Mickey Mouse has entered the public domain. Well, technically, only the earliest designs of the legendary Disney mascot have, meaning we are now free to take Steamboat Willie for a ride in whatever artistic medium we see fit. As expected🎀, this has resulte💙d in a bunch of new projects emerging from the woodwork mere days after the century-long restriction was lifted.
People had prepared for this eventuality, mostly in the form of predic▨table horror games and films where the beloved mouse has his design ♛malformed, is dripping with blood, and is eager to murder loads of innocent people in a theme park of some description. It is the lowest common denominator type stuff, taking a cute and fluffy character and asking, ‘What if he was scary?’
Remember When Steam Sales Didn't Suck?
Steam sales haven't been the same since 2015, and I miss the da☂ys when they were exciting.
It’s sad that one of the most acclaimed characters in the history of everything is finally in the hands of the entire world, and the best we can do is make him a little bit spooky. I can see its appeal, and how th💝e subversion of a childhood legend such as Mickey Mouse armed with a thirst for blood is the perfect foundation for campy thrills, but many of the things w𝔉e’ve seen emerge in recent weeks have been played straight. Horror doesn’t get the credit it rightfully deserves a lot of the time, and I can’t help but feel that garbage like this is a big reason for it.
Take a look at 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Infestation Origins on Steam, which was previously called Infestation 88 prior to its developers being made aware that said number is an infamous Nazi dog whistle. It’s a multiplayer horr😼or game where you and a few friends are hunted down by an early version of the cartoon mouse. He’s dripping blood, eager to murder, and will appear out of the shadows to scare the bejeezus out of you. That’s the intention anyway, but given the entire appeal of the game is to be scared by a creature you’re already so familiar with, it just won’t be scary.
It looks like a glorified asset ♕flip riding on the coattails of breakout hits like Lethal Company using a twisted version of a character it doesn’t understand. It’s harsh to claim it’s devoid of creativit༺y, but this is the sort of idea you scribble on a napkin but never go through with. Don’t come crying to me when it sucks. The same goes for predictable slasher movies featuring Mickey Mouse, films where the entire narrative unfolds in your mind before you even sit down to watch it. The same happened with Winnie The Pooh, and loads of other corporate icons who escaped the shackles of copyright and into our awaiting arms.
Horror is capable of fantastic, unsettling, and thematically resonant things. Just look at gems like Midsommar or Silent Hill 2, two pieces of media that take time to deconstruct the human condition before giving us a reason to care about characters, appreciate stellar visual idea🌞s, and, most importantly, to be afraid. Not through cheap jumpscares or lazy atmosphere, but a psychological understanding of what makes us feel fear. To be taken control of and lose that which we hold dear. There is a place in this world for schlocky horror that is done well, not to mention films like Scream, which continue to subvert what it means to occupy such a genre.
But it is easy to recognise a cash grab, or when something is done to capitalise on obvious trends at the moment without a single consideration for artistic integrity. Mickey Mouse is a pop culture icon that has endured for an entire century not because he’s a funny little dude but because he came to represent an entire era of animation and a company that would soon grow into one of the world’s biggest. A horror willing to🍃 delve into that history or the themes it has come to represent would be infinitely more compelling🔜 than a cheap slasher, something I doubt we’ll ever get.
