Year-end roundtable: On Disney's 100th anniversary, what succeeded?

In a series of special year-end roundtable discussions, The A.V. Club looks back at the stories that made the biggest impact on pop culture in 2023.

Is Disney still the happiest place on Earth? Maybe not. Recent original animated films like Wish and Elemental (remember Elemental?) have flopped both critically and at the box office, while the studio’s endless slog of live-action remakes has been increasingly mired by mean-spirited controversy. This year, both The Little Mermaid’s Halle Bailey and Snow White’s Rachel Zegler have had to contend with nasty, racist backlash to their respective castings, all over a film that ended up being pretty mediocre in the first place. (At least in Bailey’s case, that is; Zegler’s Snow White has been pushed to 2025.)

None of that is to mention the increasing pandemonium over at Marvel Studios, as years of convoluted plot lines, diminishing quality, and growing franchise fatigue have begun to spell trouble for the MCU at the box office.

Can good old Sailor Mickey right the ship or is Disney doomed to sink forever? Here, A.V. Club staffers Saloni Gajjar, Drew Gillis, and Emma Keates discuss whether a little pixie dust will be enough to fix the studio’s many grievances.

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Drew Gillis: This year started with Disney celebrating its 100-year anniversary. Did you have any expectations for the studio and the brand this year? For me, they’ve generally always been pretty solid, so I just expected another solid year.

Saloni Gajjar: I’m not a huge Disney person anymore, so I don’t end up watching everything they release. Still, I kind of assumed it would be a landmark time in terms of movies and TV shows because of the 100-year anniversary. Again, I haven’t seen all of 2023's slate, so I don’t know if they resonated or hit hard. What I will say as an outsider of sorts is it was interesting to witness them adapting to the times with some live-action adaptations and the annoying/fascinating discourse that followed.

I am, however, a Marvel person. And I can confirm almost all of it was a letdown except Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3.

Emma Keates: I guess I didn’t have any new expectations for Disney because expectations were so high already. When Disney announces a new project like Wish or even this year’s beleaguered Haunted Mansion adaptation, I still tend to have a general assumption of quality just based on their past output. But as the studio turned out flop after flop this year, those expectations started to wear away.

SG: The year definitely started on a high note because from January onwards, everyone was eagerly celebrating and anticipating their films. But I do feel like the general excitement faded away with each passing project.

EK: I have also literally never been excited about one of their live-action remakes, so as long as those remain the buzzy releases of the year every year it will be harder and harder to really engage. Halle Bailey did sound amazing in The Little Mermaid though, that’s a non-negotiable.

DG: Just to get it out of the way early, we’re all childless adults, so I don’t think any of us are seeking out every Disney movie unless it’s our job to cover them or unless there is some big success that everyone’s talking about. And in recent years, there have been plenty of the latter—Coco comes to mind as something that was frequently recommended to me by adults. But this year’s Pixar offering—Elemental—feels already forgotten, even as an underperforming punching bag. As soon as Wish opened, that became the punching bag and hardly anyone mentioned Elemental. The fact that there even is a punching bag is a tide-shift for Disney. It feels like a lot of people are kind of openly rooting for them to fail. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re a monopoly that uses its power to just pump out live-action remakes of things we loved as kids. Who’s to say!?

EK: Wow, that’s completely right, Drew. I completely forgot Elemental existed, much less came out this year. Even the live-action remakes themselves have a shorter and shorter shelf life nowadays. Did anyone actually watch Peter Pan & Wendy?

DG: Frankly I already forgot about that one too.

SG: You make a good point, Drew. I do end up confidently seeking out stuff like Encanto and Turning Red and Raya And The Last Dragon, all of which I loved. That’s probably because it’s buzzy and people in our industry are covering/praising it—I trust their recommendations. From what I saw, there wasn’t a similar conversation around Elemental and nothing about Wish felt like I wanted to see it. Ditto, re: Peter Pan & Wendy or this year’s holiday film, Dashing Through The Snow (which I didn’t know already came out until I looked it up to confirm). These are already erased from our collective memories. It’s also because the focus is on stuff like Little Mermaid, even if it’s getting attention for the wrong reasons when it comes to how Halle Bailey was treated.

