Disney (1994-present)

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Disney (1994-present)
"You broke our hearts, Disney. You went for a path that we can't follow!"
Formerly: Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio (1923–1926) The Walt Disney Studio (1926–1929) Walt Disney Productions (1929–1986) Type: Mass media Founded: October 16, 1923; 100 years ago Founder: Walt Disney Roy O. Disney Headquarters: Team Disney Building, Walt Disney Studios, Burbank, California, United States Key people: Susan Arnold (Executive chairman) Bob Iger (CEO) Divisions: Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution Disney Studios Content Disney General Entertainment Content ESPN and Sports Content Subsidiaries: A+E Networks (50%) Marvel Entertainment National Geographic Partners (73%) Website: https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/

The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney, is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney. They're well known for making great films and having a huge legacy.

Despite this, however, the company has gone downhill since 1994, due to many bad films, and terrible remakes.

Why They're Not Magical Anymore

1. One of the huge problems with them nowadays, is that they don't allow creative freedom for movie directors in films like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and, to a lesser extent, their live-action PG-13 movies.
   • They also don't allow creative freedom for movie directors in animated films, like those in the Disney Animated Canon and those made by Pixar; interesting concepts and stories are wasted, leading to disappointing changes and impressions. Infamous examples include Chicken Little, Cars 2, Frozen 2 (although some of them were included in the external source material, such as the canon novel Dangerous Secrets), Raya and the Last Dragon, and Brave.
2. Disney is often considered the pioneer of executive meddling: They often interfere in several projects and force the studios to alter things, which leads to lackluster movies like Chicken Little, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, the direct-to-video sequels, Lightyear, and much more.
3. In December 2003, Roy E. Disney (Roy O's son and Walt's nephew) was forced out of his position as vice chairman because he was past the company's retirement age. Roy E. said that Michael Eisner had turned the company "rapacious, soulless, and always looking for the quick buck rather than long-term value."
4. Quantity Over Quality: Many modern-day Disney films (primarily the live-action studio) care more about making money than making good quality films. This heavily contradicts Walt Disney's philosophy of focusing more on quality over quantity instead of vice versa. According to Walt, he "didn't make movies to make money" and instead "makes money to make movies". The live-action remakes of Disney's classic films are a big example of Disney franchises that are milked to death.
   • To rub even more salt into the wound, they shut down Disney Infinity, one of the most beloved video games they have ever made. The reason for this was that the game "wasn't making enough money" rather than due to the waning popularity of the toys-to-life genre by the time Disney Infinity got discontinued. Avalanche Software, the studio that developed Disney Infinity, was sold off to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment..
5. They have mostly made/produced bad movies, such as:
   • Blank Check
   • Man of the House (1995)
   • Operation Dumbo Drop
   • A Kid in King Arthur's Court
   • 101 Dalmatians (1996)
   • That Darn Cat (1997)
   • The Jungle Book:Mowgli's Story (1998)
   • Mighty Joe Young (1998)
   • 102 Dalmatians (2000)
   • Brother Bear 2
   • My Favorite Martian (1999)
   • George of the Jungle 2 (2003)
   • Home on the Range
   • The Jungle Book 2 (2003)
   • Tarzan & Jane (2002)
   • The Wild
   • The Fox and the Hound 2
   • Mars Needs Moms
   • The Country Bears
   • Cars 2
   • Planes
   • Doug's 1st Movie
   • The Haunted Mansion (2003)
   • The Pacifier
   • Chicken Little
   • Artemis Fowl
   • Inspector Gadget
   • The Shaggy Dog (2006 remake of their 1959 film of the same name)
   • Bedtime Stories
   • Beverly Hills Chihuahua
   • College Road Trip
   • Strange Magic
   • Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
   • Mulan II
   • Old Dogs
   • Prom
   • Alice in Wonderland (2010)
   • Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)
   • A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
   • Underdog
   • The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
   • Beauty and the Beast (2017)
   • Dumbo (2019)
   • Aladdin (2019)
   • The Lion King (2019)
   • Lady and the Tramp (2019)
   • Kim Possible (2019 film) (which is a bad attempt at reviving the series)
   • Mulan (2020)
   • Home Sweet Home Alone
   • The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
   • Lightyear
   • Pinocchio (2022)
   • Cheaper by the Dozen (2022)
   • Strange World
   • Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again
   • Disenchanted (2022)
   • Peter Pan & Wendy
   • The Little Mermaid (2023)
   • Haunted Mansion (2023)
   • Wish (An average way to celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary.)
   • Except for their blockbuster franchises, most of Disney's live-action movies were designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Examples include Mr. Magoo, Safety Patrol, Artemis Fowl (The most infamous one), College Road Trip, Bedtime Stories, The Shaggy Dog, My Favorite Martian, Old Dogs, Prom, The Lone Ranger, John Carter, G-Force, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, The Devil and Max Devlin, etc.
6. They stopped caring about some of their film franchises. The most infamous case of Disney unfairly ignoring franchises are the abandonment of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Black Cauldron (despite them being great films) as plans of making live-action remakes of the said films have been canceled (though to be fair, the remake of the former was canceled due to racism on Romani people). Heck, they didn't even do anything with these two franchises for Disney's 100th anniversary!
