[Sendotsh]

I’ve heard more excitement about Disney+ from family/friends than any other tech launch I can remember. Short of maybe the original iPhone, and maybe the Nintendo Switch. Techies and non-techies alike are counting down the days until it launches.

I’m generally someone who speaks with my wallet, I pay for FastMail and use DDG rather than use Google, I go out of my way and spend more to not support shitty companies, and I personally think Disney is among the most evil companies out there (for their Copyright lobbying etc).. but I’m finding it very bloody hard to resist the idea of unlimited streaming Star Wars, Simpsons, and Disney classics for my kids.

Barring some major tech fuckups from Disney, I’m pretty sure this will be absolutely huge.

[banachtarski]

Opinion: Disney content these days is absolutely awful. I'm not enjoying the films, the shows, or anything really. They spend more time doing remakes for a global audience (read. China), and compromise the quality of the end result.

[scarface74]

Well, whether it’s “awful” as far as your taste is an opinion you have every right to have, but looking at their successes in the box office, it’s clearly valuable. That’s all that matters.

[apatters]

Is it really? There are only five major studios which command 80-85% of the US box office [1], and by extension a major share of all global box office returns.

Five corporate boards exercise creative control over nearly all of Hollywood.

That's not much competition, and they seem to have arrived at a consensus about what kind of content we should experience at the theater.

Who says the content is valuable? Can you prove that the cash generation value is in the content and not the strictly regulated, consolidation-friendly oligopoly structure which Clinton put in place for these guys in the 90s?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_film_studio

[scarface74]

Tyler Perry Studios and Blumhouse both show that you can make a movie cheaply (less than $10 Million), with great ROI, and get widespread distribution. On an ROI basis, they both usually do better than the major studios.

Neither of these studios are based in Hollywood. In fact right now, both Coming To America 2 and Bad Boys 3 are filming at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta.

On top of that, if you want to make a movie today and get distribution, there are dozens of cable channels and streaming services who want exclusive content. You don’t need to be in theaters.

In fact, you can sell your movie to consumers via any of the on demand platforms like iTunes, Vudu, Google Play Movies or Amazon.

[bluedino]

Tyler Perry Studios also proves you can produce terrible content.

[sangnoir]

Was there ever a year that Hollywood failed to prove this too?

[scarface74]

Well, again in the grand scheme of things in a capitalist society, his content makes a profit, has no negative externalities [1] and has a great ROI so it is a good product.

[1] I’m personally no fan of it, it’s low brow shucking and jiving, Stepin Fetchit content. And before I get downvoted to oblivion and flagged for being racist, I am Black.

[austhrow743]

Clinton didn't introduce a mandate that people go to the cinema.

[marcinzm]

Going to the theater is neither a necessity nor is it the only form of entertainment available. As such, nothing forces people to go there so even if there was only a single film studio the quality of films would still matter.

[mark_l_watson]

My wife and I just returned home from two years working in a large university town (Urbana/Champaign) and one of the things we really enjoyed was having an IMAX theater nearby. We went very frequently. When we returned to our home in the mountains of Central Arizona, we stopped going out to the movies - our local theater is OK, but not the IMAX experience.

The amount of at home entertainment with HBO, Amazon Prime, CBS Streaming (for Star Trek), and Netflix is phenonimal. I am fine with paying for services and just experiencing a wide sampling. It does take some self control to be willing to stop watching series after sampling some episodes.

[notfromhere]

As a fellow former U-C resident, I do miss the art theater in town. A bit rundown but definitely has its charm

[scarface74]

My dad has been a once or twice a week movie goer since I can remember, sometimes with my mom sometimes without. But since I bought him a 49" Roku TV, he goes to the movie a lot less often. He has Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, access to my Plex Server, Crackle and the Roku Channel. He would have access to a lot more if the other network provided apps didn't keep forgetting his cable login and force him to validate by going to a website.

[apatters]

The substitutability of going to the theater is not super high if for instance you are busy parents in a small town and you want to have a date night, or get your kids out of the house for a few hours on the weekend.

People might still go because the theater experience is convenient, even when the content produced by the studios is crap. Happens all the time.

[taurath]

People willing to pay for it says content is valuable, or at least valuable enough for a few hours of time.

[goldenkey]

But with monopolies, you usually just take what you can get...

[s1artibartfast]

if you chose to pay fr it, it is at least worth that much.

