Devil Mouse Shenanigans

Disney is going through some massive legal contortions in order to avoid being accountable to the duly-elected state government of Florida after the state removed the special status of the Reedy Creek Improvement District that allowed the Devil Mouse to do whatever it wanted without oversight for most of the last 50 years.

On the very last day of the Reedy Creek Improvement District’s existence on Earth, they gave all of their powers to do, planning approval, building code oversight, construction permitting, and well pretty much everything including building a nuclear power plant if they feel like it, to the Walt Disney Company.

AND…

These agreements shall remain in effect until 21 years after the death of the last decedents of King Charles III of Great Britain as of this date.

Are you fucking kidding me!?!?!

The Disney lawyers must have gone through all of Florida’s legal history going back to when it was owned by Spain and found something that was still on the books as a valid legal precedent.

When the new oversight board was convened, they were shocked to discover that they had almost no power to do anything because of agreements made “in open public forums in compliance with Florida’s Sunshine Law.”

Disney Gives Florida the Finger Again, The Dark Herald, Arkhaven

It’s always fascinating to see how the ticket-takers are never held accountable, in any way, by anyone, even as they fold, spindle, and mutilate the law in order to control the behavior of others. This is pure wickedness in action, and demonstrates why conservative appeals to “the law” are not only blitheringly stupid, but totally irrelevant.

DISCUSS ON SG


Star Wars is Dead

The Dark Herald checks his watch and calls it.

The second episode of The Mandalorian aired last Wednesday and I have yet to hear a peep out of Fort Mickey. Whenever the streamer studios have one of their exceedingly rare wins they screech it from the rooftops… Today Samba.TV released its numbers for the opening episode of The Mandalorian and they are b-a-a-a-a-d.

Disney+ ate its own seed corn when the Book of Boba Fett was bombing. Tearing off Mando’s admittedly good third-season starter and stuffing it into the Book of Boba Fett was like pouring an entire bottle of expensive perfume on a pile of shit. It wastes the perfume without making the pile smell any better. Favreau had to slap together a replacement season opener out of spare parts and abandoned scripts. It was a weak start when it needed to come out strong.

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s premier was 2.14 million unique views.

The Mandalorian third season opener was 1.5 million unique views.

This is truly dire for Disney because The Mandalorian has lost half of its audience. It only edged The Book of Boba Fett by 2%.

And apparently the Marvel Cinematic Universe is rapidly going the way of the Star Wars Universe.

The Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger signaled that the company plans on cutting back on Marvel franchise films in the wake of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania performing abysmally in the box office.

During an appearance at a Morgan Stanley conference, The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Weprin reported Iger signaled the company plans on cutting back on how many films they make around certain characters.

Iger said, “What we have to look at at Marvel is not necessarily the volume of Marvel storytelling, but how many times we go back to the well on certain characters.”

He elaborated, “Sequels typically work well for us, but do you need a third or a fourth, for instance? Or is it time to turn to other characters? There’s nothing in any way inherently off in terms of the Marvel brand. I think we just have to look at what characters and stories we are mining.”

Convergence kills. There is no way back for any of these franchises. They’re not necessarily going to go straight downhill, as there will be overperformances and underperformances, there always are, but the general trend is perfectly clear. And as AI improves, the cost of producing alternative entertainment is going to decline as well, thereby creating new opportunities for Arkhaven and other independents.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Marvel Implosion Continues Apace

The Dark Herald reviews a new Marvel movie that apparently has something to do with Antman, and possibly, The Who, on the basis of its title which I can’t even bother to learn.

I have rarely seen a genre movie so dripping with contempt for its core audience.

Nineteen eighties Mexican sword and sandals videos had more respect for the people that would be seeing it than this flick did. There are no characters, only cut-and-paste caricatures. This is no plot, only a series of ridiculous contrivances. This entire motion picture has been built around appearance for the sake of appearance. It is a Disney Frankenstein. This film is broken. Like its namesake, there is no substance to Quantomania at all.

The Antman character was a problem for Marvel Studios. The problem was that Ari Arad cared about Marvel Comics back when the studio had to listen to him. In the comic books, Hank Pym and his second wife Janet van Dyne were the original Antman and the Wasp, and they were also the founders of the Avengers. Back when Ike Perlmutter made sure that Marvel gave a rancid fart about the canon, not having an Antman in the team that Antman founded was a problem. The thing is Hank’s first wife was murdered by the Hungarian secret police which was why he became Antman in the first place. Bob Iger and Kevin Feige were at best uncomfortable with Hank’s anti-Marxist baggage. But there was no such problem with the Scott Lang version. A hero on a redemption arc is easy to write and easy to make a movie about. Consequently, Scott Lang settled into a role of Antman as a lovable loser trying to make good.

