Disney’s Strange World, a cartoon flick featuring a gay teenager, belly-flopped hard at the box office Thanksgiving weekend, doing so very poorly, and costing so very much to make, that it is now expected to lose something like $147 million when it’s all done.
Naturally, the right-wing press is over the moon. “Woke = Broke: America Says ‘No Thanks’ To Disney Cartoon With Gay Teenage Hero,” crowed the Daily Wire. “Disney’s latest attempt to go woke has them going broke,” cried the equally imaginative Louder With Crowder. “Americans Slam Demonic Disney for Trying to Teach Kids About Sexual Preferences in Its First Cartoon With Homosexual Main Character,” read a headline on the Liberty Daily news aggregation site feed.
But no one was quite so excited about the film’s box office failure as Breitbart’s John Nolte, who bashed out a column bashing the “gay groomers” at Disney and their “predatory embrace” of “the sicko trans movement.” (There are no trans characters in the film.)
Over Thanksgiving, the child groomers at Disney again sought to groom your child, which cost them a loss of up to $147 million.
With rhetoric like this prevalent on the right, it’s no wonder someone went and shot up a gay club.
Strange World, Disney’s latest … animated feature, is all about spreading environmental propaganda and exposing your child to adult sexuality. One of Strange World’s lead characters is a gay teenage boy in love with another boy. This plot point has nothing to do with teaching children tolerance for people who might be different and everything to do with shattering your child’s innocence.
I’m pretty sure no one in the family-friendly film is having explicit gay sex, but whatever.
Disney’s predatory embrace of child grooming, drag queens, and advocating the mutilation of children on the altar of the sicko trans movement is no longer a secret. The Disney brand is forever damaged. Decent parents no longer trust Disney, nor should they.
He equated Disney with a creepy child predator luring kids into his van.
Maybe turning your $250 million investment into the equivalent of a guy in a van holding candy and a camera is a poor way to do business?
But, Nolte insists, straight people aren’t being bigots because they reject a cartoon movie with a gay character. It’s just that.
homosexuality makes straight people uncomfortable. We don’t go to the movies to be uncomfortable. Mainstreaming it to children is unconscionable. Suddenly, instead of thinking about love, they are thinking about the complicated world of sexuality long before they are ready. Decent people don’t do that to children.
Meanwhile, the New York Post is celebrating a British dad who took his 9-year-old son to Hooters.
Somehow Nolte didn’t feel moved to write about this example of premature sexualization.
So why did Strange World flop, anyway? It may not be the gay subplot so much as the fact that no one has heard about it; as the Mary Sue points out, Disney fumbled publicity for the film. And those who did hear about it may have decided to wait a couple of months for it to start streaming on Disney+. Of course, by then, the right will have moved onto railing hysterically about something else too woke for their tastes.
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I’d bet the flopping is more related to how I’ve only heard of this film twice, and still have no idea what it’s about. Which is a common pattern with corporate films that try to be more inclusive. Companies cheap out on everything, fail to advertise the film effectively, and then when it flops the execs are like “See? Nobody is really interested in more inclusive films, so we will go back to pumping out generic stories about heroic straight white men/boys that audiences actually want.” It makes no business sense because it’s not actually about business.
Unrelated, has anyone seen this? https://www.reddit.com/r/enoughpetersonspam/comments/z7mry9/benzo_brainworms_says_antisemitism_has_become_a/
Jordan Peterson claiming that antisemitism has become “a moral necessity”. It is honestly scaring the daylights out of me how antisemitism has become so much more acceptable just in the last month.
@ Cyborgette
What the hell is that even supposed to mean?
(The antisemitism thing being a moral necessity)
@.45
Putting it bluntly, he means that Jews take up wokeness faster than everyone else (the “canaries” part), so opposing us (i.e. antisemitism) becomes morally necessary for any upstanding person. The people trying to give him the benefit of the doubt are wrong, given his history his POV is pretty obvious.
@.45
Well, you won’t be able to understand without the Full Context of at least 8 hours of lectures, because Peterson is The Best Communicator like that.
@.45:
What the hell is that even supposed to mean?
(The antisemitism thing being a moral necessity)
It’s sadly simple: antisemitism is the One Bigotry To Rule Them All, if you insist upon assuming that all those black, brown, red, yellow, and some-Euro-diasporic-are-whiter-than-others folks (whose numbers include Jews, but we’re oversimplifying here) aren’t smart enough to run their own Grand Unified Evil Conspiracy. Figure that Jews fulfill the Drow niche (although the irony is that D&D has become a lot less Fantastic Racist since its inception in the 70’s.)
And antisemitism has a been a hardy perennial for at least two millennia for people who needed a quick grab-and-go scapegoat.
I wish they would just say they hate gay peoples and be done with it.
Their hypocrisy is astounding while they happily support sexualisation of young children (well boys) when done in a heterosexual way. And why when they think of gay people do they immediately think of sex?
Also I think you’re right about the publicity. I had never heard of this film before I read this article!
Didn’t Encanto do pretty bad when they released it, but then gained some momentum? My sister liked it, and so did my Colombian co-worker. Apparently, it also has a very catchy song in it.
*badly
Adverbs. Grammar. Early morning.
This is the second time I’ve even heard of this movie. The first time being that Mary Sue article. I’m not exactly someone who goes out of their way to avoid anything disney related even if I no longer support Disney.
Marketing bungled this big time. Maybe it was set up to fail on purpose, maybe it was cowardice and lack of faith in the product. They could have easily stoked the culture-war and get a bunch of free advertising. But then they’d have to pick a side and they won’t do that until they’re absolutely sure it will gain them more than they’ll lose.
And yet, teens have had hetero crushes in plenty of films over the years without these being castigated by the Moral Guardians for “exposing your child to adult sexuality”. Now why might that be?