Sure, there may be a more valuable film that was never made, but that doesn't negate the net positive.

[scarface74]

How is it a “monopoly” with five major studios and two or three minor studios?

[goatinaboat]

That's not much competition, and they seem to have arrived at a consensus about what kind of content we should experience

The flurry of movies loved by critics coincidentally working for media outlets owned by big players, and hated by actual fans shows the power of this.

Terminator: Dark Fate should have been amazing but it pretty much sucked, for example. Being out of sync with the fans doesn’t seem to matter to studio bosses, even if the movie tanks.

[scarface74]

So isn’t that an argument against worrying about the big bad studio monopolies? They put out a product, people don’t want it, they lose money. It sounds like capitalism for the win to me instead of wanting the government to intervene.

[rayiner]

What is the “strictly regulated” part?

[banachtarski]

Yea it's working for them, free speech be damned. Won't stop me from voting with my dollar though.

[Jedi72]

Once upon a time, Disney made films. Now they just make money.

[mulletbum]

That might be, but my 3 year old, 6 year old, and wife are on about the 300th play of Descendants 3, which never even went to the theater.

[jjm]

Ah I see I’m not the only one experiencing this pain.

[jimbob45]

Counterpoint: their pipeline for capturing young talent flows as strong as ever. Spend five minutes watching any Disney Channel show and you can see some really strong acting.

[rkop]

Are you a 14 years old girl?

[BLKNSLVR]

And if it's popular in China, I doubt there will be much motivation to change tack in terms of quality or niche market fan service.

[sytelus]

I'm super careful about exposing Disney content to my kids. The especially pre-2000 era Disney content is absolutely damaging and well documented in the academic community for that. Disney content gets created to increasing shareholder value, not for the long term well-being of your child. This means anything that can get kids addicted on easy entertainment sudar and spend more money on toys, books, trips is a good thing. In addition, I've become very averse to starting subscriptions given how hard they are to get rid off and stay underutilized. I already have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Xfinity and now I also have to do individual networks and studios? This is one reason I don't think newspaper, magazine and more subscriptions are going to fly as long term business model. People will sonner or later realize that everything cost same as cup of coffee but we are just being forced to buy way too many cups.

[wgjordan]

> The especially pre-2000 era Disney content is absolutely damaging and well documented in the academic community for that.

I'd be interested in follow-up reading on the academic research you're gesturing towards here- do you have links or any specific names/citations that would point to the material you have in mind?

[sytelus]

There was a good discussion (I can't get link) where an expert basically said that STEM enrollment for girls fell through the roof in last few decades is highly correlated with series of Disney movies that virtually every young girl was exposed to multiple times building their characters as "template" which deeply affected psycology of these children.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/24/...

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/disney-movies...

https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.12...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-9930-7

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.933...

https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/4094/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-017-0773-8

http://www.hillpublisher.com/UpFile/201803/2018032844432581....

https://firescholars.seu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=105...

https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/14406

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_The_Walt_Disney_C...

[wgjordan]

Thanks, I appreciate your followup. I'm genuinely interested in discussion on this topic. I was hoping there was something more focused summarizing the academic consensus in a given field of study that you were alluding to, but it appears not.

One thing I noticed is that the focus of these is on gender-stereotypical portrayals of princesses. Is only the princess-themed content specifically seen as 'damaging', or is Disney content not featuring princesses also suspect?

Another detail is that a good number of the results you dug up seem to be reflections on interactions with the 'Disney Princess' line of toys and media which was launched in 2000, which would suggest that the most 'damaging' of this content is specifically 'post-2000'. Was there something about pre-2000 Disney content you had in mind that's especially damaging, that is not the case with the post-2000 Disney Princess line, or is it all garbage?

[sytelus]

I don't have link to original talk I'd seen but if you search Ted talks for disney effect, you will find many discussing this. Saying that it just does "gender-stereotypical" portrayal grossly underestimates the impact of these movies. The message I took home was that young girls with constant exposure to Disney princess movies significantly decreases their future probability for enrollment in STEM.

However it's just not about girls, it also impacts boys negatively as well. If you have to read one great book about raising kids, make it NurtureShock. One thing I learned from it was how kids learn to value nature vs nurture. When you tell your kid "great job! you are smart" you are basically saying they have natural capability to do great things, they don't have to work for it. So when they fail, they tend to interpret that there is nothing they could do. Parents who say "great job! You worked hard for it" have much more successful kids. One simple phrasing makes huge change in their lives. NurtureShock has detailed analysis and citations.

