Does Disney+ mean the end of cable?
Lidia Vassar
Staff Writer
The Disney+ streaming platform just launched and fans of Disney franchises are loving it. With lots of exclusive content, the subscription numbers are rapidly going up. Subscribers can save money by bundling Disney+ with their existing Hulu subscriptions, which helps keep prices reasonable.
Disney+ combines media from all of its brands, including Pixar, Marvel Studios, Star Wars, and National Geographic, consolidating them all onto one platform. I personally have heard the most excitement about Disney+ exclusives The Mandalorian, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, and Lady and the Tramp. While all these new shows and movies are very exciting, there’s also some annoyance towards Disney. They have a history of hoarding copyrights and aggressive treatment of smaller studios, so them potentially monopolizing the streaming rights of their works, or selectively permitting them, could become a pain for at-home viewers.
It’s certainly a fantastic subscription for fans of Disney-owned series, though, with Marvel movies and upcoming television shows being released exclusively through Disney+. There’s also an enormous archive of Disney’s past works. Some, fans have noticed, are a bit outdated. Disney has been around for a long time, and its past employees were products of their time, which in turn heavily influenced their works. In some cases, Disney has chosen to preserve the works as they were created instead of simply erasing or censoring them. This shouldn’t be interpreted as support for the outdated ideas shown in the works, as I don’t believe the contemporary employees at Disney are frozen in the past.
Speaking of moving forward, some Disney originals are getting reboots. High School Musical is becoming a musical series and Lady and the Tramp is getting a live action interpretation, just to name two. As mentioned earlier, many current Disney franchises are about to be decked out with new series elaborating on the worlds. Some excitedly awaited Marvel shows include Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Loki, What If…?, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, and She-Hulk. It’ll be interesting to see how these TV shows influence the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Will feature-length films be mostly replaced by television series, or will the shows just expand on the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s worlds? It’ll probably be another year or two before we have a good idea of how things are going to change.
For fans of Disney and its many sides, Disney+ is the place to be. Soon it may be the only way to stay up to date with everything going on in all its realms. The era of cable and satellite TV is dying quickly and being replaced with much more customizable content, at the cost of now choosing between half a dozen different streaming subscriptions. I encourage you to find a good group of friends or family members or exes to share the cost between or mooch off of.
Header photo courtesy of Flickr.