Saw this a few days ago, was going to post but thought better of it because was worried you’d burse a blood vessel reading it 
But agree with you , shame Disney seem hell bent on destroying what made them great in the first place.
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Nah, that looks more like the crew from Safety Dance 
I believe that Gilliam used dwarfs because, as a cartoonist, he drew all the bandits as the same size as the boy in the story board and, as a bit of an eccentric, he stuck to his original vision when casting.
The idea with the dwarfs in Snow White is that they were societal outcasts living away from the rest of civilisation. I think there is something that they could have played on there. Most Grimm tales are rather darker than the children’s stories that they superficially appear to be. In fact the 1937 animated film managed to capture that which is why it has remained a classic even aside from the technical achievements.
I don’t think any of these Disney live action remakes has achieved anything that is artistically relevant. It’s just film by focus group. I suppose, ultimately, that they are a commercial enterprise but they do have a strong history of technical and artistic innovation. It’s a pity.
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A focus group that tries to appease a section of society that will probably never watch the films anyway. It’s lunacy. 2 Biggest films of the year, MI and Top Gun. Why? Just pure action, enjoyment and good story. Not gender, race and height politics rammed down the audiences’ throat with a strong (hopefully diverse) female lead who’s brilliant at everything.
Top Gun was part funded by the US Navy, of course it’s political.
Also neither Top Gun nor MI were the biggest films of the year. Super Mario Bros made 3x more on opening weekend than Top Gun did.
The screenshot cut it off but Super Mario is 1st. The only movie in the top 10 to make less than MI this year on opening weekend was Elemental (which funnily enough is the only one I’ve seen, because I tok my son to it, and given how much movie tickets are now I think I’m at least half the return for the entire movie)
Having said all that I think the new MI looks very fun, it’s just clearly not the biggest movie of the year.
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I suspect that they are people who will watch the films. Streaming services (and Disney+ is one of the biggest) will produce a huge amount of data about what people will watch and what they like. This will feed back to the producers that will tell them that certain types of film, actor, story line etc will appeal to a broad audience.
However, putting all these things together will not necessarily make a good film and there has been a long history of films that have bombed at the box office not because they didn’t tick the appropriate boxes, but because they were crap films. There is a smaller list of films that have performed fantastically despite being very much their own thing and unlike anything else made at the time. Unfortunately, there are far more critically admired films that tanked commercially.
It’s interesting that you pick up on MI and Top Gun. They are both films that have drawn heavily on what worked previously. I haven’t seen the new MI yet but the recent Top Gun looked like Jerry Bruckheimer by numbers. Obviously it is aimed at a different audience to a modern Disney flick but it very carefully ticks the boxes of all his previous hits.
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Funny as shit though, that photo. The roaming band of hipsters. Probably on the quest for wi-fi connection.
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Yes, entertaining the audience not actively telling them to fuck off. Not starting the press conferences and interviews in advance talking about female empowerment, diversity and inclusion and fan baiting to the nth degree. We don’t care, we just want a good story.
Fair enough. Were the Mario bros race and gender swapped? Nope.
Some people do care. Disney are fundamentally in the business of making money. They’ve obviously latched on to diversity dollar. That isn’t going to appeal to everyone and it doesn’t necessarily make for good films. It presumably does make for a guaranteed revenue stream.
They did cast a non-Italian in the main role though, given that you were just complaining about dwarves having film roles stolen (a complaint I at least partly agree with) then I expect you’re equally irritated by them casting a a man with no Italian heritage at all as Mario.
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Problem with Disney is they keep pandering to children. Don’t they know their audience for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is straight, white, 50 year old men?
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Nein, nein, Achtung! Schneewittchen ist ein deutsches Fräulein! Scheisskopf!
( 
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I think the diversity is the effect not the cause. The entire industry is facing a reality that the only thing that works in the movies anymore is established IP. Even for studios like Disney with a baked in audience anything involving new IP is hard to make money on. They then find themselves scrambling for ways to retool their IP to justify doing something new with it, and this is one of the avenues they have where they tweak it enough to make it different.
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Have you seen the takings of Disney movies of late? The diversity dollar doesn’t pay.
You think that cast is pandering to the people who pay to take their kids to the movies? Or maybe just pandering to the shouty leftists on twitter. Now which of those things is going to make you money.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Make it like that or make another story. If the subject matter is too offensive for you, choose another subject, don’t bastardise this one to die (again) on the alter of wokeism.
I think about 80% of their output is now to streaming. I doubt anyone other than Disney senior execs will have access to that. That will show which films are watched repeatedly and by which are generating regular ongoing revenue.
I had a look at the last big cinema release that generated a “gone woke” backlash which was The Little Mermaid. That took $554.3 million on a $250 million budget (God knows what that was spent on). I’m guessing that should cover the costs and that’s before it even hits streaming.
However, the streaming is where the real money is made. Disney+ has 150 million worldwide subscribers. Ideally they will want to add to that but they certainly don’t want to lose customers. To achieve that they need a mix of content that will keeping people coming back. A section of that will be a selection of kids who can see characters on screen that look a bit like them. I’m guessing you will be more interested in the classic animations, most of which are a permanent feature on the service. I’m guessing that those people don’t require the same amount of new content to attract or retain them.
What the steaming data will also tell the execs is what sort of content those that cancelled the service were watching. If enough of them are ditching the service I’m pretty sure that they would be producing something that is likely to appeal.
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It’s actually worth noting just how diverse those movies are. Even the movies that arguably are most aimed at middle aged white guys (John Wick and Indiana Jones).
The Little Mermaid that people will try to tell you nobody wants to watch because of a non-white Ariel had done pretty well. I’m sure Snow White will do fine too.
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That’s going to be $250m before advertising. The $554.3m is takings at the cinemas. they take half. An absolute flop.