   • On the topic of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, aside from having its characters appearing in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance and other Disney crossovers (including Disney Villains, which its antagonist, Claude Frollo is part of), there hasn't been another entry in the franchise since its terrible direct-to-video sequel.
   • As for The Black Cauldron, they did absolutely nothing with that film franchise since the film bombed at the box office due to executive meddling and the fact that it alienated younger audiences. None of the characters from that film appeared in any Kingdom Hearts game as of December 2023 (though they do appear in several Disney crossovers).
7. All of their huge company buyouts lead to the idea that they are trying to monopolize the entertainment industry. This became much more evident after they acquired 20th Century Fox despite the strong competition posed by other studios, such as Warner Bros, which is extremely unacceptable and infuriatingly stupid as it was one of the dominant "Big Six" Hollywood studios.
8. They enforce overly strict conditions upon theatre owners for their films. For example, they demand higher price cuts for domestic ticket sales for their films.
9. They also keep extending the copyright law to the point where the copyright system ends up broken. The 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act has been nicknamed the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" because Disney wants to keep their mascot out of the public domain.
10. They sometimes rush their films or try to cash in on other parts of their properties like Marvel.
    • This is one of the reasons why their recent Star Wars trilogy, a.k.a. the Sequel trilogy, lacked sufficient planning.
11. Speaking of which, the sequel trilogy has become infamous for its poor writing, lazy similarities to the original trilogy, lack of planning, communication, and real direction. All of this gives the allusion that they had an idea for a trilogy first and a story second and it shows as the plot and story went from here to there, characters and storylines were introduced only to then become less relevant, and all of the executive meddling that happened during such.
12. After they bought Lucasfilm, they canceled some highly expected Star Wars projects:
    • They shut down LucasArts, which led to the cancellation of Star Wars: 1313.
    • In addition to that, they made the beloved The Force Unleashed series non-canon.
    • They canceled Star Wars: Detours, an animated show that was being produced in collaboration with the creators of Robot Chicken. They've also refused ever to release the show, despite many episodes being completed, which is disrespectful to all those who worked on that show and despite many people wanting to see it. Their initial reason was that they didn't want to satirize the Original Trilogy characters in anticipation of the Sequel Trilogy, since that one is now over, satire won't do any harm.
    • To focus on the development of the sequel trilogy, the 3D re-releases of episodes II-VI were canceled, even though those transfers weren't of good quality as all of them (except III) had overdone the digital noise reduction simply for the 3D effect.
13. Just like Warner Bros., they support Amber Heard. This led to both being controversial with Johnny Depp's fans and defenders. They even fired Depp from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise despite Depp being the reason why people love that franchise so much. Luckily, Depp won the lawsuit against Heard a year later.
14. They constantly (like the rest of Hollywood) race-bend white characters when it isn’t necessary. An example would be Ariel being blackwashed in the The Little Mermaid live-action remake.
    • In addition, they refuse to accept any criticism for race-swapping white characters and instead, call people "racist" for refusing to accept these changes. This Flashgitz video illustrates that perfectly.
    • They censored some of their films from Disney+ Kids profiles to keep children from looking at them instead of relegating them to a more mature section. Peter Pan is an example, since it contains derogatory stereotypes of Native Americans.
      • To be fair, however, most of these censored films are still available on Disney+, but just not on younger profiles.
15. During the 1990s, 2000s, and the early 2010s, they made a lot of cheap and terribly executed direct-to-video animated sequels.
    • Most of these bad direct-to-video sequels tend to suffer a similar set of problems, such as executive meddling, their extremely rushed production deadlines, their lower-quality animation in comparison to their original animated films, their lackluster writing with poor executions that fail to capture the spirit of their original animated films (including some whose plots are lazily rehashed entirely from their original films (with The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea being the worst out of such)), the flanderization of its characters (with Belle's Magical World and Mulan II being the absolute worst out of all), continuity errors between these films and their originals (e.g. The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning), and having absolutely no involvement whatsoever from any of their film's respective original creators from the Walt Disney Animation Studios, even if they were still alive at the time they were made. These are the main reasons why DisneyToon Studios (pre-October 2008) and the entire Disney Sequel brand had such bad reputations among fans and critics alike, even though they’ve produced a few good films here and there, such as Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, and The Lion King 1 1/2.
    • Some of these direct-to-video sequels are essentially pointless, since most of their original animated films, such as Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Jungle Book (1967) (which was released in theaters), The Little Mermaid (1989), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and others ended nicely with good happy endings with no setup of any potential sequel whatsoever.
    • Not only have they made direct-to-video animated sequels, but they made a lot of direct-to-video, streaming, and theatrically cartoon/computer-generated imagery spin-offs, remakes, and sequels (with the exceptions of Planes: Fire & Rescue, Disney Fairies franchise, and Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022), with the former being considered much better for their mainly original plots).
      • Also, they somehow still endlessly create many live-action remakes of their animated classics instead of making something original, most of which often turn out to receive far negative audience reception in comparison to the animated originals they were based on, with 2019's Lion King being the most infamous example. All of these movies get very tiresome and unnecessary in themselves. It doesn't help that their recent original live-action films, such as John Carter and Tomorrowland, ended up flopping heavily at the box office with their reasoning being poor marketing, making their excuse a weak one.
