This year saw the beginning of a new endeavour on my part, one that had been floating around the back of my mind for a while as a potential idea, that I've now finally put into effect. A boycott against Disney films. Now, the complete list of reasons behind this decision could probably fill multiple blog posts, and any long-time readers or close friends of mine are probably aware of some of them, so for sake of brevity, this key reason is that I feel Disney are gradually moving towards a monopolisation of the film industry, homogenising and perpetuating their intellectual properties until every penny has been wrung out of them, and basically, I don't want to support that.
Annoyingly for me, this is a surprisingly difficult protest to totally abide by, with Disney's constant acquisition of other companies and properties. I took my dad to see Ford v Ferrari the other week (known by the slightly weaker title of Le Mans '66 over here) since it has been getting decent reviews and my dad is very much a petrolhead. Not to mention, modern motorsport films in general have been reliably pretty excellent, with the likes of Senna and Rush both impressing me.
And while I imagine based on the timescale and the type of production Ford v Ferrari is that Disney's input on it was negligible, that still didn't comfort me much as I saw the 20th Century Fox logo blaring on the screen and the little critic voice in the back of my head couldn't help but exclaim, "ah, fuck."
Strangely though, with Disney occupying my thoughts in the background as I watched the film, this knowledge started to reframe my perception of the story and became suddenly aware of a deeper message lurking behind the film, one that seems incredibly apt in the year that Fox was bought out by Disney, and, with James Mangold in the directing chair, the same man who bought us Logan, a superhero film that revelled in its deviance from the other cookie-cutter Marvel films that preceded it, a message that I feel can't be completely accidental.
So without wishing to sound like a stuck record, here's my reading of the film.
For those who haven't seen it, the film revolves around the Ford motor company, in the midst of a sales slump and eager to find a new edge to regain their popularity. They approach Ferrari with a proposal to forge a joint racing team, but after a brutal rejection, they decide to build their own car instead to beat Ferrari at the next Le Mans race.
And thus begins the construction of the Ford GT40, spearheaded by car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) with loose cannon Ken Miles (Christian Bale) down as the driver. However, the duo are faced not only with overcoming the engineering obstacles but political ones too, as the Ford executives constantly meddle to maintain what they feel is right for the Ford brand, rather than what will get the job done.
Some of you may have worked out where I'm going with this.
The driving philosophy of the film (no, that wasn't deliberate but it's fucking staying in) seems to be that auteurism is essential for creating a product with a clear intention or ambition and that achieves it. A product is better and stronger as one cohesive vision rather than fiddled and tampered with by lots of grubby hands thinking they know what's best for the brand. Just because something might be better received from a publicity standpoint doesn't mean it's what's best for the product, and in fact, what might look better for marketing and what will actually work are often completely different from each other. A message that I can't help but feel is made in protest of Disney and their approach to their film franchises, if not the company as a whole.
Here's one of the most prominent examples from the film. After finishing the first prototype of the GT40, Ford decides to test it at one of the upcoming races, but the executives make the decision that Ken Miles cannot drive the car, as he is far too abrasive and unpredictable to represent Ford, and might damage their image. Shelby protests, but they won't listen. Unsurprisingly, without Miles's maverick attitude or passion behind the wheel, Ford lose the race, and Shelby is able to convince them to rehire Miles, provided he can win Daytona, which of course he does.
Now I'm not saying it's a perfect comparison, but to me at least this seems more than a little reminiscent of the debacle Disney and Marvel have had over the firing of more visionary directors, such as Edgar Wright from Ant-Man and Phil Lord and Chris Miller from Solo: A Star Wars Story, in both cases being booted for supposed creative differences. These are writer-directors known for their ability to deviate from genre norms and a self-aware approach to their comedy, so it's not a huge leap to think that Disney took one look at what these guys had achieved so far, got frightened that the films were deviating just a bit too much from the regime to nicely represent the Disney brand, and promptly booted Wright, Lord and Miller and brought in directors who will do it how they're fucking told to and we'll have a little less of that lip, young man.
When it really boils down to it, Disney seems to be a company far more concerned with brand than content, making films seemingly more out of obligation than any actual artistic or creative drive. If the film isn't a smooth inoffensive slurry that can be easily poured down an audience's throat, then how will people ever bring themselves to buy up all the merchandise? And this is pretty much the indictment at the heart of Ford v Ferrari, as even in the film Ford's motivation for building the GT40 and competing in Le Mans is to inject more life into the Ford brand and get more people to buy their mass-produced factory cars rather than any real passion for racing, while the GT40 represents what can happen when a product is made with heart and passion and artistic vision. A final protest as Fox is swallowed by the amorphous mass of the Disney corporation.
And to clarify, I'm not saying that every Disney film is automatically terrible: there are always people involved with these projects that are at least trying to make quality cinema and they do often succeed. Love it or hate it, The Last Jedi was one of the more visionary tentpole Disney films of recent years and while there undoubtedly was studio meddling, the sheer divisiveness of it suggests that Rian Johnson probably had a fair amount of creative control and was able to do things how he wanted.
After all, this is only my interpretation of Ford v Ferrari; I'm just relaying what the film seemed to be saying. So if you've got a problem, take it up with James Mangold. Although, ya know, he ain't wrong.
There's also probably a lot more to this reading than I've been able to cover in this post, but I'll leave that for you to discover for yourselves. This is only Extra Rambles, after all: these are supposed to be shorter than the main posts...
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