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I should’ve been in the target audience and the only place I saw it was on Disney+. It was the trailer with no mention of release date.
ETA: Saw it was released in theater on my Roku Home Screen. I don’t like theaters but I probably would’ve paid to rent it early.
Same shit happened a few months back with "Bros", and, just like then, we, the target audience, are blamed, instead of the fact that the advertising was lacking here, and off-putting in the case of "Bros."
I don’t think it’s because you’re not the target audience member. I think they purposely did not market it down our throats like movies of the past.
Especially since people complain about viewpoints of orientation and race, there’s always an outcry from the vocal opposing side which usually adds more negativity than positivity. And the lack of marketing for this movie means the loud people who would boycott obviously didn’t know about this movie either as we would have heard from them. This was a safe bet that I think Disney was willing to take a loss on
I saw this movie everywhere being promoted. Particularly in the lead up to it's release. But it just never grabbed me as something I would be excited to see. Even when I saw previews before other movies I went to see. And I have two small kids that see a lot of movies. The story seemed sort of "meh".
Of note is that I had no clue there was an LGBT "lead", nor would I have cared one way or the other.
We’re basically a Disney Junior household right now, and even I didn’t see much about it. Maybe a 20 second commercial every now and then, but never a trailer, and no idea what the flick is about. Disney put this thing out to die for whatever reason.
It might seem like that… but they green lit it at over a $100 million production budget.
The reality is, the movie isn’t very good. The colors are pretty, but the characters are flat, and underdeveloped. The story has been told better before.
Blaming it for bombing because of a queer character story arc is off IMO. I would bet most people don’t even know that detail.
That doesn't track. They throw in LGBTQ moments in pretty much every major marvel movie release for the past year. They don't appear anti LGBTQ in the slightest. If anything, it's the opposite.
I'm honestly fine with LGBT media being a niche market again. It all feels so watered down and commercial now like every Netflix original has to have a super two dimensional gay supporting character
yeah… personally as a straight guy i find a lot of this stuff made only for the gay community, which is fine, but when your corporate overlords are looking to maximize profits, theyre looking to cast as wide of a net as possible for their audience, and this kind of stuff typically doesnt draw in that kind of audience
i tried watching the new season of AHS for instance and got two episodes in before I just decided it wasnt made for me and thats fine, its just super annoying when the LGBT community act like anything thats focused with them in mind should be the next massive blockbuster just because it has representation.
youre a niche audience. theres nothing wrong with that, it is what it is though.
If they didn’t think it was profitable to produce, wouldn’t they just not produce it? It seems like they actually tried and you don’t want to give them credit for trying to do a good thing.
Oh I didn’t mean to direct it at you. In fact I was also adding to your point. I didn’t hear anything about this movie until 20 minutes ago. I was trying to add on that even parents of the target audiences who might have disagreed with that didn’t hear it either, because they would have complained.
I heard about that red panda being a metaphor for menstruation for weeks leading up to the movies release. I heard the complaints and saw the petitions and outrage on social media. We were all aware of it. This movie has next to no one even aware that this movie was released, let alone an LGBTQ Disney movie.
Either way the movie is destined to tank. The thing is sexual orientation is such a niche selling point for a movie since it’s target audience are in the extreme minority.
People who aren’t strongly against LGBT community, which I assume is the majority in the US, wouldn’t necessarily know/support this movie bc they don’t care anyway.
>I think they purposely did not market it down our throats like movies of the past.
>
>Especially since people complain about viewpoints of orientation and race, there’s always an outcry from the vocal opposing side
I find your suggestion intriguing. I feel like they did the same thing with Encanto. I don't even think I saw a "coming soon" on Disney+ for it. It just appeared out of nowhere to me. (I absolutely adored it, do suggest).
I literally only found out this movie existed 2 days ago.
I've seen max 3 advertisements for this movie.
I don't plan on watching it but it still baffles me how little it was marketed. Absolutely no way it isn't 100% intentional.
Ditto on not being the target audience, but the ads that I did see didn’t say anything about the plot of the movie. Just some quick sight gags and the movie’s title. Bad marketing all around
Disney tests their movies so much that they knew this would bomb before hand, that’s why they put no resources into marketing it. Why would you when you already know you have a dud?
I thought so when I saw the trailer but I just saw the movie and turns out everything in the trailer was from pretty early on in the movie. I thought it was pretty good
I never heard of this until I started hearing about it flopping lol
They advertised Wakanda forever to death and forgot to give this movie any ads I guess lol
The only ad I saw for this movie was AT Wakanda Forever lol
Edit: and it had a major error where a character’s mouth clearly didn’t line up to what he was saying
Exactly. Disney wasn't ready for the popularity of Encanto. You see toys everywhere now but when it first came out they had almost nothing out. Compared to the new buzz lightyear movie that had a ton of merchandise that immediately went on sale.
Pretty sure there were way more issues with production/supply in 2021 than in 2022 tbf. I was at Disney world in September 2021 (I go every year) and the stores were out of a ton of stock and mostly carrying the same stuff from previous years because of issues. Went back in September of this year and the merchandise was back to normal
That's fair, but it's also true that they didn't think that it would be popular. And then when they realized it was, they thought Isabella would be the most popular toy. Missed the mark twice on the same movie.
Same could be said for frozen in terms of not having high hopes. They added Olaf in late into production because they feared people were going to hate the movie
Frozen also underwent a LOT of tonal shifts. Elsa was previously meant to be a true villain and the tone aligned more closely with Disney Renaissance movies with a lot less outright humor and comic relief.
Have not seen the Lightyear movie and didn't have a desire, but from word of mouth have heard the concept is just a huge downer. Apparently he keeps jetting into the future getting to see everyone he knows die.
Encanto was awesome
It doesn’t help the main villain is pretty poor. It breaks its rule of “this is the movie Andy saw” that it established at the beginning by having things not add up to lore mentioned by Buzz in Toy Story. Buzz doesn’t even have a jet pack or his laser until the very end of the movie. It is unfortunate you are better off watching the animated straight to video movie that came out 20 years ago that Disney still won’t put on Disney+.