        • The worst part is that the main reason why these live-action remakes exist aside from getting easy money on the part of the Disney studio is just to satisfy the politically correct people who keep complaining about all the "problematic themes and elements" present in every one of these Disney animated classics since the birth of social media, when, in fact, most of these "problems" aren't even valid in the slightest.
        • These Disney live-action remakes, which are often said to be marketed to the 1980s and 1990s generations (and to a lesser extent, the 2000s generation) who grew up on the Disney animated originals of the 1930s-early 2000s, also highlight the societal stigma further that "animation is strictly only for kids" (which is so not true) to an extent where it gets annoying.
        • Many of these live-action remakes, such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, for example, (unlike their cartoony originals for unknown reasons) tend to have their runtimes needlessly extended by an additional 20-minute minimum, extending most of their films' runtimes to between 100-125 minutes as opposed to their animated originals' standard runtimes of between 65-80 minutes, hence making these films drag on for way too long to where it could come off as boring to some audiences. To make matters worse, most of these "extended scenes" serve zero purpose whatsoever in their respective films, since they often have no impact on the films' respective main plots and, therefore, serve as filler in general. You can cut out these "extended scenes" from these live-action remakes and their films wouldn't be any different. And given current details, The Little Mermaid will likely run into these issues.
        • Also, Disney executive Sean Bailey announced that they're making a Lion King live-action cinematic universe and making it similar to their Star Wars franchise (Which doesn't make sense and thankfully they were slammed for, even if the prequel to the 2019 remake Mufasa: The Lion King coming in 2024 would be successful) and especially considering that the original animated franchise with its films and television shows (Except The Lion Guard) including The Lion King's Timon & Pumbaa are loosely based on and inspired by the works, stories, characters and content from the late William Shakespeare and even biblical references.
16. During the COVID-19 pandemic, starting with the Mulan remake, they copied the Trolls: World Tour's rental strategy from the height of the pandemic in April 2020 for their Premier Access program on Disney+. Unlike Trolls: World Tour and other films that were released on digital storefronts for $20 to rent (sometimes $5 more to keep them), Disney decided to take it too far. As a result, their films through Premier Access cost $30 (or $35 in Canada/Australia) to rent on top of the monthly subscription fee, which, for one film, is quite expensive, even with good results, such as Raya and the Last Dragon. Despite having unlimited access though, the film would be available for regular users to watch for free 3 months after the movie's original release date, meaning that they never owned it in the first place. This also means that such an action is an extremely twisted attempt to obtain more money from the consumers' pockets. What’s not helping is that you can wait just one month to buy and keep a 4K version on regular digital storefronts for the same price. Also, 3 months after the movie's initial release, you can buy a 4K Blu-ray bundle of the movies that received this treatment for the same price or cheaper, depending on how long you wait until you get it. Thankfully, Premier Access is no longer available, with the last movie to have this feature (for now) being Jungle Cruise. Because of this, all of the movies since Free Guy and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings have theatrical releases to ensure they might have box office success. In fact, in some regions, some of these movies were released on these platforms for no additional cost during lockdowns despite not having any form of a theatrical release before then.
17. They refused to let Lloyd Jones put Spider-Man on his son Ollie's grave (Ollie was a big Spider-Man fan) because they wanted to "preserve his innocence". Instead, Disney allowed him to have an image of Iron Man on Ollie's tombstone, which was hypocritical of Disney.
18. Hypocritically enough, they never punished a man who used their Club Penguin IP without their permission to solicit nudes from minors for two years until they got notified due to the negative attention from the media.
    • It did not help that Disney had been well aware of Club Penguin Online's existence since 2018 (the year when the game opened) as evidenced by the fact that Disney sued the site in the same year until the lawsuit was settled due to Riley complying the lawsuit. However, it could be because Disney wasn't aware of him being a pedophile at the time.
19. They support the Communist Party of China for monetary reasons, as they cannot bear the burden of losing the Chinese market, which is one of Disney's greatest sources of income (even though they came close to losing it with the film Lightyear, which got banned there for its LGBT representation). They not only gave credit to two organizations involved in the infamous Xinjiang concentration camps in the Mulan remake but also didn’t kick out Liu Yifei and Donnie Yen, both of whom support police brutality in Hong Kong.
    • When you think about it, this makes them look hypocritical, as they call out police brutality in the United States, yet they are fine with police brutality in Hong Kong as if they have lost their mind. Not to mention James Gunn got fired for making a joke about this (even though he got reinstated), yet they kept Yifei and Donnie Yen for supporting human rights abuse.
      • They also reposted to Iain Duncan Smith (a politician and a former Leader of the Conservative Party) and Baroness Helena Kennedy (a barrister and member of the House of Lords) by claiming that the United States and the United Kingdom didn’t give them a warning.
20. They changed 20th Century Fox's iconic name to the less cool-sounding 20th Century Studios. Disney's reasoning for this was that they wanted to steer people away from the Fox Corporation. That is inexcusable for them, as the Fox Film Corporation was the first to bear the Fox name before the merger with 20th Century Pictures in 1935, while the Fox Broadcasting Company was introduced in 1986. So if that was the case, then the studio would just either revert to its pre-merger name or keep the "Old Fox" name (just like what DreamWorks Animation did after being separated from the original DreamWorks Pictures studio) instead of what we have now. The New Fox, by the way, has since become associated with the disreputable Fox News.
