Wish (Walt Disney Animation - November 2023)

[Disstevefan1]

Saw it last night. It was...pretty good. I didn't DISlike it, but it didn't bowl me over...

So Wish is a pretty good. Absolutely nothing wrong with this opinion and its what I hear from most folks.

Disney makes good movies.

The movies just cost more to make and market than they bring in.

 

[Willmark]

If that's what you think, great. I don't feel that way unfortunately. There's been a lot of average in my opinion. I liked Luca the most of this post Coco run. And the two that I just didn't really care for were turning red and light year. I thought soul could have been really good but I thought the ending wasn't great. Disappointing is a matter of opinion and taste. If you weren't, again, that's great. I know a lot of people who thought the recent slate wasn't up to pixars reputation.

Always interesting when an opinion is stated as fact.

 

[Jedijax719]

Less than a million on Monday. Wow! There's NO WAY this isn't on D+ by Christmas.

 

[Fox&Hound]

Saw it last night. It was...pretty good. I didn't DISlike it, but it didn't bowl me over the way, say, Beauty and the Beast did thirty years ago from its very first song. I think part of what hampered it was that they were too busy trying to shoehorn in all sorts of Easter eggs to past movies (and set up the "origin story" to some aspects of said movies) that they neglected to develop aspects that might have made it a better movie. (I think its biggest drawback was that it seemed to get more rushed as the movie went on...jumping rather quickly from development to development.)

I've been reading about some early concepts that didn't make the final cut--I don't know whether this was because of executive meddling or not. For example, both King Magnifico AND Queen Amaya were supposed to be villains originally...an evil power couple. I'm not sure I would have gone that route, but there was something that was supposed to be even more intriguing...the Star was supposed to be a humanoid shapeshifter who'd have taken the form of a dashing young teenage boy, a love interest for Asha. Sort of like Neil Gaiman's Stardust, only gender-flipped. I think that might have worked better. I'm reasonably certain that this change was due to executive meddling...that the suits thought the little non-human star would be more marketable.

And I agree that the writing for King Magnifico was all over the place. In the beginning, they seemed to be setting up his past (losing his home and family to bandits) as a major motivating factor that would figure into the ending, but that ended up coming to nothing. He really did start of with the best of intentions, but the script didn't make as much of that as it could have. It was as though the execs were listening a little too hard to the "we want a REAL villain!" crowd. We could have had a strong villain, but one who was not beyond redemption--one motivated by fear instead of greed or vanity. Sort of an inverse of the "twist villain"...instead of someone we think is a good guy who ends up being the baddie all along, we could have someone who started out as a more traditional-seeming Disney villain but ended up repenting. (Without the idea of "once you start messing with dark magic, you're lost for good.")

So here's what I might have done. I'd DEFINITELY have kept in the humanoid male star...it could have been quite a nice romance, but one that developed naturally instead of being insta-love. (We haven't had any real Disney romances since the Frozen movies!)

And I'd have cut WAY down on the number of Asha's friends. Okay, we get it, they're supposed to correspond to the Seven Dwarfs, but it WAY overcrowded the field to the detriment of their character development. (There's that over-reliance on past Disney Easter eggs again.)

I'd have gone with a more timeless, classical/Broadway sound than the Lin Manuel Miranda-esque pop sounds of the score we got. Oh, it was okay, and I do love LMM and his style, but that style seems to be getting overdone, plus it dates the movies. I'd prefer something like what Marc Shaiman did with the Mary Poppins Returns score...very much in that classic Sherman Brothers style.

Finally, to get back to what I was saying about Magnifico...I'm not sure I would have gone with the evil couple angle, but perhaps if they'd played up his past tragedy and his desperate wish to keep anyone from suffering the same, it might have resonated in the finale more. Instead of the "he becomes the Magic Mirror" angle, perhaps he could have accidentally mortally wounded Amaya, or she could sacrifice herself to try to stop him...making him realize how far he's gone, that in trying to make himself too powerful to be hurt again he has brought everything he feared onto himself, and killed the one person he truly loved. But by this point the magic he's unleashed is beyond his control, so he pleads with Asha to help...and the ending plays out more or less as before, only the "we are all stars" magic manages to bring Amaya back to life for a classic example of the "Disney Death" trope. The movie ends with a humbled Magnifico working with his wife to reform his kingdom, and a strong hint that Star and Asha are going to become a couple.

