SecondWindGroup
patreon
[COLUMN] Bob Iger Has No Idea What's Wrong at Disney, Let Alone How to Fix It | by Darren Mooney
🕑 Added 2023-12-08 18:00:09 +0000 UTC
Last week, Disney CEO Bob Iger talked to a New York Times business summit about the company’s recent troubles, including the underperformance of The Marvels.
Iger offered several theories about why the company’s output wasn’t connecting with audiences in the way that it had been. Of course, it’s worth acknowledging that Iger is not an impartial observer and that he was effectively making an argument for his own importance to the company. Still, allowing that these statements were part of a public performance, it’s fascinating how profoundly they misdiagnose the issues that Disney is currently facing.
Broadly speaking, Iger seemed to blame some of the company’s woes on “messaging”, telling the assembled audience, “Creators lost sight of what their number one objective needed to be. We have to entertain first. It’s not about messages.” This feels like something of a dog whistle to the extremely vocal online criticism from right-wing culture war pundits about the perceived pervasiveness of “politics” within contemporary mainstream culture.
These arguments are unconvincing for a few reasons. Most obviously, art is always political. It often seems like these outraged pundits are reacting to the fact that they are returning to media aimed at kids and teenagers as adults, engaging with themes they previously absorbed passively. There’s truth in the old cliché that the “golden age of science-fiction” is “twelve.” This criticism says more about the audience than it does about the media.
Beyond that, Disney has never been uniquely progressive. To pick a relevant example, Captain Marvel was basically a military recruitment film. The studio’s efforts to include queer characters have often been criticized as tokenistic, as demonstrated by its willingness to cut those characters out to appease foreign markets. Even if something as simple as inclusivity counts as “a message”, it has never truly been a “number one objective” for the company.
What were the “messages” in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or The Marvels? Those two movies were so incoherent in plot that trying to derive a cohesive theme is an Herculean task. Sure, if the viewer squints both movies are kinda about the perils of ill-considered foreign intervention, but these themes are buried pretty deeply. Both movies are relatively subtle in their politics when compared to something like Avatar: The Way of Water.
More broadly, there’s also the very obvious fact that audiences seem to actually want to engage with movies that have big ideas and themes, things to say about the state of the world. Oppenheimer is a film engaged with big and charged ideas, and it outgrossed every Disney film this year. Barbie, the most successful movie of the year, was targeted by these same internet pundits because of its feminist politics. None of this outrage prevented Barbie from becoming a smash hit.
Although released under the 20th Century Films brand, James Cameron’s The Way of Water was the highest-grossing movie of 2022, the highest-grossing Disney release since Avengers: Endgame and one of the studio’s biggest releases ever. Even within the company’s more established brands, the most successful Marvel Studios release since Endgame was Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a movie from which they refused to cut content to appease Saudi Arabian censors.
Even setting aside that they are easily falsifiable, Iger’s comments about “creators” needing to understand “their number one objective” tie into his more specific arguments about the failure of The Marvels. Accounting for the film’s underperformance, Iger stated, ″The Marvels was shot during COVID. There wasn’t as much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives [that are] really looking over what’s being done day after day after day.”
There is something inherently self-serving in this argument. Iger is an executive arguing for the importance of executives. After all, Hollywood has just emerged from a massive labor strike in which creative talent asserted their value as part of the commercial process and enshrined protections against exploitation. Those strikes were deeply unpleasant for everybody involved, creating a “heightened antagonism” between workers and executives.
Towards the end of the strikes, Iger became directly involved on the part of the studios. However, he was never especially sensitive to the concerns of the creative class. “There’s a level of expectation that they have, that is just not realistic,” Iger stated early during the strike. “And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.” These comments were not conducive to fostering trust between creatives and executives.
Executives were frequently (and often personally) criticized for their conduct during the strike, with unflattering coverage of David Zaslav’s yacht party at Cannes and SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher reacting to Iger’s comments by suggesting that Disney “lock him behind doors and never let him talk to anybody about this.” The strikes may have been resolved, but it seems safe to suggest that there are lingering scars, a clear rift between studio executives and the talent that they employ.