Back to movies... Here's the thing: Do you love Star Wars? Lord of the Ring? Harry Potter? Do you know what is one common thing between all of them? The hero in the movie is born with capabilities to be great. You are Jedi because force with you since you were born. You are just that way. You didn't had to work for it. You are just destined to be the great, it's written in the stars. Story writers know this simple thing is cocaine for people and they keep creating more supply to keep us fed. We get hooked on to it right away but its not good for us. Now look back in your life and think about all the time you avoided hard work in the hope that your specialness would just do the work for you. Kids should avoid these kind of movies, at least until they are 18 or may be 21.

[kortilla]

Lord of the Rings? The main character fell backwards into an assignment and stumbled his way through. He wasn’t born great and had no special powers.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

How is post-2000 Disney better? Their movies are literally ads for their toys that you pay money to watch. Their toys are ads for their games. And their games are basically crack cocaine for kids.

[sytelus]

Most of us outside of entertainment business don't know this but Disney had been taking huge dissing from media as well as academics for princess movies. They have started change their ways and recent slew of movies like Moana focuses far less on being pretty and waiting for price to arrive putting female character as a confident leader. But you have to be very careful in chosing Disney content. As I said, ultimately entertainment company's goal is to hook you up with crack cocain, not your long term well being.

[riffraff]

It's not like Mulan was focused on being pretty and waiting for a prince either. Or Brave(not pre-2000, just not recent), or even Pocahontas.

I feel if anything the "pretty is everything" comes from toys, rather then the movie plots themselves.

[RHSeeger]

Personally, I'm a big fan of Sophia the First. She's a princess, but she's learning her way to becoming a capable ruler. Quality entertainment, just below Aquanauts.

[Vomzor]

Sadly the majority of sociologists still seems to believe the debunked theory of nurture over nature[1] and tend to ignore all things biology. Consequently, a lot of gender related studies are just ideology instead of robust science.

In the last decades STEM enrollment for girls rose in poor countries. And Disney movies are watched worldwide, including poor countries...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/29/so-is-it-nat...

[sytelus]

No. Disney movies are watched lot less in 3rd world countries. Most population in these countries didn't had (perhaps recently) any on-demand access to large movie collection - not as VCRs, DVDs or streaming. You gets to watch movie if it is on the cable at the time you are watching. This significantly reduces exposure and tendency to watch same kind of movies over and over. Also, market for expensive Disney toys and accessories isn't accessible to most people.

[fsloth]

Yeah, as science I have serious doubts about sociology. As a way to form an ontology it's plausibly worse than vernacular tradition. Please prove me wrong and point me to high quality sociological studies. I want to believe we have practical tools to deal with the future of our species.

[groceryheist]

How about https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/521848

?

[sytelus]

In general I agree. However many studies in this field had been large scale enough with low variance that effect is not ignorable. Given similar results, it appears reproducibility is also high.

[fsloth]

Correlation does not equal causation. If there is a trend in society driving girls toward traditional roles, then would not it be equally plausible that this phenomena is driving both the narrative of popular films as well as decrease in STEM participation.

I have only anecdotal sample size of one - but my daughter loves disney female characters, and she enjoys maths and sciences as well. Her mother has a PhD in physics so there is that as well, so... we're not exactly a good 'average sample'. But I've never got the vibe that she would not enjoy maths because the little mermaid doesn't.

Societies are driven by fashions that trickle down from perceived elite to the rest of the society. It's much more 'damaging' if there are popular celebrities setting the 'wrong' example, rather than if Ariel is not into STEM.

I know it's popular to blame big corps for all the woes of the world, but non-interactive entertainment is not harmfull on the same scale as social media or tobacco.

[sytelus]

I hope things works out for you. Having a mom with PhD makes huge difference in balancing things out but these studies are not bogus. They have proper sample size, metrics, control group and there is high probability that hypothesis is plausible. I've seen several parents buy Disney Princess book set, movie set, doll set to their daughters. My heart often sinks. It's an extremely popular Christmas gift unfortunately and marketed with vengeance like nothing else. It's like a tradition of pregnant women painting baby room. They don't know they are inhaling potentially very dangerous fumes for fetus for hours on that can potentially lead to various birth defects including autism and asperger. Not all kids gets affected but some do.

