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Wish (Walt Disney Animation - November 2023)
- Thread starter DCBaker
- Start date
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I have not seen a satisfying postmortem analysis on Wish yet. Its performance at the box office was just - weird. Really weird. Yes, I know there were quibbles with the plot. But can anyone say with a straight face that Trolls 3 and Migration had stronger openings because they had airtight plots that you just couldn’t argue with? Something bigger than a few plot inconsistencies went wrong with Wish, although I’m not sure what it was.
Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
I chalk it up to general Disney fatigue and this movie not having any aspect that would grab people's attention.
Wish was more the same, another "princess" movie, and without a viral soundtrack or legitimately funny humor to make it stand out. Everything about it was mid, not worth rushing to see in a theater vs waiting 3 months for Disney+
Trolls 3, Migration, and Kung Fu Panda 4 don't bring anything new to the table either, but they are safer bets to please younger children and they have a kind of obvious junk food appeal to that demographic.
Disney movies typically benefit from more cross generational appeal, but the kinds of people who would see them without kids didn't care this time.
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
That's an interesting take... I have wondered if the YouTube generation is just going to have different tastes. Everything on YouTube is fast, instant gratification gags, no need to even follow a 90 minute plot. I don't know if that's enough to explain a 64 million box office by itself, but combined with the Disney+ effect it might be.
Disney Irish
Premium Member
Short attention spans + the D+ effect = low box office for Disney
Tha Realest
Well-Known Member
Here’s a recent one:
Disney's 'Wish' Lost Over $130 Million, According To New Report
'Wish' made over $250 million at the global box office, but it wasn't enough to turn a profit.
www.cartoonbrew.com
The problem is it doesn't go into detail as to why the movie underperformed, why there wasn't positive word of mouth to give it the legs Elemental had in a much thinner timespan for movies in general (remember, there were no big studio wide releases the first two weeks of December).Here’s a recent one:
Disney's 'Wish' Lost Over $130 Million, According To New Report
'Wish' made over $250 million at the global box office, but it wasn't enough to turn a profit.
I think the "Disney fatigue" issue Animaniac93-98 cites was a big part of the problem - there was nothing new about the story or character types featured, the song they focused on the most in the ads ("This Wish") was incredibly generic, the jokes that turned up in most of them weren't funny. And absolutely the lack of cross-generational appeal hurt it. "Wishes coming true" isn't much of a hook for kids above, say, 8. I think one reason Wonka did well the next month despite a lot of skepticism after the trailers dropped was that it did have cross-generational appeal, not just for older viewers who like the various iterations of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but for those who like cheerful fancy musicals, ala The Greatest Showman (a movie that was a big hit with seniors!). Or teens/young women who like Timothee Chalamet.
As for Those Young People and Their YouTube/TikTok...well, Disney pitched this movie hard to that demographic with the song previews and it just resulted in terrible advance buzz. And they and other viewers have no problem appreciating longer-form storytelling. Sarah J. Mass' "romantasy" novels are thick as bricks, the biggest hit at the box office so far this year is the 165-minute Dune Part Two, Shogun was a big hit for Hulu, etc. But there needs to be a meaningful story to sustain their interest, and the one Wish has is hollow and without compelling stakes even at less than 90 minutes.
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
I very much agree that the extent to which this film bombed is very surprising. Even a mediocre film (which is really what this was) with such a big marketing push and connection to an established "franchise" (ie. Disney animated features) should earn more money than this just on sheer momentum.
It does seem like there was a combination of factors that did and did not have to do directly with the film. On the latter point, I agree with the "Disney fatigue" point others have noted in the sense that the mood toward Disney had turned relatively negative by the time this film came out. Beyond all the culture war stuff, there was a sense that all of the company's franchises had been bled dry, multiple press stories about customer dissatisfaction with price gauging in the parks, and the whole messy Iger-Chapek-Iger transition that gave the sense of a company in crisis. I know most filmgoers don't pay attention to this stuff, but I do think a broad narrative about Disney having lost its way did enter the popular consciousness.