21. Disney had to shut down 20th Century Fox's beloved animation company, Blue Sky Studios, too, according to them, "cut costs during the COVID-19 pandemic". This led to them laying off 450 employees and canceling the upcoming animated adaptation of Nimona. Unfortunately, Disney failed to give it the same recognition as Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios.
    • The cancellation of Nimona also adds to how poor Disney is when it comes to representing the LGBT community, even with Blue Sky animator Rick Fournier complaining that they weren't able to finish the film (in time) even without Blue Sky's shutdown, as it would've been their first feature animated film with an LGBT lead. It doesn't help that the film was already 75% done.
    • Nimona wasn't the only film that got canceled from Blue Sky Studios, as other films, such as Spore (there is a page on this wiki, but it's just a game), Mutts, Anubis, Frogkisser, and Foster, were intended, considered, or planned to be made, yet they were never released.
      • Thankfully, Nimona was later rescued by Netflix for a 2023 release.
    • Along with that, it was disappointing for them to shut down because their last three movies (Ice Age: Collision Course, Ferdinand, and Spies in Disguise) all bombed at the box office and Disney made the wrong decision to shut them down all just because those movies hardly made their money.
    • To add insult to injury, they posted pngs of the Ice Age characters on their official Instagram and Twitter accounts with the subtitles of "The COOLEST cast in prehistory" acting as if Ice Age was a franchise that they created! This has naturally resulted in a lot of backlash from fans of both the Ice Age franchise and Blue Sky Studios as a whole. If they posted it on either 20th Century Studios or Ice Age’s Instagram and Twitter accounts, it could have at least made more sense.
    • Granted, Blue Sky did have it coming since they both faked their taxes and stole Scrat's creator ungratefully, but that doesn't mean that they were right to add fuel to the fire.
      • Also, this was probably done to promote The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, but if that's the case, then it counts as false advertising since Scrat isn't even in the movie.
22. When they purchased Fox Family Worldwide in 2001, they completely ignored most of the Fox Kids/Saban library.
    • We get that they bought Fox Kids because Fox Family Channel had a major 35% audience decline (just thank Three Friends and Jerry, Angela Anaconda, and The Ripping Friends for ruining it). As a shocking result, Fox Kids was also declining in quality by the end of the 1990s and the start of the 2000s. But while Jetix was a great successor and many of its shows were great, it still didn't change how terrible of a move it was for Disney to ignore most of Fox Kids' shows (at least in the United States).
    • Only a few Fox Kids shows are legally available in the USA: most of Marvel's TV shows, the TV movies Richie Rich's Christmas Wish and Three Days (all of which are on Disney+), Power Rangers and all its spinoff series, such as Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation (now owned by Entertainment One, formerly Saban), Digimon (now owned by Toei), Pigs Next Door (which is co-owned with Studio 100), Bobby's World (which was sold back to the show's creator, Howie Mandel), Samurai Pizza Cats (Saban's license expired in 2000 and the show is currently distributed by Digital Media Rights), Goosebumps (which is owned by Scholastic), and DiC Entertainment (which is now known as WildBrain).
23. The infamous Disney Vault. Luckily, the Disney Vault was quickly demolished with the release of Disney+ (Song of the South and Make Mine Music, however, just happened to remain vaulted).
    • Perhaps the most notable example is Song of the South (the movie does have several racial moments), which they never and will never digitally release on video and Disney+, since they fear a negative backlash. This means that very few people have seen the actual film, despite it having massive attention from many people, including Whoopi Goldberg (who wanted the movie to be released).
      • Disney also plans to remove Song of the South from Disneyland's Splash Mountain ride and replace it with Tiana's Bayou Adventure, based on The Princess and the Frog in 2024.
    • Because of one segment of the packaging film Make Mine Music, "The Martins and the Coys", which is notable for comic gunplay reminiscent of that of Looney Tunes among its hillbilly people, the film is still unavailable on Disney+ and hasn’t been made available on home video since the vaulting of its 2000 VHS/DVD release (though on that home media release the segment is notably missing, specifically on the US home media release).
24. Animal welfare groups criticized them for their care and procedures for wild animals at the Animal Kingdom theme park.
25. They also shut down almost all their Disney Channels in various countries as of early 2020 to focus on Disney+, which is upsetting, since tons of people grew up with Disney Channel and its sister channels Disney XD (formerly Toon Disney and Jetix) and Disney Junior (formerly Playhouse Disney) between the 1990s-2010s and, therefore, remained a huge part of their childhoods over the years. Not to mention this is a pretty inconsiderate decision, since not everyone can afford streaming services.
    1. Similarly, they have stopped selling physical releases of their films and shows in Australia after Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 to focus post-theatrical release efforts on Disney+. This decision earned negative criticism from social media users who prefer physical media over streaming due to higher video and audio quality, special features, and long-term cost efficiency.
26. They no longer care about their cartoony TV shows on Disney Channel. They also move anything other than their sitcoms or Big City Greens to spin-off channels (most notably in Disney XD) to die out.
27. After Stan Lee tragically passed away, they started using his Twitter account to shamelessly promote more Marvel content (which is essentially disgraceful towards his passing) instead of leaving his account to fade away peacefully.
