There have been many that wondered if Disney acquiring all the old Netflix Defenders shows would come with a catch, that while they may make their way onto Disney Plus, that they’d end up being censored in some way.
Turns out that hasn’t happened. Watching now, shows like Daredevil and Punisher have not had even their most brutally violent scenes edited in any way. Jessica Jones and Luke Cage still have their graphic (well, graphic for Disney) sex scenes intact. Even if this is something that would have inspired a huge backlash if Disney had decided to censor the shows, it’s still another thing to see them actually go through with this, and there’s a reason that Disney has simultaneously updated its parental controls to try and ensure Encanto-watching kids aren’t stumbling upon Frank Castle raking a guy’s face across broken glass.
I keep thinking about what Kevin Feige said about Moon Knight, which arrives later this month as a Disney Plus original series.
“He’s brutal. It’s been fun to work with Disney Plus and see the boundaries shifting on what we’re able to do. There are moments [in the series] when Moon Knight is wailing on another character, and it is loud and brutal, and the knee-jerk reaction is, ‘We’re gonna pull back on this, right?’ No. We’re not pulling back. There’s a tonal shift. This is a different thing. This is Moon Knight.”
What I feel like we may be seeing here is that Disney may now finally be releasing it needs to able to go dark, like R-rated dark, in the Marvel universe at times. While I doubt we will see a bunch of R-rated blockbusters, we may actually see…a few, if this is the policy shift now. And I feel like there will probably be even more leeway on TV, perhaps starting with Moon Knight, though we’ll see if that reaches Daredevil/Punisher levels of violence.
To me, this opens a door to a lot of potential, a wider range of movies and series Disney can do. Disney, for instance, probably never would have made Logan back when Logan was released, but maybe in this era they would have. And when Punisher actor Jon Bernthal has said he’d only return to the role if they could do it “right” (ie. not sanitized) maybe that’s now an actual possibility. I mean, if you’re going to be airing Punisher season 1 uncensored on Disney Plus, who’s to say a season 3 couldn’t be just as brutal?
I’m not saying Disney needs to totally shift the entire tone of the MCU, and I’m sure that it won’t. But I think we’re going to see a wider range in both directions. Ms. Marvel practically seems like a Freeform teen dramedy. Whereas a few scrolls over on Disney Plus, you’re now able to see Jessica Jones and Luke Cage go to town on each other. It’s a new era, and I think it opens a up a lot of possibilities for the future of the Marvel universe.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
