Wish (Walt Disney Animation - November 2023)

[Miss Rori]

Here are the box office stats from yesterday, for those who want to know:

Domestic Box Office For Dec 13, 2023

www.boxofficemojo.com

 

[brideck]

(To be fair, having not seen the film but knowing the ins and outs of the plot from tie-ins, why does Magnifico have/need an apprentice anyway? If he's that desperate to cling to power, what are they supposed to be doing?)

I honestly can't recall if this is answered in any real sort of way outside of as a plot conceit to get Asha into the chamber of wishes. All of that happens in the first 15-20 minutes, and I wasn't fully oriented to the film yet at that point. Surely Magnifico says something during the interview about why one is wanted/needed. If I see it again over the holidays (and I might -- I kind of want to see if/how the art pops in 3-D) I'll pay attention to that.

Here are the box office stats from yesterday, for those who want to know:

Domestic Box Office For Dec 13, 2023

www.boxofficemojo.com

I keep a pretty close eye on screen counts at my local AMCs (so I know what to use my A-List reservations on) and somewhat unexpectedly to me, Wish has been held pretty steady this coming weekend, so it's got at least some chance of stretching its legs a bit.

 

[TsWade2]

Whoops! Another Best Animated Picture nomination for Wish. Sorry, haters. Also nominated for best song.

THE COLOR PURPLE Receives 5 Critics Choice Film Nominations - Full List of Nominees!

The Color Purple has received five Critics Choice Film nominations. Nominees include Danielle Brooks, Maestro, Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Colman Domingo, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Disney's Wish, Barbie, and more. Check out the full list of nominations now!

www.broadwayworld.com

It'll most likely may not win, but it's great that Wish receive some love.

 

[𝕴𝖒𝖆𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖊𝖗97]

This thread is going nuts! I for one would like to see a forum where everyone can express their views (which are their right to believe and share) without being labeled -ist, -phobic, or woke. Isn't it possible to just express an opinion and be okay with it if someone expresses an opposite opinion? This shouldn't be a battlefield!

The culture war has no place in a Disney forum. And yet, there are things that have happened in the past few years that have made the two collide. And I think that speaks volumes for the current state of the company.

I'd like a return to talking about Disney, not politics. Part of that is the people in this forum, and part of it is Disney itself, which has injected itself with political under- and over-tones.

I know I disagree with a lot of people on this forum on many topics: Disney, politics, society, and more! But I'm glad we're all able to talk about the company we're interested in here.

I look forward to a day, hopefully soon, when a thread about Disney's most recent animated feature doesn't devolve into political bickering.

 

[DKampy]

I agree there is no woke messaging in Wish or at least it’s not very noticeable. It does have Woke optics though. I’ve shared my thoughts on the 7 friends. Also if you’re someone who perhaps is not a fan of them race swapping the Blue Fairy, Tinkerbell and Ariel in one short year then Asha might be enough to turn you off. It’s not racism. It’s a reminder of politics, DEI etc which = not an escape in the mind of the movie goer. This is why I say DEI at Disney sucked at their job. Not very savvy with their choices and the timing of their releases in the grand scheme of things. Wish suffered from the compounding loss of trust/ faith from the audience.

Wish also suffered from the movie being De-Woked mid production. Disney fans don’t have a problem with the messaging? And you re saying that after Bobs interview from a couple weeks ago where he said that messages need to take a back seat again? Ok obviously I’m speaking with people who can’t connect the dots or are just in denial.

Bob’s a politician… I don’t really care what he said…he also said that these decisions where made after he stepped away, but all the films were green lighted before the pandemic… while he was still CEO…he is mistakenly catering to the anti-woke mob… IMO it is not going to work… it is only going To emboldened those who rage against Disney

I did not find The Little Mermaid woke at all… To complain about as you say “race swapping” Ariel…tells me you must not have watched TLM… Halle Berry felt perfectly cast as Ariel… even the harshest critics praised her performance… Spiderverse was more woke than TLM… and look how that performed

 

[DKampy]

Yup. It’s been an evening. Don’t worry. I’m relatively certain that a classic delete-a-thon is on the way. And then we can get back to the important task of reading posts from people hating Wish by people who did not even see Wish. Fun times!

Yes… The Mom must be on vacation or something… I am surprised some of these comments are still here including my own

 

[Tha Realest]

Mother must be away. She loves to delete all sorts of stuff, so it’s any time now.

Honest question- why do you persist in coming back here knowing you constantly eschew the forum rules, keep getting suspended, and seem to despise half the posters?

