Disney's Onward goes backward from Islamic countries, and from box office profits
Disney/Pixar’s family film Onward has been banned in multiple Middle East markets due to the film’s minor reference to a lesbian relationship.But it's probably been censored nevertheless, and this is the case in Russia too. Yet do advocates of this propaganda complain? Apparently not. In any event, the cartoon's tanking at the box office, and John Nolte's explained why much of the US box office is now sinking:
In the movie, about two teenage elf brothers in a mythical world who embark on a quest for magic, there is a passing reference to an LGBTQ relationship between two secondary characters.
In the scene, the two lead characters, voiced by Chris Pratt and Tom Holland, are disguised as their mother’s centaur boyfriend, Officer Bronco, and get into a conversation about parenting with two female police officers. The purple cyclops officer named Specter, voiced by Lena Waithe, commiserates with Officer Bronco and says. “It’s not easy being a new parent – my girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out, okay?”
Waithe’s character has been heralded as Disney’s first openly gay character.
But the reference hasn’t gone down well with censors in some countries, sources have confirmed. Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have all banned the film due to the reference. The film, released regionally this week, is nowhere to be seen on cinema schedules in those territories. Other Middle East markets such as Bahrain, Lebanon and Egypt are showing the film.
So what’s going so horribly wrong, you ask?It's admittedly sad the SW franchise is ending on such a sour note, and equally sad BoP had to be exploited for all this stupid propaganda. On which note, several months ago, the Federalist also lamented the decline of the SW franchise, and noted the worst part being:
In a word: Woketardism.
There were two titles that were supposed to lift the box office boat, but both under-performed because audiences are rejecting woke in droves.
The first was Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which was release on December 20, but died $105 million short of the Last Jedi’s 2017 $620 domestic run and $420 million(!) short of The Force Awaken’s 2015 haul of $937 million. Had Rise of Skywalker performed up to expectations, it would have bled million into the 2020 box office. The Star Wars franchise has been so damaged by woke politics, there are no more movies in any serious stage of production. Disney totally bungled this.
And then there’s Birds of Prey, which is a total box office disaster. After four weeks in release, this anti-male slog has grossed just $83 million, when it was supposed to be the big tentpole of the season. The Harley Quinn character had a lot to do with driving Suicide Squad (2016) to $325 million domestic, but the woketards removed everything that made her so appealing in that hit, namely her sexiness.
Many Franchises Are Falling ApartVery true, and I've written about quite a few creations and products over the years that wound up victimized by all this political correctness. Of course, if the box office results for Onward are any indication, it hasn't meant much to anybody, except the most desperate SJWs who believe its propaganda angle must be fully accepted in children's entertainment no matter what. Yet they have no issue with Islamic countries - along with Russia and China - rejecting their visions, which only confirms these propaganda tactics are being crafted simply to undermine and indoctrinate western society, not eastern. If Onward's censorship in those far reaches of the globe ruffles no feathers among the PC crowd, that's the giveaway.
If it were only “Star Wars” being destroyed in this way, we might pass over it as a mere unfortunate mistake. These things do happen. It isn’t only “Star Wars,” however. It is everywhere. Hardly a major fictional franchise or character remains that has not suffered this process, from DC and Marvel Comics to “Ghostbusters” to James Bond.
The Marvel films held out for a long time, but then came the execrable “Captain Marvel,” which followed the Lucasfilm playbook almost exactly: make a terrible, franchise-devastating film and then imply fans are acting in bad faith when they don’t like it.
They are now laying plans to follow the hyper-politicized plan of the comics, spelling doom for the franchise. More and more, the stories people grew up with, the stories that meant something to them, are being destroyed by a combination of bad writing and politicization, leaving a saddened, confused, and divided audience behind them and shutting off the few remaining refuges from our increasingly divided political scene.
Finally, on top of all the concerns already raised, there is simply the fact that quality does not need to justify its own existence. Whenever something that once was great — whatever it might be — is destroyed, the world is that much poorer for it.
Labels: animation, Europe and Asia, islam and jihad, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, politics, sales
Is there anything that John Nolte hasn't blamed on woketardism? He thinks it caused the coronavirus. he would blame it for climate change if he believed in climate change.
