So Much Work...
…For, to quote something else on Disney+ that shouldn’t be there, a whole lotta nothin’.
You probably saw this tweet yesterday. And if you somehow didn’t, take a look.
Last week at Consequence of Sound, I wrote about the identity crisis I would argue Disney+ is experiencing. One of the titles I wrote about, a film that has arguably no business being on Disney+, is Splash. If you don’t remember, this is not just the film that gave Tom Hanks a breakout role. It’s the film where a dude and a mermaid have lots and lots and lots of sex. It was rated PG! And yet it’s also the film that inspired the Walt Disney Company, pre-Michael Eisner, to create a separate distribution arm known as Touchstone Pictures. In short, Splash was too adult to be released by Walt Disney Pictures.
But it’s on Disney+, and it absolutely doesn’t need to be. Consider these tweets from Julia Alexander of The Verge this morning, after the above video went viral.
I’m glad that writers like Julia, Matt Singer at ScreenCrush, and many others have written about this, either via Twitter or their outlets. Here’s why: I kinda think that if that video above never went viral, or if writers at major outlets weren’t writing about this, Disney would’ve kept on doing what it was doing with this film. It’s a weird title to go to these lengths to re-edit, too. Have you thought about Splash in the last 10 years? At all?
I’ve said in this newsletter before that I would kill to eavesdrop on the meetings at the Disney+ Operations Center, or whatever they may call it, now. I want to understand the decision-making process. And since Disney+ is basically the one unit at Disney still visibly releasing and updating content right now, they might need to wrangle those processes in place right quick.
What this situation really highlights is what I wrote about in that linked essay: what IS Disney+ trying to be, anyway? Are they family-friendly? Are they aiming for something closer to PG-13? Which kind of PG-13 is OK? The kind where lots of death is normal, as in the MCU films? The kind where it’s OK to imply that two characters have sex but not that they have…butts?
And maybe the biggest question remains: why does Disney+ have to be the repository for so many titles when Disney owns another streaming service? Why is Hulu the wrong place for Splash? An unedited version of the film? You want to argue that the Marvel films make more sense on Disney+ for branding purposes…well, I get that. It’s cynical, but I get it. Why does Splash need to be here? It’s a question hopefully someone at Disney+ is asking themselves right now, as they try to dig out of a hole they never had to excavate to begin with.
Your Recommendation for Today
You know the drill: it’s a new day of Disney Animation bracket votes. And that means I’m recommending one of the titles up for a vote. Today, I’m going with a title that is unsurprisingly winning its battle so far. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an impossible story for Disney to adapt, which is why half of the film feels mostly out of place with the other half.
The half with wacky comic-relief sidekicks doesn’t entirely work. But when this movie leans into the darkness inherent in Victor Hugo’s story of the bell-ringer with a disfigured body, it works very well. I cannot entirely recommend this film, but any movie with a sequence featuring images like this can’t be all bad.