Then, the film honestly just wasn't that good and the advance buzz evaporated as soon as the first reviews started appearing that were surprisingly negative. Elemental came out in the same circumstances regarding the Disney brand and opened poorly, but was good enough to eventually shine through. Another aspect for Wish is that the songs really didn't hit. The soundtrack recently hit a new peak on the Billboard top 200 after it went to streaming, but that peak was #150 and it has already left the charts again while Moana continues to sit at #164 in its 370th week on the charts.
I do also think there is something intangible about this film that has made it more divisive than the average harmless family animated feature. I think there are enough good faith people who were irritated by either the plot or the music (on the latter point see this reddit thread, for example) to suggest something went wrong in the creative process that contributed to a worse case scenario outcome for what should have, at worst, been a disappointment.
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DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
Tolls 3 and Migration got people back though. At least in greater numbers than Wish.
Well, the Trolls series is a known quantity at this point - though given virtually everyone saw the second movie on streaming due to the pandemic, that the third movie did so well theatrically is honestly impressive - and Migration was helped by being the last family title of the holiday season, and legging it out into January/February. It probably would have done better if there were more interest in the big holiday titles overall (Aquaman 2 was no Avatar 2 to put it mildly), and if Wonka hadn't been as popular as it ended up being, but it was satisfying for its target audience and pleasant enough for their parents.
On the other side of the coin, any positive word of mouth Wish attained might have led to a bump over Christmas break if not for Wonka basically being the same kind of family fantasy musical but far more accomplished.
It might be that Disney in most of the promotional material was positioning this movie as the culmination of their first 100 years as a studio, "A story a century in the making" and all that, and how it was a love letter to the fans and "the tradition", and just didn't deliver on their promises. This should have been on the level of a Snow White or Beauty and the Beast because they sure loved bringing those movies up in the trailers! It's sort of like how in 1991, everybody thought/hoped that Hook was the movie Steven Spielberg "was born to make" and would be a legit event given his previous track record - even with its ups and downs - and it ended up being a warmed-over, sentimental adult fantasy pitched at a juvenile level that had the basic Spielberg fantasy motifs and shots but not the passion or magic.
Established YouTube animation critic The Mysterious Mr. Enter got around to Wish this week in a half-hour-and-change video that's one of the better rundowns of what went wrong, particularly why the animation doesn't look right, why Asha doesn't work as a character (i.e. we're told she's not trying to be an apprentice just to get her family's wishes granted, but...we never learn what she actually wants the job for), why Magnifico really isn't as bad (prior to using the book) as the film insists, etc. One of the best comments is that the film has many of the common tropes of Disney fairy tale films...but doesn't understand why those movies used them, and only includes them because that's what's "expected". (Mind the Adult Language)
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I don’t know, I guess those all sound like pretty minor factors to me. Trolls is a known entity but Disney is a more recognizable brand overall. Migration was the last big animated feature of the holiday season but Wish was one of the first so should have benefited from a longer holiday run. The appeal of Wonka could have hypothetically hurt Trolls and Migration just as much, I don’t think it’s like people would say they could see multiple kids movies but only one musical.
I think the thing that really drove the strangeness of the situation home to me was the 1900 Park Fare reopening. From what I’ve read, that was clearly meant to be the Wish character meal and was hastily redesigned. That Disney was confident enough in this movie to theme a character meal after it makes me think that whatever metrics they use to predict success - test audiences, polls, whatever - must have been pretty good.
Disney absolutely went into this thinking it was a guaranteed hit; just look at all the shelfwarming merchandise! I tracked the promotional progress of the film over '23, and they were screening highlights of the first 35 minutes to exhibitors and on the animation festival circuit (in particular, the "This Wish" and "I'm a Star" numbers) and were getting good responses by all appearances. The Asha walkaround performers were ready to go at the theme parks well ahead of time, the Epcot entrance display for the Flower and Garden Festival this year features character topiaries, and there's still some merchandise yet to be released, i.e. a Hallmark Keepsake Ornament of Asha and Star. But already with the 1900 Park Fare example, I think they're trying to sweep this under the rug as fast they can.