EK: That’s a great point re: The Little Mermaid, Saloni. I ended up really rooting for it in a more abstract sense because I love Halle Bailey and was so angry about the way she was treated, but that didn’t end up translating into real interest in the movie itself. For that, Disney has to find a way to recommit to actually putting out original stories that don’t feel rushed or slapped together like this year’s offerings did.

DG: The Little Mermaid is such a bummer because that was the first remake that I was kind of excited about when they announced it. I had been a fan of Bailey before she was cast but knowing how it turned out and all the bullshit she got saddled with, I wish it hadn’t happened. First it was the racist backlash—which she seemed to be left to deal with on her own, at least publicly—and then it was for a film that looked bad and ended up getting roasted for the visual effects. It underperformed because how wouldn’t it, and then it just leaves the worst people in the world to blame it on the casting of a Black woman and some “go woke go broke” nonsense. It already feels like the same thing is happening with the upcoming Rachel Zegler-led Snow White remake too. I’m sure the actors are getting paid well, but good lord, it’s impossible to root for a studio when this stuff is going on.

EK: It’s just a really upsetting lose-lose situation all around. And all for something that simply has no real business existing in the first place.

SG: I also think a studio as massive as Disney isn’t doing enough to support the actors who are getting harassed for no damn reason. So casting them isn’t enough without aiding them in other ways, but maybe that’s pulling on a thread that we could keep talking about for a while.

And yes, I remember when Little Mermaid’s trailer dropped, everyone obviously made fun of the visuals. Even that fake Flounder photo emerged, some people kinda believed it was from the film. Is it because we have little faith in their VFX and movies overall today? Or was it the preconceived “This is going to suck” because, of course, we know Pixar and Disney do generally excel in animation?

DG: I mean there was The Lion King in 2019, which proved that we don’t watch these movies for realism. It’s about a singing lion—it doesn’t need to look like Planet Earth. Awkwafina as a rapping seagull doesn’t need to look like a real seagull. In fact, it just makes it all the more upsetting.

SG: Exactly.

EK: To Saloni’s point, I think it’s a little bit of both. I feel similarly about the backlash to Chris Pine’s villain song in Wish (which sounds so much like Imagine Dragons or shopping at the grocery store) because we all know what they’re capable of in that capacity. “Be Prepared” is an all-timer! But just that one little clip was enough for me to know I would probably never watch the full movie unless I needed to for work. It’s just such a bummer to watch a mediocre Disney film and think about what’s been lost over the years.

DG: It’s certainly one of those things that’s hard to look at completely objectively, because obviously everyone our age has good nostalgic feelings about the ’90s Disney movies and their music but it’s pretty clear the creative pedigree has changed. Little Mermaid has music from Broadway composers Howard Ashman and Alan Menken; Wish has music written by Julia Michaels. And I’m not putting her down as a songwriter, but would you rather have music in a Disney movie that sounds like Little Shop Of Horrors or a Selena Gomez ballad?

I think there’s a bit of trying to be all things for all people. Some Disney songs do cross over to mainstream hits, sure, but it’s not because they were written as pop songs. Even when Frozen came out, they had Demi Lovato record a poppier cover of “Let It Go” to send to radio stations, only for the Idina Menzel original to outperform it.

I now cede my music student soap box, ha.

SG: No it’s compelling because when you put it like that, it helps shape it in perspective outside of just 2023, too, right? Like how has Disney’s approach evolved over the years such that this is where they’ve ended the year? And it’s not just any year.

EK: That’s such a great point. I do think it’s kind of a classic case of misunderstanding what aspects of beloved songs or movies made them popular in the first place. To go back to the Lion King example, people loved the original movie for its great music and powerful emotions, not because it taught us anything real about life on the savanna.

DG: It’s genuinely kind of wild to look back on that ’90s Disney Renaissance era and think about some of the swings they were taking. Like Hunchback Of Notre Dame? Do you think they would take that kind of swing today? And yeah, it would be risky, and it probably turned off some audiences. And yeah, it only grossed $325 million worldwide—which would be about twice that now. It was the fifth highest-grossing movie of 1996! The studio used to take things resembling risks and was often rewarded for them—if they could back it up with the quality of the product. They’d rather do a safe product now, even if no one is interested in it.