With studios facing massive layoffs, there is an obvious incentive to argue for the importance and necessity of executives. More than that, executives failed to enshrine the same protections against artificial intelligence that the writers and actors secured during the strikes. Given that advances in generative AI are now threatening white collar jobs, it makes sense to emphasize the vital functions provided by executives that cannot be outsourced to machines – most obviously, supervising a set.
There may also be a more personal motivation behind Iger’s framing of this crisis. Iger presided over what was, financially, a golden age for Disney. During his previous tenure as CEO, he guided the company to massive profits. When he retired in 2019, Disney was on top of the world. It made more money in the first seven months of 2019 than any studio had made in any year ever. Iger got off the ride at the perfect time. Even without the pandemic, Disney was unlikely to match that performance.
Of course, subsequent reports suggest that Iger was never truly gone. He remained actively involved in the company during the tenure of his successor, Bob Chapek. Many of the problems facing Disney over the past four years stem from choices Iger made during his time in charge. Iger has since conceded that the company over-exploited its brands, as if fracking the intellectual property. However, it was Iger who pushed for that approach.
Disney’s success in 2019 was built on ruthless exploitation of existing brands, with remakes of both Aladdin and The Lion King lining up with crescendos of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Iger pushed the studio towards streaming, hoping to build a brand in that space by leveraging existing properties. Chapek just continued down that path. However, Chapek probably would have taken the blame for it, if Iger hadn’t returned.
Iger’s return is one of the greatest unforced errors in recent Hollywood history, a CEO undermining his own myth and revealing that the emperor has no clothes. These comments feel like an attempt to save face, to reassert his own value as a creative leader. Given that one of Iger’s lasting creative legacies is forcing Mark Frost and David Lynch to reveal the identity of the killer on Twin Peaks, derailing the show, it’s hard to get too excited by this.
It’s also hard to look at The Marvels and argue that it needed more executive meddling. The Marvels feels like it has been fed through a meat-grinder. The plot has been hastily cut down, giving the film the shortest runtime in the shared universe. The story’s inciting incident, which serves as motivation for Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and back story for villain Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), is buried in an voice-over-laden flashback arriving an hour into the runtime.
As a rule, Marvel Studios productions are not director-driven. Key sequences are pre-visualized years in advance. Lucrecia Martel has talked about turning down Black Widow after being told that she would not direct her own action sequences. There is perhaps a reason why so many of the defining directors of the shared universe, like Joss Whedon or the Russo Brothers, have a background in television. These movies often feel like episodes in a show run by Kevin Feige, President of Marvel.
The Marvels is directed by Nia DaCosta, a talented filmmaker. She has spoken candidly about how The Marvels is not her film. “It is a Kevin Feige production, it’s his movie,” DaCosta told Vanity Fair. “So I think you live in that reality, but I tried to go in with the knowledge that some of you is going to take a back seat.” Reportedly, DaCosta left The Marvels “with a few months to go” in postproduction. DaCosta insists her departure was “not dramatic”, but it was a result of the studio pushing dates.
Since the release, there has been an effort to lay the blame for the movie’s failure at her feet. There were reports of DaCosta declining to attend a cast and crew screening of the film, even though DaCosta was not invited and the scheduling of the screening conflicted with her birthday party. Iger’s comments play into this, suggesting the problem with The Marvels was a runaway director to avoid acknowledging the studio’s complicity in the movie’s issues.
Again, Iger’s argument is easily falsifiable by looking at the data. Barbie, the biggest movie of the year, is a Greta Gerwig movie, it is not a David Zaslav movie. Oppenheimer was a critical and commercial smash because it was undeniably a Christopher Nolan movie. The most successful Marvel Studios release this year was Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, a deeply personal movie for director James Gunn about his complicated relationship with Disney.
The two biggest movies of last year were also both driven by creatives. The Way of Water is a James Cameron movie to its core. Top Gun: Maverick is a movie starring and about Tom Cruise, and one that Cruise had to fight to get made and released. To be fair to Iger, he concedes the success that Disney enjoyed in 2019 was never sustainable, setting “an unrealistically high standard.” This is true. Disney enjoyed incredible and sustained cultural dominance that set unreasonable expectations.
Looking at the state of the company and the industry, Disney doesn’t need more executives doing more meddling in its films. Instead, it needs to take more chances and trust more completely in its creatives’ vision.