[telesilla]

I'm sorry but you are out an outlier. Most girls have pink princess things and get told they look pretty in that dress and do jigsaw puzzles made of Disney princesses. I wish all girls had roles models like your daughter but it's just not the reality. (Source: woman with many friends with daughters)

[fsloth]

Yeah, I'm quite confident our family is an outlier. Our daughter is a huge disney princess fan, loves barbies but I don't see it affecting her love of STEM.

I have a hunch it's not the disney princesses that stifle young girls but just being told at some point in their lives that science is more for boys. You don't need more than that. Once you have a bunch of young girls, each of which have internalized this at some point in their life, it becomes part of their 'subconscious group identity' and that's that.

I think it's ok for girls to love princesses. It's not ok for their role models (mums) say so that they hear "i don't understand maths but that's ok" or something silly like that.

Kids learn rules from adults. Not from cartoons.

[atlasunshrugged]

It's in the same vein as the princess issues but Freakonomics did a solid podcast on this recently too http://freakonomics.com/podcast/princess/

[nabla9]

Little kids don't need new programming.

Expose your kids to physical comedy trough silent black and white classics. Young children love them and watch them again and again. Adults love them too. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and many others.

[nkrisc]

Silent films are great even if a kid can't follow the title cards. Without dialogue, so much of the story is told through the action and expressions of the actors.

While not silent, as a child I spent many a weekend morning watching The Three Stooges on our local PBS channel.

[blaser-waffle]

I wish there was a way to convey woo woo woo via emoji. Maybe some sort of Homer/Zoidberg gif?

[puranjay]

With plenty of disclaimers to not imitate Buster Keaton, I hope

[codesushi42]

Correlation is not causation. Everyone watched Disney movies as a kid.

There's no study that supports post 2000 content does anything to improve things.

[gremlinsinc]

I can't agree more. They're a draconian company eating megacorp, but they fixed star wars. Rogue one is probably my favorite after RotJ. 1-3 are dead to me. Don't exist.

Jon Favreau's a pretty decent director, so I'm excited to see how the Mandalorian turns out. Honestly I feel I need to launch a side project w/ passive income so I can retire and have enough for everything I want to stream off disney+... lol -- I'm 40 this month, and have two kids (2 and 10 months) and they're obviously going to love d+... I think D+, Hulu, Prime, and Netflix are really all you need for streaming... maybe HBO, though I don't know if I'll have time for all that content. I think network TV might die soon, w/ the streaming options nobody's going to need cable or even Over-the-air tv anymore. Nobody's going to be watching NBC, ABC, etc unless they're direct-to-netflix/hulu etc...

[i_am_nomad]

They fixed Star Wars the same way the vet fixed my dog. “The Last Jedi” was an atrocious film. “Solo” was excruciating fan service that ironically pleased none of the fans.

[shantly]

Huh. I’d call TLJ the first interesting SW film since Empire. TFA was typical Abrams—ok in the moment but brain dead beyond forgiveness as you start to think about it as the lights come up. Lazy writing even by his standards, and I don’t just mean the “copying ANH” thing. Solo was straight up awful. Rogue One had great potential and didn’t live up to it, but was OK. Gave me Star Wars Feels a couple times, which is more than I can say for any of the others but TLJ (only one to achieve the thing where they make you care a ton about several rebel pilots, and characterize them, by giving you about 3 seconds with each, since Empire, and the best of that since ANH).

[gremlinsinc]

I loved TFA because of the nostalgia, sure it copied many things. But history itself repeats sometimes. I thought it was a good way to reignite the story by having familiar elements.

Rogue one is my favorite thing so far out of Disney SW. It was so dark, and unexpected. Basically Hamlet in space. Would love for more of that, and i have high hopes for the mandalorian.

The fact that it was nothing like 1-3 is it's saving grace and no creature like jar-jar showed up. Though I was kind of hoping Snopes would end up being Jar-Jar because it could be the only explanation why Lucas would put that baffling idiot in there if he was really a brilliant Sith lord in disguise.

[shantly]

> I loved TFA because of the nostalgia, sure it copied many things. But history itself repeats sometimes. I thought it was a good way to reignite the story by having familiar elements.

It's a fun watch, like Abrams' Star Trek reboot, but has the same problem of extremely lazy plotting. Not that the original trilogy never ever has something happen purely because it's convenient for the writer and they can't be bothered to think of something better, but that's the underlying motivation for a lot of the writing in TFA and Abrams' other films, while it's usually rare or absent in a well-plotted film, including the original trilogy.

