Every positive comment I made in my late-March review still stands, but now I have a whole host more. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to evaluate their traditional practices, and in the case of Disney (and Warner Bros), it has forced a long-overdue divorce from traditional theatrical releases. With the quality of home entertainment setups and the price of popcorn/soft drink-combos both at an all-time high, it’s not surprising that many families would rather spend £49.99-£59.99 on an annual subscription to Disney+ than on a single trip to see a movie that perhaps only two out of four of them are actually all that bothered about seeing. In December alone, we’ve already enjoyed Noelle in stunning 4K HDR on a giant, Black Friday-bought QLED TV and Dolby Atmos sound system, with Godmothered pencilled in for next weekend’s slot. On top of that, Mulan has now escaped its short-lived paywall and, hopefully setting the trend for future blockbuster releases, Pixar’s Soul is set to drop on Christmas Day.
Where I really get the value out of the service though is in shows like The Mandalorian and the final two seasons of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, neither of which are available elsewhere in the UK. The Mandalorian, I’m sure, will form the basis of at least a couple of entire posts on here in due course, but for now suffice it to say that its second season is right up there amongst the finest media ever put out under a Star Wars banner, and Agents of SHIELD is now, after numerous ups and downs, as deserving of the same sort of plauditz as most of the movies that it shares a universe with. Season 7, with its time-travelling Agent Carter crossover and more playful tone has been especially enjoyable. Even the service’s Simpsons collection is now tantalisingly close* to being complete, with the recently-aired Season 31 now available to stream, much to my daughters’ delight, if not my wife’s. Just as importantly, viewers can now opt-out of watching the awful, 16:9 cropped versions of the earlier shows (the first twenty and a half seasons) and instead enjoy the original full-frame classics.
Just as importantly, many of my initial complaints have already been remedied. The inexplicably absent Star Wars Resistance debuted on the service not long after I posted my first review, with its second (and, mercifully, final) season following a few months later. Ever the awkward and capricious punter, my current complaint is that Star Wars Resistance is available on the service, sullying the Star Wars saga. Similarly, Frozen II soon appeared on the service - about a day and a half after I’d bought my girls the disc, irritatingly.
Some issues remain, of course. The we-don’t-trust-you-not-to-stretch-or-squash-the-image aspect-ratio lock (from the same people who brought you squished Simpsons...) remains in place on Smart TVs. However, with The Mandalorian occasionally straying into 16:9 IMAX territory, these days it’s not something I really want to be doing anymore – not than I really need to, either, positioned as I am less than a metre away from a colossal screen most of the time. In fact, my only major ongoing gripe is Disney’s ridiculous insistence on following every episode of every show with endless foreign language credits. On the one hand you’ve got Netflix practically running every episode of every series together into one mega-movie, with only the most fleeting of opportunities to jump ship back to reality, then on the other you have Disney+ inserting six minutes of silent credits in between four-minute shows. Needless to say, though, when our subscription comes up for renewal in March, we’ll certainly be keeping it going, even if next year we have to pay the full £59.99 (£1.15 per week).
Of course, the continued success of streaming platforms, and Disney+ in particular, begs important questions about the future of home media releases and even the ongoing viability of cinemas. Both will endure, I hope, but in a dramatically reduced, perhaps even niche fashion. I for one would pay a small fortune to own some steel-clad UHDs containing The Mandalorian or the final season of The Clone Wars, but we’re unlikely to see such releases until Disney+ have reached that crucial tipping point where what they could make in disc sales to hardcore Star Wars nuts outweighs the service-selling benefits of exclusivity for the masses. Such a strategy has proven most lucrative for CBS with their recent Star Trek series, all of which are now available on Blu-ray. That point though, I think, is still a year or two away as The Mandalorian continues to be the service’s single-biggest draw (just as Star Trek: Discovery was for CBS All Access in the fourteen months prior to its eventual home video release) and is likely to be for quite some time yet as COVID-19 has delayed most of Disney’s other high-profile series and will no doubt also have an impact on disc manufacturing. In the same way, whilst I’d never feel the need to watch a Christmas comedy like Noelle on the silver screen (hilarious and surprisingly touching though it was), I’d still gladly pay for a seat to watch a new Star Wars or Marvel Studios movie, especially if it was in some arty, retro-style picture house of the type that I hope will thrive when the big boys go under.
You can subscribe to Disney+ here for either £5.99 per month or £59.99 per year.
* Why won’t they just make “Stark Raving Dad” available? Hold onto your DVDs...
