Disney Is Really That Bad

Really it's garbage

Garbage

Yesterday I had the misfortune of having to re-watch Lilo and Stitch because someone was playing Disney films for her kids. I said “Maybe we should watch Star Wars! Or Wolverine! Well, they’re 3, so maybe not.” We might as well have watched Star Wars or Wolverine, because Lilo and Stitch is actually way more violent than I remember, so we might as well watch something violent with some substance to it. In fact, Lilo and Stitch mostly just seems like a bunch of racial stereotypes, violence, glorifying abuse, and not much in the way of science fiction.

Watching Lilo and Stitch was so underwhelming I think I can now sympathize with Tolkien when he hated all the Disney fairy tales. Stitch is described at the beginning as being a genetic experiment designed for destruction with a bunch of powers like supposedly being able to think faster than a supercomputer and having a strength of 3000 pounds. You never see any of these supposed powers from Stitch though, which makes Stitch look a lot more like, as the older sister put it, “an evil koala” who sometimes talks on a lower level than a parrot would and sometimes has six arms instead of four. The arm number thing is also never explained, since retracting two of the six arms is not exactly a Predator level disguise, but growing two extra arms is not exactly Martian Manhunter either. Like oh dear I’m sure this is how Tolkien felt comparing Disney fairy tales to real fairy tales, except I feel the same way comparing Disney science fiction to real science fiction since I’m not so invested in fairy tales.

The guy in the black suit is also not a man in black coming for the aliens but a social worker coming for Lilo, since Lilo is apparently living with just her older sister and no parents. Lilo acts like a complete brat and is basically abusive, just like Stitch basically acts evil despite not being portrayed as all that powerful or otherwise particularly fitting of a science fiction character. Dead parents are basically taken for granted in Disney films at this point which is yet another problem with them. Lilo also buts Stitch for $2 which seems very unrealistic. At exactly one scene Stitch is portrayed as looking for a city to destroy for a total of five seconds before this is forgotten, but the description of destroying cities by one of the aliens was “changing directions on all the signposts and stealing everyone’s left shoe.” I get this is for kids, but come on, you already have ultra-violent dogfights in this movie and Stitch getting brain juice extracted with a needle through the skull. The kids really would’ve been better off watching Star Wars or Wolverine even though the only reason those are even on Disney is Disney’s shady business practices. Disney literally stole the rights to Lucasfilm from George Lucas even though he’s still alive. Remember that when you need to know just how evil of a company Disney is.

Nothing about the alien civilization even makes any sense. All the aliens look different from each other, so probably they’re from different planets, but even in that case I’d expect some degree of convergent evolution. Despite looking funny none of the aliens act in any kind of cognitively or emotionally different way from humans at any point, even Stitch who’s supposed to be able to think faster than a supercomputer. They are basically just comic relief humans except Stitch who is a comic relief koala who can say a couple of words almost like a parrot but not as well. Aside from the one scene where they meet on the space station to discuss Stitch’s being an illegal genetic experiment and indict Jumba before genetically profiling Stitch and sealing him away, there are no scenes at all in space. The scenes in Hawai’i don’t seem much better, seeing as they mostly just seem like a bunch of shallow stereotypes of Hawai’i in a pastel watercolor style plus a bunch of stuff about how great abuse is because “ohana means family, family means no one is left behind or forgotten.”

After they played Lilo and Stitch they played some Spider-Man CGI cartoon which was also pretty awful. Please give Spiderman and X-Men back to Sony already so we stop ruining them and give Lucasfilms back to George Lucas. Who am I kidding, it’s Disney, and Disney has always been just as evil as its worst critics have said. Everyone I know who’s been really into Disney has also been just evil, and though people who were mostly just apathetic to Disney like I was seem to have faired better, it’s probably still harmful to be apathetic to Disney, both to yourself and to people like George Lucas who had his stuff stolen by them.

First they came for the fairy-tales and I did not speak up because I wasn’t into fairy-tales. Then they came for the myths and folklore and I did not speak up because I wasn’t that into myths and folklore. Then they came for the musicals and I did not speak up because I wasn’t that into musicals. Then they came for the animal fables and furry stuff and I did not speak up because I was not a furry. Then they came for the old animes and I did not speak up because I’ve only seen a few of the new animes. Then they came for science fiction and there was no one left to speak out for me, which did not matter because I communicate in pictures in people’s heads now anyway. Just kidding, it matters a lot and it’s not that literal.