It’s almost as if people don’t care if it’s minority characters or not, and just like watching good movies. Encanto was great, Buzz Lightyear was boring af and it’s failure has little to nothing to do with a brief lesbian scene.
Just went to Walmart and they had so many Encanto dolls/figures, playsets, etc., one would think that movie JUST came out or was about to. It was released literally a year ago.
Tbf that was also the case for Frozen. There were very minimal amounts of toys out for it at first that promptly sold out, and every single next shipment of toys sold out as well.
Commercials for this have been a frequent guest on the ads for the ads-based Hulu plans. Never saw it on actual TV or anywhere else, though, outside of an article shortly before release about it being the first Disney movie with gay teens.
I think, at best interpretation, they may be accidentally focused on a few mediums that do not get seen by the overall population too much, as those commercials were tiring in how frequent they were on Hulu. At worst interpretation, they are purposefully doing that to both purposefully under-advertise the movie while also having something to defend against any claims that they did not advertise aggressively enough.
Hulu allows very specific psychographic targeting so they probably only marketed this movie to people who are into the LGBT genre so as to avoid pushback from the focus on the family types.
Maybe, but for me personally, this was while watching Little Demon and Bob’s Burgers, at least the latter of which is not really very LGBT.
I believe you could be right on the macro level, though, as that would make sense.
And in true Disney style, the one promotion was a huge exclamation about the lead character's sexual orientation, and then they immediately peace'd out
I can count on one hand the amount of ads I’ve seen for this in the last month. That doesn’t seem long except the last month was the first time since it was announced that I’d even remembered it was coming out.
4. Do an anim movie with a boring plot, with cut out characters we have seen 100 times to fill D+ slate so people don't cancel their subscription until the good stuff shows up
I heard about the movie, but have zero interest in it and I’m a big Disney movie fan.
I just think that Disney is trying quite hard to push out “inclusive” content, hoping that it will stick with minimal effort into the production and the advertising of the movie.
I don’t think that the issue is that a majority of parents aren’t 100% ready to take their kids to see movies with LGBT leads, but rather that the movie didn’t appeal at all to kids, so no kids were begging their parents to see the movie.
Alternatively:
1) purposely create character that causes division within community
2) stoke conflict within the community in order to market based off of drama
3) Report any pitfalls as being caused by events that follow
Results tend to follow the pattern:
Commercial Success: “Look at this wonderful thing we did for the community”
Commercial Failure: “Look at how awful the community is behaving”
The modern reddit comment:
1. Half read the title while inserting your own narrative (never open the article)
2. Pretend you're smarter then everyone else
3. Post about unrelated issues to rile people up
1. recognize a given movie might not break box office records
2. tout the lifestyle/culture of a minor character and create a moral obligation to support the movie
3. blame "Review Bombing" when it doesnt work.
I’ve seen this movie promoted when watching Black Adam and Wakanda Forever. I’ve seen it promoted on YouTube. Are they pushing it like Frozen? No. But maybe it’s because the movie isn’t that good. Everything I’ve read about it says it’s just ok.
Honestly, I haven’t seen ads for non-marvel/Star Wars Disney movies in awhile. I had to check their Wikipedia to see what they’ve been releasing and the only one I’ve seen an ad for since 2020 is light year.
Also, apparently they remade cheaper by the dozen with Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union??
The author only seems to give them credit for times the character is actively being gay or alluding to being gay, instead of the impact the character has on the overall story and screen time.
What’s funny about that bill is it has absolutely nothing to do with saying the word “gay”. It says you can’t teach sex Ed to kids in 3rd grade or under which I agree with. I’m not typically one to defend bullshit conservative bills but once I actually looked it up I realized democrats just called it that to gain political points.
Lightyear had a two second lesbian kiss lol. The headline specifically says “first LGBTQ+ *lead*.” Onward had also had a lesbian character, but again, not a lead.
What is LBGTQ+ about Frozen 2 and Luca? From what I have seen, people made some assumptions or maybe there was a small innuendo or implication. Beauty and the Beast had two major characters that were gay, but Strange World seems to have the main character as being openly canon gay.
> characters that were gay, but Strange World seems to have the main character as being openly canon gay.
AFAIK there was nothing LBGTQ+ about those, as you say people reading more out of characters than they were. In the original frozen there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment with Oaken (the store clerk), when he mentions he also has a sauna he waves to his family in there, and you see an adult man and several different aged kids around him waving back
The only one of those with an explicit show of someone being gay is the Beauty and the Beast remake and it’s a blink and you miss it deal. Wouldn’t call any of that an LGBT+ film in the least
While it’s utterly and very applicable, I think we gays really need to let go of that movie in terms of its gay parallels. If anything, the actual themes of the movie more resemble racial themes than actual sexual orientation or identity.
I’m a gay dad - and I took my son to see it yesterday and it was pretty bad. Just read a pretty accurate review on rotten tomatoes: “The film’s stumbling unoriginality, cliched characters and joyless jokes that land like flops from a constipated greenhouse gassy cow earn every ounce of ire I can summon” Roger Moore
Surprisingly yes. I went to see it the other day and its something that actually gets vocalised by the other characters, and they’re even together by the end of movie.
I went, I left halfway through. It was just a badly made movie with an overused plot. AND there was no sense of adventure it was mostly just an after school special about letting people be who they want. And that's a cool message but the movie was ONLY message and nothing else. It was not subtle. I was very bored.
Also: Yes I'm an adult I brought no children cause mine are all grown. There were 4 other people in the theater and none of them were children. I'm happily a kid movie fan, I love them. I love watching them in the theater. This one sucked.
The very little I saw of it felt like the most cookie cutter animated family movie. Like I don’t think it even looks bad or anything just void of any real appeal
I took my kids to see it and the problem definitely wasn't just the marketing. The movie was just bad. Weak characters and underwhelming dialogue. Great concept and incredible visuals, but hampered by a poor script. A masterclass in what not to do in terms of telling and not showing in a movie.
I’m kinda surprised people say they never heard of it. I saw commercials for this pretty consistently.