Comments
Pēteris Krišjānis
I went to see Marvels, and it wasn't "progressiveness" that held movie back, it was the fact that it was clearly rushed, comittee driven and not letting director and actors having fun. For short periods of time when they do, you can sense it inherited sadness that they were forced to do movie this way. Problem is that what is entertaining changes and chasing that is very hard. But of course Bob knows this and this is him trying to steer away from diversity when it actually proven very profitable for Disney. But corpos being corpos, nothing new.
Darren Mooney
I like the idea of the column as an audio book! Personally, I'm not a *huge* fan of the "Avatar" movies, but they're undeniably powerhouse pieces of blockbuster entertainment that profoundly resonate with people. And while the films don't work for me personally, I love that about them.
Jason Youngberg
Cognitive Dissonance. People will find excuses to dismiss contradicting information. Like "Quantumania was disrupted by COVID" or "writing was bad" or whatever but the reason why Marvels failed was because of "femoids".
Marshall Halleck
My morning reading aloud to my wife, it's really nice how tuned you are into the industry's goings on and how much context (cited too!) you provide. The idea that we can escape politics in anything we do, that what we do doesn't speak to our views of the world, is absurd. I suppose I've got this want to avoid the popular, to group it all together as the same trash, from the marvel movies to avatar, despite enjoying them very much myself. And then, as humans are so good at, I justified my position with whatever facts fit as opposed to using the facts to arrive at a position. Avatar really was quite a good movie and the numbers show that. The sequel obviously more so, and the contrast you draw between that and the very television like, vision-less newer marvel movies helps highlight the discrepancy. There is room for vapid rollercoaster rides but they get boring pretty quickly, and the numbers show that. It's easy to be cynical but the numbers really don't support that view: people want something unique, weird, with a vision, with a message. Anecdotes are a dime a dozen but The Way of Water is 2.3 billion for one.
Darren Mooney
“Nimona” is great.
Darren Mooney
It’s a glass cliff situation. Disney and others waited so long to diversify their roster that those heroes were largely doomed to failure just because there had already been so many bites at the apple. After all, both “Quantumania” and “Fury of the Gods” failed as well this year, both led by white men.
Darren Mooney
Oh, the live action remakes were the very definition of a once off cash grab. I don’t think they were ever meant to “replace” the originals. (After all, the Disneyland rides are still modelled on the animated versions, as is most of the merchandise.) They were an attempt to supercharge the old “re-release” model Disney had, releasing their animated films over and over in cycles. The problem was that the trick only works once. Although I guess we’ll see his “Mufasa” does.
erakfishfishfish
I can’t help think of Nimona. When Disney acquired Fox, they canceled the nearly-finished film. Some of the film’s crew stated that they received pushback from Disney over the film’s queer themes. Well thank god Annapurna and Netflix picked it up, because it’s a great movie with poignant message for a family film.
Jason Youngberg
I enjoy the new MCU movies but I can understand why fewer people are seeing them. By the time we got to Avengers, we saw the main cast and one of the Infinity stones. After Avengers we got Thanos so we knew the Infinity Gauntlet story was coming. We didn't get that after Endgame. There were no hints of an Infinity Gauntlet - level story. It all seemed to be "what did everyone do after Endgame". That's good enough for me, but I think more people in the public felt the story was over. I would compare it to Stargate SG-1. They had an epic conclusion after 7 seasons but the executives were like, "This is making too much money for us to stop now. Find a way to keep going!" The show's last few seasons and movies were ... OK. The worst part is people blaming "wokeness" for the problems as if all superheroes should be white men with token representation of others. Superheroes are for everyone.
noirscape
In my opinion, the biggest weakness of Disney were the Live Action Remakes replacing their old school 2D animated canon. That's when they started nostalgia mining to exploit their brands, and I don't think any of those movies have really stood the test of time, even when they weren't bizarre disasters at release. The rest of that rot seems to have spread over the years to their other divisions, Marvel included. That's IMO where Iger misses the mark; Disney needs to do something groundbreaking, but that's scary and hard to justify to investors compared to trotting out the same type of stuff over and over again.
