Strange World has been released in theaters for the better part of a week now and it’s tracking to be one of the biggest financial bombs in Disney history! It is set to lose the company at least 100 million dollars, making for easily the most disastrous opening for a Disney movie during a Thanksgiving weekend and possibly ever! How did this happen? As easy and simple minded it is to point the finger at one specific cause, there are at least multiple factors as to what made Strange World sink harder at the box office than the Titanic. It’s the textbook example of how everything that could have gone wrong with the movie’s release did.
So, let’s go over every single logical reasoning behind the sever underperformance of Disney’s new animation flick, which hopefully will serve as a lesson to treat your movies with more proper respect to avoid a terrible outcome like this again.
Lack of Marketing
Let’s start off with the most logical factor of the movie’s dreadful box office results. Strange World had to have the least amount of marketing for a Disney movie in recent memory, not counting those DisneyNature pictures. While I was well aware of this movie’s existence since I’m always looking up which movies are playing each week, the rest of the world did not, aside from openly homophobic individuals, who unironically did more advertising for the film than Disney itself (that will be discussed later on). I can’t recall seeing a single trailer for this movie in any theater showing that I went too for the past few months or seeing a single tv commercial for it until less than a week before it came out. Something which plenty of folks pointed out about before and after the movie’s release, such as the ones I will provide below.
Regardless if you saw any promotion from the marketing campaign or not, there’s no denying that Disney did not try anywhere near as hard to market the movie as much as they do with their other films. After all, how is anyone going to want to see your new movie if they don’t even know what it is? Even the trailers themselves that were shown felt very vague and didn’t give an indication as to what the movie was actually about other than some crazy family adventure.
This isn’t a first for Disney as they usually don’t tend to put as much focus on a product if they believe it won’t make them a profit. They were practically treating it as if it’s another Disney movie that’s being released at theaters and on Disney Plus at the exact same time (which it is NOT!). Some folks have claimed that it’s hard to sell family movies in theaters in a post-Covid world, but if Minions: The Rise of Gru nearly making a billion worldwide is any indication along with Sonic 2 being the most successful video game of all time in the USA, that does make for a rather premature claim. We may have to wait until Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is released worldwide in the aftermath of Avatar: The Way of Water to make a legit point on that but I’m sure Disney barley acknowledge this film’s existence is a bigger factor into that other than folks would rather wait for it to come to Disney Plus.
So why is it Strange World out of anything that Disney seem to have no faith in? Many folks believe of the obvious reason as to why but there is also a couple of other factors that I don’t think people have put as much thought in. Let’s go on with the most convenient scapegoat from both it’s contradictors and even some of it’s supporters.
The Inclusion Of An LGBTQ+ Character
Within the very little marketing Disney actually did for Strange World, one of the selling points was that it was the first Disney Animation movie to feature a LGBTQ+ teenage character. The character in the movie is a 16-yeard old kid named Ethan who is openly gay and has a crush on another boy named Diazo. That, unsurprisingly, ruffled some feathers from a certain group, likely being the main cause of the movie for being review bombed through Imdb, Google Play, and Rotten Tomatoes. While I’m never one to accuse someone of being homophobic or anti-LGBTQ+, we are still living in an unfortunate reality where folks lose their ape shit over the absolute bare minimum of these kind of characters. Just go take a look at the negative reviews for any one of the websites I just mentioned and I’m sure you’ll find most of them not talking about the movie itself and just getting triggered over the fact that there’s a gay character in it.
As someone as seen the movie, I can confirm that Ethan is indeed gay with his own love interest being another boy. That being said, there’s only about three or four scenes acknowledging that in the whole movie and the boyfriend himself only has about two scenes with only a handful of actual lines of dialogue. They don’t even kiss or make out or anything like that. All they do is hug one another and kind of blush and that’s kind of it. While Ethan being gay is definitely a factor to this character, it’s not the only factor to his character. The story would have played out the same way even if he was straight. With the amount of controversy surrounding this, you would think that Ethan would have taking his boyfriend along with him in his journey and make out with him every chance he got. It’s really sad we have to keep going through this same and annoying dance over and over and over again. That being said, I do believe that it’s inclusion of a gay character in Ethan might have played a factor into the lack of marketing.