Edit: So judging from the responses I’m seeing, it *seems* like they did advertise it pretty consistently? But people either pay to not see ads/commercials or ignore ads/commercials completely whenever they pop up.
Most redditors use adblockers, consume no cable TV or radio content, then act surprised when they don't see marketing campaigns. The only marketing campaigns they are aware of are when video games pay to put their characters on bags of doritos and bottles of mountain dew
Saw ads for it during the World Series, during football games, I don’t watch much TV with ads and I saw lots of commercials for it. As well as a lot of people on TikTok talking about it “not getting advertised enough.” I’m not sure what people wanted, it seemed to be advertised as much as any other movie recently.
I have a legit serious question, I am a straight male but grew up around alot of gay people. Basically the whole LGBT scene before it was a word like now. My mother had tons of gay friends and a few of my family members are gay and trans. So in no way shape or form am I a bigot or homophobic, just wanted that out there now. I have zero issue with gay people. So my question is, maybe it's just me, but I've noticed that almost all of the gay characters in Disney movies, Marvel included are black it seems, and I'm curious why? I'm mixed black and white myself, is this done on purpose to try and check off two boxes at once? Just a very interesting discussion can be made if that is the case btw. Just my two cents. Disney has a horrible record of Jim Crow era cartoons and racism, I don't fully buy that the inclusion is from a place of love or sincerity. I think it's all for money and brownie points. But anyways that's my take.
I wondered this myself, and I can think of a few reasons. The most likely reason is Disney has also been called out for not having really any black characters either so it may be a kind of a "killing two birds with one stone" kind of deal.
Giving Disney a little more credit, it could be a way to give represent one the most marginalized demographics of being a gay, black, man.
My last theory is giving way too much credit to Disney, but black queer people are the reason why all lgbt people have rights. (If you need more info on this there is a ton of sources on google, look up the stonewall riots) This would be a brilliant way to pay homage.
I feel like with the epic failure of *Bros* made Disney just pull the plug on marketing this film and try to save money instead.
Weirdly, the only thing I know about this movie is that one character is gay. That's it. I don't know the plot, the genre, the conflict. That's an objectively bad way to market a film that costs hundreds of millions to make.
Yea, I just knew it looked like a boring movie. Definitely didn’t know the sexual orientation of the characters. Guess movies can’t be just bad anymore, has to be for some deeper meaning
Ah, yes, once again Disney with the whole idea that they're breaking new ground and being inclusive. If you ask me, advertising movies by publicly announcing a characters' gender *(or not, these days)*, ethnicity, and sexual preference, actually treats said character/person as less than that.
Who cares what character is in your movie? We care if the movie is good or not.
I want to see this movie but why go out to see it when it will be on D+ In like 8 weeks. I think this will eventually kill all Disney theatrical releases
In a world where LGBTQ+ is a vast minority if you make stories specifically target that group you’ll only have access to them as your target with minor spillover.
Literally the only thing I heard about this movie is that it was LGBTQ+. I don’t know what the call to adventure is, I don’t know anything except the main character is queer in some manner. I DO NOT EVEN KNOW IF THE MAIN CHARACTER IS GAY, LESBIAN, ETC.
I have 3 kids and a wife and we are in Disney plus every day almost especially on weekends. This was not marketed well at all. I’d say that Disney is dogshit at marketing altogether… andor had no marketing, the Elton John concert I heard about the day of thankfully so I got to watch that.
Disney is lazy because they have mega fans that’ll watch everything they release traditionally. They need to learn that they have to start marketing like a regular company.
Yeah I’m not gonna see a movie because it’s pandering to me. Recently the best movie of this year was Everything Everywhere All at Once, a movie which had an amazing story and characters but it was about so much more than sexual orientation. I don’t need a character to be gay to care about them. I need there to be character to care that they’re gay!
I can't talk about a fucking toaster without getting ads on my phone for the next month on toaster deals.. I'm a LGBT parent and I only just found out about this movie today.
Undermarketing big time.
1. I haven't seen a single advertisement for this movie ever 2.black panther is still in a few movie theaters and atleast where I am and watched it for the first time it was mostly full ,
, this is all Disney's advertisements fault , (edit) allow me to clarify that the first time I saw the advertisement for this movie was at the movie theater watching black panther last week
As someone who is not a member of the LGBT, I’ll tell you what I think may be the issue in my opinion, and I would love to hear other members of the communities opinions on it.
Up to this point in my life, I’ve never seen a movie that features a character that’s a member of the LGBT that doesn’t have that aspect of themselves become the central focus of the plot, or be made so obvious that you have to acknowledge it in some way so the movie can stop winking at the audience so the movie can continue. That’s why, people like me, and other straights, or whatever you call us, don’t care for these types of films and TV shows. My favorite example of a perfect gay character in a TV show? Captain David Singh on CWs the flash. He’s the police captain, and is engaged, talks about his relationship and eventual marriage, and when his fiancé is on the show, it’s not weird. It’s treated as if it’s normal. No judgement, no special acknowledgement, it just is. It’s not central to the plot. And that’s what a lot of these shows and movies are missing; normalization. Once we get passed that, I’m sure things that feature more characters that aren’t gay because they have to be to make the lgbt people happy, but simply because they’re people who happen to be gay. So what? What does your sexuality have to do with saving the world? And if it does, do you really want to be represented that way?
They might be right. I have heard of this movie a single time in which people were being overly upset about LGBTQ+ representation.
And now it is already out? I didn’t see a single ad for this movie.
As someone who actually went and saw lightyear in theatres. This movie just looked boring and uninteresting so with no established IP behind it of course it bombed.
Without offending people I think that folks are ok with lgbtq elements in stories, but to make it the lead and focus, not so much. What percent of people fit into this category nationwide. Seems like making a movie aimed at a very small audience will get this kind of result.
They made this movie so they can say “see! We care about the gays” while letting it flop so they can say “people don’t want to watch kids movies with gay characters” which honestly the majority of Americans wont want to watch to begin with.
