ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ From Snow White to Shang-Chi //
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The debts were paid off (until Walt reinvests more money into his next films), millions of profit was in the bank, then Walt builds an extremely successful studio.
Walt hated the idea of needing a reduction of quality to speed up the production process.
Walt died in 1966 while making The Jungle Book.
Some places where Snow White is (Cross-Media convergence) :
- Computer games (Nintendo Gameboy)
- Rides at Disney Land
- Shrek 3
- Wreck-it-Ralph
- Doctor Strange
- Macy's Christmas
- Sophia The First
Snow White is so popular that there is still a market for a new Snow White Ride.
Cross-Media Convergence is where the same type of media is spread across different types of media. This is different from synergy where different companies work together.
The creator of the Shrek films goes to DreamWorks and turned Snow White on her head, turning her into a foul-mouthed brute.
In Wreck-It-Ralph, the Disney princess flip the stereotypes around saying they need to 'save the big strong man' proceeding to place him in Snow Whites dress and having the Snow White sound track on in the background.
Sophia the First has Snow White visit her and states to not trust anyone and to only trust yourself.
Modern audiences look for something a bit different, we also look for and challenge the social and cultural context of a movie. In Snow White, there was a lack of this - the one protagonist who is female is naïve and the only other one is evil. Shang-Chi is the solution to this problem.
Some of the problems with Snow White:
- Its not okay to name one of the characters Dopey for being stupid / having learning difficulties.
- An unconscious person cannot give consent to be kissed.
- Peter Dinklage was asked for his position in the Snow White remake and had been quite loud about not wanting to do this.
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Shang-Chi
There was a huge lack in diversity and representation in Disney - presenting most as a rich white straight American male. This can lead to a generational unpicking of stereotypes.
Sleeping beauty (1959) is classified as the 'victim' or a 'romantic lead' who is kissed by a "handsome rich" prince who she had never met before - nowadays this would obviously be not okay. This can lead young girls to believe that they're going to get love if they're a little sleepy and very beautiful. However, it also protrudes male stereotypes that men have to be handsome, rich etc to deserve love.
In recent days, Frozen (2013) there was no true loves first kiss or saved by a prince norms of Disney, rather a much more open embracing way of living life. Anna saves her sister and finds a little bit of true love along the way instead of a prince at first sight.
Ariel (17th Nov, 1989), has a key message of feeling like an outsider and going to drastic measures to change that. The deeper message behind this is to love who you are and not change anything due to the dangers of hiding self-expression - rather than being a damsel in distress, there is a mutual respect between the mermaid and the prince; Ariel saves Eric first from drowning and then Eric rescues Ariel, defeating Ursula. In the original fairytale she feels as if she is walking on knives with every step she takes, she is offered the chance to kill the prince she loves to return to the land and she dies and turns into sea foam, but none of that made the Disney cut.
Tiana (2009) was the first African American Disney princess. Being a hard-working woman, she opens her own restaurant and attempts to save the prince.
Moana (2016) the deeper meaning to Moana is that you don't need a man to save you and you also don't need to kill people to save others.
Merida (2012) doesn't get saved by a man - not a love story, rather the movie is focused on familiar love and questions a patriarchal society with forced marriage. She is a feisty female protagonist. She was quite literally the opposite of the classic Disney princess.
During 2020, there was a trending tag of '#OscarsSoWhite'. This is where a disproportionate amount of people of black ethnicity were brought forward for any Oscar nominations, this was on top of the black lives matter movement. Shang-Chi counters this.
Disneys remake strategies:
During Disney's 100th anniversary, the company received a lot of backlash suggesting that the company had gone "too woke". This was in the sense that they had picked up 'scraps' of representation and diversity and presented them as ground breaking firsts.
It made $432 million worldwide (similar to Snow White) making this the 9th highest-grossing film of 2021.
The budget was reported $150 million.
The majority of the actors in Shang-Chi are Asian and the only none-asian actor is Romanian, demonstrating a widely multi-cultural movie.
Bruce Lee's son was considered for a live-action version when he was shot dead by a live action gun on set of 'The Crow'.
'The Mandarin' - super villain
Enemy of Iron man and Other Avengers
Ten rings gave him his power
The stereotypical presentation of the character would have gone down very badly in China and other Asian countries.
Later, his name was changed to Xu Wenwu, played by Tony Leung through inspired casting.
Production:
Shang Chi is a part of the Australian film industry supported filming with a large grant - this truly highlights the GLOBAL production this is.
For the past few years, Disney has been using Australia for the amount of large rural areas due to the nature of the western culture and shared language.
Another movie that was filmed in the exact same area is Thor: Ragnarok.
During the production, they had created a whole village most of which doesn't even get seen in the film - this is to give the actors a true sense that they are in a village.
The movie was filmed in IMAX, this was an expensive production especially considering it was a new entry to the MCU - not every movie can film on this as it's expensive.