Posted by Anonymous | 12:45 PM
If you actually, you know, read Nolte's stuff you'd know he calls a spade a spade. He does lists of great movies where there's a lefty message. One of his favorite movies is Stone's "JFK" which is propaganda as admitted by Stone, but Nolte praises it to the hilt as a great movie. The "woketardism" is real, but some people's tastes run to trash. So if that POV upsets you then stop reading him.
Posted by Anonymous | 3:57 PM
I can't say I feel particularly saddened by Star Wars' collapse (it went woke a LONG time ago, long before even the Disney acquisition in fact. It went woke since Return of the Jedi, which was the start of Lucas openly trying to push leftist propaganda at the expense of the film's quality), at most feeling very empty from the abuse Lucas heaped up long beforehand, abuse which continued under Disney, but I certainly feel very bad that James Bond, Disney, Marvel, and DC Comics are going that route (and what's even more sad is that the wokeness started around 1991 with Beauty and the Beast thanks in large part to Jeffrey Katzenberg), especially when unlike Star Wars, which was leftist from the start, all those properties were originally conservative even back then, let alone by today's standards. And while I might not like Bond's... proclivities of sleeping around I guess, I'm glad he at least takes out clear leftist threats like communists and the like.
Posted by eotness | 3:11 AM
"what's even more sad is that the wokeness started around 1991 with Beauty and the Beast thanks in large part to Jeffrey Katzenberg"
Say, why does it seem that Jews are always pushing for leftist ideas ?
Posted by Anonymous | 5:24 PM
I don't know. You should ask Sheldon Adelson, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Ari Schaffer or Stephen Miller. If you don't know their addresses, just contact the White House.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:29 AM
Uncle Walt was a conservative, or at least he certainly hated organized labor, as was Carl Barks I suspect, but Disney also hired liberals like Walt Kelly, and didn't pander to the right. Marvel and DC though, were always liberal. Stan Lee was awake and alert from the start.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:36 AM
"Marvel and DC though, were always liberal. Stan Lee was awake and alert from the start."
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have had Superman being for, among other things, "The American Way" if they were Liberal (actually, if anything, he'd be screaming Death to America and be all in for a Communist revolution. Maybe even siding with the Russians and China. You know, like how Hideo Kojima reduced Big Boss to being a Che fanboy or how he planned on making Solid Snake into a Chinese agent in Metal Gear Solid 2). And let's not forget Captain America fought against both Nazis AND Communists, so it's extremely unlikely that they were liberal. Also, DC and Marvel predated Stan Lee (remember Jack Kirby?).
Posted by eotness | 9:49 AM
I don't remember Franklin Roosevelt, Bobby Kennedy, or Jimmy Carter chanting 'Death to America' or calling for communist revolution, but maybe I slept through that history class.
There is a lot of room for disagreement about what the American Way is, but Siegel and Shuster's included the Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants and refugees, giving a fair shake to everyone regardless of color or creed, siding with the underdog and the underprivileged. Superman was a liberal. Jack Kirby was definitely a liberal.
During much of the last World War, the Soviet Union and China were our good guys in the fight against Naziism and Japanese militarism. Liberals supported them. Now, though, it is the other way round; right wingers favor Russia and have contempt for the decadent democracies of Europe while liberals and conservatives have the opposite sympathies. McConnell doesn't like being called Moscow Mitch, but he earned the title.
Captain America fought communists during the Cold War. Establishment American liberals were loudly anti communist during that period. Socialists felt betrayed by them. (In the comic book universe, by the way, that Captain America, who brutally killed communists, was treated as out of continuity by Lee and Kirby in the sixties and then ret-conned in the seventies as an imposter driven mad by the ersatz super soldier formula that created him.)
Posted by Anonymous | 12:04 PM
"I don't remember Franklin Roosevelt, Bobby Kennedy, or Jimmy Carter chanting 'Death to America' or calling for communist revolution, but maybe I slept through that history class."