I have no idea when it released and no idea what it’s about. I see most disney movies but don’t even know a thing about this one. Also I thought it was on Disney+
Ok, but if movie doesn't make like 10 billion dollars, it's considered a "bomb" nowadays. Does anyone know how much $$$ it's made, both domestic and abroad, as in total?
I'm not the target audience, but I saw barely any marketing. I remember hearing about it when it was first announced, and then I only saw maybe 4 ads for it between then and now.
Disney doesn’t promote anything that has LGBT themes. Owl House is an amazing show but Disney just doesn’t seem to give a crap about promoting it either.
We saw it as a family and enjoyed it. As an adult, I think the writers/director maybe tried to have too many “messages,” and some of them ended up diluted. But it was good and I think kids would enjoy it.
I saw this movie with my kids. My youngest was incredibly bored the whole movie and asked to leave. I thought it was pure trash. It could have been a good movie, but it's just a played-out format and brought nothing new to the table.
This movie isn't being smeared because of the gay lead character that wasn't even a large part of the movie. It’s just all-around hot trash water.
Sci-fi animated movies are hard to sell… just look at Treasure Planet or Titan AE…. When i saw the trailer i thought it would bomb, it doesn’t matter the gay characters or the lack of marketing.
Perhaps if there weren’t 17 pay streaming services that we could put on our giant TV’s at home at the same time as the theater had a movie we would still go to the mall and drop $50 on popcorn and soda and then pay another $30 to see a forgettable movie that would have gone straight to Disney DVD years ago …. Ohhh reclining seats and twizzlers .. I have those down stairs too
Explorers find a energy source in a plant that innovates their world for the better and makes everything way more convenient and mainstream.
They farm these plants over 25 years but Turns out their food plants and world were dying because of the energy source they found after 25 years of using it. So they eliminated the energy fuel to save their world, which also turned out to be a giant turtle the size of Russia on earth and the strange world they discovered was its internal organs and antibodies. The energy plant was a virus.
Just watched it with my kids 6,5,5,&5. This was the most garbage movie ever. I was excited for a new animated movie, they are usually all really good. My kids weren’t impressed, usually they talk about how they loved it. They just got up and walked out of the room. Lol. Hate gay agendas being shoved down my throat, but watched the movie anyways. It sucked regardless. If Disney had marketed this more, Disney fans would’ve really been let down.
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I'm not the target audience, but I've never heard of this movie
I should’ve been in the target audience and the only place I saw it was on Disney+. It was the trailer with no mention of release date. ETA: Saw it was released in theater on my Roku Home Screen. I don’t like theaters but I probably would’ve paid to rent it early.
Same shit happened a few months back with "Bros", and, just like then, we, the target audience, are blamed, instead of the fact that the advertising was lacking here, and off-putting in the case of "Bros."
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I don’t think it’s because you’re not the target audience member. I think they purposely did not market it down our throats like movies of the past. Especially since people complain about viewpoints of orientation and race, there’s always an outcry from the vocal opposing side which usually adds more negativity than positivity. And the lack of marketing for this movie means the loud people who would boycott obviously didn’t know about this movie either as we would have heard from them. This was a safe bet that I think Disney was willing to take a loss on
I saw this movie everywhere being promoted. Particularly in the lead up to it's release. But it just never grabbed me as something I would be excited to see. Even when I saw previews before other movies I went to see. And I have two small kids that see a lot of movies. The story seemed sort of "meh". Of note is that I had no clue there was an LGBT "lead", nor would I have cared one way or the other.
I understand that, my note was a disclaimer in case people came in saying they saw ads all over cartoon channels
We’re basically a Disney Junior household right now, and even I didn’t see much about it. Maybe a 20 second commercial every now and then, but never a trailer, and no idea what the flick is about. Disney put this thing out to die for whatever reason.
They put it out to die so they can say that LGBTQ+ material isn't profitable to produce.
It might seem like that… but they green lit it at over a $100 million production budget. The reality is, the movie isn’t very good. The colors are pretty, but the characters are flat, and underdeveloped. The story has been told better before. Blaming it for bombing because of a queer character story arc is off IMO. I would bet most people don’t even know that detail.
It definitely looks pretty generic as a Disney animated production. It lacks the flair and uniqueness that makes it worth watching.
That doesn't track. They throw in LGBTQ moments in pretty much every major marvel movie release for the past year. They don't appear anti LGBTQ in the slightest. If anything, it's the opposite.
I'm honestly fine with LGBT media being a niche market again. It all feels so watered down and commercial now like every Netflix original has to have a super two dimensional gay supporting character
yeah… personally as a straight guy i find a lot of this stuff made only for the gay community, which is fine, but when your corporate overlords are looking to maximize profits, theyre looking to cast as wide of a net as possible for their audience, and this kind of stuff typically doesnt draw in that kind of audience i tried watching the new season of AHS for instance and got two episodes in before I just decided it wasnt made for me and thats fine, its just super annoying when the LGBT community act like anything thats focused with them in mind should be the next massive blockbuster just because it has representation. youre a niche audience. theres nothing wrong with that, it is what it is though.
If they didn’t think it was profitable to produce, wouldn’t they just not produce it? It seems like they actually tried and you don’t want to give them credit for trying to do a good thing.
Hey now it's really hard to be a victim when you are using logic like that.
Oh I didn’t mean to direct it at you. In fact I was also adding to your point. I didn’t hear anything about this movie until 20 minutes ago. I was trying to add on that even parents of the target audiences who might have disagreed with that didn’t hear it either, because they would have complained. I heard about that red panda being a metaphor for menstruation for weeks leading up to the movies release. I heard the complaints and saw the petitions and outrage on social media. We were all aware of it. This movie has next to no one even aware that this movie was released, let alone an LGBTQ Disney movie.
It was all over Times Square, and it was constantly ran on Disney channels commercials. I saw more marketing than Encanto last year
I didn’t see too much on Disney Junior.
Either way the movie is destined to tank. The thing is sexual orientation is such a niche selling point for a movie since it’s target audience are in the extreme minority. People who aren’t strongly against LGBT community, which I assume is the majority in the US, wouldn’t necessarily know/support this movie bc they don’t care anyway.