 

[brideck]

Honest question- why do you persist in coming back here knowing you constantly eschew the forum rules, keep getting suspended, and seem to despise half the posters?

Not my question, I know, but perhaps... some people are worth melting for?

 

[Casper Gutman]

Honest question- why do you persist in coming back here knowing you constantly eschew the forum rules, keep getting suspended, and seem to despise half the posters?

I think Buddy's a valuable poster even if I may not always agree with him and I hope he sticks around.

 

[TP2000]

My 22 year old daughter saw Barbie with a friend on opening day and came home telling me it really wasn't "woke". I saw it with her the next week and loved it. And I didn't come out describing it as "woke" either.

The only person who could honestly describe Barbie as being "Woke" would have to be stuck in 1973 and be upset that Barbie was suddenly allowed to be a doctor instead of a nurse, or the plane's pilot instead of the stewardess, or be an Astronaut instead of a go-go girl. (Not that there's anything wrong with go-go girls! Some of my best friends have been go-go girls.)

As a reminder, 1973 was 50 years ago. If you're that stuck in the past as to think Barbie in 2023 is "woke", you're hopeless.

 

[TP2000]

What we need are some good updated box office numbers.

I can help with that!

Wish is still a massive global box office bomb. It is on track to lose at least $200 Million for Disney.

What's interesting is that foreigners dislike Wish even more than Americans do, on a per capita basis. The damage to the Disney brand isn't confined to just the deplorables in St. Louis and Salt Lake City, it extends to Stockholm and Singapore as well.

 

[brideck]

What's interesting is that foreigners dislike Wish even more than Americans do, on a per capita basis. The damage to the Disney brand isn't confined to just the deplorables in St. Louis and Salt Lake City, it extends to Stockholm and Singapore as well.

I know it wouldn't surprise you to know that Disney+ has roughly 60 million subscribers (excluding India) outside of the US. They've probably also been trained to wait for the digital release, unless you think that's somehow a uniquely American phenomenon.

 

[Willmark]

Being a biological parent also does not give you the right to demand your thoughts and hopes be imposed onto OTHER people’s children. It also does not legitimate attempts to define other people (and other children) as abnormal and less human.

Being a parent is not an excuse for bigotry, and it’s disgusting to use something so beautiful as a shield for something so vile.

Society is under no obligation to reinforce the thoughts and hopes an individual may seek to impart to their children, especially if those thoughts and hopes are widely seen as socially destructive. More importantly, children are free to develop their own thoughts and hopes as they grow and learn, and if those do not perfectly reproduce their parents’ thoughts and hopes it is not a legitimate reason to launch a vitriolic moral panic agains institutions associated with childhood development - institutions like Disney.

Who here said this?

 

[Sir_Cliff]

So the deception was that Magnifico doesn't tell them the stakes of him taking their wish nor the likelihood that it'll almost certainly never be granted, ie giving false hope but yet taking an important part of their personality.

This is a valid point, but again, it's only 12 wishes per year in a town of thousands of people. Of course they know the likelihood they're not going to win in their lifetimes! And they do have some idea things are rigged because apprentices generally get their wishes. That's the key thing Asha's concerned with at the start! (To be fair, having not seen the film but knowing the ins and outs of the plot from tie-ins, why does Magnifico have/need an apprentice anyway? If he's that desperate to cling to power, what are they supposed to be doing?)

This is exactly what I keep coming back to: they know their wish will almost certainly not be granted unless they lack basic mathematical skills. You could argue Magnifico's criteria for granting wishes is hidden, but the fact most won't get granted is not.

The warning about authoritarianism and power corrupting, I think, could have been the basis for a very interesting film. It just isn't well-written enough to work, at least in my view. The situation is quite murky regarding the degree to which the citizens are just consenting to something they shouldn't versus being actively deceived, and you also have to embrace the notion that the most important thing in life is following your own wishes/dreams to find the conclusion satisfying. Weirdly, Rosas also remains a monarchy.

By comparison, I think Elemental handled Ember having to deal with following her own dreams and desires as well as respect and duty toward her family and culture very well. The internal struggle and final conclusion was far more satisfying than the fight against Magnifico, at least for me, as there was a struggle between a competing desire for freedom and feelings of responsibility that the character had to balance. The happy ending in Wish just seemed too easy and simple to me.

 

[Tha Realest]

I think Buddy's a valuable poster even if I may not always agree with him and I hope he sticks around.

