Avi Joshi ‘26 is a prospective English and education major. He is a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity and Wind Ensemble. Contact him at asjoshi@wm.edu.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
In the beginning, there were trains. A dude named Walt Disney really liked trains and made cartoons with his brother. Then, with the help of construction workers paid in vanilla milkshakes, Disneyland was born. Since then, Disney has grown into an American powerhouse and implanted itself very deeply into American culture. Almost all of you reading this grew up with some aspect of Disney in their lives. However, the recent release of Disney’s Star Wars show “The Acolyte” has brought attention to the quality of recent Disney projects. To put it bluntly, the show was terrible. This is not a review of “The Acolyte,” but know it was truly horrible. The show was also not received too well by general audiences, with the show scoring low across many different platforms. So, what happened? Well, to be completely honest, the same sh*t that has been happening for years. Disney does not care about the quality of content being given to consumers anymore.
I think there is a definitive point where Disney’s creative quality began to deteriorate and consumers started to get more content than we knew what to do with or care about (i.e. “The Acolyte”). Namely, after “Avengers: Endgame,” there was a noticeable lack of care with a lot of Disney projects. While “Avengers: Endgame” is a Marvel movie, there seemed to be a ripple across all Disney content. I think that a majority of the projects released by Disney since “Endgame,” whether presented as Marvel, Star Wars or anything new, have been horrible. “Wandavision” takes an interesting, powerful character and asks the audience to sympathize with her as she mentally enslaves an entire town to foster children that aren’t real. “Lion-King,” like all the live-action films Disney has released, was ugly and hurt the legacy of an actually good movie. Do you know someone who watched “Hawkeye”? Get them help. The Star Wars sequel trilogy was diarrhea with porch lights stuck on it; that’s what most Disney content feels like nowadays: an hour and a half of explosions, bright colors and catchphrases.
I think it is important to establish that I don’t think that Disney has been so out of touch with audiences since the beginning. There is a lot of genuine love and artistry put into many of the projects that I and many other people grew up with. There used to be a sense that Disney had a vision with its projects. Now, it all feels gray, lifeless and incorporated. “The Acolyte” embodies all the worst qualities of Disney content. It’s bland, horribly acted and continues to ruin a franchise already deeply wounded by much of its previous content. Shows like “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Ahsoka” also scored low and were berated online for their stories. Again, I won’t go super in-depth, but most of the top reviews of “The Acolyte” mention all the problems I just did. What sucks more is that the times Disney does put out something good, it gets buried under all of the horrible content being pumped out to consumers. A great example of this is “Andor.” This was a Star Wars show that wasn’t completely wasteful and actually had characters that said more than just weak catchphrases. “Soul” got a lot of praise and it was a great movie, but again, I feel like its creativity and vision also got buried under all the sh*t.
So, why does any of this matter? I mean, I’m not the target audience for current Disney content; none of you are either. Disney is for kids, right? Well yes, but the argument that content intended for children can’t resonate with older viewers is not something I want to believe. It’s also an argument that I would say most people my age disagree with. By all means, if you think of yourself as a big grown adult in a big scary world who is not allowed to watch “Up” simply because you aren’t the intended audience, then go on with your day. Please continue to be dull. For the rest of us, who still have an imagination, it is a genuine heartbreak to see Disney destroy its franchises. Disney isn’t the only one, of course, most big production studios across all media platforms seem to be focused on factory-made, fast content. Honestly, I don’t have any optimistic views on this topic. We will continue to get content that slowly melts our eyeballs, and we won’t even notice when they fall into our heads. Disney, along with every other big studio, will continue to lose it over their sheets of money and demand more money for meaningless projects.