He'll even, sometimes, write in nonsense because it's convenient, then have to come up with other nonsense to find an excuse to get rid of the first nonsense, without bothering to try to make any of that seem reasonable or natural. Example: Han and Chewie show up in a big ship just because we need them to be here now and can't be bothered to write them into the plot some more natural way that doesn't require introducing a new ship, but we don't need that big ship around past this scene because it only exists in the first place for the writer's convenience in the moment, so we'll just... make up some plot-irrelevant reason for them to abandon it suddenly, at exactly the time we need them to. Boom, problem—which we created due to laziness—solved, by applying more laziness! It's basically a whole movie of that, ground up, from a plot perspective, and it really grates once you notice it.

About the best thing I can say about Abrams is he runs one of the the best casting operations in the business and seems to be a good director of actors. I mean, damn. And he's about 100x better than, say, Michael Bay at creating good, popcorn-dumb but not dumb dumb or hard-to-follow-for-no-reason-but-laziness, action scenes. He's no master of action, but he does entirely serviceable work, which is more than a lot of directors manage. His plot writing is just god awful technically speaking. About as bad as it can be without suffering outright incoherence.

[alpaca128]

TLJ is the movie that finally broke the camel's back and let me decide to never ever give Disney another dollar for anything Star Wars until they fix it. Every single promising scene was ruined by a misplaced bad joke or intentionally stupid bad guys(so the movie would not end within 5 minutes, including the opening). The rest was so inconsistent with itself and the older movies that nothing in SW makes sense anymore.

Disney has managed to kill all my enthusiasm I ever had for SW with a single movie. TLJ felt like an attempt to show how little they care about fans of the older movies imho.

[krapp]

>Huh. I’d call TLJ the first interesting SW film since Empire.

I agree, and I think time will eventually come to agree as well. TFA was visually interesting as all of the modern Star Wars films were, but plot-wise it was such an obvious fanservice-laden rehash of ANH that it left me unsatisfied. Yes, seeing Han Solo again engaging in space pirate shenanigans was fun, but another Death Star, just bigger this time, really?

TLJ actually tried to say something new and push the lore forward (in a direction a lot of fans didn't like, but still, no longer circling the drain of decades-year-old nostalgia.) I liked what it had to say about the nature of the Force and how the Jedi and Sith were both wrong, I like that Luke turned out to be a flawed character cynical about his mythical status as a hero, and that there is more than just the binary morality of "Jedi good, Sith bad, let's fight now" at play.

My biggest criticism of TLJ would be that, while I enjoyed it as a movie, I think it failed at its role as the second part of a trilogy, spending too much time undermining the previous movie. Although, as far as I know, that's because there never was an "arc" planned for this trilogy, so I don't even know how much blame TLJ can get for deviating from a plan which never existed.

I get a bad feeling that Rise of Skywalker is going to wind up being nothing but a fix-fic for the last two parts, though.

[WorldMaker]

Kathleen Kennedy (the Star Wars Kevin Feige) wouldn't have allowed Rian Johnson to wreck any plans for Star Wars, and JJ Abrams had plenty of time to object if he thought TLJ was going to step on any ideas for its sequel.

My biggest criticism of TLJ was that I think it did the intended arc justice, but I didn't enjoy it on its own as a single movie. (Some of that is because I accidentally sort of double featured it with Three Billboards and Three Billboards entirely broke Poe Dameron as a character for me.)

I don't have any expectations for Rise of Skywalker yet. Waiting for reviews.

[chipotle_coyote]

The Last Jedi was clearly a polarizing film, and it's fine if you didn't like it, but I think it's worth keeping in mind that the movie...

* Has an 85/100 on Metacritic ("Universal Acclaim")

* Has a 91% score on Rotten Tomatoes

* Made $619M

So it was both a box office success and a critical success. Personally, I think it's far from an atrocious film. I think it's a flawed film, although my complaints have to do with structure and film mechanics, not story choices.

[dageshi]

The franchise itself is so big that it has/had a lot of momentum, fans were willing to give it a lot of chances.

The test will be this years film and how it does.