This is the part where I try to ruin the whole movie for you by spoiling it in detail, but this thing is such an inconceivably disjointed trainwreck that my brain keeps shutting down in self-defense when I try to recall the details.

The film opens with Scott strutting down a sidewalk in an alternate universe San Francisco, where he isn’t trying to avoid stepping on broken needles and human shit. The theme from Welcome Back Kotter is playing as Hank has a montage about what a great life he is having as a superhero. The whole city loves him. Apparently, he landed a book deal and has a number-one bestseller. We are meant to believe he wrote it himself; this is the least of the contrivances that are about to pummel an unsuspecting audience.

Montage ends when Scott has to bail his new teenage daughter out of jail (she was recast). Cassie was protesting for the rights of the homeless to establish her unassailable moral superiority over her Generation-X world-saving superhero father, and it is done with such brutal impact that passersbys suffer blunt force trauma. She shrank a police car and was apparently allowed to keep it in jail so she could put it on the comically outraged cops’ desk at the county lockup. She is allowed to leave rather than be arrested again for GTA of a police car because the movie has to get to the next scene as fast as possible. Cassie is such sassy.

I do so love the smell of an imploding converged comics industry in the morning. Throw in a little Devil Mouse in decline and it’s practically a party.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Future of STAR WARS

Is bleak. It is very bleak indeed, if the Dark Herald is hearing things properly.

There was a big pow-wow at Disney on the future of Star Wars. Iger, the senior executive leadership at Disney as well as the leadership of LucasFilm. Disney has massively over-invested in Reylo Star Wars. The sunk costs are too big to reskin the rides and attractions at Disney Parks. Disney hates the idea of retconning away Rey anyway, they NEVER throw away a property, that company’s executives are as repelled by that idea as fish is of getting a suntan.

They have come up with the most designed by committee future of Star Wars imaginable. This is the result of market testing, egos tied to malinvestment and of course the malinvestments themselves.

Consequently, the new big Star Wars movie is going to star five characters.

Ready? Because Disney don’t care if you aren’t

  1. Rey
  2. R2-D2
  3. Chewbacca
  4. New character that will be introduced in the TV shows
  5. (You guessed this one already) Baby Yoda.

Bob Iger had to go with something. In fact, anything. He can’t shitcan Kathleen Kennedy, not with a big proxy fight coming up. He has to express confidence in her despite her disasterous record because he was the one that never fired her.

What they are telling themselves is that the reason Rey isn’t popular is because she has faded from public memory and needs to have her profile raised and not that she was Queen of the Mary Sues.

This is literally the complete opposite of a character-driven approach. It’s a plot-driven approach driven by the need to force the completely different characters from different mediums together. Why not throw in a character from the Alan Dean Foster novels and another from the Dark Horse comics just to increase the degree of difficulty?

It’s really too bad neither of the writers I tried out as collaborators were able to make the grade on my now-ancient not-Star Wars project called FARAWAY WARS that would have preceded Nick Cole’s GALAXY’S EDGE by more than a year. Well, perhaps once I’m finished with my next four books, I can crank one or two of them out myself. It’s more likely that I’ll initially do it as a comic script, however, as Arktoons continues to grow.

FARAWAY WARS

DISCUSS ON SG


Disney Admits Racism

Disney is replacing Splash Mountain with Tiana’s Bayou Adventure:

Disney announced it would permanently close the iconic theme park ride on Jan. 23, 2023. According to Disney, Splash Mountain is racist. The ride promotes “racial stereotypes,” and thus must depart Magic Kingdom swiftly. Disney decided Splash Mountain was racist after complaints over the ride’s source material, the 1946 film “Song of the South,” which supposedly portrays plantation life as historically insensitive.

Moving forward, Disney plans to replace Splash Mountain with a ride entitled Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. TBA will carry on the legacy of “The Princess and the Frog,” which features a black heroine named Tiana. Disney says this ride, unlike the racist Splash Mountain, better represents Disney’s commitment to “diversity.”

It certainly better represents Disney’s commitment to self-extinction. Disney should simply cut to the chase and permanently shut itself down in order to amend for its vast panoply of crimes, past and present, against children and civilized society.

DISCUSS ON SG


Disney Doubles Down

I wish I could have seen the Dark Herald’s face when he learned that Disney is bringing Bob Iger back as CEO:

Former Disney boss Bob Iger, who headed the entertainment giant for 15 years, is returning to lead the firm. He replaces Bob Chapek, who took over as chief executive in February 2020. Disney shares have fallen by more than 40% this year and the company has poured billions of dollars into its loss-making streaming service Disney+.