Disney has always had a track record of doing the most bare minimum LGBTQ+ representation imaginable, adding a scene or two with with a certain character or two that they can easily cut out of foreign markets so they don’t get banned. Examples include the gay character cameo played by director Joe Russo during the therapy session with Captain America in Avengers: Endgame, a blink-and-you-miss-it moment in Toy Story 4 where a kindergarten meets their lesbian parents after school (which I didn’t even know about when watching the movie for the first time), and at the celebration scene at the end of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker where two female Rebels randomly kiss in the background. It’s mostly came across as more of a thing to check off a list to make sure it’s progressive enough to target that demographic but not nearly enough to enrage those who are incredibly sensitive to this kind of representation. While they have been more open with that in recent memory at the expense of it being banned in foreign markets, particularly with more recent Marvel movies such as with Phasto in Eternals and America Chavez’s mothers in Multiverse of Madness along with Pixar’s inclusion of the lesbian couple in Lightyear, it’s never really been used as a main selling point until now.
Here we have Strange World, where Disney has came out and admit to having a full gay character with no ifs or buts about it, and it just so happen to be the one with very little promotion attached to it. I don’t think that is a coincidence and there are many folks that would say the same thing.
Why have the courage to fully represent a certain community only to have the movie you are representing them barley marketed? Is it to prove a point that movie with this representation don’t sell or make a profit? If that’s the case, then why even bother adding in that inclusion? If you’re too afraid of what certain folks out there will think with having a LGBT+ character in the movie, then just don’t bother putting them in the movie. Because then, not only are you not representing the LGBT community properly, you are only just insulting them. If the intentional lack of marketing was done entirely to make some sort of statement, then that is just an incredibly despicable act by Disney itself and should know better.
This lead to another odd coincidence as to how this movie’s dreadful box office results is quite similar to other prior Disney movies in this particularly genre of fantasy-adventure films.
The Treasure Planet Curse
Is it me or does Disney movies with a fantasy-adventure element tend to tank hard at the time of their releases? I don’t know if you can say that’s a coincidence or not but there hasn’t been much luck for Disney movies with a huge emphasis on adventure and excitement with fantastical elements thrown into the mix.
You have Treasure Planet, a movie that just celebrated it’s quiet 20-year anniversary, grossing only $110 million worldwide with a $140 million budget. There’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which only made $186.1 million worldwide with a budget of around $90-120 million. And of course, there’s now Strange World, which as we speak has began it’s box office run with a dreadful $29.6 million opening with no signs of matching it’s $135-180 million budget. Perhaps we could also throw Tomorrowland in there as well despite it being live-action. Whether the cause of this is, these kind of movies don’t do so kind for Disney which is why it’s become more rare that they even release these fantasy-adventure movies.
Of course, there are multiple reasons of the cause of all these movies I’ve just mentioned for bombing hard aside from there particular genre/subgenre of films. Maybe it has to do with the ridiculous budget it had for original unproven projects. Maybe it had to do with them competing with other, bigger movies at that time that not even the Disney brand name along could convince audience this was something they had to see in theaters. And of course, maybe it has to do with the quality of the movie itself and lackluster word of mouth that many believe it wasn’t worth the time or money.
Disney animated movies at their core are mostly well known for flicks involving princesses and fairytales. Any other kind of genre or subgenre are mostly secondary compared to the rest of their filmography. Perhaps that is why they felt the need to purchase Marvel and Lucasfilm when they did, as those are companies that would (mostly) provide them with the amount of content that differs from their philosophy that can make a profit where their attempts at it had faltered.
Treasure Planet and Atlantis did eventually go on to become cult classics over the years and I’m sure Strange World will fall in it’s footsteps as well, but there seems to be some unwritten rule that a fantasy-adventure Disney flick must flop at the time of it’s theatrical release in order for the whole world to continue moving forward. It’s a curse that started with Treasure Planet back in 2002 and it seems to still being passed along 20 years later!
In Conclusion
It’s hard to know whether or not Strange World would have fared better if more effort was put into by Disney to let people know about it. Heck, even the audience that have actually seen it don’t seem to be digging it, if the B grade from Cinemascore is anything indication, the lowest Cinemascore grade ever for a Disney Animation picture and the lowest for a Disney property movie in over 30 years. However, Disney putting little to no effort in marketing the thing and basically leaving it to die in theaters certain didn’t do the movie any better.
As someone that seen the movie, Strange World is a fine, enjoyable adventure flick but definitely not one I will remember much of in the grand scheme of things and certainly not one of Disney’s very best. Which mostly seems to be the general consensus overall if the lukewarm response from critics and audiences is anything to go by. Perhaps doom word of mouth would have let to it underperforming regardless.
Even so, it’s blatantly obvious that Disney left Strange World for dead and it makes me fearful to think what other upcoming movies will be given such disrespectful treatment in the future.
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