Well it looks like this thing is gonna go through. We never thought we’d see the day something like this happened, and while our initial thoughts were of a (mostly) unified Marvel, a second look at the situation leaves us a little… uneasy.
Yay! Marvel will finally get the X-men universe back. This is huge, as it not only includes the X-men, but all of the good guys and bad guys that have every been closely associated with the X-men. That means Deadpool, Cable, X-force, The New Mutants, Silver Surfer, Galactus, Magneto, and so on. Not to mention Fantastic Four who, incidentally, were HUGE players in pretty much everything Marvel back in the day. Even though I’ve never been a FF fan, their absence has been noticeable.
Booo! The acquisition of the television properties means Disney will acquire Fox Sports Net, a thought that should make any sports fan uncomfortable. Personally, I’ve always preferred our local commentators on Fox Sports Southwest over anything ESPN or TNT shits out. I loathe the nationally broadcasted games for the simple fact that those commentators not only know very little about most teams, but they usually never actually call the game, and instead sit and talk about some bullshit nobody cares about. We can only pray that nothing changes. (UPDATE: Apparently the news and sports division of Fox are not included in the merger. Thank. God.)
Yay! Avatar, that movie that nobody cares about, is one of the driving forces behind Disney’s acquisition. It’s a huge property that Disney is going all in on, having already themed an entire section of their Animal Kingdom park after. That’s some big licensing money right there, with Disney not set to make any money off of its theatrical success. Unless, of course, it owns it. The only reason I consider this a “yay” is because that section of the park was pretty awesome, and the ride was cool too. Mainly because I didn’t have to wait in the 3-hour line. Screw that.
Booo! Disney acquiring Fox also means that Fox News, probably the most conservative news network on the planet, will be owned by the most liberal company on the planet. While I have no love for Fox News, there are already many, many, liberal news networks, mainly owned by the same handful of companies. This brings us one step closer to limiting our available information. Having our news controlled by a relatively small number of entities, each with agendas, is never a good thing. (UPDATE: As mentioned above, the News division may not be included in the merger. For better or worse, it looks like Fox News will continue to operate as normal.)
Yay! Bring back the mutants! Enough of this Inhuman nonsense, nobody’s buying it. Let the Agents of SHIELD call them what they are, already.
This bid is no doubt driven by the Avatar and X-men properties. I can’t blame Disney for wanted to get Marvel’s IP’s back, and owning Avatar would save them a shit-ton of licensing money.
I wonder if Disney will disavow all the X-men movies that came before, similar to what they did with Star Wars. I mean, it wouldn’t actually be a bad thing, would it? Fox really did screw the pooch with that whole X-men timeline. A reboot would probably be a welcome sight.
There are a ton of reasons out there why this isn’t a good thing. The further consolidation of properties under a single corporation means less competition. But for every Disney there’s a Universal, for every Dreamworks there’s a WB. The only thing we can really do is wait and see how this plays out.
But if Disney does a remake of Die Hard, I’m rioting.
