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When you open Disney+ for the first time, you immediately recognize which streaming services will become obsolete. A number of the top 20 films in iTunes, a service that charges $11.99 to $19.99 for download, are now included in your $6.99 subscription fee. It’s quite literally a steal, a play for scale. Because for Disney, scale is absolutely critical. It’s not Apple that Disney+ is attempting to upend.
There’s a scene in Damien Chazelle’s First Man that depicts a moment that I had never considered. A tune by Leon Bridges blares for the short duration of the scene. On screen, a group of young African-Americans stand viewing the Apollo 11 launch from a nearby field. Kennedy Space Center is in view but the military installation may as well have been 10,000 miles away. They were purely spectators, nowhere near the real action. And they knew they never would be.
