Extended Disney+ Thoughts
The Criterion Channel set up an unreal expectation of what streaming sites could house beyond just a film or a TV show with additional interviews, commentaries, documentaries, original theatrical trailers, etc. and then HBO Max when that launches will have podcasts and curators from users on what’s good to watch. Even the DC Universe offers users a catalog of older comic books to read on top of their original superhero shows and movies as well as news pertaining to their fan base. Then you get to Disney+, and it’s… aggressively mediocre. It’s exactly what it wants to be, a family friendly platform with access to some of the titles from Walt Disney’s vault, with none of the ambition behind it. It’s slightly above Netflix and Prime Video in terms of extras that are on top of the movies, but it’s very hit and miss with whether titles get to have bonus features. The MCU and Star Wars movies offer some deleted scenes and trailers when they were coming out on digital, the original Muppets movie has the famous camera test where Jim Henson was improvising, and other titles function like they do on Netflix where a small clip of the movie is available for a preview in the hopes that you’re interested in watching and that’s it. When there’s effort implemented, Disney+ can be interested, but more often than not it’s pretty vanilla in terms of it’s features.
Some other notes after playing with the service:
-I don’t understand why you would launch The Simpsons with a catalog of episodes as heavy as that without the option to see it in a 4:3 setting. We bitched about this when FXX launched Simpsons World without that feature and it makes older episodes of the show look like crap.
-Speaking of cropped material, When I was watching Steamboat Willie on my Roku device, the picture quality was *slightly* zoomed in resulting in cutting off the top text and copyright text at the bottom. Watching it on my desktop looked fine but going from The Simpsons to that and then wondering if all the older material is badly cropped, nearly made my head explode. Then those fears were confirmed to be true:
So what this means is something that was originally presented in a 4:3 setting like this:
…Now looks like this:
I know that folks have complained that the new DuckTales series is out of chronological order, and it’s more than just that show that pulls this nonsense. Darkwing Duck, X-Men, Spider-Man, Gargoyles, Fantastic Four, even the original Ducktales series all have episodes playing out of order which interrupts the continuity to the original series. Some of these are as small as an episode or two are placed incorrectly, and others like Ducktales 2.0. it makes trying to follow along with the show so much more difficult. Then there’s Gravity Falls removing the symbol on his fez, yet it still shows up in the previews and magically returns later in the show’s run. There’s a lot of dumb decision making here, and it’s infuriating.
-It’s annoying to navigate too. Looking through shows and movies in the A-Z category, not everything pops up and it’s annoying to track down where to find stuff (ex. the X-Men 90’s cartoon only came up in the Marvel channel, and it was nowhere else to be found otherwise). It’s formatted weird too, like there’s Darkwing Duck and then the next title was Amphibia or Wizards of Waverly Place to Adventures of the Gummi Bears.
On my desktop, every new title I watch I must keep turning on the closed captioning instead of having it always on and the window to close out is annoying to leave.
Original programs are very bland. Forky Ponders The Human Experience was the only original I could consider being great and I could happily watch an entire half hour animated series on it. The Mandalorian feels like a poor man’s Genndy Tartakovsky western with most of the CGI and action sequences looking and feeling awful (Baby Yoda v good tho). The Imagineering Project feels like a long form commercial for Disney World (and blatantly kiss-assy to Walt Disney. “I use to argue with him all the time, BUT HE WAS SUCH A GREAT GUY”, please shut up) and the World According to Jeff Goldblum is going to get launched into the sun. There’s folks that have already shared their encounters with Goldblum and how much of a creep ass this dude is, and I expect Disney will pull the plug on that whenever that story breaks.
-I like that you’re not thrown automatically into the next episode of shows as soon as you’re done. Still annoying to have a pop-up window and you can’t view the credits unless you click on the episode again, but at least there’s time. Netflix and Prime Video have gotten so much worse with that (5 seconds with Prime, and Netflix will try to get you to watch something else when you’re done with a season). I’m glad there’s at least 20 seconds to make that decision and it’s sad I even need to say this considering how many people work on a production of a show. I also enjoy episodes are coming out on a weekly basis as oppose to all at once. I like that I don’t have to marathon through an entire season the minute it comes out just so that I can stay in the conversation and then forget about it a week later.
-I get not everything could be included from Disney’s vault due to licensing agreements not being there yet (ex. MCU Spiderman movies, X-Men, a few key documentaries like The Boys, The Lone Ranger, etc.) or admitting their past has been a bit rocky (Song of the South is noticeably absent), but it does seem weird that stuff like Genndy Tartakovsky’s Star Wars shorts aren’t here, the old school Muppets series isn’t here, that David Lynch’s G RATED MOVIE is absent, and when you have access to the 20th Century Fox titles and only a micro serving of them show up, it feels like a missed opportunity to introduce folks to that catalog, and it sucks. These people can forbid independent movie theaters from screening shit like “Raising Arizona” or “Alien”, but then refuse to do anything to screen it to a wide audience for a streaming distribution.
Disney+ feels super vanilla and safe and when one of your premier programs at launch is a documentary about the works of Walt Disney and how brilliant and innovative he was, this feels like Disney’s Crackle more than a real competitor to the several other streaming services out there. Combine the lack of innovation with all the technical issues, it’s hard to recommend getting a subscription to it unless you’re a die hard Disney fan. $6.99 a month/$69.99 per year should feel like a steal instead it feels like just another service to con folks into getting a subscription.
