Disney's Latest #Woke Leap Crashed And Burned at the Box Office - Granite Grok

Disney’s Latest #Woke Leap Crashed And Burned at the Box Office

Disney rainbow - LogoLynx

If you’ve not seen the ads, the movie is called Strange World, which is ironic. The film includes a gay teen, accepting biracial parents, and a disabled dog. In other words, it is the template for every commercial you see on television (minus the disabled part for the dog).

Not strange at all, unless you’re talking about another Disney opening weekend box office flop! Their biggest opening flop ever?

 

The new Disney animated movie, “Strange World,” opened to a disappointing $4.2 million on Wednesday and is expected to make less than $24 million in its first five days in theaters. For a movie with an estimated $180 million in production costs, those are worryingly low returns.

 

Based on the ads, I don’t think the #woke bits are the problem. I’ve seen their commercials more times than I can count, and it was unclear to me that it was anything but an animated feature. I’ll confess to liking Disney movies, though I’ve not watched them in recent years, and I know enough about stories to understand when there isn’t one. Not a good one. I could not determine what these individuals were doing from the ads and why anyone should care.

Disney may have been more interested in how to portray a gay teen romance, biracial parents, (and climate change themes) and forgot that none of that matters if it doesn’t somehow drive the story. Making people gay or trans or using people of color for straight or white roles or whatever else the entertainment establishment feels guilty about is irrelevant if it’s posturing.

People complained about dark-skinned Valyrians in HBO’s House of the Dragon, but if you ignore the superficial insecurity of the Hollywood casting directors and producers, the actors were outstanding, and that’s what matters.

Strange World might be strange because it wanted so badly to normalize a biracial family with a gay teen romance it forgot to make the story about that, which – still isn’t for everyone – but at least it would have been honest. Instead, we get a “kids” movie peddling lifestyle choices that are not all that strange unless they are unnecessary affectations to push an agenda.

I’ve not seen the film and doubt I will, but that’s my sense, given the noise following a disappointing opening weekend.

And I’m not offended by animated biracial parents accepting their animated gay teen or his romance. Being a constitutional conservative means protecting the idea that limited government maximizes individual liberty and personal choice. If parents want to take their kids to that, it’s not porn, grooming, abuse, or even strange. And neither are Liberals getting mad at me for protecting the right to have different choices and calling me a bigot if I don’t immediately give up mine and embrace theirs.

It is strange that Disney is clinging to a cultural obsession that its core audience continues to reject.

I suppose that might be why they just jettisoned their CEO and asked Bob Iger to fill in and stop the bleeding. But is that something Bob Iger can do? The brand is damaged, and park attendance is down. Has Disney’s # woke momentum dragged the franchise off more than just a box office cliff?

 

 

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