I’m not saying he should leave. I appreciate his perspective. I just don’t get why he’d want to stay given his constant irascibility towards his view of the forum rules and their enforcement, and his emotional reactions to some of this.

 

[Phroobar]

The only person who could honestly describe Barbie as being "Woke" would have to be stuck in 1973 and be upset that Barbie was suddenly allowed to be a doctor instead of a nurse, or the plane's pilot instead of the stewardess, or be an Astronaut instead of a go-go girl. (Not that there's anything wrong with go-go girls! Some of my best friends have been go-go girls.)

As a reminder, 1973 was 50 years ago. If you're that stuck in the past as to think Barbie in 2023 is "woke", you're hopeless.

Well Barbie did start out as a hooker.

 

[Phroobar]

I know it wouldn't surprise you to know that Disney+ has roughly 60 million subscribers (excluding India) outside of the US. They've probably also been trained to wait for the digital release, unless you think that's somehow a uniquely American phenomenon.

Why does Universal not have this problem? Even the hard core Disney fans didn't show up. In fact I would bet most of you didn't show up to see it. Why? If we are such fans why are we there first showing?

 

[brideck]

This is exactly what I keep coming back to: they know their wish will almost certainly not be granted unless they lack basic mathematical skills. You could argue Magnifico's criteria for granting wishes is hidden, but the fact most won't get granted is not.

Why do Americans spend over $100 billion on lottery tickets every year even though they know they will almost certainly not win? Humans are horrible at understanding odds and will do pretty much anything with a massive benefit if there's even the slimmest of chances it might happen.

 

[brideck]

Why does Universal not have this problem? Even the hard core Disney fans didn't show up. In fact I would bet most of you didn't show up to see it. Why? If we are such fans why are we there first showing?

So we're on the same page, which Universal movies are we talking about here? This year, they've managed two viral successes in Oppenheimer and M3GAN. The rest of their biggest movies have all been known entities as part of franchises (e.g. Fast X, which was hardly a success anyway) or based on well-known properties (e.g. Mario, FNaF), and those are the movies that are still getting people to see them in theaters. Generally, audiences aren't showing up for things that they don't already recognize.

Is the question about why people don't wait for them to be on Peacock? (I'm assuming that's where they all go.) I don't have Peacock (it only has 60% of the number of D+ subscribers in the US, after all), so I don't know if they have a consistent, well-known, and fast release plan for getting their movies onto the platform. The only one I know about for sure is FNaF, which did inexplicably get a day and date Peacock release, but still managed to do well in the theaters. Horror is a genre that has also still done well in the theaters (the freaking Nun II almost made a $100 million), so people have turned out in some numbers. It probably could have been an even bigger smash without the Peacock release.

If you're comparing to Trolls 3, I'd suggest that everyone would certainly still be calling Wish a bomb, even if it were doing the marginally better numbers that Trolls has pulled in.

Edit: All that to say, that I do think Disney has had marketing/messaging/target audience problems with some of these recent movies. Your elevator pitch to the public has to be understandable in a single sentence and appeal to the audience you're seeking. Disney's budgets imply that they're going for a wide, all-ages audience, so the pitch for Wish had to be something like "a young woman and an adorable magical star team up to defeat an evil king." But they put too much nuance/complication into the evilness of the king, and then revealed that nuance in the trailers. Mass confusion.

 

[Tha Realest]

So we're on the same page, which Universal movies are we talking about here? This year, they've managed two viral successes in Oppenheimer and M3GAN. The rest of their biggest movies have all been known entities as part of franchises (e.g. Fast X, which was hardly a success anyway) or based on well-known properties (e.g. Mario, FNaF), and those are the movies that are still getting people to see them in theaters. Generally, audiences aren't showing up for things that they don't already recognize.

Is the question about why people don't wait for them to be on Peacock? (I'm assuming that's where they all go.) I don't have Peacock (it only has 60% of the number of D+ subscribers in the US, after all), so I don't know if they have a consistent, well-known, and fast release plan for getting their movies onto the platform. The only one I know about for sure is FNaF, which did inexplicably get a day and date Peacock release, but still managed to do well in the theaters. Horror is a genre that has also still done well in the theaters (the freaking Nun II almost made a $100 million), so people have turned out in some numbers. It probably could have been an even bigger smash without the Peacock release.

If you're comparing to Trolls 3, I'd suggest that everyone would certainly still be calling Wish a bomb, even if it were doing the marginally better numbers that Trolls has pulled in.

Thank you for reminding us of all of the Universal films released this year that greatly exceeded their expectations.

How many Disney films could say the same?