Mr Iger’s decision to step down in 2020 came as a surprise, after he had driven several major takeovers and launched Disney’s streaming network.

Susan Arnold, who heads the company’s board, said in a statement that Mr Iger was “uniquely situated” to take Disney through “an increasingly complex period of industry transformation.”

Mr Iger has agreed to hold the post for two years in which time he aims to find a successor to lead the company.

“I am extremely optimistic for the future of this great company and thrilled to be asked by the Board to return as its CEO,” Mr Iger said.

During his decade and a half as chief executive Disney bought animation studio Pixar, comic book company Marvel, the home of Star Wars LucasFilm and Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox.These deals, along with the launch of the Disney+ streaming platform and amusement park openings helped the company’s market value increase five-fold during his time in charge…

Disney now has more than 235 million subscriptions across its three streaming platforms, which also include the sports-focused ESPN+ and wider entertainment site Hulu. Netflix, by comparison, has about 223 million subscribers. Mr Chapek also faced pressure over his response to Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Here is my prediction. Iger will not only double down on Disney’s convergence, he will also attempt to buy Netflix. Growth through leveraged buyout is the only thing he knows, and the seeds of future failure are always planted in the flowering of success.

DISCUSS ON SG


Wakanda Never

The Dark Herald steels himself and reviews Wakanda Forever in substantial detail. It’s not an easy job, but someone has to do it.

I feel like such a chump.

I honestly thought Marvel was going to try for once. I have no idea what this unfounded optimism was based on.

Most of the praise for this film was written by shills before it hit the theaters. You can tell.

Although, I have seen legitimate good reviews for this movie, and they were entirely from fat Gamma Males. If you are a Fat Gamma Male or are simply a Gamma male who is fat in spirit, this is absolutely the film for you. You will cry like the bitches you were born to be throughout the whole thing.

If you are a Delta and above, you will curse the goddess of whatever fate that pronounced the doom upon your head that forced you into a theater to endure this impenetrable wall of tedium.

Fortunately, the movie theater I went to serves drastically overpriced beer. Bless you, oh Founder’s Dirty Bastard Scottish ale ABV 8.5%, I couldn’t have made it without you.

I strongly suspect this script was mostly finished before Chadwick Boseman died because he was mad as hell with Disney about something before he clocked out. It feels like it was extensively reworked. Some things just don’t fit like they should. It is possible that this script was originally supposed to take place during The Snap after T’Challa got zilched out for five years. That would make more sense than the complete lack of political adjustments being made when T’Challa was…let’s face facts…dead after Thanos’ little visit.

When T’Challa Blipped back in, he should have seen Gorilla Dude sitting on his throne being unhappy to see him. Although Gorilla Dude was undoubtedly less happy to be in this movie given that he was portrayed as being stupider than a gorilla.

Regardless, a story about his family adjusting to King T’Challa being gone would only make sense if they hadn’t already just gone through it. They are acting like they are mourning him for the first time and we all know he just spent five years being dead.

I would have to assume that you were hopelessly incompetent as a scriptwriter to have deliberately designed a story like this. This is not an assumption that I can casually dismiss with Marvel in the 2020s.

The oppressed minorities in this movie are constantly snarling about “colonizers.” WHY? Neither Wakanda nor the Sea-Mayans were ever colonized. And if the Wakandans were so morally outraged about the slave trade… Why. Didn’t. They. Do. Anything. About. It?

If Wakanda is three hundred years ahead of everyone else then I am pretty sure, my 18th-century ancestors would not have been willing to pursue the slave trade in face of 20th-century weaponry.

Read the whole thing there. In related news, the Devil Mouse is losing money. A LOT of money.

The Walt Disney Company is expected to make massive layoffs due to their poor financial outlook. As per a memo sent to top company execs last Friday and subsequently viewed by Variety, the House of Mouse will begin taking substantial measures to offset the company’s recent and abysmal Q4 financial losses.

This year, production spending for the Marvel Cinematic Universe hit an all-time high with both both Thor: Love & Thunder as well as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hitting $250 million in costs before marketing – the highest such budgets for a non-Avengers film in the entire franchise. The massive costs of the film have driven Marvel Studios’ average break-even mark for those films to be an estimated $700-800 million dollars.

DISCUSS ON SG


March Into Darkness

The Devil Mouse is making it harder and harder for its defenders to justify any parents permitting their children access to Disney material.

