In addition to playing, writing, and reporting about games, my other hobby is closely tracking the film rights to comic book franchises and how it impacts the ability for media conglomerates to cross-pollinate characters in a shared cinematic universe. You can imagine my excitement at today’s news that Disney, who bought Marvel in 2009, has purchased 21st Century Fox, who secured exclusive film rights to the X-Men and Fantastic Four in the 90s. Fox has shown no interest in sharing the characters.
It a tough situation as this will give Disney control of a lot of media and will have the power to say how it’ll be run, distribute, and pay out. On the other hand it allows them to better integrate certain series even if they license it out and yes X-men and other Marvel properties can return to marvel film universe.
It’s basically impossible for me to see the silver lining here. It just fucking sucks man. Watching so many people react to this with anything other than complete horror is real bleak.
I know this article is trying to be cute, and it’s “exciting” to have all this nerd shit under one umbrella but I really do think, politically, that we need to stop having “two thoughts at once” when it comes to the culture we consume. It’s high time to start really analyzing the impact of this huge bloated monster. We need to put to task whether what we’re consuming is actually good or just the machinations of a capitalist machine that will serve you up fine but hollow and to celebrate it as exciting
Taika Waititi and James Gunn are being heralded as these indicators that “actually, these are fine and they’re allowed to be creative,” while completely ignoring Edgar Wright, Phil Lord, and Christopher Miller’s firing for “not staying with the same vision.” They want the names and the things they carry, Edgar Wright carries indie prestige and with it that audience, and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller this habit of turning the expected into the unexpected. While they could have been making anything else, they were tied with this, then subsequently fired for not fitting into the mold.
Taika Waititi and James Gunn are good, but can it honestly be said that Thor or Guardians of the Galaxy are their movies? Or just a James Gunn and Taika Waititi flavored Marvel movie. I’m glad they’re getting paid, but let’s not pretend these movies were ground breaking.
There is no good thing here and to try and even suggest this could be exciting is so frustrating because it buys into directly what they’re selling. It’s the sort of response that makes this news possible. It’s already too late, and I feel like I’ve been shouting about this for year, which makes the response to this news even more frustrating.
I’m pretty mad about takes like this. If you were so desperate to see Captain America talk to Wolverine you could just pick up a comic book. This buyout is only bad news.
It’s been said in other places but this isn’t some corporate takeover. Fox wanted out of the business and basically asked Disney to take their shit. The alternative would have been Comcast but they bailed.
Oh. I didn’t see that in the story I read about it.
Well then…
I mean, it’s still bad because monopolies, capitalism, etc, but at least that problem is not on the table.
Unless Disney was gonna shut it down, like the sensible thing to do. Then the deal is even more maddening cause we as a people had a shot at killing it once and for all and now instead Disney has just basically handed them infinite money.
I feel like there should be a bigger focus on why Disney buying Fox is bad here than the other thing. I mean, “we’ll finally get X-Men and Fantastic Four stuff in the MCU!” ain’t exactly a new take. But even just talking about superhero stuff I’m not really expecting that much good from this. Like, Fox’s handling of the franchise may have been mixed for quite some time. But also I feel like under Disney we never would have gotten the R-rated Logan or a New Mutants horror movie. And I’d rather get more out of the norm stuff like that than Galactus appearing in the MCU. And I say this as someone who loves MCU movies.
It totally owns how uncritical people are of the quality of everything Marvel and Disney is making. It melds so well with things like this. “Uuuh, this is probably bad but more green monster movie, thank you based Disney!”
Disney did say they will do R-rated marvel stuff regarding X-men and other Marvel stuff but I get where you coming from with only them being behind the rights and not other holders. I still trust Disney to a degree since they done good work but it is the fact that by being the ones holding rights to these series that it could limit how creative they can be.
The corporations are going to keep eating each other until this whole mess collapses and I honestly have minimal hope in our ability to stop that from happening.
I know that’s not helpful. I want to believe that a movement could undo the excesses and evils of capitalism… But it just seems, in this year especially, that the beast devouring itself is more likely.
Apologies if I want to sit in the theater while Rome burns.
Yeah, it’s them possibly limiting how creative these movies can be that has me worried. They’re going to allow R-rated movies like Deadpool to happen now, but only because it’s already been proved to be successful. I doubt that if Disney owned the X-Men movie license before Deadpool and Logan were made that either of those movies would have happened.
