the ever increasing gay audience save it? same goes for the diverse cast. they must have been banking on minorities to show up and they clearly stayed home as well.

Disney moves away from their core demo and the audience reacts in kind..."Bigoted racists!" comes the cry.

The newly targeted demo fails to respond either, "We'll try harder next time, we are allies, we swear!" comes the cry.

BP2 clearly shows that teens and up at least won't shy away from a POC dominated cast for a film. Disney really ought to consider the messages of their recent films versus the superficial cosmetics they seem to overly dwell on. These films are not that engaging for kids, definitely not something I as a parent want to waste my time on, stuff like Lightyear just felt so cynical. I think Coco was the last one I really enjoyed. Even Beyond, or whatever that DnD brother road trip one was, something that SHOULD be right up my alley, just felt off and bland.

 

[HoodWinked]

The problem with this movie is that it looks like it was designed by committee (probably was). So it just looks like a generic hellscape.

The characters look generic, the name is generic, when I first saw the trailer I wasnt even sure what it was. Then months later realized it was a Pixar theatrical movie.

 

[chromhound]

 

[Jennings]

Never heard of this movie, and I get served ads on the internet every single day of my life.

 

[Rran]

Then months later realized it was a Pixar theatrical movie.

It's not even that! It's a Walt Disney Animation Studio movie. Although the line between the two is getting blurrier by the year.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

I'm glad it bombed.

 

[Husky]

Walt Disney Animation's made very few good movies since they moved to only doing CGI. They're mostly just a discount Pixar now. Glad to see it didn't pay off this time, I guess.
What did people think of Encanto and Raya and the Last Dragon? I thought those were two of Disney's worst, and I would like if those could be partially responsible for this new film bombing. But I also totally missed that Strange World was releasing, so maybe it was just poorly marketed.

Honestly, at this point even Netflix Animation has higher quality output than Disney.

 

[ahtlas7]

All the talent in the world and THIS is what gets made. Someth’n is broken.

 

[Rran]

Walt Disney Animation's made very few good movies since they moved to only doing CGI. They're mostly just a discount Pixar now. Glad to see it didn't pay off this time, I guess.
What did people think of Encanto and Raya and the Last Dragon? I thought those were two of Disney's worst, and I would like if those could be partially responsible for this new film bombing. But I also totally missed that Strange World was releasing, so maybe it was just poorly marketed.

Honestly, at this point even Netflix Animation has higher quality output than Disney.

I thought Encanto wasn't bad overall, even if it was a bit all over the place. However, the last Disney animated movie I liked a lot was Zootopia, so it's been a while. I thought Moana was just okay, Frozen II was messy, and Ralph Breaks the Internet and Raya were both pretty bad.

 

[ThatStupidLion]

Honestly feels that disneys most recent golden age is already dying.

Once they upped their output to like 4 movies a yr or whatever it is. They just put out trash these days.

Also i feel like everyone saying they didnt see ads for it, its because disney knew it was a bomb and didnt put as big of a marketing budget behind it

 

[jason10mm]

I wonder if there was internal struggle to just put it on D+ like Luca or the Red Panda movie but the theatrical side won in a pyrrhic victory.

I also feel like the traditional trailer/commercial/trailer/commercial endless loop of programming kids to want to see the film is very broken and these studios can't get out into youtube to reach the audience. I've been able to totally control what my kids want to see because they don't see ANY trailers on the stuff they watch since there is no regular TV with commercials, few DVDs with unskippable trailers, few theater experiences with trailers, and most of what they do watch is netflix which has no ads or cross promotion (yet). So unless Straya, unspeakable, or those twin asian guys with the hot pink haired girl start aggressively promoting kids films in their videos I think studios are gonna flounder a bit.

 

[strange headache]

Get woke go broke.

And this is coming from somebody who defended Buzz Lightyear.

 

[jason10mm]

Get woke go broke.

And this is coming from somebody who defended Buzz Lightyear.

h....how? What redeeming factor was in that film, AT ALL?

Even as a stand alone sci-fi film it was pretty bad IMHO, much less as a Toy Story spin-off or just a kids film with ray guns and rocketships.

