By Robin Bruno
There has been a lot of talk around Disney recently, but today I’m going to focus on their quality of movies. I personally think that their quality of movies have gone down, especially when compared to some of their classics like Bambi, Lady and the Tramp, The Aristocats, Alice in Wonderland, etc. Often, their movies seem like mindless cash grabs, or dumbed down for the audience. But, some of their newer movies aren’t completely horrible, for example Elemental, the Avatar series, Wreck it Ralph, etc.
Many think that the reason for Disney’s downgrade in quality is due to the fact that the majority of them are cash grabs and lack the same magical feeling the older movies provided. “I feel like it is more of a cash grab right now than anything, since for a lot they tend to produce remakes too quickly,” Said Razo, a journalist.
With the birth of new movies, sequels, and remakes, many are left with feeling very unsatisfactory and heavily disliked. Journalist Benjamin Lee was someone who thought negatively of Disney’s movie, “Wish.” Expressing his feelings regarding it in his article, “Wish Review – Disney’s Throwback Animation Is Missing Some Magic,” he states that, “Wish feels less like Disney’s new ‘Frozen’ and more like an off-brand rip-off,(…) hampered by a mostly uninspired and underpowered plot and, most deafeningly, lacking in magic,” Lee.
With Disney almost constantly creating liveaction remakes of their older films, it makes it seem like they are lacking creativity for simply recreating their better films. While this could definitely be a possibility because of the fact that Disney is a business looking to profit as much as possible, they aren’t just here to tell heartwarming stories.
Some think there are other reasons for their decline in quality, Makayla Honciano, a student at Benicia High school with a new approach to this topic. She says that it could also be caused by controversial plots in some movies, “The audiences being shown the movies are expanding their view in many parts such as plot, characters, and timelines, theories, and even fandoms,” Honciano. She also believes that the money is not necessarily the problem because they can always choose to spend millions on one movie.
Another student from Benicia High School, Khloe-Moon Berndt has similar ideas that align with Disney’s attempt at appealing to the younger generations. “They want to appeal to the newer younger generations but they are essentially ruining franchises and new live-action remakes.”(Berndt). And since Disney is not succeeding in appealing to their younger audience, their movies are turning into cash grabs, which are wrecking their franchises.
Is money a factor in any of this? Many of Disney’s remakes tend to go over budget.
Disney’s Snow White remake is the third most expensive movie produced by Disney, because of all the reshoots that had gone on throughout 2022 to 2024. Then you also have to remember the additional costs for advertisement. “The ongoing trend demands movies of such extravagant scale to recoup at least 2.5 times their budgets in order to break even,” Rastogi, a journalist said.
Snow white is a perfect example of how they need to break even, for the movie they would need to make about $600 million dollars. The chances of that are very low for the fact that The Little Mermaid remake only brought in $569 million with a similar budget.
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