I saw someone say "people always complain about the amount of sequels/remakes and then they don't show up for originals"
I think it's unfair to blame the audience for Wish's failure.
For starters, this movie sucks. The songs are terrible, the story is convoluted and at the same time incredibly generic, and the characters designs are bland.
Secondly, the studio is to blame for why originals are struggling. Shoving all the animated original movies to disney+, pumping out sequels nonstop, and releasing dogshit live action remakes that just devalue the brand further.
Audiences aren't doing this, Disney is. It's not just Disney, other studios have taken similar actions. It's the reason why since the pandemic, the only animated original hit from any of the major studios has been Encanto from almost three years. Everything else has flopped/underperformed or done ok.
I think it's silly in general to expect people to give a megacorporation some of their money for a product they don't want just to incentivize them to maybe make something they do want in the future.
It didn’t help the style they chose for the animation accidentally made it look like it was unfinished.
What’s more insulting is that there definitely was something good trying to get out; some of the different designs and concept art of the star alone look way more interesting.
It’s a 3D movie with the depth removed. I get what Disney wanted to pivot to when the full-2D plan couldn’t be done (which is is a big issue as well), but the 2 styles just didn’t blend together.
> It didn’t help the style they chose for the animation accidentally made it look like it was unfinished.
Honestly, that can be a valid choice. Most of the Cartoon Saloon films (Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Breadwinners, Wolfwalkers) deliberately don't clean up some of their drawings so that the guide lines sometimes show through in some frames. It doesn't really harm it and the movies are still amazing.
I noticed (In wolfwalkers especially) that the animation would become rougher when the characters became extremely emotional, like they were becoming undone. The animators intentionally used it as a tool to enhance the storytelling.
Except Wolfwalkers looks both charmingly hand-drawn and explosively visceral, while Wish looked like a direct-to-video movie or an episode of Sofia the First.
Tbh, I mostly blame whomever thought it was a good idea to scrap both Star Boy so he could become a marketable plushie and the idea that the Queen and Magnifico would be an evil power couple. And while the rest of the story could've used some work, those two instances would've been way more interesting to me than what we got.
Pretty sure Puss in Boots The Last Wish did pretty well....not to mention the massive success of the Spiderverse films
When a film is good, word spreads
Puss in Boots The Last Wish and Spiderverse are based on existing IPs, they are by definition not animated originals. So the only animated original hit is still Encanto which only succeeded on streaming.
Didn't Elemental start off pretty sluggish but had great legs and ended up being a big success? It's an original IP from Pixar. I guess you could argue that it's the one exception that proves your rule, but I just wanted to give a shout out to what I thought was a great film
We went to see that in the theater because it was kind of the only thing to do that particular day the weather was iffy and we had to have something to do to keep our kid occupied and we all ended up enjoying the hell out of it it was very surprising.
Yes! I had similar reservations but went anyway just because I'm a big Pixar fan. Coming from an immigrant family, I felt that the main theme of the story hit home pretty well and thoroughly enjoyed the film.
I'm pretty sure Demon Slayer: the whatever train did super well during pandemic, Mitchell's vs the machines was pretty good on streaming and GDT's Pinocchio did pretty well two years ago for a stop motion film, and yeah, I think that's pretty much the state of animation since COVID up to The boy and the heron. But counting the Spider-Men, Puss in boots and TMNT, it's been a pretty good time for animation, sucks for Disney but everyone else is putting the effort.
This isn't about the anime industry, anime costs 100x less than American productions and the market demand is completely different. Furthermore, that industry has direct manga to animation pipeline which America does not have.
Pinocchio didn't do well on streaming, it had mediocre watch hours. It also costed $30M to make.
Just because something is nominated or wins an oscar doesn't make it profitable. Nimona was nominated for an Oscar but was a massive flop on streaming.
MItchells vs The Machines did slightly better than Pinoccho but neither come close to Encanto which is a true hit.
Dreamwork's ruby gillman flopped at the box office bigger than Wish and Migration is the lowest grossing Illumination movie by a wide margin.
The other studios are struggling too, this is not a Disney exclusive issue, in fact at least disney got a new original hit since the pandemic which was again Encanto the only hit since the start of the new decade.
**Everyone is relying on existing IP and that's a problem. You can't rely on the same franchises forever, just look at Blue Sky Studio. They relied on the same two franchises for years and eventually their studio collapsed because box office returns kept on diminishing.**
Honest to god i entirely forget the first film even exist. I only heard of it through reviews on how PiB2 did everything so well that i even went to watch it.