Diogo Silva
I would say that the term isn't untrue so much as it is misleading. People have fatigue over marvel yes, but only because they spread themselves thin and lost their previously clear sense of direction and building crescendo that used to obfuscate the flaws of some of their more subpar efforts in the past. It's not "too much Marvel", it's "too much below average Marvel"
Darren Mooney
I compare Iger's approach to intellectual property fracking. It's a process that derives a lot of material value very quickly, but it's also not sustainable and causes long-term damage to the wider environment.
Darren Mooney
Yep. I've talked about this before with regards to Chibnall era "Doctor Who", where you can have a staggeringly conservative text - and I don't mean that pejoratively, I just mean in terms of its values and outlook ("respect the police", "the system isn't the problem", "the way things were is the only way they should ever be") - and the mere presence of women or people of colour in that text is enough to make it some radical left-wing screed to certain observers. It's weird.
Darren Mooney
I think "Guardians" and "Spider-Verse" were both really good this year, in large part because they weren't constrained by that sort of studio-think. (And, in fact, "Guardians" is kinda about that studio-think.)
Darren Mooney
Oh, @W. Fry! I was not offended at all. I apologise if it seems like it was. I was genuinely fascinated that *that* seems to be the detail that ties the piece together for a lot of people, which is one of those great examples of how when you write a piece you don't always know what it is until people read it.
LifeIsStrange
I wonder if Eisner ever regrets picking Iger as his successor?
LifeIsStrange
I'm with Moviebob in thinking the whole "Marvel fatigue" thing is a cliche that's not really true.
LifeIsStrange
well it's not like they had many options to replace Chapek with how horrible he was.
LifeIsStrange
I didn't see Iger saying anything like that. Those Disney live-action remakes have sucked the big one so more oversight of them I don't see as a bad thing(I really want that Lilo and Stitch remake to be good).
LifeIsStrange
Conrad Zimmerman brought that up in Podquisition and Jim Sterling absolutely LOATHED episode 8, feeling like it was Lynch actively disrespecting the audience and that once you've repeatedly made unsatisfying conclusions it stops being unexpected and clever and becomes every bit as cliched as wrapping things up tidily.
LifeIsStrange
Honestly I think Lynch is kinda overrated.
LifeIsStrange
i'm with Moviebob on that film, it's pure light fun and there's nothing wrong with that. I unironically enjoyed all of Michael Bay's Transformers movies and will defend them all on my goddamn deathbed(and i'm still pissed at part 6 getting cancelled and i'm still holding out hope the franchise does their own "No Wat Home" so Sam and Mikeala and whoever can crossover).
LifeIsStrange
I thought that show would've been better without all of the dumb supernatural crap and I share Jim Sterling's opinion that episode 8 of the revival is quite possibly the single WORST episode of a TV show of all time.
W. Fry
NOTE: Yes, I understand this "abject failure" lead Disney during its most profitable years of all time, and that I am soapboxing on artistic grounds rather than financial. But I'll stand by my statement. Personally, I think a wet rag could have been CEO when Robert Downey Jr. donned the mask, and would have raked in the billions.
Captainflake99
Great piece again Darren. One of my hopes from the recent strikes was the practices and effectiveness of the executives. Whether out of fear of losing their position or perhaps incompetence, they relied too heavily on established IP and are not willing to take the risk on something new. Whilst there isn't nothing wrong with making a film on an established IP if done properly, Dune comes to mind, you will eventually run out of material before fatigue sets in. Films are supposed to be a creative art form, some will work some will not. There is nothing artistic about bleeding an IP drive continuously because it still made money, even though it decreased each time. Life is about taking risks and learning from them not sticking with what is safe.
