Farerb
Active Member
It's because the people who were teenagers or in their early 20s when they saw those takes, internalized them and are now working at Disney.
Internet culture ruined real culture.
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Wish (Walt Disney Animation - November 2023)
- Thread starter DCBaker
- Start date
Internet culture ruined real culture.
Definitely not joking because of exactly what you say in the first sentence of your 2nd paragraph. Disney Animation movies have never particularly asked you to think about themselves in terms of the real world and Wish is not really any different. It is 100% understood by the audience (or should be) that the wishes we are talking about here are things like wanting to open a restaurant, wanting to fall in love, wanting a child, wanting to inspire the next generation, wanting to fly, wanting to explore, wanting to pursue our own dreams and have security and peace of mind at the same time. All of the wishes and dreams that our heroes throughout Disney animation history have sought. We should all get those things if we want them, and yes, that is if we're willing to do the work for them.
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
The problem is that Magnifico actually brings up the issue that some wishes might have harmful effects if granted and Asha basically just dismisses the idea. So, I don't think it's unreasonable to think about that in the context of them film because the potential for negative wishes or, at least, unintended negative side effects of granting everyone's wishes is raised and then just waved away.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
I disagree with your reading. Magnifico's concern was with wishes that he thought might destabilise his personal authority, which is why he took issue even with Sabino's rather innocuous desire to create inspirational music. There was never a suggestion that he cared about the public good.
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
Normally I would agree, but in Wish Magnifico actually calls the topic to the audience’s attention, which I think makes it a little different. Granted his criteria for what a “good” wish is are specific to his particular stance on Rosas national security, but still, in making the topic of “So are these good wishes?” a thing, it brings it to the viewer’s attention.
I don’t think that made or broke the movie, but if they were going to bring up the topic, I think it would have helped if they had a song devoted to introducing a sampling of people and their wishes. Lin Manuel said something about how he wrote a couple of songs in Encanto to solve the problem of “how do you get your arms around this whole family?” That quote stuck with me because it struck me as a wise approach when there’s a lot of characters involved. I do think Wish suffered from the fact that we don’t know anything about most of the people making wishes and even Asha is kind of a blank slate of a character.
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Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
I read it with a little more nuance in that he identified the public good with his own rule. That's obviously self-serving and can be said of many dictators throughout history, but they went to such pains in the film to show how happy everyone was at the beginning of the film that when he suggested a wish might not be granted because it could destroy the kingdom it didn't seem an entirely unreasonable concern.
I tend to feel the same way that most of the issues being discussed here probably would be waved away if the sum of the parts was greater. The problem is that, at least in my view, none of the elements really clicked entirely, be it the plot, the music, or the characters. That makes it easier to pick apart things such as what appear, to some at least, as plot holes. For example, I also felt even Asha just sort of does the things that were needed to move the plot along more than having a particularly convincing character arc from nervous teenager to leading a rebellion and then, for some reason, fairy godmother.
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LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
But the only concrete examples we see of such ungrantable wishes belie the notion that he is being rational or fair in his risk assessment. He comes across instead as a paranoid and controlling autocrat.
They absolutely did this in the 2nd song of the movie. The lyrics don't directly address individual wishes, but if you're paying attention to the visuals, you certainly get to see a number of wishes and what they're all about. There are 3 that we return to repeatedly throughout the movie. We shouldn't need to know that Alice the milkmaid wants to fly, Bob the banker wants to explore, etc. and know anything concrete about their lives to be able to care about them.
They went to pains to show how everyone thought they were happy at the beginning of the film. They immediately broke this illusion with plot point 1 when Asha sees the flyer, the explorer, etc. doing absolutely nothing with their lives, prompting her to make her own wish to the stars.
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I don’t want this to come across as snotty, so with respect, I’m pretty sure it’s Writing 101 that it’s on the writer to make people care about their characters. They don’t get to say that they’re human, ergo we don’t need to know anything concrete about their lives to care about them.
You could, to my mind, make that argument about universal healthcare, or effective altruism, and so on. In that case it’s fine to sort of admonish others that we are all human and no life is any more or less valuable than any other, whether you know them or know anything about them or not. Screenwriting is a different story though. I’m under no moral obligation to care about the dreams of a fictitious cartoon character, and it really is the job of the movie creators to make me care.
