Since the first Iron Man movie, Disney has found new methods of fanatically making their movies fanatically popular, regardless of critiques and memes that follow afterward. It won’t matter what fans think of the new Star Wars movies. They will consistently break box office and streaming website records.

For some properties like DC and Sony, a well-crafted film is still necessary to make money. However, Disney seems to have found that special mixture of excitement, nuance, and nostalgia to create the perfect money-making movie. And what’s important isn’t that they tell a compelling story or try something new in cinema. What’s important is to make as much of it as possible, as fast as possible. Because Disney doesn’t always make art, they create content.

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The early Marvel films may have been innovative in how big studios approached making comic book movies, but slowly, as a process was dialed in, each Marvel movie has mirrored the others in style and voice. A Marvel movie is still a Marvel movie despite bringing in different directors and cinematographers. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness wasn’t a Sam Raimi movie, as his films are typically seen. It was an MCU Big Mac. And if Wes Andersen had directed it, it would’ve looked similar.

These movies are meant to appeal to a specific type of fan that Disney has cultivated over generations.

Why We Love Disney

     Disney

We all rushed in to see the next installment in the MCU because we all went to see Attack of the Clones. We had spent years growing up adoring the three original Star Wars movies. When they came out, they somehow managed to creatively combine Old Western films with Samurai movies and put them in a science fiction universe. And no one could get over how cool that was.

We spent decades after their release watching and rewatching them until George Lucas announced he would finally make more. And when everyone walked out of The Phantom Menace, it was with a stunned confusion because it couldn’t have been that bad, could it? But when Attack of the Clones came out, everyone rushed straight back into the theater because our love for the series was stronger than one movie. Our nostalgia outweighed our good sense that Lucas couldn’t possibly make two movies fans would take issue with.

Of course, the same thing happened years later when Disney bought the franchise. The Rey trilogy was worlds better than the prequels, but it wasn’t the Star Wars revival we had all been hoping for. Some fans still consider Revenge of the Sith the best movie in the main storyline. And despite all the general disapproval from fans around The Rise of Skywalker, it still made more than $1 billion. Naturally, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a movie because it is what it is, but in Disney’s case, it is no longer necessary to make innovative films. A Marvel or a Star Wars movie simply has to check the right boxes to please the fans. No one has to do anything different.

In that way, it will cover the cost of making the film, and the producers will be happy with the return on their investment. But in this system of creating movies as content, we lose the story’s soul and the reason we loved the film in the first place. Instead, we’re fed this entertainment through a tube, and we keep accepting it, hoping we might soon see the next Lion King by accident.

Why Audiences Will Always Go Back for More

     Marvel Studios

The art world has recently accepted its division into genres of both high art and low art. Art made in both categories is equally good but has distinctly different aspects. High art might be things like Frank Lloyd Wright or Paul Cézanne, whereas low art would be Banksy or Basquiat. Each are phenomenal artists, but they all create distinctly different types of work that appeal to a particular population. The same occurs in cinema if you look at the distinction more specifically.

There are films that win awards at the Oscars and others that win no awards but are still appreciated. There are art nouveau films that nobody understands and big flashy films designed to appeal to the masses. Disney creates the latter of these categories. They always have. Ever since the days of Walt Disney, the company has been designed around creating a brand that remains popular with everyone.

When you look at properties like Marvel and Star Wars, both were designed around appealing to a massive fanbase that had existed long before Disney owned them. Both looked at the original source material and determined what the fans liked. The story became more of a contextual issue to which the movie needed to attach these bells and whistles. They needed a structure from which they could sell a product.

It doesn’t matter if we relate to Kylo Ren’s character. It matters that we see his new style of lightsaber. Disney movies don’t need to introduce new ideas or be emotionally impactful but look good. They remind us of things we used to like. And that’s why we keep going back for more.