Entertainment Weekly dropped a new image of Walt Disney's Ralph Breaks The Internet this morning, one which again highlights the film's marketing trump card, namely the appearance of every iconic Disney Princess character sharing screentime with each other. As I discussed back in May, one of the trade-offs for Disney turning the respective female leads in their various fairy tale movies into a stand-alone merchandising juggernaut back in 2000 (as a way to revive a flagging Disney consumer products division) was that the likes of Jasmine, Cinderella, Ariel and Belle wouldn’t actually interact in each other’s stories. Not only are there no direct-to-DVD movies where Elsa and Mulan go on an adventure together, but the princesses that share space on T-shirts, lunch boxes and the like also don’t ever look at each other.
The gimmick is that each Disney princess occupies only their own world as shown in their respective movie, to keep their mythologies separate. It’s one of those weird Disney regulations that exists to keep their IP somewhat on-message concerning representing the individual franchise. That is mere trivia by itself, although it’s slightly annoying when you consider that the likes of Jasmine or Pocahontas are often the only major female characters in a given Disney toon. But either way, it was a qualifier put into place when Disney started essentially combining the Disney Princesses into a stand-alone merchandising empire. No matter, in Ralph Breaks the Internet, opening this Thanksgiving, Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) and Ralph (John C. Reilly) will interact with all of the Disney Princesses. That includes both Mulan and Ariel.
So, if you're one of those folks who screamed "Problematic!" when Mulan wasn't in the first released images, you probably owe Disney (and your readers) an apology. In this outrage-culture dominated media, the mere absence of Mulan from a single still photo was enough to set off the winds of outrage. Nevermind that it was a single picture which was also missing Ariel. Nevermind that Ming-Na Wen had already discussed playing the character in this November's upcoming sequel months before the images started dropping. Bloggers and pundits were able to manufacture a controversy merely by sharing folks ill-informed tweets and/or creating their own outraged blog posts. Just a few days later, there was another picture showing, clear as day, that Mulan was indeed in the Disney animated sequel.
Since these stories were of the "some people are saying on Twitter" template, there was no accountability or responsibility to make sure that those expressing disdain were correct in their outrage.
Putting aside that a ten-second Google search would have noted that, yes, Mulan is in Wreck-It Ralph 2, does anyone think Disney would be so stupid as to not include Mulan (or Ariel) in these sequences? Disney, as a corporation, may not be a hero. In fact, from time to time, I'd argue that they use their enormous power for relative evil. But they are also not idiots, and they like to make money. They know that folks would cry foul and feel justly left out if they made a movie featuring all of the prominent Disney Princess characters except one or two of them. And that's especially true if one of those was the lone representative of a given ethnic demographic.
Because they have made a lot of money over the last five years partially by crafting big-scale entertainment for relatively underrepresented demographics, they aren't going to intentionally leave out Mulan just because... well, I can't think of any good reason to do so. This has been a habit in the online sphere of late. How many times have we heard that "the Internet is mad" about a rumor or baseless speculation about a Disney biggie that turned out to be false? Casting Tom Hardy as Jafar? False. Struggling to find Middle Eastern or Asian lead actors for Aladdin? False. Adding a British/white male love interest to Niki Caro's Mulan adaptation? False. Too many folks saw Disney releasing Black Panther on Blu-ray and DVD 90 days after its theatrical release as a sign that Disney didn't have faith in the picture.
Yes, because a big studio that doesn't have faith in a big-budget superhero movie from/by black artists centered around black characters and targeted at (among others) black audiences will spend $200 million+ to make and market that movie but then schedule a DVD release date based on a lack of confidence in that film even as it shatters box office records. If studios don't have faith in a movie like Black Panther, they aren't going to make Black Panther. That goes ditto for Warner Bros. and Wonder Woman. The whole "this movie wasn't being marketed" bs became gospel even after Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. flooded the market with billboards, magazine articles and TV spots in the month before release (which is standard practice) and let the review embargo drop early.
After Patty Jenkins' Gal Gadot actioner opened to $103 million on opening weekend, the theme then became "Well, just imagine how much it would have made if it had been marketed better!" Now you can debate how much sympathy the folks who make and market these movies deserve since they are giant multinational corporations. But to the extent that this stuff matters, Disney has become a favorite online whipping boy specifically because they are going out of their way to make the kind of movies that we all claim we want. The easiest way to avoid this kind of online scandal is to not make Aladdin with a mostly Middle Eastern cast or to make a live-action Mulan. But I think that's exactly the opposite of what most of the "outraged" actually want.
We can render judgment on these movies when they are screened for critics and audiences. Oh, and in a slight digression, we can hold off on squealing with glee about Marvel's first LGBT relationship based on a moment of Black Panther sizzle reel footage that ends up never being seen by consumers. Even if those screaming on Twitter don't represent the majority, the ability and willingness of the media to turn those tweets into a story make them a considerable part, if not a defining element, of the narrative. So Sony's Peter Rabbit can become defined not by its success but by outrage over a misconstrued moment concerning food allergies. When you can frame a story around "people are saying," there is no accountability for making sure that what they are saying is correct or merited.