W. Fry
Oh, sorry. No, I connected with the entire piece. You beautifully documented and articulated how wrong headed Iger is, and how streamlined and invasive the Disney/Marvel process is. I did not know the extent DaCosta distanced/detached herself from The Marvels. I can't find it, but I believe Lynne Ramsay talked about being asked to do a Marvel movie, and when she was told she "wouldn't even have to direct the action," she replied "But that's the whole reason I would want to do the f***ing thing." The reason the Twin Peaks thing connected with me in particular (I can't speak for others) is multifactorial. I'm not much of a Disney fan. Not much of a superhero guy. Executive aimlessness is almost a given at this point. I have listened to hours of interviews with Lynch discussing the "a**holes" who intercede on his work, and that he simply won't take their "bull****" anymore. Famously recently walking away from season three of Twin Peaks due to studio interference before coming back. It's that connective tissue: The guy who derailed the highest rated show on TV at the time, the show that ushered in "prestige television," who was lambasted for their interference *by name* for his lack of insight, is now the head of the Disney. It boggles comprehension. People get fired for being five minutes late! What an indictment of the current media landscape, on corporate culture, on executive classes in general. That you could remove the other litany of boneheaded, callous, ignorant nonsense this insanely wealthy dotard you so eloquently document here--his call for more oversight in the year of Barbenheimer being particularly hilarious, and his shifting blame to woke-ism is downright dangerous--and he would still be the guy who killed Twin Peaks. I just... The upward trajectory of abject failures, and those failures controlling our current cultural zeitgeist confounds the mind.
BlueAversion
Regarding criticism of progressivism in The Marvels, I don’t think this was ever about a message in the plot but rather due to the make up of its cast - the film having three female includes, including the from ethnic minorities. This way the same with the Captain Marvel film where the social criticism was due to the female lead, and the film does bring up themes about women being overlooked in the workplace (the cockpit comment) although it doesn’t really do anything with this beyond just bringing it up.
23 Aaron
Really good piece. People have Marvel fatigue, and I think it comes from this sense of every film they make now being cookie cutter. When you have someone talented like Nia saying publicly that this is Kevin Feige’s film, and Disney not immediately thinking “what the hell are we doing”, it demonstrates how they view creatives (if Iger’s callous remarks during the strikes didn’t do that already). Imo, give directors a basic outline of where this character needs to be at the end of the film to serve their next Avengers/crossover film, and let them work their magic. I wish i had a counter example of a superhero film this year that did that from outside Disney but DC seem adamant to keep setting personal bests for least amount of money made for a superhero film.
Darren Mooney
“Next time, just draw a regular clock. None of that drippy stuff.”
Darren Mooney
Yep. I cannot get over how lucky Iger was to retire after 2019, and how incredibly shortsighted his decision to come back was.
Darren Mooney
To be fair, “The Dark World” is a movie about how you don’t half-commit to a genocide. (To be clear, I don’t think that was *intentionally* the message of the movie.)
Justin Michael Baard
It is in fact just that, the context, that really made that portion stand out to me. As a Twin Peaks/David Lynch superfan, I'm surprised I wasn't already aware of that and it TRULY shows that this is a pattern of behavior that extend far back from what we've learned about him this year alone.
Toby Teh
“Creators lost sight of what their number one objective needed to be. We have to entertain first. It’s not about messages.” Then what the heck were Black Panther, Winter Soldier, Civil War, Wandavision, and Falcon and the Winter Soldier all about? If anything, the least regarded MCU stuff had the weakest messages (Dark World, Incredible Hulk, Multiverse of Madness).
Ryallen
I remember reading an interview that Lynch wanted to make the show about how the community reacted to the death more than he wanted to actually solve the mystery, which does sound really appealing on paper. It just didn't click with me in a lot of ways. Almost no one actually talks about this but I actually could've done without the inclusion of Leo as a character, he's the primary obstacle to any attempt I make to rewatch the series
Darren Mooney
Yep. It’s interesting that this is the observation in the article that people really connected with. To be clear, I’m not complaining. It’s honestly great to help provide people with that context - I love finding a similar aside or nugget in a piece myself. But it’s just fascinating that *this* is the detail that lands.
ConTM
Yes no shade at all to Mark Frost, just brought up Lynch specifically because even people I know who've never watched any of his stuff know him as "the guy who makes almost impenetrably esoteric movies." Makes me think Iger would look at Dalí's work and say " what's the deal with all these fuckin clocks? Get em out of here! "
Darren Mooney
I honestly wonder if they actually watch any of the content they produce, or if they honestly see it as slop for the masses. (The term “content” really bugs me because it implies that attitude.)
Darren Mooney
Yep. Very “Dodgeball.” “It’s a bold move, cotton. Let’s see if it pays off.”
Darren Mooney
Thanks, Rev! Much appreciated!
