Roger’s Best & Worst Disney Moments Of 2016
With 2016 now behind us, I’ve wanted to share some of my best and worst of Disney from the year.
Best Movie
It’s been an incredible year for Disney at the box office, we’ve seen some top animated movies including Finding Dory and Zootropolis, some live action remakes including The Jungle Book and Pete’s Dragon plus many Marvel movies including Civil War, Doctor Strange plus Deadpool and X-Men from Fox. And we also had Rogue One to finish the year. Picking one movie as my favourite is pretty hard, sadly I missed Moana at my local cinema due to man flu, so that one is missing from my line up. Rogue One was certainly a highlight for me, how it connected with “A New Hope”. I also loved Deadpool, it wasn’t very refreshing to see a different type of Superhero movie and just thought Ryan Reynolds was so perfect for the role.
But for me I think Civil War was my top choice, featuring the Marvel Cinematic Universe debut of Spider-Man and the Black Panther, the airport scene is possibly one of the best moments of the year and seeing the heroes in a different type of story was so much better than just a hero vs villain.
Best Collectible
There have been many great collectibles throughout 2016, some of my personal favourites include the Iron Man Vs Captain America Pop Vinyl set from the Civil War Collector Corps box. I also thought the last two Disney Infinity figures, Dory and Nemo were two of the best looking figures we saw from the game.
Most Memorable Moment From The Theme Parks
When details of the change from the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror to the Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout at Disney’s California Adventure, were announced, I was very much on the excited camp. I’m a huge Marvel fan, so bringing these characters into the parks is very exciting, there are so many opportunities and sadly they can’t all be brand new attractions. I was never a big fan of the Twilight Zone and with such a huge collection of characters available, paying to use the Twilight Zone franchise seems unnecessary. I’m looking forward to trying out the new attraction in the fall and with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 hitting cinemas in the summer, I’m sure it’ll be a huge success.
Best Video Game
It’s been a strange old year for Disney Video Games, with the decision to end Disney Infinity, plus many different mobile games, Disney is returning to its licensed ways. Resulting in a few great experiences such as the many expansions to Star Wars Battlefront, the weak Marvel Battlegrounds and awesome Finding Dory added to Disney Infinitt, plus we had two full LEGO games released, The Force Awakens and Avengers. We’ve also seen many remasters and ports released that have been lots of fun like Marvel Vs Capcom 3 and the Ultimate Alliance series.
I’ve really enjoyed playing many mobile games throughout 2016 like Disney Magic Kingdoms but it was LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens that stands out as the highlight of the year, it had many new elements that were new to the LEGO gameplay and told the complete story plus other missions from across the Galaxy.
Worst Moment Of The Year
Personally the cancellation of Disney Infinity will be the major moment from 2016 that was a huge disappointment. The game was just hitting its stride and not getting new playsets for Moana and Rogue One have been a constant reminder of what could have been. The drop of Infinity caused a ripple through the gaming community and will take a while to recover due to the development time involved in games. We’ve had plenty of remasters and ports to tie over Marvel fans and Star Wars fans got some great expansion packs for Star Wars Battlefront, but Disney fans got left with very little and 2017 might be similar bar some re-releases and remasters of Kingdom Hearts titles. It’s a shame how it ended so badly, leaving players with a bad taste and Disney executives just pulled the plug with very little thought, I can’t imagine Disney would treat other entertainment mediums like this by not planning ahead and putting all their eggs in one basket.
What was a highlight of 2016 for you?