[chipotle_coyote]

My suspicion is that it's going to do very well even if, unlike the first two movies, it's a critical flop -- which I should note I'm not predicting. The last two movies did very well and the saga is going to have an awful lot of people who want to see how it officially ends regardless of whether they think TLJ (or TFA, for that matter) completely "worked." And J.J. Abrams certainly isn't likely to take the kind of story chances that Rian Johnson would, but he's also likely to make a leaner, less messy film, and might successfully thread the needle here. (I really hope the film doesn't try and pull off shocking twists to reverse the last film's shocking twists; it's always been in the back of my mind, though, that one of the story points some fans seemed to be so outraged about -- Rey being "a nobody" -- is a point that we technically only have Kylo Ren's word on.)

Having said all that, I don't think you're wrong -- I just think it's going to be the film after this year's that's going to be the real test!

[gremlinsinc]

None of them are perfect (except maybe RO imho), all exceeded my expectations (Lucas set that pretty low after 1-3).

[hoseja]

Now let's see those audience scores.

[chipotle_coyote]

Okay! The most reliable audience score metric -- in that it can't be brigaded by a relatively small number of online fans mobilized to affect the score of a movie because they want to prove a point[1] -- is probably CinemaScore, which has been polling actual moviegoers on opening nights since 1978. The Last Jedi's CinemaScore is A.

[1] While this is usually to drive down a score, you can find the reverse occasionally, such as the Atlas Shrugged movies. It's hard not to notice that the point the brigades are making usually revolves around "stick it to the Hollywood liberals," although I don't think that's true in TLJ's case.

[megablast]

It made $1.333 billion.

[chipotle_coyote]

Ah! The score I looked at must have just been the US box office scores.

[Angostura]

Atrocious is a pretty strong word. Saw it at the cinema with the wife and teenagers and we all enjoyed it. Rogue One was pretty spiffy.

[gremlinsinc]

So you're saying eps 7-9 are worse than 1-3? Because even if it were only slightly better, that is what 'fixing' means. Nothing could compare to the shitfest that 1-3 are.

I mean JAR JAR! for fuck sake.

Do you also deny that Rogue one is better at all than 1-3?

[mschuster91]

The real shitfest about the prequels is they didn't follow through with the JJ = Sith Lord plot.

[plq]

I don't buy that theory. Sequels' emperor looks nothing like JarJar.

[gremlinsinc]

Snoke | Palpatine don't need to be jar jar.. He could be any number of bad guys...

It would've redeemed his character if he was able to infiltrate the opposition by being an imbecile.

[nradov]

The "Solo" movie about Han Solo's origin story was pretty good. I think they should do another one like that but for Darth Vader. Show what he was like as a young man before turning to the dark side.

[dawnerd]

Uhm, they did... but many of us refuse to accept 1-3

[gremlinsinc]

Exactly his point, I'm sure. Disney needs to uncanonize 1-3 and redo them completely.

[riffraff]

I read this as the xkcd comic about the matrix and smiled.

https://xkcd.com/566/

[specialp]

Disney is probably the only media company with enough of a portfolio to have people add another streaming service in addition to Netflix or replace it. NBC/ATT/Apple don't really have a chance IMO. It is sad but we are going to move back to a federated "bundle" of streaming services a la what cable was for TV.

[judge2020]

Apple's strategy seems to just give their service away for the next year or two (to anyone who buys an iPhone) and hope a few million people like their first-party shows. $5/month for the family (well, max. 6 people) is also not a hard thing to push for the iPhone demographic.

[Terretta]

Just like Amazon Prime. Let's not pretend most people are actually subscribing to it...

"As a Prime member, you can already watch thousands of popular movies and TV shows at no extra cost, including exclusives and award-winning Amazon Originals available in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. Save even more with exclusive deals on video purchases."

No 'extra cost'? All that content isn't free. I feel about this much as I do about cable subscriptions by default including the cost of ESPN and other sports channels:

May I not subsidize this, please?

[josteink]

> Just like Amazon Prime. Let's not pretend most people are actually subscribing to it...

People outside the US may actually do that, because they don’t get Prime and thus they don’t get Prime Video as a free rider.

Personally I subscribed to it for The Grand Tour alone. For $4 a month, I find that worthwhile.

[fnord123]

>People outside the US may actually do that, because they don’t get Prime and thus they don’t get Prime Video as a free rider.

Prime and Prime Video are available and bundled outside the US.

[josteink]

But not all countries. You can’t presume all Prime Video subscribers have Amazon Prime.

[dageshi]

I think the Grand Tour probably got quite a few people to subscribe to prime.