Franklin Roosevelt himself didn't, but Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White sure did, wanted to turn America into a Communist state and came dangerously close to doing so. And I can definitely say that while Bobby Kennedy and JFK didn't do that (heck, if anything, the latter actually helped Tailgunner Joe as well as Richard Nixon expose several Communists before McCarthy was thrown out in disgrace by the leftist media and various Democrats, and in fact, JFK was probably one of the few Dems to actually SIDE with McCarthy.), Teddy certainly did (heck, actually did actual collusion with the Soviets to force Reagan to lose the election while he was a sitting senator). Can't comment on Jimmy Carter, though he certainly was one of our worst presidents (probably would have been THE worst had Clinton and Obama not turned out to be much worse).
"There is a lot of room for disagreement about what the American Way is, but Siegel and Shuster's included the Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants and refugees, giving a fair shake to everyone regardless of color or creed, siding with the underdog and the underprivileged. Superman was a liberal. Jack Kirby was definitely a liberal."
Ah, what makes you think Conservatives WEREN'T for immigrants and refugees, or giving a fair shake to everyone regardless of color or creed, or siding with the underdog and the underpriviledged back then? Heck, if anything, most conservatives were all FOR civil rights (if anything, it was the leftist Democrats who wanted segregation retained), as far back as the Civil War in fact, and our only objection regarding immigration was ILLEGAL immigration, not immigration itself. It sounds like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of conservativism. And for the record, the liberals were the KKK, who last I checked were the terror arm of the DEMOCRATS, and if anything targeted REPUBLICANS.
"During much of the last World War, the Soviet Union and China were our good guys in the fight against Naziism and Japanese militarism. Liberals supported them. Now, though, it is the other way round; right wingers favor Russia and have contempt for the decadent democracies of Europe while liberals and conservatives have the opposite sympathies. McConnell doesn't like being called Moscow Mitch, but he earned the title."
Actually, the only bit that was correct was the Soviet Union. China back then wasn't even Communist (ironically, them becoming Communist was OUR fault thanks to George Marshall disarming Chiang Kai Shek as well as Vinegar Joe pretty much ruining things there with his disastrous diplomacy skills and having a not-so-secret mancrush on Mao Zedong). And for the record, George Patton was against the Soviet Union as well (in fact, he advocated we turn and fight THEM after taking Berlin and stopping Japan before he was cut off).
Also, Right-wingers NEVER supported the Russians even today. Trump's comment about Hillary needing help with email servers from the Russians was supposed to be a joke. Also, you ARE aware that conservatives and right-wingers are one and the same, right? So they can't be against themselves. And what we have contempt with is the globalist policies of the European Union.
Posted by eotness | 3:35 PM
"Captain America fought communists during the Cold War. Establishment American liberals were loudly anti communist during that period. Socialists felt betrayed by them. (In the comic book universe, by the way, that Captain America, who brutally killed communists, was treated as out of continuity by Lee and Kirby in the sixties and then ret-conned in the seventies as an imposter driven mad by the ersatz super soldier formula that created him.)"
Not all liberals were loudly anti-communist. The Hollywood Ten were if anything openly pro-communist. And let's not forget that "anti-anti-communism" (which is really "pro-communism" under a different name) was such a thing back then. Heck, one of the Hollywood Ten, Howard Lawson, even said upon being released from Jail, and I quote, "Unless you portray any role given you in a manner to further the revolution and the class war you have no right to call yourself an artist or an actor. You must do this regardless of what the script says or what the director tells you. Even if you are nothing more than an extra you can portray a society woman in a manner to make her appear a villainness and a snob and you can portray a working girl in such a way so as to make her seem a sympathetic victim of the capitalist class." Edward Murrow certainly attempted to single-handedly sabotage the McCarthy hearings, for example. And don't get me started on the likes of Howard Zinn, who wrote that schlistory book "A People's History of the United States" and was very much a communist.
And for the record, when I think of Captain America being liberal or Superman being liberal, I mean them behaving EXACTLY like Big Boss and Kazuhira Miller did in this video regarding a certain infamous mass murderer, terrorist, and leftist revolutionary regarding the USSR, even at the height of the Cold War:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usYtK3d2ydk
Bear in mind that during the setting of the game it was the 1970s. 1974 to be precise.
