The bad and good about Disney buying Marvel

Don't check your calendars, because it's not April one. In fact, forget your calendars, it's the end of Fuckin' TIME!

http://www.cinematical.com/2009/08/31/shocking-disney-buys-marvel-ente rtainment/

Fire in the skies! Brother turns against brother! A huge bear with a rib in his mouth is rising from the sea!

It's symbolic; you wouldn't get it. I don't.

Marvel comics, the company that as of last year was vying for it's independence as an entertainment company is to be bought by Disney. Among a sea of dumb internet analysis(can't wait for the hannah montana meets spiderman movie (sarcasm) ), I will try to bring you the best outcomes of this deal, as well as the dark side of Disney mergering.

Not the Darkseid of Disney, though.

Good
1)It's NOT the end of the world

Another thing neither of us gets, is highly symbolic and is not the end of the world. Touga!

Well, Marvel wanted to be able to do it's own films without having to license to companies. In a kind of Bizarro way, getting bought by said companies is the ultimate expression of that. You get all the backing a transnational juggernaut like Disney can provide, and you can go to town with whatever Antman film you didn't have money for. It's like a prostitute marrying a millionaire, except this probably doesn't end in murder.

While I would have though Marvel would have made enought money from all that licencing Spiderman, Daredevil, Hulk and Fantastic Four, you can't blame them for seing 4 billion dollars and saying "insert penis here" while pointing to their mouths. And NO, they aren't changing Spider-Man to a musical outside of, you know, the musical.

Now you'll face Doom...bo

Lot's of people out there hear Disney and inmediately wonder if Bambi will become a Marvel regular because Marvel to them only makes kids stuff. Disney is a HUUUUUGE corporative conglomerate and likely you've enjoyed their products sometime even if it doesn't have that little castle in it.

2)Marvel vs Capcom 3 is way more likely to ocurr.

Mugen, it only makes you want the real thing more!

Hey, Disney corp is a lean, mean, shilling machine. Anyone with stones to have a Nightmare before Christmas game would sell they're own immortal souls for a grill cheese.

And while we can look on the bad side of that and how we don't like it, it's that kind of marketing insanity that lead to Ducktales for the NES, Disney's Magical Tetris Challenge and Square crossover extraordinaire Kingdom Hearts(which still baffles me to this day. I don't ever mention Donald Duck and Cloud from FF7 in the same sentences, unless I'm mentioning character's who's games I've yet to catch up to.)

Berserker DUCK!

In fact the first two I mentioned where made by Capcom, as well as the Nightmare before Christmas one. So, there's a history there, and I think this opens a whole new world(snort!) of
possibilities, including a 3rd Capcom crossover game. It's money in the bawnk! And, hey, if they wanna put Goliath of the Gargoyles there, it's okay with me.

I mean, just sayin'...

3)Not all of Disney is kids stuff, and not all of Marvel is Wolverine.

So, yeah, I've made a point that Disney produces more than teeny bopper flicks and starlets. But did it ever occur to you, Mr Manly, than maybe Marvel is slightly less adult than we've all come to consider it? Yes, there are dark stories and there's sex/sexual tension and that terrible brown blood they use all the time, but maybe, JUST maybe we are still reading about a guy un blue spandex called Cyclopes fighting a guy called Mr Sinister? They can curse and kill all they want, they're still wish fulfillment fantasy stories.

See, the brown stuff under Frank Castle/Punisher and Marshal Mathers/Eminem. Wait, WHA?

Disney can do dark too. Even without going into it's other sub-lables(because they financed Pulp Fiction and that's cheating right there.) Disney films have a long history of dark moments. There's the time that guy sang to a Virgin Mary statue about his lustfull desires and potential murder of a gypsy. I mean, hard to get darker than that.

Cue the sexy gypsy registration act!

In fact, Disney traditional animation and Marvel could use each other's help. Imagine something like this, but with Marvel characters. And that's just T.V. budget animation, I don't need to tell you Disney produced some beautiful animatin back in the day and plans to do so again. Huh? Hello? Awesome! And we know Pixar is exited by the prospect of Marvel moving in.

Now THIS is dark!

And now for the bad.

3) Take it from those with experience

So, it's a wonderful, brave new world for Marvel, right? They can get theis groove on with as many films as Disney can muster them doing. Is there a precedent? Do you even have to ask?

Warner Bros. bought DC comics in the 70's. Superman, Batman Wonderwoman, the whole damn Justice League is theirs to command. With a media giant like Time Warner you would expect characters like this would have been mercylessly exploited.

But no. The DC catalogued in more than 30 years has been criminally underused. Sure, we've gotten enough Batman in films, and Superman as well, despite the horrendous 20+ year gap between the last and second-to-last films. From there on down, it's been nothing but pain. Catwoman and Vertigo imprints like Sin City and V for Vendetta round out the films so far And one of those was Catwoman!. No WonderWoman, no Justice League, no Flash no nothing. Sure, Marvel got some duds, too, but because it was independent it was free to release the rights to whoever would end up making the damn things, it ensure that the movies WHERE done.And getting a Dark Knight here and there only reminds you how neglected everyone else is. Sure, I expect a Wonder Woman movie will exist eventually. I will run to tell my grankids about it, hopefully before the rapture takes place.

You guys wanna catch Green Lantern 2 before we end the world?

I'm not saying Marvel is going to suffer through the same as DC. But it COULD happen.

2) Crosspollination of the worst kind possible

Far as we know, Marvel and Disney's universes stay separate. You AREN'T getting Hulk in the Incredibles, and you aren't getting Mickey in Ironman. Got it? Good. You don't see Bugs Bunny in Superman...much.

But what if Marvel tries to go all micromanagement on Marvel. What if posters for High School Musical start showing up in Spider-Man comics? What if Spider-Man shows up in House of Mouse. What if the new Storm is Raven Simone?

That's so UATU!

Sure, this kind of thing won't start on day one. But what if over time, when we become numb to it, it becomes too much?

Better him than Mac Gargan. Link!

1)The Flinstones effect.

Millions of years ago, dinosaurs ruled the earth and we used them as appliances. Well that was the premise behind The Flinstones, a show about Cave Dwellers with anachronistic technology. It was one of the most popular shows of it's, and indeed, any time. They belonged to Hanna Barbera. Which was bought out. You wanna know where they are now? They're cereal mascots. That's all that's left of them. No more shows, no more attempts at revivals. Just. selling. Cereal.

How the mighty have fallen.

Woody Woodpecker, Tom and Jerry and others who, with a little updating could still be relevant, but as they became part of a larger portfolio of characters, they became less important, and thus stopped beign shown without any respact at all. After all, you only get a limited number of T.V. animated shows a year, you probably don't want them to be Secret Squirrel.

A shortlived comeback

Disney is buying this characters with a rich history, and great marketing possibilities and toyism as well. I fear they may, like the ones that came before, ignore the rich histoory part and get straight to the markting and toyism part. I mean, I get that this are businesses and that they aren't here to be fair to some 60 year old scribbles. But in any case, balance in all things is better for all involved.