Pixar, Marvel & Now Lucasfilm. The Force Is Strong With Disney

Yesterday it was announced that Disney are to acquire Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion. This is all “subject to clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, certain non-United States merger control regulations, and other customary closing conditions.”

But everything has been approved by both Disney and Lucasfilm’s sole shareholder, George Lucas. So what does this mean for the fans?

Well, besides three new movies, with “Episode 7″ being released in 2015 and all sorts of merchandising/theme parks spin-offs, only time will tell.

Did anyone really notice the changes in Pixar and Marvel. I didn’t. Let’s look at this from the fan viewpoint and the easiest way is to look at the responses to films before and after. Comparing Pixar before and after is relatively easy, but Marvel is a bit more complex as they licensed their comics to various companies for production & distribution, some good and some not so much.

Have a look at the two tables below, which are split into 2 sections (post- and pre-Disney) which are split again into public opinion and critic’s opinion. The abbreviations are as follows:

• RT (AR) is the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Rating from http://www.rottentomatoes.com
• IMDB is the public rating of the movie from http://www.imdb.com
• RT (T) is the Tomatometer rating based on critic ratings from http://www.rottentomatoes.com
• MC is the Metascore (based on critic reviews) from http://www.metacritic.com/

Lets start with Pixar:

PRE-DISNEY
Title	Year	RT (AR)	IMDB	RT (F)	MC
Toy Story	1995	81	8.3	100	92
A Bug’s Life	1998	61	7.2	92	77
Toy Story 2	1999	72	8	100	88
Monsters, Inc.	2001	84	8	95	78
Finding Nemo	2003	82	8.1	99	89
The Incredibles	2004	67	8	97	90
Cars	2006	80	7.3	74	73
AVERAGE		75.3	7.8	93.9	83.9
POST-DISNEY
Title	Year	RT (AR)	IMDB	RT (F)	MC
Ratatouille	2007	84	8	96	96
WALL-E	2008	89	8.5	96	94
Up	2009	86	8.3	98	88
Toy Story 3	2010	91	8.5	99	92
Cars 2	2011	54	6.4	38	57
Brave	2012	80	7.5	78	69
AVERAGE		80.7	7.9	84.2	82.7

A quick look the average public ratings (RT(AR) and IMDB) show us that the public prefer the post-Disney Pixar, if only slightly. If you take a closer look, Cars 2 was a major let-down for post-Disney Pixar. If we take that one out, things are very different the averages go up to 86, 8.2, 93.4 & 87.8 respectively. If you look atthe critic’s opinions however, Rotten Tomatoes says that Disney is not doing a great job, while Metacritics says it’s pretty much the same, unless again, you take out Cars 2.

But the jump from Disney to Pixar is not that huge, not as much as it is for Marvel… So what is the verdict with regards to Marvel. Up until 1998, Marvel never really made the jump to the big screen, with only a four movies coming out, including two versions of Captain America. From 1998, they started licensing out more movies to various companies until Disney bought them out in 2009 for $4.24 billion.

PRE-DISNEY
Title	Year	RT (AR)	RT (F)	IMDB	MC
Year	Title
1944	Captain America	-	-	6.6	-
1986	Howard the Duck	-	-	4.3	-
1989	The Punisher	42	24	5.4	-
1990	Captain America	20	11	3	-
1998	Blade	78	55	7	45
2000	X-Men	83	82	7.4	64
2002	Blade II	72	59	6.6	52
	Spider-Man	65	89	7.3	73
2003	Daredevil	46	45	5.4	42
	X2	84	88	7.6	68
	Hulk	34	62	5.7	54
2004	The Punisher	68	29	6.4	33
	Spider-Man 2	81	93	7.5	83
	Blade: Trinity	70	26	5.8	38
2005	Elektra	47	10	4.8	34
	Man-Thing	18	20	4	-
	Fantastic Four	57	27	5.7	40
2006	X-Men: The Last Stand	73	57	6.8	58
2007	Ghost Rider	56	26	5.2	35
	Spider-Man 3	54	63	6.3	59
	FF: Rise of the Silver Surfer	55	37	5.7	45
2008	Iron Man	91	94	7.9	79
	The Incredible Hulk.	75	67	6.9	61
	Punisher: War Zone	45	27	6	30
AVERAGE		59.7	49.6	6.1	52.3
POST-DISNEY
Title	Year	RT (AR)	RT (F)	IMDB	MC
2009	X-Men Origins: Wolverine	72	37	6.7	-
2010	Iron Man 2	80	75	7.1	57
2011	Thor	80	77	7	57
	X-Men: First Class	88	87	7.8	65
	CPT America: The First Avenger	75	79	6.8	66
2012	Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance	32	18	4.4	32
	Marvel’s The Avengers	96	92	8.4	69
	The Amazing Spider-Man	81	73	7.4	66
AVERAGE		75.5	67.3	7.0	58.9

No matter which way you look at it, Disney is doing a pretty damn good job, except when it comes to Ghost Rider 2, which was neither produced or distributed by them or Marvel, since talk of it’s production began in 2007 already.

Ultimately, as I said, time will tell, but I’m pretty sure they’ll do a good job

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