disney trying to get back the genZ boys

[dvc lover 1970]

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/disney-marvel-lucasfilm-gen-z-1236494681/#
Sorry if i did the link wrong. But as a mother of two young men, I could have told disney they did it all wrong and lost the gen z's to Anime. Here is where disney went wrong and i hope someone from disney reads this and really thinks about it.


Lets start where disney went wrong explained in the first two paragraphs

Disney of old - classic movies that I still love (Cinderella, SnowWhite, even sadly the Little Mermaid, and Aladdin) but sadly they had it wrong because the female was the victim who needed her male "prince" to rescue her (mind you the prince she met one hour before or day before) -which enchanted and frozen 1 so poignantly pointed out.

Dinsey of new - has changed this and now the male character cant survive without the female. Disney killed Toy story in Toy story 4 Where Woody left with Bo?? My kids grew up with toy story - I had put all their toy story stuff away for grand children thinking that would be something cherished forever. Nope - that one movie had my kids telling me to throw everything out. Who writes this stuff??? This is a story about friendship Woody and Buzz best friends forever. And disney wants to know where they went wrong????

Disney in the middle years- They got it right! Princess and frog, tangled, Beauty and the beast, Mulan, Lilo and Stitch (animated) ect - had it right. Both the female and male characters had flaws and needed each other to rescue each other. Princess and Frog - Tiana was an overachiever who sacrificed any fun for work - to an extreme. The prince on the other hand was lazy and total opposite - was all about fun and zero work ethic. They rescued each other.
Tangled - They brought out the best in each other and helped each other. She has her own goals and internal motivation, while Flynn it is reforming himself and finding that there is more to life than being a thief (on an island that i own tan and rested all alone) he has growth beyond being a selfish person and she helps him to realize this. Beauty and the beast - I don't think it needs an explanation.

Why anime is killing it with Gen Z males - They never sacrifice the male protagonist to make the female protagonist stronger. There are really strong female protagonists (Demon slayer - many strong female characters in the Hashira who fight and die in the infinity castle arc; AoT - Mikassa, but her strength does not diminish any of the male characters; onepiece the entire crew support and grow from each other -Nami is the smart navigator - luffy never questions her skills and vice-versa). Alchemist brotherhood - Winn (female) is Ed's prosthetist. She's brilliant and tells him or his brother off when they are wrong. So where did disney go wrong? I said it above they have in essence turned their male characters into the female characters of old. they need to go back to the middle, where the characters support each other and not make one gender strong at the expense of the other. I feel i have a decent understanding of this since we have had some pretty lengthy discussions on this. Disney has lost my two in terms of movie watching and tv to Anime - along with all their friends for the reasons i listed above. One more thing anime does right - it poses philosophical questions that younger kids might not understand but older ones will. lets start with naruto - the Pain arc - where the cycle of hatred is explained in terms of hate begets more hate and killing begets more killing. The importance of one willing to break the cycle and make changes. alchemist has the philosophy of equivalent exchange echos Kants categorical imperative. Attach on Titan = is the endless cycle of oppression and revenge. There is many more. OnePiece tackles racism, oppression, human trafficking among others. Legends of galactic hero is a mix of plato Hobbes and Machiavelli in space.

Sorry so long but I really hope disney is able to grasp where they went wrong and why they lost their male base to anime.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

I definitely heard about that article. They did try to appeal to the male crowd in the past with Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet in the early 2000s, but they didn’t do so well at the box office.

What I would love for Disney to do in order to appeal to the male Gen Z crowd is an animated adaptation of the Japanese folk legend of Momotaro.

The whole point of the above article is that both Marvel and Lucasfilm are just not cutting it anymore when appealing to the aforementioned demographic, so Disney is looking to doing it themselves with original ideas.

(Of course, there’s also 20th Century Studios, but their stuff is a bit more mature.)

 

[Smugpugmug]

Throwing out a disclaimer that I'm not a Gen Z male nor do I speak for all of them but I am in the Gen Z age range.

This article is garnering a lot of discussion on Twitter amongst other Gen Z people and tbh I don't think it's wrong. I've been going to events in my area where I frequently talk to men my age and when Disney is brought up in casual conversation, there is ALWAYS a comment about how Star Wars and Marvel were "ruined" or someone mentions one of the stupid live action remakes. Tbh most of what Disney puts out TV/movie wise does not interest me and that's okay. Not everything has to appeal to me specifically. But Disney is seeing an issue where their content is no resonating with the Gen Z male demographic.

Absolutely agree with the point about anime and that's the boat I'm in too. Would also add in video games as every single Gen Z male I've spoken to is a gamer who rarely if ever goes to see a movie in theaters. I feel like a Kingdom Hearts anime would be amazing and yes I know a show was in the works around when Kingdom Hearts 2 was in development and was scrapped as to not conflict with that game's story but trust me most fans would LOVE an anime. They wouldn't care about any story conflicts or whatever. Make it happen, Disney and Square lol

Also side note but while Toy Story 4 is absolutely a movie I do not care for, I don't agree for your reasoning as to why. It's just a pointless cash grab, nothing more nothing less.

 

[BrianL]

While the article may be accurate, I do not agree that the treatment of male characters is why. Disney has not denegrated their male characters, and while they do let the females take the lead sometimes now, that shouldn't be taken as a slight. There's nothing wrong with a male needing help from a female at times, nor was it wrong for a female to need help from a male (though the problem is that those were the ONLY types of stories being told). I don't see a lot of cases where male charactes are being "sacrificed" in favor of the female - in most cases it's working out pretty equal (and it's okay if it ocassionally doesn't too). My male ego isn't so fragile as to be threatened by such things, but I guess that's just me.

 

[LoveDaisy]

I didn’t read the article but I will say I purposely did not let my bonus daughters watch the original Disney princess movies because of how the princesses were portrayed. We were raising strong daughters not girls who needed to be rescued. They have seen them all now that they are older. They still like Disney but are villain girls. The youngest says why would I want to be a princess waiting to be rescued when I can be a villain and rule the world. She’s joking of course but those values didn’t align with mine and the kids still like Disney. I guess my point is Disney is more than princess movies so I’m not sure why one thing they make would limit a whole generation from liking it.