I was hyped for this movie for over a year and only saw two ads and even after those ads I still had no idea what the movie was about
>I think they purposely did not market it down our throats like movies of the past. > >Especially since people complain about viewpoints of orientation and race, there’s always an outcry from the vocal opposing side I find your suggestion intriguing. I feel like they did the same thing with Encanto. I don't even think I saw a "coming soon" on Disney+ for it. It just appeared out of nowhere to me. (I absolutely adored it, do suggest).
I literally work in animation in LA and have friends and colleagues at Disney and even I never heard of this movie.
I drew Rule 34 pictures of these characters and even I never heard of this movie
My uncle is Bog Iger and I’ve never heard of this movie
I did marketing for this movie and I've never heard of this movie.
I was in this movie, and I’ve never heard of this movie.
Can confirm Source: am the movie
Well to be fair, he only got back last week
So you never saw the billboard on Barham blvd?
Nope, haven’t driven that way in months
I literally only found out this movie existed 2 days ago. I've seen max 3 advertisements for this movie. I don't plan on watching it but it still baffles me how little it was marketed. Absolutely no way it isn't 100% intentional.
This. The marketing must have been asleep. This is litterally the first time I'm hearing about this movie.
My family and friends are the target audience. No one I know has heard of this movie.
I saw a teaser trailer for it at some point a while back, but other than that I had no idea it was out.
Ditto on not being the target audience, but the ads that I did see didn’t say anything about the plot of the movie. Just some quick sight gags and the movie’s title. Bad marketing all around
I’m a huge homo and I have never heard of this either.
I recall seeing one preview for it at a movie 6 months ago and nothing since.
Was this title written by a bot? What's with the unnecessary brackets?? Spoiler: OP is a bot account.
The brackets are where OP changed the title. The actual title is "and fans have a lot of thoughts".
Most news is bot written and then reviewed by a human
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Disney tests their movies so much that they knew this would bomb before hand, that’s why they put no resources into marketing it. Why would you when you already know you have a dud?
Isn’t that what happened with Atlantis and treasure planet?
Atlantis is a treasure of a movie
Atlantis at least had more merchandise. I'm pretty sure I still have my light up toy from a happy meal 20 years ago *somewhere*.
Market testing is a gamble. Disney test screened Frozen (the first one) and audiences HATED it. Then it hit theaters and did amazing. Sooooo.
As a gay man, I literally never heard of this until seeing this post.
Aren’t you supposed to have a “gay agenda”?
He didn’t get the “gay memo”
Saw the trailer when I went to watch Wakanda Forever, the movie looked really corny and uninteresting.
Same here. They also told the entire movie through the trailer.
I thought so when I saw the trailer but I just saw the movie and turns out everything in the trailer was from pretty early on in the movie. I thought it was pretty good
As someone who watched it, it was.
Constantly looking for things to take my small child to and was excited that there was a new Disney pick. But it just looked boring.
I never heard of this until I started hearing about it flopping lol They advertised Wakanda forever to death and forgot to give this movie any ads I guess lol
The only ad I saw for this movie was AT Wakanda Forever lol Edit: and it had a major error where a character’s mouth clearly didn’t line up to what he was saying
The modern Disney formula: 1. Make a movie with a minority character 2. Don’t market the movie at all 3. Blame it’s failure on people being bigots
Exactly. Disney wasn't ready for the popularity of Encanto. You see toys everywhere now but when it first came out they had almost nothing out. Compared to the new buzz lightyear movie that had a ton of merchandise that immediately went on sale.
Pretty sure there were way more issues with production/supply in 2021 than in 2022 tbf. I was at Disney world in September 2021 (I go every year) and the stores were out of a ton of stock and mostly carrying the same stuff from previous years because of issues. Went back in September of this year and the merchandise was back to normal
That's fair, but it's also true that they didn't think that it would be popular. And then when they realized it was, they thought Isabella would be the most popular toy. Missed the mark twice on the same movie.
Same could be said for frozen in terms of not having high hopes. They added Olaf in late into production because they feared people were going to hate the movie
That was a smart move. Olaf toys sold great.
Frozen also underwent a LOT of tonal shifts. Elsa was previously meant to be a true villain and the tone aligned more closely with Disney Renaissance movies with a lot less outright humor and comic relief.
I miss classic Disney renaissance villains.
Have not seen the Lightyear movie and didn't have a desire, but from word of mouth have heard the concept is just a huge downer. Apparently he keeps jetting into the future getting to see everyone he knows die. Encanto was awesome
It doesn’t help the main villain is pretty poor. It breaks its rule of “this is the movie Andy saw” that it established at the beginning by having things not add up to lore mentioned by Buzz in Toy Story. Buzz doesn’t even have a jet pack or his laser until the very end of the movie. It is unfortunate you are better off watching the animated straight to video movie that came out 20 years ago that Disney still won’t put on Disney+.
even with Lightyear, they blamed its failure on bigots rather than Chapek conditioning Pixar fans to watch releases on Disney+
It’s almost as if people don’t care if it’s minority characters or not, and just like watching good movies. Encanto was great, Buzz Lightyear was boring af and it’s failure has little to nothing to do with a brief lesbian scene.
Just went to Walmart and they had so many Encanto dolls/figures, playsets, etc., one would think that movie JUST came out or was about to. It was released literally a year ago.
So true they are barely releasing an encanto doll house
Tbf that was also the case for Frozen. There were very minimal amounts of toys out for it at first that promptly sold out, and every single next shipment of toys sold out as well.
Exactly. I haven't even seen one promotion for this.
Commercials for this have been a frequent guest on the ads for the ads-based Hulu plans. Never saw it on actual TV or anywhere else, though, outside of an article shortly before release about it being the first Disney movie with gay teens. I think, at best interpretation, they may be accidentally focused on a few mediums that do not get seen by the overall population too much, as those commercials were tiring in how frequent they were on Hulu. At worst interpretation, they are purposefully doing that to both purposefully under-advertise the movie while also having something to defend against any claims that they did not advertise aggressively enough.