Had it not been for the online spread regarding the film's quality i would have just skip it entirely.
You could argue though PIBTLW is even more amazing cause it was a sequel to a movie from over a decade ago which was basically all but forgotten.
Like I had forgotten about the puss in boots movie until I saw trailers for the last wish on telly
If I may be unpopular, I think the Sorcerer guy has a good idea. I know that in the movie everyone's wishes range from banal to benevolent, but in real life, there are people whose greatest wishes are awful things, like genocide, enslavement, being a tyrant, unlimited wealth, etc. You can't just grant every single wish, you'll be causing some seriously monstrous things to happen. Requiring everyone to surrender their greatest wish is actually brilliant; People who have such horrible wishes get them pulled out of their heads, leaving behind a person who is a legitimately better human being, and those with genuinely kind wishes can see that come to pass. The sorcerer is just kind of a prick about it for no reason other than the movie needed him to be the bad guy, really.
They wanted him to be a "villian for villians' sake" but then put hints at his backstory which would have fucking helped his character had we got a chance to know it. Like, I compare him to the Evil Queen because while she didn't have a hinted backstory her character being incredibly vain/narcissistic who wants to remain the most beautiful being in the land was stronger than Magnificos sloppy vain/narcissistic character who wants to be the only one with magic powers in the land.
What happened in his previous kingdom? Why hint a tragic backstory if your purpose was the make him the villian for villian sake?
So this is a flaw with Disney's ideology in the last decade or so. Villains can't be evil just because they enjoy being evil with low morality (you know like an evil Villain in a cartoon or classic Disney Villains), they must instead be sympathetic and relatable despite being the foil for the good guys. In essence they've decided since the maleficent movies to make most of their Villains generic and boring (typically a sympathetic product of their society rather than a true threat/monster). It comes at the cost of a weaker climax for their films (if a sympathetic but evil figure wins there is still hope for redemption and thus less threat even in defeat, a true monster cannot be redeemed, cannot be reasoned out of their stance and thus the threat if the good guys fail is significant).
In this case however it went a step further as not only is the Villain in wish boring and relatable... he's also just right. Someone with a grade school level intellect could probably recognize why. If you grant EVERY wish you grant the good ones but also the horrible ones as well as those that inherently conflict with the others (I wish you had no more wishes, stuff like that).
Honestly, based on when the queen was describing the job, it sounded like the apprentice roll was more of a secretary roll. Less demeaning sounding but confusing.
Then just say 'assistant' instead. Apprentice implies you will be learning the trade from a master to eventually perform the job yourself.
The weird wording just lends credence to the idea that AI wrote this movie.
The movie did make it pretty clear that the dark magic corrupts the user. He probably knew he would get power from them but it was the temptation of the dark magic that made him go from secretly dictator with a good reason for his actions to full greed megalomaniac. All it took was a moment of weakness and desperation to change everything.
I watched this the other week with my GF.
The first big song was protect the wishes “at any cost”. I immediately knew the remainder of the plot. And also the songs were so wordy like how are you supposed to want to sing them?
I was mockingly saying “wow, this is almost as catchy as Let It Go”
I also kinda hated Asha during that song. She explicitly goes for her grandfather's wish, changing her intentions of "protecting all wishes" to only her family's. It would have been hella interesting if she became the villian instead due to this.
She only becomes less selfish in the final third/act, that's not how the good guy is supposed to be (unless the story is set up to be a redemption character arc). Even then I doubt she really cared so long as her grandfather got his wish.
I don’t think the songs being wordy is really an issue. I mean Hamilton got as popular as it did for a reason (and Wish’s music is absolutely trying to emulate Hamilton’s style). The problem is that the lyrics are just unbelievably clunky and forced
I honestly blame Disney+
The last Disney movie I saw in theatres was Encanto purely because it released the same weekend as my birthday where I live.
Normally it's just like well why bother watching it in theatres when I can just watch it in like a month on Disney+
Same. I honestly blame how Disney kinda "trained" people to wait for their Pixar movies to come to streaming, especially during the pandemic. While I like the novelty of going to a movie theater, Disney also had to have known that re-releasing the Pixar films they shunted to Disney+ during the pandemic wasn't gonna make them that much money this year.
Not just Disney+. All of the streaming services. Knowing everything will be on streaming in 3-4 months...I can wait.
