Don't Let Me Down

I'd been waiting patiently to see The Beatles: Get Back, New Zealandic director Peter Jackson's new two-hour documentary on the Beatles' session for what became their last LP release, since it was first announced in 2019.  The movie was supposed to be out in theaters in September 2020, but COVID delayed it.  The it was supposed to premiere this fall, and I still kept waiting.  Then, just last month (June 2021), it was announced that it would instead be a six-hour documentary series.

Great news . . . until I found out that it would be streaming on Disney +.

I don't have Disney +.  So that means . . . I'm screwed.

This is so unfair.  Beatles fans have been waiting patiently to see this new documentary, as it promised to feature previously unseen footage of the Beatles' Get Back / Let It Be sessions from January 1969 and show us a more lighthearted and enjoyable look at the group rehearsing and then recording the Let It Be LP.   Now you're expected to pay extra to get a streaming service that, for the most part, is only good if you have kids in the house who want to see Frozen at home.  True, you also get all of the Star Wars movies, but how many times can you see all nine of them?

Had Jackson's project been a two-hour movie in the theaters, I could have seen it and paid only the price of admission,  and that would have been it.  Instead, I and everyone else have to subscribe to Disney + and be at the ready in front of our computers when the series premieres.  Disney, which owns ABC, could have shown us the original two-hour documentary on regular TV and still presented the six-hour documentary for streaming, just as The Beatles Anthology, aired on ABC in 1995, was a six-hour broadcast complimented by a home-video ten-hour version.  That would have been fairer to those who don't stream and can't afford streaming.  But no, that would have been too sensible, and someone is always around to prevent something like that.

Part of the Beatles' appeal is that their music was and remains a universal, democratic experience; it's always accessible, it's there for anyone who wants it, and to this day you can't turn on a classic-rock or oldies radio station without hearing a Beatles song.  (You don't hear their ballads on so-called "light" pop stations anymore, but that's another bone of contention.)  Disney +'s monopoly on The Beatles: Get Back smacks of elitism, the sort John Lennon would have disparaged.  And why Disney?  The last thing Lennon or the other Beatles would have wanted was to sell out to Mickey Mouse.  Disney's product is American, homogenized, wholesome, and lightweight.  The Beatles were none of those things, and homogenizing them for family entertainment on an Internet channel only a few can watch is completely at odds with the egalitarianism the Beatles stood for.

I may just subscribe to Disney + to watch The Beatles: Get Back . . . and then cancel my subscription once I've seen it.

The Beatles: Get Back streams over three nights during the Thanksgiving holiday, November 25, 26, and 27.