One of the biggest selling points of Disney Plus is that it would grant you access to Disney’s impressive back catalogue. Aside from its animated classics, the Mouse House owns a huge variety of other properties through its various subsidiaries, most notably Marvel and Star Wars. So, it’s a bit disappointing that Disney Plus seems to be following the lead of its competitors and not just adding, but removing titles each month. And naturally, their subscribers aren’t very happy.
One of the main reasons other services like Netflix remove titles from their platform is that they’ve lost the licensing rights to the show/movie, but Disney has no such excuse. Still, if you’re a Disney Plus subscriber, you now no longer have access to the following movies ‘just because’:
Home Alone
Home Alone 2
The Sandlot
Dr. Dolittle
Flicka
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Strange Magic
Wonderful World of Disney: Magical Holiday Celebration
White Wilderness
The Three Musketeers
Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties
The Shaggy Dog
Admittedly, few of these movies are going to set the world on fire, but there are a couple classics on there. Perhaps the most annoying removals are the more obscure Disney features that are going to be difficult to find anywhere else. Disney’s Mickey, Donald and Goofy-starring The Three Musketeers is precisely the kind of thing that should have a permanent home on Disney Plus, as is their 1958 nature documentary White Wilderness (notorious for its staged depiction of lemming suicide).
Similarly, while Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides isn’t a great movie, I can’t see any good reason for sending it back to the Disney archive. On the other hand, perhaps the removal of Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties could be considered as dodging a bullet for subscribers.
Whatever the reasons are behind them, I hope these removals slow to a trickle as Disney Plus establishes itself. After all, if you can’t watch your favorite Disney films on there, then what’s the point of it?