    • As if that weren't bad enough, they eventually used his account to promote an NFT of Chakra The Invincible.
    • The official Twitter account for Dictionary.com even rationed this tweet by bringing up the definition of 'defile'.
    • They also used the Twitter and Instagram accounts of the late Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman (who died in 2020) to promote Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which led to massive backlash from fans and audience alike.
28. They’ve also done their fair share of atrocities in the past even during Walt's lifetime. For example, the late Bobby Driscoll, the actor who played Peter Pan in the 1953 movie, got fired because he had grown some acne. And thanks to this, he died homeless at the age of 31. To rub more salt into the wound, 54 years later, in the otherwise fantastic new Chip and Dale movie, people pointed out the similarities between Sweet Pete and Driscoll's dark fate, calling it tasteless, though it's likely an unfortunate coincidence since there are some clear differences here and there.
29. They made a tweet supporting the LGBT+ community (while it sounds nice due to it being released during Pride Month), which is unfortunately hypocritical since Alex Hirsch (creator of Gravity Falls) exposed them for making him remove a scene from an episode for LGBT related content. This proves that they just want to have a "good" corporate image. He even participated in the major ratio against Disney's tweet.
    1. This original stance against the LGBT+ community was probably because Disney wanted to show their products in countries where LGBT+ content cannot be shown in any form of media (such as China) or where LGBT+ behavior is outright forbidden (such as the majority of the Middle East, where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death).
30. Despite changing their stance on the LGBT+ community in recent years, their support for the LGBT+ community has become a bit extreme starting in 2021.
    1. One example of this is their fierce opposition to Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, which forbids the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity to students between kindergarten and third grade (or, as the radical left calls it, the "Don’t Say Gay" bill). While originally choosing to remain neutral on the bill, they were pressured into opposing it when it was discovered that they had funded the bill
    2. This new stance has included adding more LGBT+ content in their movies and shows and mocking anyone who opposes these additions.
       1. For example, they added an initially deleted scene of 2 women kissing each other in Pixar's Lightyear movie. However, when people voiced their opposition to this scene being included, Chris Evans, the voice of Buzz Lightyear, openly mocked them, calling them idiots "who will die off like the dinosaurs".
31. Despite being one of the studios with the largest budget in the world and one of the best places to work, there have been a large number of testimonies from current and former workers who have claimed that working at the company is one of the worst. decisions that can be made. Several of the testimonies affirm that the main Disney executives do not give them medical insurance, the salary they were promised is not the right one, and that they are exploited both physically and psychologically by a large number of working hours. In addition to these testimonies, the Snopes page confirmed that Disney exploited its workers or threatened them with monetary claims in case they refused to work at the same time Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Roy Disney, has publicly criticized this treatment given to her to the workers.
32. Their Publishing Worldwide supported the widely criticized Stop Online Piracy Act.
33. They've priced some of their products at ridiculously high costs.
    • For example, the recently opened Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel in Walt Disney World costs $6,000 for a two-day stay with 4 people, which is extremely ridiculous, even for some hotels especially considering that it has very little relevance to the source material, as explained by Angry Joe talking about a now-deleted video that showed off the hotel.
34. They have tried reviving old franchises from the studios they acquired, only to run them further into the soil, the same way they remake every classic animated movie.
    • They agreed to greenlight an unnecessary reboot for the Home Alone franchise, even though that franchise stopped being good after the first two movies and only had direct-to-video sequels for the fourth and fifth films released in 2002 and 2012 respectively.
    • This was also done as an excuse to make even more money. The other fact is that the rebooted movie for 2021 would only exist to pander to the fans of the franchise and the people who have subscribed to Disney+. This shows that the Home Alone franchise has become more of a soulless and empty advertisement for its former glory.
    • The same can be said about The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, despite Ice Age completely losing its charm after Continental Drift and being seen as a cash grab franchise.
35. To twist the knife, during the development of Pixar's Coco, they tried to trademark Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) as their property.
36. To celebrate Disney+ Day on November 12, 2021, they announced a collection of NFT artworks.
    • Ironically, one of the NFTs in this collection depicts WALL-E, a character from his titular movie where an environmental issue (albeit not the specific type that NFTs are causing and NFTs environmental problem, along with energy usage, was already mostly solved when Ethereum (which most NFT uses) transitioned to proof-of-stake back in September 2022) led to the Earth being evacuated.
    • Also, one of the NFTs uses the partner's statue, which depicts Walt Disney himself, the founder of the company itself, which is disrespecting to both his legacy and his death!
    • It's also no surprise, as one of its rival companies (Warner Bros) also suffered in terms of business practices by the late 1990s, especially following the horror that is the merger between AOL and Time Warner.
    • It doesn't help that most of the music broadcast on Radio Disney in the 2000s or produced by Disney around that time was pretty terrible with the Jonas Brothers, for example. To rub extra salt into the wound, they were practically manufactured by Disney as well. This South Park clip illustrates that perfectly. Unfortunately, the Jonas Brothers were brought back to the public in 2019 (despite arranging to come back by themselves). Disney is continuing to hire more pop stars than nobody wants.
37. They have ignored Oswald the Lucky Rabbit ever since the flopping of Epic Mickey: The Power of Two and relegated him to minor appearances and cameos, which is a disappointing way to treat his legacy.