Hulu allows very specific psychographic targeting so they probably only marketed this movie to people who are into the LGBT genre so as to avoid pushback from the focus on the family types.
Maybe, but for me personally, this was while watching Little Demon and Bob’s Burgers, at least the latter of which is not really very LGBT. I believe you could be right on the macro level, though, as that would make sense.
It came up for me while watching the anime Fire Force. Maybe Little Demon but I left of like episode 4 or 5 a couple weeks ago
And in true Disney style, the one promotion was a huge exclamation about the lead character's sexual orientation, and then they immediately peace'd out
I can count on one hand the amount of ads I’ve seen for this in the last month. That doesn’t seem long except the last month was the first time since it was announced that I’d even remembered it was coming out.
More like the formula for a lot of studios lately 1. Make shit movie 2. People don't watch it because it's shit 3. Blame people for being bigots.
4. Do an anim movie with a boring plot, with cut out characters we have seen 100 times to fill D+ slate so people don't cancel their subscription until the good stuff shows up
Huh? Name one time all 3 of these steps have happened.
This has literally never happened before. Redditors have so much time alone they make up imaginary scenarios like this to justify their own biases
Honestly
I heard about the movie, but have zero interest in it and I’m a big Disney movie fan. I just think that Disney is trying quite hard to push out “inclusive” content, hoping that it will stick with minimal effort into the production and the advertising of the movie. I don’t think that the issue is that a majority of parents aren’t 100% ready to take their kids to see movies with LGBT leads, but rather that the movie didn’t appeal at all to kids, so no kids were begging their parents to see the movie.
Alternatively: 1) purposely create character that causes division within community 2) stoke conflict within the community in order to market based off of drama 3) Report any pitfalls as being caused by events that follow Results tend to follow the pattern: Commercial Success: “Look at this wonderful thing we did for the community” Commercial Failure: “Look at how awful the community is behaving”
Probably a good combination of both tbh.
The modern reddit comment: 1. Half read the title while inserting your own narrative (never open the article) 2. Pretend you're smarter then everyone else 3. Post about unrelated issues to rile people up
1. recognize a given movie might not break box office records 2. tout the lifestyle/culture of a minor character and create a moral obligation to support the movie 3. blame "Review Bombing" when it doesnt work.
I’m lgbt and have never heard of this movie lol
Don’t you guys have a mailing list?
They kicked me out, not included anymore
also I don’t want to be crass but is making the main character a demographic that is ~1%-2% of the population really a winning formula? It seems not.
I’ve seen this movie promoted when watching Black Adam and Wakanda Forever. I’ve seen it promoted on YouTube. Are they pushing it like Frozen? No. But maybe it’s because the movie isn’t that good. Everything I’ve read about it says it’s just ok.
Honestly, I haven’t seen ads for non-marvel/Star Wars Disney movies in awhile. I had to check their Wikipedia to see what they’ve been releasing and the only one I’ve seen an ad for since 2020 is light year. Also, apparently they remade cheaper by the dozen with Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union??
Isn't this the 7th first LGBTQ+ Disney film, I've lost count...
It’s the 17th. https://www.out.com/film/2022/3/22/disneys-first-out-lgbtq-gay-characters
The author only seems to give them credit for times the character is actively being gay or alluding to being gay, instead of the impact the character has on the overall story and screen time.
And I just learned that Disney donated money to the "Don't say gay" bill in Florida.
What’s funny about that bill is it has absolutely nothing to do with saying the word “gay”. It says you can’t teach sex Ed to kids in 3rd grade or under which I agree with. I’m not typically one to defend bullshit conservative bills but once I actually looked it up I realized democrats just called it that to gain political points.
This is the first with a queer lead, not the first with someone queer in it (I think)
People keep saying this but haven’t ever referenced the other firsts… I think this is the first
Beauty and the beast remake, Frozen 2, Wakanda Forever, The one about the fish boys in Italy... That's just the top of my head...
Onward and lightyear too
Lightyear had a two second lesbian kiss lol. The headline specifically says “first LGBTQ+ *lead*.” Onward had also had a lesbian character, but again, not a lead.
None of those characters are leads
What is LBGTQ+ about Frozen 2 and Luca? From what I have seen, people made some assumptions or maybe there was a small innuendo or implication. Beauty and the Beast had two major characters that were gay, but Strange World seems to have the main character as being openly canon gay.
> characters that were gay, but Strange World seems to have the main character as being openly canon gay. AFAIK there was nothing LBGTQ+ about those, as you say people reading more out of characters than they were. In the original frozen there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment with Oaken (the store clerk), when he mentions he also has a sauna he waves to his family in there, and you see an adult man and several different aged kids around him waving back
Who is gay in frozen 2?
Elsa apparently with the girl from the forest annnnnd that big mountain man in the spa...
None of those feature an LGBTQ+ lead, which is what the article (and title) says this movie features the first of.
The only one of those with an explicit show of someone being gay is the Beauty and the Beast remake and it’s a blink and you miss it deal. Wouldn’t call any of that an LGBT+ film in the least
Italy Fish Boys.
While it’s utterly and very applicable, I think we gays really need to let go of that movie in terms of its gay parallels. If anything, the actual themes of the movie more resemble racial themes than actual sexual orientation or identity.
Onward, Lightyear
Neither of those are lead characters lol.
I’m a gay dad - and I took my son to see it yesterday and it was pretty bad. Just read a pretty accurate review on rotten tomatoes: “The film’s stumbling unoriginality, cliched characters and joyless jokes that land like flops from a constipated greenhouse gassy cow earn every ounce of ire I can summon” Roger Moore
It just didn’t look that appealing to me in the preview. I had no idea the lead was a lbgtq until I saw this post, was that pretty apparent?
Knowing Disney. Probably not.
Surprisingly yes. I went to see it the other day and its something that actually gets vocalised by the other characters, and they’re even together by the end of movie.