Not to mention how Hideo Kojima described his intentions with Metal Gear Solid 2 where he not only advocated changing things so that women are protectors of men and not the other way around, but openly condemning America itself as irredeemably evil: http://www.mgstus.org/downloads/misc/MGS2_orginal_gameplan/metal_gear_solid_2_grand_game_plan.pdf
I believe his exact words in that document were "The evil in MGS2 is the American government. However, this does not refer to Americans in general, nor to any particular persons, but to the festering discharge that has built-up within the democratic state of America over the years. The intention is not to defame any race, state or ethnicity, but rather to look at the ‘monster’ that the country’s political structure has created. It is an intangible entity yet at the same time a massive menace to the world, about on the same level as the evil in The X-Files. It could be called a throwback to the somewhat classic type of evil. It is this hidden hand of the American government, the Patriots, that has both created madmen like Solidus and the members of Dead Cell and has also used them for its own ends." And considering he had no problem singing praises to Communist China or Che Guevara, I think you can guess where that leads to.
Heck, even look at how George Lucas openly admitted he made Star Wars to sing praises for the Vietcong and manipulate audiences into doing the same in the following sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxl3IoHKQ8c
And it being backed up by his own notes from 1973, no less:
https://otnesse.tumblr.com/post/162081709399/this-is-from-george-lucas-1973-notes-for-star
In order for them to be liberal back then, they'd need to do the same thing as those examples above. Not to mention Lucas strongly implied he favored the Soviet Union over Hollywood regarding filmmaking and advocated for a more OWS-based view of Democracy due to his upbringing in 1960s California.
Posted by eotness | 3:35 PM
Generally, you are mixing up Democrats with Liberals and Republicans with conservatives. Historically, that wasn’t a clear correspondence. Until the 1960s, the Democratic Party was an alliance of Southern conservatives and Northern liberals; Southern conservatives abhorred the party of Lincoln. The Southern Democrats who fought to preserve segregation were not liberal in any sense of the word, nor was the KKK.
Today’s right wingers and Republicans are not conservative. Trump, a Democrat for most of his life, is a right winger but not a conservative. Republican conservatives today are either gone from the party, converted to the new ideology, or are in the midst of an ‘inner migration’, paying lip service to the prevailing leadership while awaiting a better day..
Conservatives believe in tradition and stability; the right wingers like Trump want to radically change government and society. Conservatives believe in fiscal responsibiltiy and balanced budgets; Trump has cut taxes while increasing spending and massively increased the deficit, even before the recent stimulus package. He conducts government like he conducted his businesses; borrow heavily, rake a lot off the top, and leave someone else to hold the bag. Conservatives want to maintain traditional alliances; Trump has dissed traditional allies while currying favor with Russia (and not just by making a ‘joke’ that Russia took seriously and acted on.) Conservatives believe in America’s national institutions; Trump undermines and is at war with the ‘deep state’ and calls the free press an enemy of the people. He is like some conservatives of the past in that he is an isolationist, disavowing any role for America on the world stage.
McCarthy, a notorious liar and demagogue, was undone by the conservatives, not the liberals. As long as he was attacking Jewish intellectuals, conservatives went along with him; when he attacked the army, a traditional conservative institution, the establishment turned against him and he was censured by the Senate and squashed. Under a Republican president; he was gone from the scene years before the Democrats retook the White House.
Conservatives generally side with the people who benefit from the established order, not the people who want change; they favor the rich over the poor, the natives over the immigrants, the people on top over the underdog. Conservative politicians opposed immigration both before and after the Second World War, trying to keep the quotas low, and they were not the ones fighting against slavery or pushing for civil rights legislation. They were against illegal immigration, and they wanted to make most immigration illegal; a bit like today’s right-wingers who want to prevent legal asylum claims by refugees.
A lot of right wingers do support Russia, certainly including Trump with his ‘not so secret man-crush’ on Putin. White nationalists identify with that country. Conservative commentators on television suggest that we should not support the Ukraine in its fight to preserve its independence and territory. Trump is ceding America’s prominence in the Middle East to Russia and defends Russia against criticism.
Posted by Anonymous | 8:56 AM
McCarthy was undone because he was correct about Communists symapathizers in government and in the media. What he never made explicit was that MANY of them were Jewish. All Jewish intellectuals had to do was make a few calls and Mcarthy found himself becoming a social pariah. Politicians are ruled by the people who finance them, and Mccarthy was not undone by white christan America, he was undone by wealthy liberal Jews who grew tired of his antics.