I hope this doesn't turn Disney off making more musical fairy tales...they just need to adapt some of the lesser-known ones, and concentrate on telling a good story rather than giving us a bunch of references and calling it a story. I'd KILL for them to adapt The Wild Swans/The Six Swans (with elements from both Andersen's and Grimm's versions). Or East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which is a descendant of the Cupid and Psyche myth and sort of a second cousin to Beauty and the Beast. Both have strong, active heroines, strong villains, the potential for great visuals, and involve romance.

Beautifully written. I agree that the writing for the king was just all over the place. Is he kind? Funny? Pure evil? Who knows. And I thought his burnt tapestry would have come back in the end, but nope. And yes the too many friends definitely made them not very fleshed out. I really liked the movie but I have a hard time naming any of the characters besides Asha and the goat, Valentino.

 

[TalkingHead]

Saw this tonight on the big non-Dolby screen before it gets bumped tomorrow for Beyoncé.

The narrative never establishes that citizens’ lives are deficient after they give up their wish. Only evidence of this is the 18 yr old guy who’s sluggish and “boring.” But Asha’s grandfather and mother aren’t boring; they seem well-adjusted. The movie opens with townspeople singing and dancing and we see them being sociable throughout. Worse conditions were needed to make Asha’s quest to return the wishes seem less arbitrary.

It was a mistake not to make the queen evil. The revolution ends up getting rid of the too-ambivalent king and replacing him with the queen. Would’ve been more dramatically satisfying to return power to the people since that’s clearly what the original idea was. (Probably an unacceptable concept to the execs.)

Wouldn’t watch again. Overall a misfire but the animation style is at least testing something new and expressive. Too bad the story is so unsatisfying.

 

[_caleb]

Which is easier to change, one company or society?

I don't think Disney is trying to change society instead of changing the company.

Why are other companies able to fair this storm better?

Big picture, they're not. At the present time, Disney isn't doing as well at the box office because they've gone all in on DTC. Others have had successes in the last couple years because they've hedged their bets and continued to focus primarily on box office.

The last few years is a loaded question. We are only three years away from a major global impact event. So it slowly comes back. Like the box office has.

I think the movie industry will never be the same as it was. Box office was already in decline before the pandemic due to home theater and streaming. The pandemic accelerated the trend. I don't think what we're current seeing is "coming back" to some solid baseline, but a rebound due to pent-up demand (similar to what we've seen with attendance at the Parks).

The thing Disney has done is rested on laurels and not changed. The company was that impacted the most was the one that lacked diversifying interests and variety in product.

Aren't you one of the fans here who bemoan the current direction of the company? I was under the impression you saw this as major change since the good old days.

Disney is risking their entire business on a new model. They're spending more money than ever on content, and they've made almost all their content available on D+. They're knowingly frustrating a powerful sub-set of their audience by diversifying their content (I know that's not what you mean when you say "diversifying interests") as they shift from treating their customers as one big audience to recognizing the variety of sub-audiences. They've de-emphasized box office in favor of streaming. It seems like a lot of change to me.

 

[celluloid]

Big picture, they're not. At the present time, Disney isn't doing as well at the box office because they've gone all in on DTC. Others have had successes in the last couple years because they've hedged their bets and continued to focus primarily on box office.

That is classic business 101 right? Go all in! Risk it all!

Dude, the new Alien film for example got moved from being a Hulu original to theatrical. Opposite of all in.
What unfounded tripe.

 

[Phroobar]

Last night I watched The Magician's Elephant. Just like the Sea Beast, this was a project that Disney killed when they acquired 20th Century Fox but it was sold to Netflix who had it finished. It is very good story about a boy that doesn't give up hope to find his sister as long as he has faith. A magician conjures up an elephant and the boy is told by a fortune teller to follow the elephant. The king has him do three impossible tasks to win the elephant. If he does, he will find his sister. Its a very good story but the animation is a little rough. Even that, it is a better told story than Wish. With a little more polish, it could have been Disney's 100th anniversary film that actually made money. Imagine that!

 

[The Mom]

Posters are wandering off topic - as usual. And politics/social issues again.