The design aesthetic wasn't bad though, kinda liked the Space Ranger suits, sooooo close to Space Marine territory, needs more power fists and chain swords

 

[DeaDPo0L84]

 

[strange headache]

h....how? What redeeming factor was in that film, AT ALL?

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/pixars-lightyear-flops.1638101/post-266298807

 

[LordCBH]

Bring back the traditional animation! The CG movies just lack the heart and soul.

 

[Kadve]

Bring back the traditional animation! The CG movies just lack the heart and soul.

I honestly have a hard time keeping most of Disney's recent output apart from one another. Think its something with the color pallet.

 

[DKehoe]

Seems like a lot of people just hadn't heard about it until after it came out. I wonder why Disney didn't really bother promoting it. I get that, in a lot of cases, Disney+ is their priority over theatrical releases but if you are going to have it in cinemas then why not do a decent job promoting it?

 

[Fbh]

I don't get what their approach is here:

- Alienate part of the audience by focusing on "The Message" instead of more universal themes
- Release the movies on Disney+ after a short 30-45 days window instead of the multiple months it used to take to be able to watch a movie at home.
-????
-Profit

 

[Mistake]

It’s so weird to me that disney can produce a world wide phenomenon like Frozen and rake in tons of money, but then make movies as if they completely forgot what to do

 

[StreetsofBeige]

In the variety article, they were saying the reasons for the movie bombing in the US are:

- People conditioned to wait for Disney movies to come to Disney+
- People wary to watch movies due to covid pandemic
- The movie plot is meh.

On the plus side nothing stopped macho man Top Gun Maverick from doing great. Jet fighters, good looking Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly, and the entire cast are military (people in authority to kick ass). People loved it.

 

[chromhound]

Disney are the best at making mediocre movies. Look what they did to Star Wars, Pixar, Marvel (Phase 4)

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

It’s so weird to me that disney can produce a world wide phenomenon like Frozen and rake in tons of money, but then make movies as if they completely forgot what to do

Love and sibling rivalry are universal themes. Then you just have to get a half competent script and character designs the kind kids would look at aspirationally.

Boom insant hit.

Newest stuff is wierder, and hey wierd can be interesting but also can be off putting.

I personally think Moana is a great film that embraces weirdness just enough to make it interesting and rise above the common disney story but that it knows when to fall back to the tropes to seal the deal.

 

[newtypepilot]

Disney didn't really promote this film, so they knew beforehand it was going to bomb. I didn't even know this existed until I saw videos talking about how it bombed.

It also doesn't help that Disney tends to put this up on Disney+ after a month, so there's no real reason to go watch this in the theatres.

 

[ADiTAR]

Creative is hard. Even harder when money is involved. Harder still when it has to appeal to EVERYONE. Hardest when it starts with a focus group.

And that's probably the issue with creative today. It's all tested, focus grouped, and then morphs into boring. There's no gut feeling anymore as people rely on data. Hopefully this trend of bombs will continue as people will revert back to trusting their gut, because that leads to a film coming from the heart (erm, yeah...).

 

[Cyberpunkd]

You want to know why it bombed? Shit be ugly AF.

 

[TonyK]

Why to pay 3 tickets to watch it at cinema when we can watch it (and stop it if we don't like it) for free with the Disney+ subscription? I'm sure a lot of people think in the same way.

 

[TransTrender]

Shit looked ugly as fuck in the commercials.
Both the art style and especially the character designs.
Couldn't tell anything about the story or point of the movie from the commercials.

I honestly have a hard time keeping most of Disney's recent output apart from one another. Think its something with the color pallet.

Why does everything they make need to be soo goddamn ugly?! Especially the character design? Looking at these + Strange Worlds it's like the same four body types are present, and they all suck.

 

[FunkMiller]

Weave your messaging organically into a narrative = success!

Force the narrative into fitting the message = failure!

 

[YCoCg]

I honestly have a hard time keeping most of Disney's recent output apart from one another. Think its something with the color pallet.

Raya and The Last Dragon, yeah that sucked, but Moana and Encanto are legit good, come on now, they got some bangers.

 

[SJRB]

 

[diffusionx]

I am totally shocked to learn that Twitter lunatics and resetera posters cannot make a $180 million movie a success.

Plus let’s be honest, all of this is performative, they post about how stunning and brave it is and don’t actually spend money on it.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

The Croods looks more visually appealing.