The Neoconservative/neoliberal movement was also a product of Jewish intellectuals. Neoconservatism can be traced from Russian Jews who defected to NATO countries because they had a falling out with Stalin.
Donald Trump has the blessing of conservative Jews. He has a lot of Russian Jewish support.
Despite what the media says, post-Soviet Russia, like many places, has a lot of Jewish influence. Putin is about as conservative and a "white nationalist" icon as Iran is antisemetic and about as much as Iraq was a terrorist breeding ground.
Posted by Anonymous | 4:59 PM
“Putin is about as conservative and a "white nationalist" icon as Iran is antisemetic and about as much as Iraq was a terrorist breeding ground.”
That sounds about right.
You have to wonder why it took four or more years of abuse for those Jewish intellectuals to make a phone call to the wealthy liberal Jews. I guess they were too proud to ask for help. And the wealthy liberal Jews were just not paying attention and didn’t know about McCarthy’s antics until they got the phone call. Or maybe it was that McCarthy actually had Jewish support; his chief counsel was Trump’s favorite lawyer, Roy Cohn.
McCarthy, an alcoholic and morphine addict, was undone by popular revulsion against him. The country was disgusted by his antics once they got to see him on television. And because he got too big for his britches, thinking he could take on the Army and President Eisenhower as easily as he could make hay denouncing a few nobodies in the State Department. They didnt need anyone to pull their strings to act against McCarthy; they sqaushed him because he attacked them first.
Posted by Anonymous | 7:10 PM
"Generally, you are mixing up Democrats with Liberals and Republicans with conservatives. Historically, that wasn’t a clear correspondence. Until the 1960s, the Democratic Party was an alliance of Southern conservatives and Northern liberals; Southern conservatives abhorred the party of Lincoln. The Southern Democrats who fought to preserve segregation were not liberal in any sense of the word, nor was the KKK."
Actually, I'm not mixing up anything (heck, I made sure to cite explicit left-wingers such as Howard Zinn, George Lucas, and the like). And for the record, the KKK IS a liberal organization. Even Conservapedia makes that much clear.
"Conservatives generally side with the people who benefit from the established order, not the people who want change; they favor the rich over the poor, the natives over the immigrants, the people on top over the underdog. Conservative politicians opposed immigration both before and after the Second World War, trying to keep the quotas low, and they were not the ones fighting against slavery or pushing for civil rights legislation. They were against illegal immigration, and they wanted to make most immigration illegal; a bit like today’s right-wingers who want to prevent legal asylum claims by refugees."
Ah, you DO realize it was the liberal FDR who was opposed to immigration before WWII and keeping quotas low, right? Also, conservatives WERE the ones fighting against Slavery. Who do you THINK formed the fight against it? Republicans, aka, Conservatives. Again, even Conservapedia makes clear that Conservatives were against slavery. Not to mention Thomas Sowell, who even stated that, and I quote, "Moreover, within Western civilization, the principle impetus for the abolition of slavery came first from very conservative religious activists – people who would today be called ‘the religious right.’" It's very clear you're woefully misinformed about what conservativism is all about.
"McCarthy, a notorious liar and demagogue, was undone by the conservatives, not the liberals. As long as he was attacking Jewish intellectuals, conservatives went along with him; when he attacked the army, a traditional conservative institution, the establishment turned against him and he was censured by the Senate and squashed. Under a Republican president; he was gone from the scene years before the Democrats retook the White House."
1. The Venona Documents proved that McCarthy was actually telling the truth, so don't call him a liar. 2. While it is true that Republicans ended up dealing the final blow to McCarthy, it is also very much true that most of the Democrats were the ones trying to outright crucify McCarthy LONG before that (and for the record, Ed Murrow was a far-leftist democrat, NOT a republican). Not to mention thanks largely to the Republicans taking out McCarthy, they lost control of the Senate, so I'm not sure people popularly supported that bit (if they did, why on earth would they lose the Senate immediately after that. They'd if anything gain even MORE seats had it truly been popularly supported).