EK: I totally agree, Drew. Marvel’s diminishing returns also really illustrate that mindset. Even Disney CEO Bob Iger knows that the MCU’s output has been kind of lousy recently, but they still keep churning them out!

SG: Is it safe to say Disney isn’t taking risks as a company and would rather play it safe to avoid scandal? They don’t seem to escape that anyway, whether it’s Little Mermaid or endless poor MCU content or all the Daredevil: Born Again drama or even Bog Iger pushing Nia DaCosta under the bus for The Marvels. The product itself isn’t what people are talking about, whether good or bad, but it’s the issues surrounding it.

DG: I feel like playing it safe reads as a safe investment, but it’s clear that audiences are growing tired of it, based, at least, on The Marvels’ box office. I think part of the issue with the MCU is they have things planned years in advance, so they can’t really course-correct very quickly. The attempts to right the path are quick reshoots and shoddy last-minute VFX, a la Quantumania, which has the opposite effect of endearing new people.

SG: Just the memory of watching Quantamania in the theater makes my eyes gloss over. It gave me such a headache. Not relevant, I know, but needed to vent.

DG: It is relevant because you’re the most invested out of the three of us, so if they lost you, they certainly lost a lot of people.

SG: They applied the same formula to their TV shows, rushing them out to fill an almost made-up quote, hampering the quality in return.

EK: For my part, as someone who was pretty invested in the original Avengers saga, one of the things I appreciated was that I could totally understand and enjoy Endgame without watching every single film/TV show/commercial tie-ins, etc. There are so many callbacks that that’s impossible now, and it’s hard to imagine any new fans climbing aboard or returning once they’ve been alienated.

SG: At least if there’s one thing Disney/Iger have learned this year, it’s to not go insane with how much MCU stuff they’re throwing out.

DG: I think that’s an interesting tie-in to some of the disappointment toward Wish as well, which tried to tie its ending into everything else in the greater Disney canon. They had so much success with the multiverse and the almost serialized narrative of the original Avengers saga that now there seems to be an idea that everything needs to be like that. And it’s just interesting how much priorities have changed. Remember when movies would go into the “Disney vault” and the scarcity made them more valuable? Imagine how successful an MCU movie would be if they just took, like, a year off.

SG: The anticipation alone would help, yeah.

EK: That’s especially frustrating about Wish because Disney has always put little easter eggs in their movies, but until recently they were just that: easter eggs. If you noticed that Rapunzel from Tangled attended Elsa’s coronation from Frozen for a split second, good for you! It was a fun puzzle, but those moments weren’t expected to have any real impact on the actual story of the film. It’s so much more headache-inducing when every single plot point has to affect everything else. Sometimes things can just be fun!

DG: Exactly Emma! I was thinking about how there’s a Buzz Lightyear toy in the dentist’s office in Finding Nemo. I think part of it was internet detectives reading way too much into it and dubbing it a shared universe, but Disney is running the bit into the ground.

SG: That’s an amazing detail and one I forgot about completely.

EK: That “Pixar theory” video really did change so many lives (derogatory).

DG: Let’s end on a more positive note, I guess—what was good this year? Are there any projects in the pipeline you’re looking forward to, even if it’s cautious optimism?

EK: MAJOR emphasis on the word “cautious” but I am hopeful about Inside Out 2. While I’d prefer to get excited about high-quality original content, the first Inside Out movie is a classic for a reason and the conceit does leave a lot of room for an interesting and hopefully smart follow-up, as Riley gets older and experiences new challenges. Plus, Pixar at least used to really know how to churn out a good sequel. Toy Story 2, anyone?

DG: I’d concur on that point, and I can’t really think of anything else I’m more interested in than that, ha.

SG: Yeah, same for me. Inside Out was so lovely, I hope the sequel can remain as inventive & heartwarming. I don’t know if excited is the right word, but I am looking forward to Deadpool 3.