Pixar has released some of my favorite movies in the past few years, yet most don’t hold a candle to my favorite of all time. Play in a factor of nostalgia, and of course my top three stand high, but there’s another, less obvious difference.
The highlights of my viewing experiences originate from sitting in plush seats, stuffing my face with buttery popcorn, and watching a projection on the big screen.
Now, that’s not to say I do not enjoy watching the media with my family on couches and under fluffy blankets. If anything, streaming services nowadays have made that a reality for most modern households in America.
Paying for services like this makes it easy to access movies and TV shows whenever you desire, such as long car rides and waiting for traffic to wane at the end of the school day, a position I often find myself in.
But, despite every upside to technological advances in the way of consuming television and movies, the ugly reality is rearing its head in the wake of a worldwide pandemic.
During lockdown, Disney as a whole released Luka, Encanto, and Turning Red straight to Disney+, while delaying many other titles back years later. Because of this, promotion-based content and advertisement got jumbled and many anticipators lost enthusiasm. Once restrictions were lifted, many other companies like Disney rushed to place projects back onto the production line and crank out piece after piece of work.
Audiences had an influx of Marvel Movies, most of which lost key production value. Animation teams were shoved into the finishing phases of direction, and forced to make cuts and haphazard solutions in order to make deadlines. There were even movies placed into a streaming platform as a premiere, causing dissatisfaction to all those who awaited, yet had not purchased a subscription to Netflix.
Media used to be rented or burned onto CDs, now people wait for digital releases in order to spend money on . Thus, movie theaters lose revenue and attendance splits into half of what it used to be. In order to fight this, theaters buy lavish reclining seats, splurge on kitchen equipment, fancy lights, and so much more just to achieve the experience once had before COVID-19.
Prices are jacked higher, causing more and more to turn away. They instead rely on streaming services, making the platforms undeniably the better option in some cases. However, the more one has, the more they will want. Prices of renting, or having an account rise, then services lock different movies under pay barriers. Movies disappear at random times and appear on other platforms later on.
The whole monopolized idea then forces people to fork out money on multiple apps just to watch a few movies. Not only that but sometimes unskippable ads pop up, completely ruining the idea of uninterrupted viewing pleasure. To that, one would pay even more just to remove ads that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Ways that consumers use to benefit from streaming, now pay in more ways than one. Netflix’s ploy to stop account sharing, where they used to push the idea as a platonic gesture, shows just how stingy the company has become.
This is not the only thing streaming services and brand companies have injured. I would argue that this is even worse than being scammed of money.
Setting employees and producers back causes disruption and unfair treatment just to complete a movie. The demand was for high-quality products in an impossibly short amount of time, giving low wages to those pulling more weight than higher-ups, even pushing artists to the brink of exhaustion just for an episode to come out on time. These workers have even had their jobs threatened by Artificial Intelligence to the point where a fine line between real and fake is as clear as muddy water.
Understandably, a strike ensued. April 18, 2023, marked the day in which thousands of writers and actors raised signs in hopes of reaching a fair agreement with their parent companies. The craziest part about this is that just this late September we watched as companies finally released a summary disclosing little information, yet promising to finally quell the anger of their writers.
We have watched, as a once problem-solving idea has caused so much more stress to both the consumers and makers of media as a whole. No one thing has remained untouched, and no one thing will be completely fixed in the future.
In a world where everyone benefits from each other, we must band together and make a conscious effort to support and defend all those who are responsible for creating our favorite stories and characters.