    • Furthermore, they canceled the Disney+ show of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for no reason, which made many people upset. Click here to see how.
    • Julius is also ignored after the stopping of Alice Comedies. That was many years before Oswald and, considering that he is the very first original Disney cartoon character, makes this all the more ridiculous.
38. They moved the premieres of Soul, Luca, and Turning Red during the COVID-19 pandemic and had them skip their originally planned theatrical releases (except for in countries that don't have Disney+). While this did make sense for Soul, it didn't make sense to do the same for Luca and Turning Red, especially since films from Disney's other studios that were released around the same time got theatrical releases. This led to some Pixar employees questioning the way Disney has treated the studio. Though considering the recently released Pixar film Lightyear (a spin-off movie of Toy Story) was a box-office disappointment (becoming their third box-office bomb, after Onward and The Good Dinosaur). Maybe Disney was right all along due to the infamous review bomb practice.
39. Since the Disney Afternoon era ended, Disney animated TV characters rarely appear in Disney parks anymore. Only characters from Doug, Kim Possible, Phineas and Ferb, and the Playhouse Disney/Disney Junior animated series appear.
40. They pretend more than once that the source material doesn't exist, to the point where many fans made fun of them and said they don't watch their own movies. The most notable example is when they posted a tweet about how the family is there for each other when they added a drawing of Chicken Little hugging his father Buck Cluck, a character who is known as one of the worst fathers in animation and wasn't there for his son when he needed him.
41. They treated The Owl House badly and decided to end the show early and have Season 3 be shortened due to the show not being a cash cow like Big City Greens and The Ghost and Molly McGee and also how Disney views the show as "too costly and mature", although this is considering how the show has recently gotten dark, it's fair to say that Disney inadvertently made their version of Invader Zim, thus causing Disney Channel to go downhill again as they did in the mid-2000s, as stated earlier.
    1. The same thing can be said with Star vs. The Forces of Evil (albeit partially), due to them giving Daron Nefcy just 4 seasons for the show and also forcing her and her team to rush it, which led to the downfall of the show itself.
42. Speaking of which, sometimes they would spontaneously cancel a good show due to supposedly not fitting the brand. While it's okay if they have an opinion, the fact that they suddenly withdrew Dave the Barbarian, Motorcity, Wander Over Yonder, Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero, and Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! in their first or last seasons can be a pretty idiotic move, especially the latter show ending in a massive cliffhanger similar to the third season of Final Space, the second season of both the infamous Butt-Ugly Martians and the short-lived series Sonic Underground.
43. During their time with EA making Star Wars games, even when they forced EA to remove loot boxes in their Battlefront 2 reboot game due to the mass controversy surrounding that game, they stated that they have a "good" relationship. Somehow, one could say it was on-and-off.
44. Thanks to the bad decisions, fans and the creators of South Park often see Mickey Mouse as a real villain when the blame is with the executives and not the mascot or the employees.
    • The worst thing is that the executives are so perverse that they don't defend Mickey Mouse if he's good or bad.
45. Their treatment of P.L Travers (the creator of Mary Poppins) was quite jarring starting with their otherwise fantastic 1960s adaptation of the book, which Travers hated so much, that she went out of her way to write it in her will so that Disney can never do anything Mary Poppins related as long as she lived. Then, in the year 2013, they made a semidocumentary of Disney named Saving Mr. Banks that portrayed him as a hero (which, to be fair, is mostly true, 86% at least) and Travers as an impossible shrill (though, in the movie's defense, she got more excellent at the end). When she eventually died, Disney made a deal with her estate so that they could make a mixed-to-positive sequel.
46. Remember when they once bought DIC Entertainment as part of their acquisition of Capital Cities (former owner of ABC and ESPN)? That wasn't the best decision they've made. They had little faith in their productions due to their animation quality being nothing like theirs. Although productions like Sabrina: The Animated Series and Mummies Alive! were successful, others, such as The Wacky World of Tex Avery and Sonic Underground, not so much.
    1. Although, on Disney's behalf, they never wanted DIC from the start and were, in reality, forced to own them as the Limited Partnership previously obtained by CC/ABC had not expired yet. They were eventually allowed to sell DIC off in November 2000, although, according to Seth Kersley, who directed and produced Mummies Alive!, Disney could no longer own them by 2000, as DIC was classified as a non-union animation studio.
    2. Fox Family Worldwide, which Disney acquired in 2001, held the international distribution rights to DIC's pre-1990 library until 2006 when the rights reverted to DIC (which is now known as WildBrain).
47. They broke Roy E. Disney's promise to his uncle to never give licenses for Fantasia by giving the license to Sega to develop a game based on the film for the Sega Genesis due to the success of Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse and the re-release of the film in theatres on home video to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fantasia. Instead of developing the game house like with Castle of Illusion, Sega decided to outsource the development of the game to Infogrames because they were busy with Sonic the Hedgehog and the game was rushed for the 1991 holiday season. The game was poorly received, with most of the criticism going to the poor renditions of the film's music, bad gameplay, and horrendous controls. After finding out about the game's existence and the negative reception towards it, Roy E. Disney demanded Sega recall all unsold copies of the game and get rid of them. Thankfully, in return, Disney would give Sega more Disney licenses at no further cost. This is often believed to be the reason why Disney Interactive was founded.