Which is where plot point 1 comes in -- seeing how truly hollow the "happy" existence of those same citizens of Rosas is. That brief sequence was heartbreaking for me and mine.
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DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I think you’re talking about how logically consistent the “wish system” was in terms of the overall plot, while I’m talking about how effective it was in terms of making an interesting movie. Regarding the former, it does seem like the system was a bit of an odd thing for many of the people of Rosas to opt into in the first place (many of the wishes were fairly obtainable, why put them in a lottery with very low odds?), so I think it makes sense in terms of the plot that they might have wanted a different system. I’m just saying the viewer didn’t really get to know these characters or develop an investment in their wishes being granted.
I’ll reiterate, though, that I don’t think Wish was a horrible movie, and it seemed at least good enough for the usual under-12, princess loving audience. I haven’t heard any negative feedback from that crowd, so I don’t know why it did so poorly at the US box office. It might not have been emotionally impactful enough to go in the Disney Hall of Top Earners, but it seems like it should have done at least ok at the box office.
I was about to say: If these people willingly gave up their perfectly obtainable wishes into a system they knew would not likely grant them, then it's on them if they're not happy. And even if they do forget the wish, don't they have anything else they'd like to do with their lives that they could move on to instead? In the real world our desires evolve and adapt all the time. (Indeed, how many stories are about people who start out wanting one thing and then end up realizing they want another thing more?)
I thought that too in the runup to opening; I had no interest in actually seeing the film after reading up on the plot and sampling the songs, but I figured the people who ate up Tangled and Frozen would go for this, and Disney sure promoted it heavily (I haven't seen so much merchandise for any Disney release since Frozen II, even counting stuff like Star Wars and the MCU). I think a few things got in the way:
1) The ad campaign was vague in the early going with the teaser trailer and posters giving very little idea of what the story was (aside from "generic Disney princess fantasy"), and once the full-length trailers arrived they seemed to evoke reactions of "Remember how much you loved these old movies that you could just watch at home? Here's a rehash of those with ugly animation!" and/or "Wait, it's bad that the villain won't grant wishes willy-nilly?" and/or "Isn't she Isabella from Encanto?" from a lot of people.
2) The song previews were an absolute disaster for PR, the bizarre lyrics and tones in particular getting a lot of mockery. That's not what you want a musical's advance press to be.
3) No one outside of Disney Adults cared about a corporate centennial and since so much of the press (and the movie) was about "Disney's 100, Disney's awesome, Disney's this, Disney's that"...
4) Professional critics couldn't find reasons to support it -- even many of the "Funko critics", as I've seen them dubbed on Twitter, weren't especially enthusiastic about it -- and I'm getting a sense that they're slowly becoming more important to a film's prospects again. (They definitely helped give Wonka a boost the following month, a movie lots of people were similarly skeptical about based on the advance marketing.)
5) Being a "woke" Disney film with an Afro-Latina lead and being co-directed/co-written by women brought out all the ultra-conservative clickbaiters to bash it, and when the opening weekend receipts came in it was easy and profitable to keep kicking it when it was down in YT videos, blog posts, etc. Beyond that, you'd be hard pressed to find any positive reviews on YT even from less slanted souls, pointing to how bad the word of mouth must have been in general. If it had been better, it certainly would have had stronger week-to-week holds over the next two weekends when there were no wide releases beyond Beyonce's concert film.
6) The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes got a more enthusiastic reception than expected, especially from teen girls/young women, which were this movie's primary target audience beyond the generic "family" crowd. For that matter, both those demographics had Trolls Band Together as an option for a Thanksgiving movie outing. And by the time Christmas rolled around, Wonka was in theaters -- offering a Disney-style musical in its own way, but with much wider potential appeal. There was also Migration, which I thought would do better than it did but times are hard and families only have so much time and money for movie outings, leading to choosier choices than we might have seen back in 2019. (See also how underwhelming the take was for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.)
7) A lot of families are just waiting to watch on Disney+. If you look up news about this movie from the past few weeks on Google virtually all you get are puff press releases about the digital purchase release, the hard copy release, and "When is this going to be on Disney+? We don't know yet." Disney seems really determined to kick that can down the road even though there's no benefit at this point to delaying the streaming release - it's been snubbed by the big awards organizations. Yes, the Blu-Ray release is clearly timed for Easter and the assumption parents will buy it for their kids but I'm betting we'll hear about WB doing the same with Wonka shortly, which is even better suited to an Easter basket...