[Jamwinner]

I nearly unsubsubbed. GT is all the cruft and precious little of the TopGear soul it tried so cringlingly hard to steal. There is some good original content nontheless on prime.

[smush]

Ironic, here I am thinking that GT is TopGear with the boring stuffy old parts removed. No, I don't care about Star in a Reasonably priced car or the Cool Wall.

I do care about the new car reviews, The News, 'what would happen if we made a car...out of spaghetti noodles', on-location shoots etc. GT has its own take on each of those.

[josteink]

> There is some good original content nontheless on prime.

To my amazement I found a surprisingly big catalog of RiffTrax and MST3K there. Definitely an unexpected bonus.

[wongarsu]

> Disney is probably the only media company with enough of a portfolio to have people add another streaming service in addition to Netflix or replace it.

HBO seems to be doing fine, with plenty people getting HBO Go to watch their shows.

[WorldMaker]

NBC's rumored plan to build Hulu Attempt 2 with Peacock and focus on it being ad-supported and free by default might have a chance.

[judge2020]

Their advertising and announcements seem to be very well executed, watching some relatives scroll through Twitter/Facebook recently showed a pretty large proportion of D+ ads.

[Fezzik]

My hunch is that, at least as far as the originals are concerned, Disney+ will only have the butchered-Gredo-never-shoots versions of 4-6. Do yourself and your loved ones a favor and track down Harney’s Despecilized Edition of 4-6 those are the only versions worth watching.

Edit: corrected the version numbers, dunno what I was thinking when I first typed the comment.

[pkroll]

Just to be pedantic: in the original, Gredo really doesn't ever shoot, Solo just puts him down. So that's not the butchered version: Gredo shooting and Han's head moving unnaturally to the side, that there is an abomination available on blu-ray and DVD everywhere. And what we'll almost certainly have on Disney+. (I'd guess it was part of George's contract when he sold to Disney, that they can't release the originals.)

And yes, the Despecialized versions are wonderful and worth hunting down.

[chrisseaton]

> are counting down the days until it launches

I don't understand - Disney already has a streaming service - DisneyLife. Why's everyone talking about Disney+ like you can't already stream Disney's classic movies, and Marvel, and Star Wars content, all in one place?

[judge2020]

DisneyLife is geo-restricted if i'm not mistaken, D+ will actually be in the US.

[surye]

I don't think DisneyLife is available in the US.

[Mindwipe]

You mean DisneyLife in the UK? That doesn't have any Marvel or Star Wars titles on it.

[chrisseaton]

I’m not imagining them! I subscribe for my daughter and it definitely does.

[colechristensen]

I'm not even remotely interested and haven't heard a word about it from anyone I know. I don't like throwing around words like evil much any more but I don't like Disney and can't see why I would want the service even if I did.

[dwoozle]

I’ve never bought a bra but somehow they manage to sell a lot of them.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> I’ve heard more excitement about Disney+ from family/friends than any other tech launch I can remember. Short of maybe the original iPhone, and maybe the Nintendo Switch. Techies and non-techies alike are counting down the days until it launches.

I am one of those people. I can’t wait to sign up for Disney streaming and ditch Netflix.

For me, Netflix is just full of filler with annoying ads touting a garbage Netflix series (I Land anybody)

At least with Disney, I know I will be getting a strong catalog (classic cartoons, Star Wars, Marvel)

[blaser-waffle]

Man the marketing bots are out in force today. Either HN really loves Disney -- skeptical of that -- or Disney is pushing hard. And they have the money to do so.

[pkroll]

You think a site full of nerds is somehow not fans of animation, Star Wars, and Marvel movies? I'd contend that not one 'marketing bot' is involved at all. Disney's a monstrous company that's twisted Copyright to its own ends... but Marvel movies alone will drag me in.

[Angostura]

Interesting. In the UK, I've heard nothing. I don't even know if they are launching.

[kmlx]

March 31. Still a few months to go. I assume that's why.

[beamatronic]

I don’t know anyone who has stated they would not get it. I know 1 person who prepaid 1 year already. I got more excited when I found out the Pixar shorts like Piper will be on there. I see it as an “all you can eat” delight!

[judge2020]

Also, earlier this year you could sign up for "D23" and get D+ for 3 years at $4/month (which I did). https://www.businessinsider.com/extended-d23-disney-plus-dea...

[Aarostotle]

Hail corporate!

[HBKXNCUO]

Maybe give them a book instead.