48. They ruined Doug after buying Jumbo Pictures. Because of this, Doug's 1st Movie and Doug Live! were created, both of which were a failure, with the latter being shown several times daily at Disney MGM Studios. It ran until 2001 when Jumbo Pictures cut ties with Disney, they ruined their reputation, and it was re-opened and replaced as Cartoon Pizza. For more information about this company, see here.
    • Speaking of which, ever since Disney bought the rights to Doug from Nickelodeon in 1996 which is now titled Disney's Doug as of 1998, the show started to go a little downhill, as several pointless changes were made, although this era is not that bad, it's nowhere near as good as the Nickelodeon era.
49. Somehow, they aired their coverage of E3 2018 to be left uncensored and something like that should be unacceptable for a children’s program.
50. During the infamous 94th Academy Awards, the 3 presenters (Halle Bailey, Lily James, and Naomi Scott), who played the Disney princesses from the live-action remakes, infamously said that animation is something "only kids watch" just before they announced Encanto for Best Animated Feature Film, which is extremely disrespectful to animation fans, the animators who worked on the other Disney movies that were nominated, and even Walt Disney himself, since he literally stated, "You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway!" In fact, they have been accused by many animation communities and spaces of supposedly bribing The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences into giving films from Walt Disney Animation and Pixar the award for Best Animated Film.
    1. If you thought that the 94th Academy Awards wasn't enough to make you believe that Disney believes that animation is for kids, then another rage-inducing event happened. In an interview, Bob Chapek, the former CEO of Disney, openly said that animation is for kids, which shows how the company reached an all-time low. Thankfully, Bob Chapek was fired from Disney and Bob Iger returned to work in the company as the new CEO until the end of 2026.
51. Also, the entire 2022 Academy Awards ceremony felt like a huge circle-jerking by the company, since they included a Lightyear commercial with Chris Evans in the middle of the ceremony and also kept Best Animated Feature Film and Best Costume Design, just so Cruella and Encanto would win, and so that Jenny Beavan could express how truly great the latter was, making it incredibly self-indulgent.
52. They, alongside Marvel Studios, have recently treated VFX artists badly due to stress and unrealistic deadlines.
53. The opening credits sequence of the MCU series Secret Invasion was created using generative AI to showcase "the shapeshifting tone of the series" according to Ali Selim which which was met with backlash from audiences and the animation industry.
54. During the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, it was revealed that several background actors for several Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Studios, Lucasfilm, and Disney Branded Television productions were scanned to train a generative artificial intelligence to use their image on several episodes or films without their consent or additional payment.
55. In May 2021, conservative activist Christopher Rufo released internal documents from Disney. These included employee training material containing what Rufo said were racially inflammatory accusations and telling employees to complete a white privilege checklist.
56. The way they tackled racism in The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder was downright abysmal, due to the overreliance on referencing Black Lives Matter, the awful, really historically inaccurate songs, some laughable lines, and so on. While they wanted to tackle racism like the original Proud Family, the latter at least tackled it excellently, while this show failed in every way. This shows that Disney outright missed the point of The Proud Family's take on discrimination.
    1. Despite three episodes that tackled racism, the show itself was massively review-bombed by the audience because of these episodes.
57. They began layoff notices for more than 7,000 employees. The layoff comes in three waves, with the first wave starting on March 27, 2023.
58. They, along with companies like Amazon, Netflix, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery, made an outright malicious and downright evil plan to break the recent WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes by not responding and making them run out of money, to the point they lose their apartments and their houses.
59. Even worse, the company is getting bad earning calls.
60. The company's streaming platform, Disney+, is also going downhill, losing millions of subscribers as the infamous trend Cancel DisneyPlus had already begun and left the platform for Disney's other streaming platforms, such as Star Plus and Hulu, in addition to other platforms, such as Netflix, Apple plus, Paramount Plus, and Peacock.
    • Speaking of which, the platform doesn't include all seasons of "Doug," which ignores the seasons of the Nickelodeon era and includes only one season from the revival, which can make new people watching the series lost. Although, it's understandable since Nickelodeon still owns the rights to their era, but still. However, the Nick era is currently available on Paramount Plus
61. They decided to make drastic changes to the upcoming remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with almost all of the changes being either unnecessary or downright terrible, such as removing the prince altogether, changing the story, and deciding to make the dwarfs "more diverse", to the point that the final product will be unrecognizable from the original movie. To make their Snow White remake worse, The House of Mouse decided not to want dwarves into their film (Which caused a lotta backlash from the Dwarfism community including dwarf actor Peter Dinklage who is angry about this).
62. They delayed Avatar 3, Avatar 4, and Avatar 5 to December 19, 2025, December 21, 2029, and December 19, 2031, respectively, which is way too long. The worst offender is Avatar 5.
63. They made Pistol (a miniseries about The Sex Pistols) unavailable to watch in any form by removing it from Disney+ and Hulu worldwide in May 2023.
