At first, I was as eager as anyone: it was refreshing to see a presentation with so much content and so little filler talk (well, at least after they were done talking about Hotstar). But after a while, I started to savor the countdown clocks between announcements. Watching the clock meant I could stretch and make coffee. There is so much content coming to Disney+ that I feel burnt out just watching the announcements of it all. To be clear: I'm not complaining, I just didn't see that much coming at me all at once and I'm real tired and need a nap soon.
It feels odd to look at it like this. I remember the early 2000's, when you had to wait three years for another Star Wars movie. In one day alone, ten Star Wars projects and ten Marvel projects were announced. I'm still processing them. If I try, I can remember half of the things they talked about. They were stacked on top of the other like they were platefuls of food piling in my gut after I'd already stuffed myself with Thanksgiving turkey. Kathleen Kennedy's putting Star Wars on my plate like a grandma trying to break my beltline with extra portions.
The four hour long report was less of a business call and more of a spectator event for fans of major Disney franchises, whether those be the animated CG films of Pixar and the Disney Animation Studio, Marvel, Star Wars, or the "live-action" movies I guess (looking at you, Creepily Photorealistic CGI The Lion King that's coming to my nightmares first and Disney+ second).
A prior complaint about Disney+ has been the lack of engaging content. While HBO, Netflix, and Hulu have their own catalogs of content with standout shows regularly airing, there was a lack of that with the first year of Disney's content. The exceptions were few and far between: The Mandalorian and the final season of of The Clone Wars were the biggest attractors.
This won't be the case for long; former CEO of Disney and current Executive Chairman of Disney has stated a goal of 100+ new original shows and movies per year, and boy did the hours-long series of back-to-back announcements prove it.
Kathleen Kennedy, the woman who saved or ruined Star Wars (depending on whether or not a new episode of The Mandalorian just came out), regaled fans with Star Wars: Ahsoka, Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars anime. By the time Kathleen came back from the Disney+ kitchen with a full stew pot of Star Wars: A Droid Story to make sure my brain was filled, I was fighting to keep my focus.
... Also why droids? There has NEVER been a good series of Star Wars anything that was from the perspective of a droid: Dave Filoni tried with The Clone Wars' weird droids episodes that went off the rails to copy Gulliver's Travels, and then again with Rebels where Chopper makes friends with an Imperial stand-in for C-3PO, but it's always strange and usually filler. They've been trying to make droids interesting since the 1980s with... Star Wars: Droids, but they haven't succeeded yet.
There were so many announcements that some of them felt like they were trying to slip in jokes just to make sure you were still awake: the live-action Cruella Deville (Cruella) movie taking place in (their words, not mine) "1970's punk rock London," a Rescue Rangers movie with Seth Rogen, Sister Act 3 with Whoopi Goldberg, and Turning Red: an animated series where a 13-year-old girl turns into a giant Red Panda whenever she gets nervous (Disney CEO Bob Chapek stood on stage and compared her to the Hulk without any hint of irony).
Again: I'm not complaining, and honestly even the shows and movies that sound like jokes are probably going to be highly-produced works where at least some of them come out amazing. They just look very strange in a sea of Star Wars and Marvel by comparison. Disney+ is gearing up to be a major competitor to Netflix, and just like Netflix, they intend to have more original content than anyone can watch.
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