 

[Disstevefan1]

Last night I watched The Magician's Elephant. Just like the Sea Beast, this was a project that Disney killed when they acquired 20th Century Fox but it was sold to Netflix who had it finished. It is very good story about a boy that does give up hope to find his sister as long as he has faith. A magician conjures up an elephant and the boy is told by a fortune teller to follow the elephant. The king has him do three impossible tasks to win the elephant. If he does, he will find his sister. Its a very good story but the animation is a little rough. Even that, it is a better told story than Wish. With a little more polish, it could have been Disney's 100th anniversary film that actually made money. Imagine that!

Thanks for the tip. I will watch it.

 

[Phroobar]

Thanks for the tip. I will watch it.

I think it's funny the movies Disney killed were actually really good. Maybe they chose the wrong teams to lay off?

 

[Heppenheimer]

The ending of Soul was disappointing. It could have been a real love letter to jazz. Less cloud people antics and more abstract jazz numbers.

And maybe have the non-diegetic music scored by an actual jazz musician, rather than someone best known for industrial synth rock?

 

[WorldExplorer]

Last night I watched The Magician's Elephant. Just like the Sea Beast, this was a project that Disney killed when they acquired 20th Century Fox but it was sold to Netflix who had it finished. It is very good story about a boy that doesn't give up hope to find his sister as long as he has faith. A magician conjures up an elephant and the boy is told by a fortune teller to follow the elephant. The king has him do three impossible tasks to win the elephant. If he does, he will find his sister. Its a very good story but the animation is a little rough. Even that, it is a better told story than Wish. With a little more polish, it could have been Disney's 100th anniversary film that actually made money. Imagine that!

The more I hear the more I think anything Disney chose for the 100th would've ended up having serious issues. No matter what the story was it would have been shredded by a terrible mindset that isn't conductive to good filmmaking.

Like, even if you plucked The Lion King or The Little Mermaid from history and plonked them down to start being made in 2019 having some idiots in the creative process pushing for things like "but what if there were seven extra characters!? Like the seven dwarves! Wouldn't that be funny!?" would inevitably ruin things.

 

[Disstevefan1]

I was watching one of mostly anti Disney YouTubers and apparently there is a tweet out there from a theater operator saying he had multiple families ASKING IF ITS SAFE TO BRING THEIR KIDS TO SEE WISH! Apparently he as never experienced this many questions about a film, so it sounds like is not just one radical family asking.

As we all know Wish is a good movie, it just cost more to make and market than it will bring in.

The elephant in the room is TWDC went from a no brainer, "no worries plop your kids in front if it because its Disney", to, "Is this Disney film safe to show my kids"

Now, we know this is a fraction of the population, but there was a time ZERO families felt this way.

I do blame social media and YouTube for fanning the flames for the clicks and views.

 

[Miss Rori]

While I believe social media/YT have definitely distorted how many people actually hate The Walt Disney Company and All Its Works at this point, at the same time I don't think that had as big an effect on the poor reception of Wish as those click-baiters wish (heh).

Just about all family animations (G/PG) this year have had an uphill climb at the box office, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse being the two exceptions that were big news from day one. Certainly the streaming shift has hurt many of these films. But why did Elemental still end up half-a-success-story - in that it's a film that hung on and is genuinely liked by many people, even if that wasn't enough to make its theatrical run profitable in the wake of that dreadful first weekend and mediocre initial reviews from Cannes - while Wish will, probably, only stick around the next two weeks due solely to a lack of wide-release titles and see its screen count plummet when Wonka arrives on Dec. 15?

It's easy to just say that Wish got undercut by poor promotion on Disney's part (given Disney's ad campaigns of late have often felt half-baked) or the eeeeevil social media crowd (or Disney itself just being eeeeevil), but Elemental didn't have a lot of support going into its release either. Indeed, while Disney probably could/should have put the hard sell on Wish a lot sooner than they did once October came around they pushed it the way they haven't any animated feature since Frozen II. The trailers/teasers, song previews, toys, books, etc. were everywhere by the turn of November, and prior to the opening weekend there were the preview screenings.

And it's absolutely possible the trailers, song previews, and screenings may have done more than anything else to kill its chances. "Why does the animation look unfinished?" "Why do the songs sound like Disney Channel numbers?" "Doesn't the villain have a point that not all wishes should be granted?" "Aren't they just recycling Isabella's design for Asha?" "Isn't that star just a Luma?" When those are the questions commonly being asked on places like YT, Reddit, etc., that's not a sign people are being hooked by the story and characters, so it's not surprising there wasn't a huge rush to the theaters that first weekend. Certainly I wasn't inspired to see the film by them. I was one of those skeptical of the film from the announcement because I just never got into the Frozen-style features and thought the concept of "origin for the wishing star" was hopelessly cheesy, and all the preview material just made it look worse. Apparently, my concerns were justified.

