Disney+ Is One Year Old Today – Here’s How It Can Improve In Year Two
Release more catalog titles
This should be a given, and yet, it’s been basically the opposite in the last five or six months. Over that period of time, there have been fewer and fewer catalog titles arriving on Disney+. If you’re a fan of National Geographic – one of the main tiles on the Disney+ home page, thanks to Disney’s acquisition of the Fox Corporation – then you’ve no doubt been in streaming paradise lately. Each of the last few months, the most catalog titles being added to the service are courtesy of Nat Geo.The problem, of course, is that most of these titles have essentially no connection to the Disney name. If it weren’t for the Disney-Fox merger, these titles wouldn’t even be present. Though Disney+ does boast hundreds upon hundreds of titles, from the popular to the obscure, there’s still quite a lot left in the fabled, and not-at-all real, Disney Vault to unearth. Decades' worth of Walt Disney anthology TV series? Still not available anywhere except via YouTube uploads. 70s and 80s live-action fare likeThe Watcher in the WoodsandCondorman? Still languishing. Even the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon isn’t fully represented; the 1946 animated featureMake Mine Musicwas last released on home media in the United States in 2000.Some people have argued that Disney is doing this intentionally, essentially reviving the old Disney Vault with these typically hard-to-find titles the way they did with animated favorites likePinocchioandAladdin. Putting it bluntly, there are two options when you consider this argument. Either this argument is flat-out wrong or it implies that Disney+ is overvaluing this content to a strange degree.Make Mine Music, for example, is a must-watch for any true fan or completist of Disney animation. It’s never been released officially in HD quality. (One of its segments, a riff on the Western battle between the Hatfields and the McCoys, has a fair amount of cartoon gunplay.) But the casual viewer won’t carequitethat much about a 40s-era package film being made available on Disney+. The same can be said for the anthology episodes, and plenty of other examples. These allshouldbe made available on Disney+, but treating them like some of the studio’s most beloved and popular films is…weird, to say the least.It’s a head-scratching decision, too, when you consider the obscurities thatareon Disney+, fromJustin Morgan Had a Horse(and don’t you let anyone tell you that he didn’t) toThe Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World. These are not titles that will appeal to anyone other than a true completist. Why puttheseon Disney+ but not plenty of other titles with a more built-in audience? Would millions of people flock to streamDonald in Mathmagic Landin HD? Perhaps not. But more would be excited than the perhaps literal handful of people who have streamedJustin Morgan Had a Horse(including this writer).
Bring back The Muppet Show
One specific example of something Disney+couldbring back – one title that really would raise awareness among even casual viewers – isThe Muppet Show. And that’s not an encouragement to revive the show for the 21st century. (Disney+ instead released the six-episode season ofMuppets Now!in the late summer, and it was perfectly…OK.) Disney owns the Muppets, and that means that they ownThe Muppet Show. People like the Muppets. People especially like the original iteration of the Muppets, with performers like Jim Henson and Frank Oz. Thus, Disney+ should streamThe Muppet Show.The hurdles to clear here are – it should be noted – not minimal. Each episode ofThe Muppet Show, which lasted five seasons comprising 120 episodes, was hosted by a different guest. Some were actors, some comedians, and some musicians. Even the episodes not hosted by musicians, though, featured songs whose licensing rights may simply be a little too hefty. Having said that, there are ways to resolve the licensing problem. Disney+ could follow in the footsteps of Peacock, which recently made all the seasons ofSaturday Night Liveavailable to stream…though some episodes are incredibly short, in part due to music clearance rights. StreamingThe Muppet Showdoesn’t meaneachepisode needs to be available in full.Or, hey, there’s another option: Disney could just pay the licensing rights! It would no doubt be expensive, but among the various catalog titles the company has that have yet to stream on Disney+,The Muppet Showis perhaps the most famous and the one that would inspire lots of casual viewers to check it out. Instead of letting the Muppets continue to collect dust, Disney+ should make them available to everyone.
New commentaries/special features
Disney+ is intended to offer something for just about everyone, but there’s at least one area of its existing library that remains fairly dormant: special features. Physical-media fans and collectors are no doubt aware that during the DVD craze of the 2000s, Disney didn’t skimp on its special-feature offerings. Animated classics likePinocchioandSleeping Beautywould include multiple commentary tracks, including film historians and animators, as well as a bevy of behind-the-scenes documentaries. Newer animated films, both from Disney and Pixar, often had even more since there could be in-the-moment documentaries created, as opposed to looks back at the past.If, however, you go to Disney+ and access these titles, you’re more likely than not to find very little of the sort. It’s not that these features don’t exist. It’s that they haven’t been added. And even now, during the pandemic, there’s an opportunity to create something new. Here’s a free idea for Disney+: reach out to various celebrities (having a cadre of performers in Marvel and Lucasfilm projects allows the net to be pretty wide) and have them do a commentary track with a film critic or historian on their favorite Disney movie. It’s an easy sell, and likely a very low-cost project on which to embark.
Disney+ recently updated some of its older films with a brief title card that speaks in vague generalities, implying that whatever film is about to play features racist or sexist depictions. Honestly, it’s a fill-in-the-blank description that simply lets the viewer know that the movie might be an awkward sit for one reason or another. Two things can be true: this is a more forthright way for Disney to acknowledge the flaws of its past films, and it’s not nearly enough.This writer won’t spend too long explaining why Disney+ needs more than just title cards, and that a host would be better. (You can read thiscolumnfor a longer explanation.) But the title cards are exactly why. It’s possible that you’ve watched an older Disney film in the last few weeks via Disney+, and thus seen that title card. Possibly, you weren’t even aware of the warning’s existence until you clicked Play. And of course, the title cards aren’t unique to a given film. You may have a guess why it will appear in front of, say,The Jungle Book, but there’s no further background or context given.Enter a host. The basic idea here is that Disney+ could easily treat some of its older films and TV shows as if they’re Turner Classics Movies programming. It’s not intended to imply that these are fusty objects of the past, but to burnish them and add to their legacy. A host could be a Disney stalwart like Leonard Maltin, who once hosted the Walt Disney Treasures DVD sets of the early 2000s (and has been known as an expert on the subject for decades), or it could be someone younger and/or not a man, like TCM’s Alicia Malone. The options are limitless. And they’re necessary.