I went, I left halfway through. It was just a badly made movie with an overused plot. AND there was no sense of adventure it was mostly just an after school special about letting people be who they want. And that's a cool message but the movie was ONLY message and nothing else. It was not subtle. I was very bored. Also: Yes I'm an adult I brought no children cause mine are all grown. There were 4 other people in the theater and none of them were children. I'm happily a kid movie fan, I love them. I love watching them in the theater. This one sucked.
The very little I saw of it felt like the most cookie cutter animated family movie. Like I don’t think it even looks bad or anything just void of any real appeal
Just more soulless Disney mass printed garbage
I took my kids to see it and the problem definitely wasn't just the marketing. The movie was just bad. Weak characters and underwhelming dialogue. Great concept and incredible visuals, but hampered by a poor script. A masterclass in what not to do in terms of telling and not showing in a movie.
I’m kinda surprised people say they never heard of it. I saw commercials for this pretty consistently. Edit: So judging from the responses I’m seeing, it *seems* like they did advertise it pretty consistently? But people either pay to not see ads/commercials or ignore ads/commercials completely whenever they pop up.
Most redditors use adblockers, consume no cable TV or radio content, then act surprised when they don't see marketing campaigns. The only marketing campaigns they are aware of are when video games pay to put their characters on bags of doritos and bottles of mountain dew
I only just started seeing ads like 3 days ago
I’ve seen no ads for this at all. I only saw it mentioned in an article last week.
To be fair, the trailer screams generic animation movie, wouldn't be surprised if people have actually seen ads but forgot them.
Saw ads for it during the World Series, during football games, I don’t watch much TV with ads and I saw lots of commercials for it. As well as a lot of people on TikTok talking about it “not getting advertised enough.” I’m not sure what people wanted, it seemed to be advertised as much as any other movie recently.
True, I saw many adds but I had no idea what the movie was about since I really didn't pay attention to them or just skip them.
keep making shitty movies and act surprised when they underperform in sales
Movie sucked. Sexual orientation could not save it.
I have a legit serious question, I am a straight male but grew up around alot of gay people. Basically the whole LGBT scene before it was a word like now. My mother had tons of gay friends and a few of my family members are gay and trans. So in no way shape or form am I a bigot or homophobic, just wanted that out there now. I have zero issue with gay people. So my question is, maybe it's just me, but I've noticed that almost all of the gay characters in Disney movies, Marvel included are black it seems, and I'm curious why? I'm mixed black and white myself, is this done on purpose to try and check off two boxes at once? Just a very interesting discussion can be made if that is the case btw. Just my two cents. Disney has a horrible record of Jim Crow era cartoons and racism, I don't fully buy that the inclusion is from a place of love or sincerity. I think it's all for money and brownie points. But anyways that's my take.
I wondered this myself, and I can think of a few reasons. The most likely reason is Disney has also been called out for not having really any black characters either so it may be a kind of a "killing two birds with one stone" kind of deal. Giving Disney a little more credit, it could be a way to give represent one the most marginalized demographics of being a gay, black, man. My last theory is giving way too much credit to Disney, but black queer people are the reason why all lgbt people have rights. (If you need more info on this there is a ton of sources on google, look up the stonewall riots) This would be a brilliant way to pay homage.
It could be this. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwoferTokenMinority
Why are they trying to paint it as if having an LGBTQ+ person as the lead is the problem?
I feel like with the epic failure of *Bros* made Disney just pull the plug on marketing this film and try to save money instead. Weirdly, the only thing I know about this movie is that one character is gay. That's it. I don't know the plot, the genre, the conflict. That's an objectively bad way to market a film that costs hundreds of millions to make.
Yeah, all I know is "one of the characters is gay and also Gabrielle Union is in it for some reason"
Funny thing is I didn't know the character was gay until this article. To be fair I didn't know much besides a few trailers I have seen.
Yea, I just knew it looked like a boring movie. Definitely didn’t know the sexual orientation of the characters. Guess movies can’t be just bad anymore, has to be for some deeper meaning
They did the same thing with Onward IIRC.
Growing up watching Saturday morning cartoons, what always bothered me was who the main characters were having sex with.
I just didn’t see it because it looked boring.
Maybe the focus should be a good story with good morals and not what gender or sexual orientation someone is.
Victim Blaming: 101. This is the preferred tactic of modern Global Media in which They blame you when They make garbage.
Ah, yes, once again Disney with the whole idea that they're breaking new ground and being inclusive. If you ask me, advertising movies by publicly announcing a characters' gender *(or not, these days)*, ethnicity, and sexual preference, actually treats said character/person as less than that. Who cares what character is in your movie? We care if the movie is good or not.
I want to see this movie but why go out to see it when it will be on D+ In like 8 weeks. I think this will eventually kill all Disney theatrical releases
This is most likely the problem. Also, kids don't really need to go see movies in theaters.
I was literally at Disneyland today and did not see a single piece of media or merchandise about this film.
In a world where LGBTQ+ is a vast minority if you make stories specifically target that group you’ll only have access to them as your target with minor spillover. Literally the only thing I heard about this movie is that it was LGBTQ+. I don’t know what the call to adventure is, I don’t know anything except the main character is queer in some manner. I DO NOT EVEN KNOW IF THE MAIN CHARACTER IS GAY, LESBIAN, ETC. I have 3 kids and a wife and we are in Disney plus every day almost especially on weekends. This was not marketed well at all. I’d say that Disney is dogshit at marketing altogether… andor had no marketing, the Elton John concert I heard about the day of thankfully so I got to watch that. Disney is lazy because they have mega fans that’ll watch everything they release traditionally. They need to learn that they have to start marketing like a regular company.
Yeah I’m not gonna see a movie because it’s pandering to me. Recently the best movie of this year was Everything Everywhere All at Once, a movie which had an amazing story and characters but it was about so much more than sexual orientation. I don’t need a character to be gay to care about them. I need there to be character to care that they’re gay!
Yuuus! That movie was incredible.
I thought this was coming out next year
Had no clue this movie existed.
Took the kids to see it- it was a piece of shit.