Darren Mooney
Yep, I don’t see “Twin Peaks” as a show that was ever *truly* a “whodunnit.” It was just using that event as a springboard to tell the stories it wanted to tell about corruption at the heart of an idyllic small town.
Darren Mooney
And Mark Frost, to be fair! But, yeah, it’s wild that at one point in the late eighties and early nineties, Lynch was one of the most beloved and powerful auteurs in the world. (Didn’t “Wild at Heart” win the Palme d’Or while “Twin Peaks” was on the air?)
Darren Mooney
Yep. It’s wild that Disney’s biggest hit in four years is “The Way of Water”, and they think creatives are bad and audiences don’t respond to messages. (Most great movies are “about” something the filmmaker is trying to communicate about the world. Most art, to be honest.)
Darren Mooney
I was not a fan of it, to be honest. But I also don’t believe box office correlates to quality. (After all, the first five “Transformers” films were huge hits.) Worse comic book movies have done better, and there’s a larger and more general trend at play, I’d contend.
W. Fry
Darren! You can't just drop a bomb like, "Bob Iger is the guy who forced the reveal of Laura Palmer's killer in Twin Peaks" and keep going. WHAT!? WHAT!!!? How did this man climb any ladder in Hollywood after being responsible for the greatest narrative creative misdeed of the 20th century? The most egregious example of executive interference in television history sits atop the most valuable entity in the entertainment industry. Am I having an aneurysm? I must have purged Iger's name from my memory. Knowing this now, everything makes sense. Twin Peaks killer heads Disney (20th Century Fox/Pixar/Marvel/Lucasfilm/Searchlight/ABC/FX/HULU). Honey Boo Boo birther leads Warner Bros Discovery (New Line/Castle Rock/Spyglass/Magnolia/HBO/Max/TNT/CNN/adult swim/TruTV/Cinemax/Sci). WHAT COULD GO WRONG?! ****Enters disc one of Twin Peaks: The Return into the bluray player and turns up the volume. It's good to finally (re)understand how the name Bob was landed upon****
Skujat
There is nothing wrong with messages, remakes or franchisebuilding in and of themselves. But with an approach that shallow and soulless. Limiting creative input and at the same time oversaturating the market with a glut of "content". That trend should really not come as a surprise. I am curious what kind of entertainment these toplevel executives would find intellectually or emotionally stimulating. Although the answer would probably end up being really bleak. Like watching company stock values rise or something similar-_-
Sean McMillan
So Disney's ethos going forward is 'let's try to appease the people who screamed WOKE because live-action Ariel is black' and 'increase studio presence on set.' fucking YIKES
Rev Zsaz
Darren, thanks for this piece man. I couldn't agree more with the sentiment shared here if I tried. The idea that the success Disney had is in any way a standard that can be upheld with any consistency is preposterous. If the numbers folk would just let the creatives create unhindered, they may again see something like that success, but patience is not for bean counters... The more people understand what goes into the creative process and how different that process is from person to person, the more likely we are to see new wonders. Thanks for continuing to speak on this Darren. It's important. Cheers man and hope you're as well as you can be 🍻🙏
Maximus
I'm pretty tired of these rich out-of-touch goons and their army of mindless consoomers...
Ryallen
>one of Iger’s lasting creative legacies is forcing Mark Frost and David Lynch to reveal the identity of the killer on Twin Peaks Oof, I did not know that. Although I can't even say that I personally think the parts that took place after the mystery was resolved were bad, I enjoyed the more traditional mystery elements that came into play when that sort of thing came into play. Not necessarily that I think Lynch is a bad director but more that I don't care for his more ethereal, "interpret it how you will" sort of storytelling that I find in a lot of his work. As it stands though, I definitely would've much preferred the show not reveal the killer at all rather than crowbar in a resolution in a show that was never meant to have one, if only for the sake of creative integrity
ConTM
What unfathomable, bottomless hubris for Iger to think that anyone other than David Lynch could know what a David Lynch project needs.
Justin Michael Baard
This is obvious blame shifting, if the writers were able to tell these stories without being FORCED to diminish any inclusive action makes the stories weaker. That's the higher ups, not the writers you spent the last half a year bleeding dry.
LifeIsStrange
I thought Marvels was pretty good myself.
