Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

I'm surprised, you'd think Disney would want to have the more family friendly version on there too.

 

Fear of people showing their kids the R-rated versions by mistake?

 

I read speculation that it's an asterisk on a computer and the title of the film will be changed midway through or at the end to 'Dark Avengers'.

 

Not that, so much as I'm surprised they didn't choose the include the more family friendly version that is closer to their usual image.

 

People keep expecting Disney to be limited by their "usual image," which is exactly why they keep trying to expand beyond that straitjacket. In the '80s, they created the Touchstone Pictures imprint to release more mature films without the kid-stuff stigma attached to the Disney name. It was still Disney making the films; they just didn't call attention to that. And the whole reason they acquired Marvel and Lucasfilm was because they wanted to attract a wider audience than they had before (particularly a larger male audience). They didn't want to change Marvel and Lucasfilm's output to be more like the stereotypical Disney brand, but just the opposite -- to draw in people who didn't like the stereotypical Disney brand by offering them something else.

So really, there's nothing surprising about Disney being willing to broaden their output to include TV-MA or R-rated content. It's entirely in keeping with what they've been doing for decades. Disney is a corporate behemoth, so all it cares about is making as much money as possible, and that means attracting as wide an audience as possible.

 

Yeah, but in most of those cases they didn't actually use the Disney name, unlike Disney+. But I think now people are maybe a little more open to things like Disney expanding beyond what they're known for.

 

I think maybe at one time it was about branding (see Disney creating Touchstone label to keep the more adult stuff away from the 'mouse')

but at this point since Hulu is only a US thing you have the more mature shows on there usually airing on Disney+ in other countries. American Horror Story airs on Disney+ in Canada.

Then you have other countries making original content for Disney+ that can have extremely violent and sexual scenes in them. The casino/mob Korean show Big Bet airs on Disney+ in South Korea and has some very graphically violent scenes and some sexual scenes in it. Shogun airs on Disney+ in a lot of foreign markets.

 

I didn't realize all of that stuff aired on Disney+ outside the US.

 

No, it wasn't to keep it away from the "mouse." Originally, Disney tried releasing PG-rated films like The Black Hole, The Watcher in the Woods, Dragonslayer, and TRON under their own name, but the audience's prejudices attached to the name hurt those films' box office. So the motivation behind the Touchstone name wasn't about the studio's desire to keep the Disney name pure, it was about getting around the audience's preconceptions about the name. Disney themselves would've happily embraced a reputation for a broader, more adult selection of films, and spent several years attempting to build that reputation, but the audience wouldn't go along with it. So they had to give up trying to change their image and just started releasing the more mature stuff under a pseudonym.

 

EW.com has an interview with Joseph Quinn about playing Johnny Storm in the new Fantastic Four and about the movie in general.
They talk quite a bit about the two '00s movies, but I couldn't help but notice there was no mention of Fan4stic. So are we all just pretending that one never happened now?

 

Michael B. Jordan was a better Johnny.

 

I think that's the first positive thing I've ever seen anyone say about that movie.

 

Michael B. Jordan and Reg Cathey were the only good things about that movie.

 

That pretty much all I got.

 

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

 

I can't agree.

The Black Hole was eagerly awaited and hopefully received, but the film was too awful to be more successful than it was. The fault lies in the film itself.

Tron was actually quite successful, regardless of the Hollywood accounting practiced by Disney; it simply didn't achieve major blockbuster success.

 

No matter the motivation it seems the result was the same: to keep it away from the mouse.

 

You need to enter a password every time you open the app unless you are opening a kids account which doesn't have access to the more adult content.

 

The main problem with The Black Hole is that its tonally all over the shop. It at once wants to be a family friendly Star Wars style film with cute robots, whilst also an epic sci-fi film with grand ideas more like 2001, and then, deciding that contrast wasn't quite jarring enough, someone thought "But what if we were a horror movie as well?"

 

No, the goal was to keep the mouse away from it -- to allow older-skewing movies to thrive without the "kid stuff" stigma of the Disney name driving audiences away. They weren't trying to "protect" the Disney name, they were trying to escape its limiting reputation.