Then came the reality that I personally had worried about since covid-19 brought the movie industry to a screeching halt. Mulan will indeed be on Disney Plus, but as premium content that will cost viewers $30 to watch. The good news is once you pay the thirty, you can watch the movie as many times as you want. Now I could be wrong, but I have read reports that if you let your Disney Plus subscription expire, you also let your opportunity to watch Mulan expire. Eventually one would think it will be added to it's base catalog anyway, but until it is, it seems pretty crappy to me that you'd pay thirty for it and then not be able to watch it. Basically you are paying thirty dollars to simply unlock the movie. You don't actually get to own the movie.
Many people are freaking out over the thirty dollar price tag. Personally I think it is a bit steep as well. For families I totally get it. Four people going to see a movie can easily be well over thirty dollars before all the tickets are even purchased, but for people like me who basically watch movies by themselves, I just cannot see the worth in watching any movie for that amount of money without actually owning it. I get that Disney needs to make up as much of the money that they've lost with this movie. I totally understand it as the company continues to battle with the movie industry being still largely halted and Disneyland California still not being able to open. For me though, it is just too much of a price tag for a movie that already seems to be quite debatable in its quality with critics being split on whether it's good or bad from early screenings and fans being all too aware of the things omitted from the animated original. That last bit I find kind of comical as so many of these remakes are looked down on for being too close to the original, yet here is one that appears to be doing something different and it's already being looked down on for not being the same as the original.
My biggest concern though with this is the experiment itself. Disney CEO Bob Chapek has said that this is a one time occurrence and that this is not the strategy for new movies going forward. That said, this is one hundred percent an experiment. If Mulan releases and makes an absolute killing on Disney Plus compared to what the company had hoped for, it is going to happen again. I don't know if it will happen with Marvel's Black Widow, but you can bet that Disney and other movie companies are going to be watching this very, very closely. Several studios have already skipped out on releasing certain movies in theaters, and understandably so given covid, but once the theaters are open then what? Say this goes super well for the company, will they see theaters as irrelevant and utilize this thirty dollar fee on Disney Plus instead? I would like to think the answer to that is no, but with the world ever rapidly changing, it wouldn't come as a shock to me at all. News has been breaking that Disney is also ending their 4K HD Blu Ray releases of its movies. So if that's not a sign of changes coming, I don't know what is.
The bottom line for me is that while I am glad that Mulan is finally going to get to be seen, for me personally the price is just too much. If I had a family I could justify it by thinking about how much it costs me to go to the movies, but for someone who doesn't have that I can't use that. I also can't help but think that if the movie gets released on regular Blu Ray or DVD that I can actually own it for less and not have it tied to a subscription. I hope the movie does well, but not well enough that Disney sees this as the way of the future. As always, thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next blog coming real soon!
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