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I honestly don't know what to make of all that. I mean, who cares if Asha isn't the most popular character ever, why not just include her as part of the Park Fare mix? And why didn't they wait to see if Wish was a streaming hit a la Encanto?
Chicken Little
Member
So i've been thinking about it and I think it just had a lot of it going against it (aside from not being a good movie) instead of one big cause. in my opinion it had:
- a generic title (I know some people who thought it was a documentary for the company, some thought it was the short with all the characters, cruise confusion)
- The trailers were boring for kids and didn't had bright colors to caught their attention
- The animation looked cheap and not what people expect from Disney
- No appeal to boys (most of the focus on Frozen marketing was on Olaf/Sevn and in Moana Maui/The rock being on it for parents not to think it was a "girls" movie)
- No appeal to adults, they make a large portion of the audience for the biggest animated movies(Since most comedy movies go to streaming now, animated movies are the closest thing and very popular options for date nights or taking all the family (this is the reason why animated movies that look funny usually make much more at the box office (minions, mario, kung fu panda, most pixar)
- No viral songs (none of the artificial hype Disney did to the songs seemed to catch, trolls 3 managed to get a few on tik Tok)
- No repeated viewings, cause well, no one watched it a first time
- There's probably more reasons too.
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I imagine it's hard to justify keeping a new character in meet and greets, much less character meals, if there's a very likely chance that the diners won't recognize them. While people will just pass up a meet and greet in the parks if they're not interested, a character performer is stuck in the "rotation" at the restaurant, running the risk of being ignored or having awkward encounters with kids who are clamoring to meet Cinderella, Tiana, etc. That's not fair to the performer, and it's disappointing to the diners. If Disney had cut its losses and dropped Wish on streaming sooner (say, Christmas), there would have been a better chance of diners recognizing Asha by the time the restaurant reopened, but that's not what they did - and especially given how popular Mirabel remains and how there aren't any other character meals at the moment that would fit her any better it made sense to drop Asha and bring her in, even if she's the odd one out thematically.
This is an interesting point - how comedies so rarely get to theaters now that animated features have become the default alternative. It goes a long way to explain Illumination's consistent success, one reason Wonka did well (it is very much a comedy), and perhaps why the last few Pixar movies had an uphill battle (as the B.O. Boys podcast joked regarding their winter reissue program, at this point they seem to be made solely for maudlin middle-aged men in terms of their plots and tones - well, maybe not Turning Red). And the only comedy Wish had to offer was "wow, look at this moron/flake" awkwardness and kindergarten-level talking animal jokes going by the trailers. Skimming through it on D+ the other night it was amazing how Valentino had no truly funny lines, which given he had no reason to be in the film otherwise...that's awkward.
(Think of how many ads brought up "The Happy Chicken Song" bit. On the one hand, as Mr. Enter points out, there's no reason for Star and Valentino to be causing trouble with that. On another, as others like CinemaSins have noted, an adult, maybe even a kid, might realize that the chickens seem to be happily killing their unborn kids. On another, if Star's magical enough to randomly work powerful magic like this why doesn't it just free all the wishes, or purify Magnifico from the dark magic, etc.? Not to mention that the filmmakers kept this scene but cut "A Wish Worth Making", the resolution of Sabino's character arc given how little he does for the rest of the movie [who stuck around for that post-credit scene?].)
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Chicken Little
Member
Definitely, I think the last comedy( non rom-com) that got a big push was No Hard Feelings almost a year ago, which didn't do that great at the box office but it was able to make a profit thanks to Sony not having a streaming service and selling it to others
.About Pixar, they have forgotten that the main reasons people went to their movies was because they looked funny and then they ended up really liking them because they had heart. I think the Up/Toy Story 3 acclaim really got to their heads and now their movies feel very calculated about their structure and having an "emotional" and/or "sad" scene. But at least they still have a plot ( looking at you disney animation movies since 2019)
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
Good point, although still a bit of a bummer.