What a week… From suing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to finally giving The Little Mermaid fans a sneak peek at Flounder (spoiler: it did not go over well), it’s safe to say the House of Mouse is in need of a break. While we’d love to toss the entertainment behemoth a block of cheese and call it a day, unfortunately, that’s not how news works; alas, there is more afloat.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania now has its Disney Plus release date, Chris Pine charmed the pants off of us as King Magnifico in the latest Wish trailer, and fans have swum to the surface to defend Flounder’s honor after previously fileting him for looking like a corpse. All good news, yes — but that’s where it ends.
Now that Peter Pan & Wendy is on Disney Plus, the reimagined classic is doing little to sway the court of public opinion. Plus, Star Wars fans are growing fed up with the company’s family-friendly approach to vitally gritty aspects of the dark side of the Force. Thankfully, the all-encompassing problem plaguing Disney — couch, cough visual effects — is seeing some improvement with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. So, there’s a bit of good news there. Let’s dive in.
Peter Pan & Wendy falls victim to review bombing and ignites the “woke” discourse… again
Ever since the first trailer of Peter Pan & Wendy revealed a — gasp! — mixed-raced Peter Pan played by 16-year-old Alexander Molony, the movie was unfortunately doomed to be plagued by trolls. Add in Captain Hook’s diverse pirate crew, a Black Iranian-American Tinker Bell played by Yara Shahidi, and some Lost Girls interspersed with the Lost Boys, and you have yourself some idiotic woke backlash. Whether or not the movie is getting review bombed for that exact reason is not entirely clear, but comments like “Disney is not the same” and “Disney hates its source material so much!” indicate a high plausibility.
Disney has a VFX problem, but apparently, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 does not
It takes only a swift glance at Hollywood’s string of movies in the last couple of years to see the industry’s glaring VFX problem. Somehow films from 2019 and earlier have better CGI than the movies being made in 2022 and 2023. This has been most obvious in Marvel films like Thor: Love and Thunder and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, but the issue isn’t Marvel’s alone. Star Wars is also taking a hit, indicating the problem to be a Disney-wide one and not just studio-specific. Miraculously, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has righted course with some noteworthy compliments to its CGI. The only question now is whether this is an anomaly or a sign of the times.
Someone, please hire a drag queen to fix Ursula’s makeup — stat!
Deep breathe… Let’s all just take a deep breath here, okay y’all?
Look, this is going to be all tea, all shade to whoever is the makeup artist over at Disney’s The Little Mermaid; if you’re reading, brace yourself. There are a plethora — plethora, I say — of drag queens who could have achieved the kind of look Ursula is going for better than what was slapped on Melissa McCarthy’s face. Secondly, — talking to you, Disney — have you not heard of Trixie Mattel, Bianca Del Rio, Kim Chi, Blu Hydrangea, or any of the other talented queens from RuPaul’s Drag Race? Heck, you could have called Raven, the drag queen who paints RuPaul’s face, and gotten a better mug than whatever misshapen ovals were colored on the poor Melissa McCarthy’s eyes. We hate to say it, but this god-awful makeup is going to make it that much harder to watch the movie. Sigh.
And with that, we bid you adieu. Until next time.