While there are certainly people who liked the movie out there, it seems more in the wake of the professional critical reviews' rather muted praise than the sparkling word of mouth the Pixar film enjoyed. This isn't a movie people are willing to champion the way Elemental was, where they were touched by the love story and/or the metaphor for the immigrant experience (which ironically I think Disney may have downplayed in advertising because anti-immigrant sentiment is so high these days and they didn't want to look "woke" with a sympathetic portrayal). Wish just doesn't seem to have anything that connects with people - it isn't a love story, it isn't about friendship or family really, it isn't a funny comedy, its attempts at old-school throwbacks come off to many as contrived, it's a dud as a musical, etc. To go by the reviews it's just "Isn't Disney awesome?" and "Wishes are great aren't they?"

 

[Miss Rori]

The narrative never establishes that citizens’ lives are deficient after they give up their wish. Only evidence of this is the 18 yr old guy who’s sluggish and “boring.”

And as pointed out elsewhere, that character (Simon) is the Sleepy analogue anyway! Of course he'd be "sluggish and boring"!

 

[TsWade2]

Well those critics and grifters can kiss my…….you know what! I’m going to see Wish in two days and I don’t want those stupid philistines ruined my excitement. I’m still concern with the box office, I hope it makes good legs in coming weeks. In the meantime, I’m going to see Wish with my best friend in two days and I’m going to enjoy it the best I can.

 

[mickEblu]

Well those critics and grifters can kiss my…….you know what! I’m going to see Wish in two days and I don’t want those stupid philistines ruined my excitement. I’m still concern with the box office, I hope it makes good legs in coming weeks. In the meantime, I’m going to see Wish with my best friend in two days and I’m going to enjoy it the best I can.

If you hurry you may get to the theatre before Wish is available on Disney +!

 

[TsWade2]

If you hurry you may get to the theatre before Wish is available on Disney +!

You know people wait longer than what Disney did for Encanto and Strange World at DisneyPlus. Nice try!

 

[Miss Rori]

I have no idea what the appropriate budget for such a film is, so I’m not in a position to assess whether it’s too much or not.

A problem a lot of movie studios, not just Disney (they're just the most obvious) are having right now is that they're catching up on a lot of projects that were stalled/delayed/etc. by the pandemic, and it's just not the same theatrical moviegoing market that it was in 2019. $200 million+ budgets for tentpole releases (especially "known quantities" such as sequels) didn't look so outrageous when multiple movies were pulling in $800 million+ theatrically each year, never mind merchandise sales and home media/streaming revenue down the line. Spending big to make it big. This was also the point where lower-budgeted projects - say, dramas and comedies - started just being dropped from theatrical schedules altogether until awards season, leaving the really expensive movies as pretty much all the studios had! (When was the last time Disney released a simple family comedy to theaters? That gets sent to streaming now.)

The pandemic, I think, stalled a lot of momentum built up by production companies/studios' franchises like Fast and the Furious, Marvel, and to a lesser extent DC and even the Disney live-action/CGI remakes. Combine that with one too many releases going straight-to-streaming or day-and-date theatrical/digital...and perhaps even some buyer's remorse about the quality of some of the movies that were huge in 2019...and if people are going to see movies theatrically right now, they seem to prefer stuff they haven't seen a zillion times. Maybe that's a biopic like Oppenheimer, or an IP not milked dry like Barbie or The Super Mario Bros. Movie -- and because they weren't as "sure bets" as Marvel they generally don't have $200 million+ budgets to make back. Also: Covid shooting protocols did inflate the budgets of certain movies, as did extensive reshoots on films like The Flash and The Marvels.

So one could see the current theatrical situation as an extended hangover for the industry as audiences move on from what was big 5 or so years ago but the studios can't catch up immediately because they have to work all this stuff out first. The hope people like me have is that this will turn out like the fall of the big studio system at the end of the 1960s when big epic musicals and war movies started bellyflopping left and right and nearly sank studios like Fox, but also allowed an "in" for lower-budgeted dramas, comedies, horror, etc. to catch on with the public instead, the fabled "New Hollywood" of the 1970s.