64. They've begun to take down videos of Steamboat Willie on YouTube despite the short now being in the Public Domain, as they used the short's music as a reason to take it down despite the music being Steamboat Bill, which has been in public domain before Steamboat Willie and have also forced content creators on the site to take down their uploads of the short, and have used animal cruelty violations to force YouTube to prevent people on YouTube to not upload the short on the site. This proves that they are unwilling to accept that Steamboat Willie's copyright has expired and are trying to justify taking down videos of the short online that are uploaded by other people, as the main reason why they're doing this is to protect the trademark rights of Mickey Mouse, which has nothing to do with the copyright expiration of Steamboat Willie aside from being short that introduced Mickey Mouse, but then again, Mickey looks completely different in the short when compared to what he looks like nowadays.
    • Ironically, they were fine with Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey using the trademark of the series, despite Disney themselves owning the trademark of Winnie the Pooh, and haven't sued the creator of said film, and yet they're striking down multiple videos of Steamboat Willie by using their ownership of Mickey's trademark as a reason to do so when Mickey has changed throughout the years and now has a different design.
    • What makes the situation worse is that they haven't responded about this unreasonable decision to do this for certain content creators and are trying to protect the short from being used despite now being in the public domain, and since they're still using Steamboat Willie in promotional material, this means that Disney fans are unable to use Steamboat Mickey as they would like, meaning that Disney is clearly ignorant to the rules of the public domain and are only using the trademark of the franchise to take down videos of the short on YouTube, which isn't a good move since both copyright laws and trademark laws are completely different from each other, and the copyright expiration of Steamboat Willie has no effect on the trademark rights of Mickey Mouse, which are still owned by Disney, and Mickey's design in Steamboat Willie is completely different from what he looks like nowadays, making this decision to copyright claim videos of Steamboat Willie on YouTube completely stupid and shows that Disney haven't changed at all.
      • However, they haven't sued any other works based on Steamboat Willie and have only taken down YouTube videos based on the short, and YouTube later revoked the copyright claim upon some videos.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Compared to Nickelodeon (the most infamous example), Cartoon Network, Warner Bros., Mattel and PBS Kids, despite their downfall in 1994, Disney still makes great movies (excluding live-action remakes), but their theme parks are still fantastic with amazing rides like the iconic it's a small world and Star Wars: Rise of The Resistance, and like Paramount Pictures, they sometimes listen to criticism.
2. Their feature cartoon studio, Pixar, Marvel Studios, the television animation studio, and Star Wars media still make mostly quality movies or shows. Many of the criticisms centered on Disney are mainly from it as a company, its live-action studio, the sequel trilogy, and its bad stories.
3. They like many other companies are rooting for Ukraine to win over Russia's unprovoked invasion of the country and are hoping once Ukraine wins the war to resume their operations in Russia considering their acquisition of 20th Century Fox gave them the rights to Anastasia, a character who is perfectly fitting for the Disney Princess franchise.
4. Like D.C. Douglas for Funimation/Crunchyroll, it looks like they disassociated from Bob Chapek in 2022.
5. Ever since they acquired 20th Century Fox, they saved plenty of franchises.
   1. Ever since their acquisition with 20th Century Fox, Disney saved the Predator franchise after they produced the recently released original Hulu 2022 film Prey (Which is considered a major improvement over Shane Black's previous 2018 controversial and abysmal installment The Predator by both fans and critics), Same with the Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise after they rebooted the series from live-action to animation after the 2017 film The Long Haul had nearly ruined the franchise.
   2. They're also allowed to remain Deadpool as an R-rated Marvel superhero especially the Fantastic Four, Venom, Wolverine, and the X-Men while being both joined and rebooted (Except for Venom and Wolverine while Tom Hardy, Hugh Jackman, and Ryan Reynolds who is expected to reprise their roles as the Merc with a mouth, same with Wolverine and Venom, after Disney signed an overall multi-year deal with Sony) into the MCU (Despite its slight downfall).
   3. In addition to Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Studios, They've also acquired their famous comic book store and film/television company Boom Studios! and adapted their first comic book Just Beyond! into a TV series on Disney+, Same with R.L Stine's novel series of Goosebumps and in addition to that they signed a first-look deal with them while Boom Studios signed a first look deal with Netflix.
   4. Ever since they merged with Fox, they're also saving the Percy Jackson & The Olympians franchise by rebooting the series (Based on the books) into a TV series for Disney+ (Which is very cleverly honest of them, unlike Fox 2000 Pictures that poorly made the first two books into films that didn't properly stay true to the source material) and the show is set to be released on December 20th, 2023.
   5. In addition to that and their acquisition of 20th Century Studios Furthermore, Disney will produce and release their upcoming new Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes adaptation and latest film titled Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and will be coming to theatres on May 24th, 2024 and confirmed that the new film will be a directed sequel where the previous 2017 film War for the Planet of the Apes left off with Caesar's legacy continues and centers on another chimpanzee (Who is the franchise's new protagonist) named Noa (Especially with its official teaser trailer came out).
6. Their network Disney Channel is still good.
7. There are remakes of their original films that are good so far are The Jungle Book (1994 and 2016), Cinderella (2015), The Call of the Wild (2020), and Cruella (2021).
8. They never forget their 100th anniversary for the Disney fans, for the new and the old.
9. Bob Iger and Disney execs promise that their main goal is now "quality over quantity." Proving that they have seen their mistakes and are trying to improve.
10. They have announced that they will put Soul, Luca, and Turning Red in movie theaters in 2024.

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