Posted by eotness | 4:13 AM
"Conservatives believe in tradition and stability; the right wingers like Trump want to radically change government and society."
No, if Trump wanted to radically change government and society, he would not have specifically tried to put Originalists onto the Supreme Court. If anything, he'd be like Bill Clinton and put the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsburg who infamously admitted to hating the US Constitution to such an extent that she advocated that Egypt base its constitution on the one in Marxist South Africa rather than our own.
Posted by eotness | 4:17 AM
Ruth GInsberg never said, or 'admitted', that she hated the US Constitution. She did say that Egypt should look to recent attempts at constution making, including the South African Constitution and the Canaidan Charter of Rights. And you have to admit that the US Constitution, which is written for a federation of states, would be largely inapplicable in a historically unified country like Egypt. The US constitution has extensive provisions about how to divide up power between a central government and individual states like Massachussets or Louisianna with their own constitutions and history and character and legal systems; that is largely irrelevant to a geographically small and far more centralised country like Egypt.
'Originalists" are not traditionalists. The drafters of the Constitution were not originalists. Origiinalism, despite the miselading name, is actually a radical revision of decades of constitutional jurisprudence. And it is hypcritical, because it ignores historical scholarship to project the originalists own politics on the Constitution, pretending that this is what the founders thought about the issue.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:02 AM
Some religious Christian communities, like the Quakers, were strongly against slavery as a matter of principle. Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of a Presbyterian preacher and wrote Uncle Tom as a Christ-like figure who redeemed others through his suffering. But other Protestant churches and ministers quoted Scripture in support of slavery, citing the curse of Ham as Biblical justification for the institution. A lot of the ancestors of the 'religious right' were strongly in support of slavery, particularly in the South. Even today, Southern Baptists are not know for their tolerance or their crusade for reacial equality
Are you really saying that conservatives in slavery times wanted to radically change or overthrow the institutions, legal systems, social order and governments of the Southern states and wreak unpredictable change on the plantation economy? Somehow, that does not sound very conservative, by any definition. Abraham Lincoln would have nothing to do with Mitch McConnell or Lindsay Graham.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:21 AM
It is interesting how, in the 50s, some conservatives were passionately concerned about Russian influence, espionage, and covert dealings in the United States, to the point were McCarthy's people accused the Protestant clergy of being a hotbed of communism; while now Republicans are in fervent denial that Russia would ever do such things, and say it would be okay even if they did. After all, as the President says, 'you think we are so innocent?"
Posted by Anonymous | 9:31 AM
McCarthy was undone because he was correct about Communists symapathizers in government and in the media. What he never made explicit was that MANY of them were Jewish. All Jewish intellectuals had to do was make a few calls and Mcarthy found himself becoming a social pariah. Politicians are ruled by the people who finance them, and Mccarthy was not undone by white christan America, he was undone by wealthy liberal Jews who grew tired of his antics.
The Neoconservative/neoliberal movement was also a product of Jewish intellectuals. Neoconservatism can be traced from Russian Jews who defected to NATO countries because they had a falling out with Stalin.
Donald Trump has the blessing of conservative Jews. He has a lot of Russian Jewish support.
Despite what the media says, post-Soviet Russia, like many places, has a lot of Jewish influence. Putin is about as conservative and a "white nationalist" icon as Iran is antisemetic and about as much as Iraq was a terrorist breeding ground.
Posted by Anonymous | 4:47 PM
In salvery times., most people belonged to a faith community, evne if they were not believers; most people went to church on Sundays, although slaves were often prohibited from doing so. Both the pro-slavery and anti-slavery people were mostly church-goers, and both sides found their justifications in scripture.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:39 PM
Why do you care so much about Onward's distribution? You were never going to watch it anyway based on previous comments about cartoons and how much you hate animation. As a matter of fact, when's the last time you've watched something you actually like anyway?
Posted by Anonymous | 5:15 PM
I can't speak for Avi, but in my case, considering we've got far too many instances of both animated and live action children's programs trying to push homosexuality as a good thing with the very obvious intent of propagandizing the kids, we DO have to care about this since that basically WILL ultimately harm our kids.
Posted by eotness | 5:22 PM