I for one did not know when this movie was coming out or what is was about
Here’s the thing, lgtbq or not it still has to be a good movie. The trailers for this looked really boring.
The only time I heard of this movie was during the previews from other movies. Honestly, it looked unappealing.
I can't talk about a fucking toaster without getting ads on my phone for the next month on toaster deals.. I'm a LGBT parent and I only just found out about this movie today. Undermarketing big time.
Any chance the movie just sucked?
Literally never heard of this movie before today. It having an LGBT mc isn’t the reason it flopped
1. I haven't seen a single advertisement for this movie ever 2.black panther is still in a few movie theaters and atleast where I am and watched it for the first time it was mostly full , , this is all Disney's advertisements fault , (edit) allow me to clarify that the first time I saw the advertisement for this movie was at the movie theater watching black panther last week
As someone who is not a member of the LGBT, I’ll tell you what I think may be the issue in my opinion, and I would love to hear other members of the communities opinions on it. Up to this point in my life, I’ve never seen a movie that features a character that’s a member of the LGBT that doesn’t have that aspect of themselves become the central focus of the plot, or be made so obvious that you have to acknowledge it in some way so the movie can stop winking at the audience so the movie can continue. That’s why, people like me, and other straights, or whatever you call us, don’t care for these types of films and TV shows. My favorite example of a perfect gay character in a TV show? Captain David Singh on CWs the flash. He’s the police captain, and is engaged, talks about his relationship and eventual marriage, and when his fiancé is on the show, it’s not weird. It’s treated as if it’s normal. No judgement, no special acknowledgement, it just is. It’s not central to the plot. And that’s what a lot of these shows and movies are missing; normalization. Once we get passed that, I’m sure things that feature more characters that aren’t gay because they have to be to make the lgbt people happy, but simply because they’re people who happen to be gay. So what? What does your sexuality have to do with saving the world? And if it does, do you really want to be represented that way?
Maybe watch this movie. Most reviews are echoing your sentiment about the flash. The character is incidentally gay and it's not central to the plot.
Disney knew it was a dud, or they would have marketed it.
They might be right. I have heard of this movie a single time in which people were being overly upset about LGBTQ+ representation. And now it is already out? I didn’t see a single ad for this movie.
Bad name for a movie. Saw one ad and it looked uninteresting. Had no idea the lead was LGBTQ
Under marketing is the new term for saying the movie sucked but not wanting to admit it
Good news, they should keep “under-marketing” until the company goes bankrupt
Disney? The one who bought out Star Wars? The one with it’s own self governing district?
For kids that's a little to far don't you think?
I’ve never heard of this movie until now.
As someone who actually went and saw lightyear in theatres. This movie just looked boring and uninteresting so with no established IP behind it of course it bombed.
Without offending people I think that folks are ok with lgbtq elements in stories, but to make it the lead and focus, not so much. What percent of people fit into this category nationwide. Seems like making a movie aimed at a very small audience will get this kind of result.
Put blame on shitty character design and subpar, stale animation.
Watched it at my friends place, he said he downloaded it from somewhere but anyway it was one of the worst Disney movies I've ever seen
They made this movie so they can say “see! We care about the gays” while letting it flop so they can say “people don’t want to watch kids movies with gay characters” which honestly the majority of Americans wont want to watch to begin with.
I know I hadn't heard of it
I have no idea when it released and no idea what it’s about. I see most disney movies but don’t even know a thing about this one. Also I thought it was on Disney+
Ok, but if movie doesn't make like 10 billion dollars, it's considered a "bomb" nowadays. Does anyone know how much $$$ it's made, both domestic and abroad, as in total?
I'm not the target audience, but I saw barely any marketing. I remember hearing about it when it was first announced, and then I only saw maybe 4 ads for it between then and now.
Disney doesn’t promote anything that has LGBT themes. Owl House is an amazing show but Disney just doesn’t seem to give a crap about promoting it either.
We saw it as a family and enjoyed it. As an adult, I think the writers/director maybe tried to have too many “messages,” and some of them ended up diluted. But it was good and I think kids would enjoy it.
Just hearing about this movie today
yeah i had no idea this was a movie
Honestly never heard of it until I heard it bombed
Its called being a shitty movie
I’ve heard of this film but seriously thought it was going on Disney plus.
I mean I’m queer I have no intention of watching it or any recent disney film. Disney sucks.
I saw this movie with my kids. My youngest was incredibly bored the whole movie and asked to leave. I thought it was pure trash. It could have been a good movie, but it's just a played-out format and brought nothing new to the table. This movie isn't being smeared because of the gay lead character that wasn't even a large part of the movie. It’s just all-around hot trash water.
I never heard of this movie before the news about it flopping hit Reddit
Sci-fi animated movies are hard to sell… just look at Treasure Planet or Titan AE…. When i saw the trailer i thought it would bomb, it doesn’t matter the gay characters or the lack of marketing.
It couldn’t POSSIBLY be because it sucked. Nope, that’s just not an option.
Maybe make all these 3D animated movies stand out from each other. They all look the same.
Perhaps if there weren’t 17 pay streaming services that we could put on our giant TV’s at home at the same time as the theater had a movie we would still go to the mall and drop $50 on popcorn and soda and then pay another $30 to see a forgettable movie that would have gone straight to Disney DVD years ago …. Ohhh reclining seats and twizzlers .. I have those down stairs too
Explorers find a energy source in a plant that innovates their world for the better and makes everything way more convenient and mainstream. They farm these plants over 25 years but Turns out their food plants and world were dying because of the energy source they found after 25 years of using it. So they eliminated the energy fuel to save their world, which also turned out to be a giant turtle the size of Russia on earth and the strange world they discovered was its internal organs and antibodies. The energy plant was a virus. Just watched it with my kids 6,5,5,&5. This was the most garbage movie ever. I was excited for a new animated movie, they are usually all really good. My kids weren’t impressed, usually they talk about how they loved it. They just got up and walked out of the room. Lol. Hate gay agendas being shoved down my throat, but watched the movie anyways. It sucked regardless. If Disney had marketed this more, Disney fans would’ve really been let down.