(Deposits $0.02)
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
Wish’s domestic box office is an interesting analysis. I’m hard pressed to think of a recent animated children’s movie that did worse. Paw Patrol 2, Trolls 3, Migration… all did better. I tend to think it’s a combination of the Disney+ factor and people boycotting Disney. I just feel like buzz, reviews, and social media don’t play a huge role in deciding what movie to take your kids too. That tends to be more about whatever happens to be playing in theaters that is semi palatable when you’re desperate to entertain your kids for an afternoon, or what kids are clamoring to see. So while the factors you mentioned probably impacted adult attendance, they should have had at least the usual reliable crowd of families looking for something to do.
The one exception was Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken, which ate dirt, but that was largely because Dreamworks/Universal tossed it away.
They did, but that crowd had multiple other options between Trolls Band Together, Wonka, and Migration. The latter two are still in the box office top five this weekend! That Wish hung around as long as it did is a testament to the need for family movies in the marketplace (as the B.O. Boys podcast puts it, "The rats need their cheese"), but it could have had Wonka's staying power if people liked it. Wish quickly became a movie defined by how much people were disappointed by it; nobody was making YouTube videos about how they could have fixed Migration. And a lot of that is at Disney's feet not because of boycotts or what have you, but because they promised a world-beating animated feature -- in a year that saw a lot of exceptional animated movies -- for the centennial and just didn't deliver.
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
This is where the discussion about Wish makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me. I think I would have had the same question as Magnifico about Sabino's wish to inspire people: to do what? I also think showing wishes like people wanting to fly kind of supported Magnifico's contention some wishes were unrealistic alongside others that could be potentially harmful. They did come back to the flying one at the end, suggesting it would lead the person to design aeroplanes. Still, I felt watching the beginning of the film that Magnifico did make a reasonable point!
I like Bilge Ebiri's comment about Sabino's wish in his review (at Vulture): "Really? He wished that at eighteen?"
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I guess my view is - I simply can’t imagine that kids and families care about YouTube critiques. Maybe I’m totally wrong. But I feel that’s just a niche they’re not a part of. And in terms of kid friendly-ness, I just felt Wish was pretty good. This is 100% anecdotal / opinion of course. But I took my niece and nephews to Wish, and they really liked it. My niece and to a lesser extent my nephews were singing along to the songs for weeks. Took them all to see Migration and I think I scarred my son for life (granted he shows signs of being neurospicy in some ways so maybe he’s not totally representative, but still.) We were driving in the car today and he suddenly got a 1,000 yard stare and intoned “I didn’t like the scary duck movie.” Facepalm at the mom fail, because he’s probably going to be having flashbacks to the heron sequence in therapy one day. My niece and nephews didn’t mention it after viewing it either, I think they were mostly in that one for the popcorn.
So again, anecdotal, but I think as a kid movie Wish should have done pretty well. That makes me think its box office performance was either due to Disney+, boycotts, or maybe adult viewers actually make up a sizable percentage of the audience for animated movies these days. In that case what you’re saying would make sense to me, because I see criticism of the film and social media reception as applying more to teens and young adults.
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
I do wonder whether we've reached a point where it's harder for "pretty good" movies to make a lot of money at the box office. My sense with Wish was that it was building up quite a lot of momentum until the reviews came out, which were surprisingly negative and killed the momentum completely. Even before the movie was released, the buzz around the film was painting it as another failure from Disney.
On the face of it, at least, I would think the film probably suffered from a combination of increasing reluctance from families to spend money on going to the theatre to see movies in addition to paying for streaming services, Disney's brand troubles that go beyond boycotts to a narrative that the company has lost its touch, and the film itself generating buzz that reinforced rather than overcame these issues. In short, a film being released in an adverse environment that ended up not being strong enough to overcome those challenges. Elemental wasn't exactly a blockbuster in the US, but it is an example of where that last element was different.
I tend to agree about the YouTube reviews. To me, that seemed more like piling on once the mainstream reviews had already tilted negative and probably part of a world of which most of the film's audience has little knowledge.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
My feeling is that many, and perhaps most, Disney fairytales would fall apart under this level of scrutiny. Perhaps Wish is more vulnerable to such criticism than its predecessors because it isn’t as well done to begin with. For me, the conceit worked well enough that I didn’t feel the need to question it (though I certainly understand why you feel otherwise).