“Disney has announced that FX’s new animated horror-comedy series “Little Demon” will begin streaming on Disney+ in Australia and New Zealand on Wednesday, September 21, 2022. The series currently debuts new episodes on Thursdays on FXX and streams the next day on Hulu. The show is also expected to arrive on Disney+ in other countries,” according to Disney Plus Informer.

The cartoon takes place 13 years after an unmarried pagan woman is impregnated by Satan (voice played by Danny Devito) and follows her and her daughter (literally the spawn of Satan and referred to as the Antichrist) through everyday life. The series features demonic witchcraft, pagan rituals, gratuitous blood, gore, and nudity…

Disney seems to be dead set on continuing their march into darkness as we previously reported, Disney announced that they created a task force to create more LGBTQ content for children, and recently announced casting a drag queen in a new marvel comic series Ironheart.

Perhaps you thought I was exaggerating when I began describing Disney as the Devil Mouse. I wasn’t, and the mask continues to come off. So don’t support those who hate you, and especially don’t support those who hate Jesus Christ, America, and Western Civilization.

If you’re not subscribing to UATV and/or Arktoons yet, this should suffice to explain why doing so is quite literally a cultural imperative.

UPDATE: “Laura and her daughter Chrissy are Jewish, something the writers plan to flesh out more in the first season. “We did make Laura Jewish for a reason,” says Fowler.”

Indeed. They could hardly be Christian, now, could they?

UPDATE: Google, which is no longer reminding itself “don’t be evil”, is openly attempting to hide the Devil Mouse’s wickedness from people looking into this.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Devil’s Wire

It appears Ben Shapiro was instructed to hire Disney executives to lead his fake cultural non-alternative to the Devil Mouse:

To help Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire continue to venture into the entertainment and subscription streaming business. the company has reportedly hired a former Disney executive to serve in the company’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role. The right-leaning media outlet has hired Eric Caballero to be the CMO, who recently worked as a Vice President in Disney’s media and entertainment distribution group, The Hollywood Reporter (THR) first covered.

“While it includes politically focused content from The Daily Wire as well as some other conservative programming, the company is moving further into entertainment, committing $100 million to produce kids and family fare, and expanding into original movies (including a Gina Carano-led offering called ‘Terror on the Prairie’),” THR reported on the scope of Caballero’s work.

Jeremy Boreing, the co-CEO at the Daily Wire, said in a statement that Disney’s audience is sick and tired of the company’s progressive activism and expressed Daily Wire’s intentions to progress deeper into the children’s media space. “Companies like Disney have betrayed their family-friendly and pro-America audiences because of outsize influence from activist shareholders and employees, leaving money and opportunity on the table in the process,” Boering explained.

Caballero hopes to captivate the Daily Wire’s audience in a way similar to his work at Disney. “I studied Disney’s traditions of customer obsession, of multi-generational franchise-building, and of broadening Hollywood’s best talent,” Caballero told THR in a statement.

Earlier this month another Disney exec joined the Daily Wire. Chris Sonnenburg, the showrunner of Disney’s “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure” was hired to be the Daily Wire’s senior vice president of animation development and production.

Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire Hires Former Disney Exec To Be CMO, 19 August 2022

This is a picture-perfect example of how the media gatekeepers create a false binary in order to present you with an alternative that isn’t actually an alternative at all, in the expectation that you’ll be dumb enough to accept the same thing that you previously rejected because it has a different logo on it.

Arkhaven is a real alternative. Unauthorized is a real alternative. That’s why you never, ever, hear the media – not even the comics media – uttering a single peep about either of them despite the fact that they are already technologically superior in some ways to their mainstream competitors.

DISCUSS ON SG


Spiderman is Gay

On the plus side, at least Mary Jane is now available.

Disney-owned Marvel Comics is set to debut its first openly gay Spider-Man, with effeminate characteristics, dressed in lace, in an upcoming book due out in September.

The comic book company first informed fans of its plans with a June 16 solicitation, that described the new character as, “WEB-WEAVER: A not-so-mild mannered fashion designer at Van Dyne gets spider-powers and shows us a very different kind of Spider-Slayer,” according to Comic Book Resources.

But that is not the only notice revealed by company employees. Writer Steve Foxe also noted that he has the “huge gay honor” to introduce the first gay Spider–Man. “SURPRISE: I had the huge gay honor of helping to co-create WEB-WEAVER, who’ll make his debut in EDGE OF THE SPIDER-VERSE #5 this September!” Foxe wrote.

It’s really too bad Joe Bennett wasn’t able to continue his excellent work on RED HORNET, as we would have been introducing that right about now. But this sort of thing – below is the new and fabulous Spider-man” – is why Arkhaven Comics is the inevitable way of the future, however long it takes us to get there.

DISCUSS ON SG