Explain, then, the existence of, say, the Friday the 13th franchise ….
@Gatecrasher
Several catchy songs. Though speaking of Encanto and a marketing team who can’t read the room … we all know Disney loves the merchandising and especially any character they can sell to girls. So they made a LOT of dolls for Isabela, the girliest character who swirls around in beautiful flowers all day long. Guess what doll actually sold out?
Luisa. The middle child who isn’t even the protagonist of the film, isn’t super-duper feminine in her presentation, and whose gift is superstrength. Admittedly she does have a pretty great song, and I think the theme of “what happens if I can’t live up to expectations” resonates pretty hard with kids.
Disney had some weird plan to put Strange World in theaters and on Disney+, while promoting it in neither venue. I didn’t even hear of the movie until I saw an article in the Times business section talking about what a flop it was going to be. That article was written before Thanksgiving, before the movie went to wide release. I didn’t know the movie had a gay character in it until a week later.
I@Victorious Parasol, as soon as I saw the first few bars of her song, I was sure Disney had a winner with Luisa. I was surprised when my wife told me the company was promoting Isabela over Mirabel over Luisa, because it was so obviously going to be exactly opposite in terms of demand. I know how Disney pushes cultural norms, but they usually let their instincts at following the money win out.
By the way, the animators had to fight to make Luisa look like a weight lifter. Corporate wanted her to look petite like every other Disney princess.
Now that Disney owns the IP for both Star Wars and the Muppets; why can’t we have Muppet Star Wars
@Dave
I put it in the same basket as “George Lucas thought Jar-Jar Binks would be the breakout character.”
Both Mirabel and Luisa are more interesting (IMO and all that) than Isabela, since unfortunately Isabela is The Pretty One and … that’s about it. Yes, she wants to be more than the Pretty Perfect Daughter, and that’s nice, but Mirabel wants to be valued by her family and Luisa worries about losing her value. I find either of those stories to be more compelling than Pretty Perfect Daughter. Also, I’m betting more kids can identify with Mirabel or Luisa than they can with Isabela.
Possibly if they’d bothered to advertise it?
I only saw a trailer about a week before it came out — and only once, on the show that’s literally called “Nothing But Trailers”. And Jake Gyllenhaal mentioned it in a recent Colbert interview (which was mostly about their mutual love of sourdough pandemic baking) That was it. I even have Disney+ and nada there.
I mean, I watch a LOT of TV and surf the net at geek places, and those were the only times I heard of it. I’d forgotten about it again till the Mary Sue article.
Personally, I found “Turning Red” delightful, but the Usual Suspects thought it was too girly and had too many Asians.
@ Vicky P
Jar-Jar was one of the very few things I liked about the prequels. He’s the only sympathetic character on the good guys’ side.
But, to reignite a debate from a time I don’t like to think about cos it makes me feel old, I was not a fan of the prequels.
But I aren’t generally. There’s an inherent flaw in prequels. Whether it’s the clone wars in SW or the Time War in Dr Who, the representation onscreen can never be as good as your imagined thoughts on the backstory. I much prefer things just left as unexplained hints as to ‘the world outside the window’.
One exception, the Tripods prequel. Not only does that flawlessly explain the events alluded to in the original trilogy, it also addresses some complaints people (well, Brian Aldiss) had about them; and pre-emptively (as far as anyone now reading the stories in order knows) rebuts them. I guess Rogue One did that too.
@Alan: But didn’t Aldiss complain about EVERYTHING?
It is impossible for most laypeople to tell in hindsight why a movie flops. Most people who work in industry don’t know why. Most people do not have a good grasp of how advertising, marketing, and the film industry interact, and so have no idea what they’re talking about when they make these statements. Even without “wokeness” (whatever the hell that means) the movie would still have flopped.
I’ve made a big point of trying to understand the basic workings of how films get made and marketed, and all things being equal, even if a company thinks they’re doing everything correctly, a movie might still flop because there are simply too many unknowables. Pointing to just one reason why a movie flops is a fools game (and yes, these bigots are fools).
This movie was released very soon after Wakanda Forever, and I wager most people chose to see that and already spent whatever disposable income they managed to collect for the month just to see that movie. Most people don’t go to the movies multiple times per month because it’s expensive and time consuming. If you have a full time job and kids you might go one weekend every month, and that’s for those who have the money for it.
Going to the movies is incredibly expensive. I only go once a month, or every couple of months if that, and only for tentpole movies. It is obvious that the tentpole movie for November was Wakanda Forever.
Wakanda Forever was marketed within an inch of its life everywhere. I saw exactly three of four ads for Strange World, all of which aired on YouTube, which I had to click on to see. I had no idea it had a gay character in it at all because the ads don’t mention it.
Sometimes is just down to timing. Sometimes a movie is simply released at a bad time and people just don’t go see it.
Winter is a notoriously bad time to release a movie ( at least in the Midwest). The only time period in the winter that gets a lot of play is as close to Xmas as possible and that slot is already taken by Avatar, which I have seen advertised every damn where! I’ll wager that any movie released between these two tentpole films wasn’t going to do too well especially if it involves kid’s interest.
Look…I just watch Jim Carrey the Grinch the other night with my husband. They had an 8 year old child lick a lollipop while giving the 8 year old Grinch bedroom eyes the whole time. Do not tell me a story that has a gay character in it is exposing children to adult sexuality when shit like that exists and an adult director decided to make a 8 year old horny for another 8 year old.
This is the first time I ever heard of this movie. Like, at all…
I’m so bummed out. If I knew it had a gay character I would have seen it over the weekend! The marketing has been atrocious.
First time I heard of this film. Guess it didn’t break past my ad guards.