During February 2020, they were due to start principle photography (main bits of filming) and it couldn't have been at a worse time - Covid had struck. The release pattern also had to be delayed due to this.
Huge amounts of Computer-Generated imagery (CGI) were used for Shang Chi. This modern equivalent of Disney/Marvel still pushing the technology boundaries like Snow White did in 1937.
They also managed to get WETA Digital for some of the work on Shang Chi - they are the famous New Zealand special effects company which done work on Game of Thrones.
Originally, production used greenscreen to mask out certain things while filming - this is used by using something called a 'chromakey' which selects certain digital colours over a colour range. More often than not, they now use blue screens as it allows for a more blended image in regards of nature. Blue and green are colours which are less likely to pop up on the human body unlike red which may be there and may accidentally 'mask' out part of the person instead.
The budget was less than the Avengers and also cheaper than the less successful Eternals therefore it represents pretty good value for money.
Marketing:
As the MCU grows, so the clips and characters that are spotted in them develop too.
The massive size of the MCU means that fans can enjoy the intertextual contexts within different movies in the studio.
So why does Shang-Chi have so many different posters? The reasoning to this is to allow Marvel to appeal to different demographics. On the original poster, they may see that the majority of the movie is masculine action based movie - wiping out a demographic of the female audience. Awkwafina opens up a female audience as she's a female, to be more specific, she is originally popular due to being a rapper which allows for wider audiences - these things are not traditionally accompanied with the company. Michelle Yeoh is an older actress and so again, breaking the norms of being a young, attractive actor(tres) in these movies. Yeoh was in one of the biggest kung fu break through films. Benedict Wong was one for the fanboys of MCU. This appeals to the existing constituency fans.
On the other hand, Snow White only had one poster (hand drawn, hand distributed in the post worldwide). This also corresponds with the fact that Walt Disney had no more budget to invest into advertising and had to take a loan out for it.
Conventional Methods for Marketing Strategies:
Above the line (ATL) -
Talk Shows
Soundtracks
Tv Adverts
Main Posters, character posters, trailers, teasers
Below the line (BTL) -
Using social media i.e. Instagram
Disney released a 101 guide to the characters -
Shang Chi had a short reactional window (45 days) for screening. In the same year as Shang-Chi, they put 'Luca' onto Disney Plus. The result of this could've went very badly however, it didn't. It was a critical (reviews) and commercial (money) success. This film basically done as well as it could've done due to being released directly after Covid. For an Autumn cinema release the movie done so well even reaching past the classic movie 'Halloween' - making just under half a billion. Shang-Chi was praised for its depictions of the Asian-American experiences, solving some of the earlier issues. This wasn't tokenism, not for the sake of it - the depictions were genuinely represented sympathetically. Yet, the movie was still not a success in every parts of the world, China in particular. This is likely due to the Chinese, American tension being quite high and the Chinese government editing a lot of the Shang-Chi to accept their morals.
Shang Chi was one of the 5 films to get nominated for the best Visual Effects award during the Oscars, unfortunately losing to Dune in 2022. Although Shang-Chi didn't win anything at the Oscars, they did win some smaller awards.
D23 is the official fan club and every year there is an Expo event (convention in the style of Comic-Con). They have a winter event every year in November or December. It was named D23 as their 100th anniversary was during 2023 and Disney was formed in 1923. D23 was used to announce Shang-Chi to engaging fans. (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Archives - D23)
Jonathan Majors had assault allegations against him, this ruining
Throughout the Bus fighting scene, the camera shifts throughout different positions showing Shang-Chi. Some of these involve internal shots (the inside of the bus), external shots with camera tracking Chi and many different angles, positions etc.
Practice paragraphs : comparison links to the wider industry
Disney has huge advances when it comes to budgets, being able to spend $150M on Shang-Chi (which in itself is small when compared to the Avengers series or even relative flop The Eternals). Most other companies simply can't compete with this level of spending, especially for the 25th film in a series. As comparison, a similar date of release, 'Birds of Prey' produced by the Warner Brothers, had a limited budget of $84.5M yet they still had a big amount of vertical integration and both still globally known production studios. Although still a large amount, this was no where near the amount of spending done by Disney; most likely due to the large amount of visual effects, huge numbers of CGI and release on IMAX chosen by Disney. This helps Disney by allowing them to be nominated for a number of rewards that they were able to budget for whereas, Birds of Prey may not have been able to compete as close to them because of the budget difference.
Shang-Chi has opened up its potential target audience to groups of people who might have felt under-represented in the film industry in the past. The predominantly Asian cast and crew and director Destin Daniel Crettin, for example, are new role models. This wasn't just a Disney problem though - the Warner Brothers had also tended to depict women in the past during superhero/villain films to be on the sideline and almost owned by the protagonist or other characters. To change this view, they had released Birds of Prey where all the main characters were powerful women taking back the power that had been depicted overtime. Specifically Harley Quinn who had always been an accessory for her partner. This whole film had painted women in a really powerful light and had helped shine the light on anti-sexism.
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