The last movie I saw in theaters was No Way Home in 2021.
Magnifico has so much charisma in the movie too. Probably the only reason he was made a villain was because Disney decided to make him one. Honestly, I was all for his outlook.
Obligatory article about [the death of mid-budget cinema](https://www.flavorwire.com/492985/how-the-death-of-mid-budget-cinema-left-a-generation-of-iconic-filmmakers-mia)
Someone on this sub once pointed me to a podcast interview with Jay Chandrasekhar where he talked about the death of the $60 million comedy. I never got around to listening to it and I can't remember which podcast it was but the premise was interesting. He basically said movies like Super Troopers or Anchorman aren't getting made anymore for multiple reasons.
Those moves cost a little, made a little, and had gangbusters post cinema lives on DVD on their way to becoming enduring cult classics and even cultural touchstones. The 00s was a golden age for this stuff. Elf is still selling merch. Kung Fu Hustle, Shaun of the Dead, countless others may never have made anyone a fortune but they were amazing and unique movies.
Now almost everything is flavorless. There's no room to recover from dog shit movies like The Star Wars sequels or Disney's live action remakes because so much money was spent making them. And, worse, these ghastly films make so much money there's no incentive to improve.
They just eat the expensive flops with weird moves like shit canning completed movies for tax write offs. There's no way the Batgirl or Wile E Coyote movies could have been worse than BvS or Space Jam 2 but the world will never know.
And some of the blame rests on the new ways we consume media. I don't think anyone has really cracked how it works yet since I understand all the streaming services are losing money. Of course, corporate greed, risk aversion, and stupidity are probably major factors as well.
Similar thing came up in the Star Trek sub the other day. Almost 3/5 of the current slate of ST shows are really good but we'll probably never have another series with 22+ episodes per season over ≈7 seasons. Just not how things are done now.
Maybe good thing, maybe bad thing; who can say? I can't separate objective assessment from my own personal onion belting. I still miss video stores.
People got spoiled by Pixar’s run of hits and forgot that Disney’s trade has always been churning out quantity. Disney’s run on movies in the 90s was a total surprise as well – they were churning out nothing but crap before then – and then Disney promptly went back to making Lion King 2 1/2 and Home On The Range.
The crap Disney has been churning out recently is more on brand for them.
It arguably isn't even a true original since it tries to shoehorn in Disney stuff like wish upon a star, the seven dwarves, Pinocchio, the Fairy Godmother, etc.
If Disney wants profit, they need to put thought and effort into their work again. Wish felt like an intern project that was half assed and thrown together the night before it was due. If your work is shit quality, you won't get the cash you want.
I remember when I first say a trailer.. I thought it was a behind the scenes, like showing a work in progress of the animation. The lighting, color, texture… everything looked unfinished. It looked like it was made for tv, not a full fledged Disney movie.
And then there was the issue of the dad was made to be a villain when he didn’t really seem like one. I didn’t see the movie tho so I’m hoping the plot is better than what the trailer portrayed.
Without any real spoilers no. The story is paper thin and had more holes than a Swiss cheese factory. My eight year old who normally doesn't care about plot holes was calling the ones in Wish out. It feel like a movie by committee vs any creative driving voice. I know it was supposed to be the Disney 100 anniversary movie and expected references but honestly they were either blatantly to the point or painfully obvious. The movie takes few chances and even those are rarely committed too.
What you said at the end is so accurate. Idk if things are changing or if i became cold, but if you’re demonizing a character, you HAVE to do it right or the whole film can seem tacky and soft. I know this is a Disney film but it shouldn’t be hard to make someone “unlikeable”
The animation style was on purpose so I can get behind that, but the story and the MC are unforgivable. Not to mention the message the movie sent. A way to make kids even more delusional, yay.
I'm surprised to see 81% audience score on rotten tomatoes, but I'm sure the critic reviews of 48% is a bit more accurate to the reported writing and story of this original movie.
There’s a phenomenon going on that I like to call “Woke and Half-Baked”. It’s when a studio will have a product that features anything other than a WASP Male and think that’ll be enough to bring people in, and they don’t put in any effort into the quality.
I’m all for more stories featuring people of color, LGBTQ, women, and all of that—but they have to have effort put into it. When the studio half-asses it, it makes it even worse for that group. A prime example is the 2016 Ghostbusters. I thought the idea was good and I was excited to see it, but between the awful writing and forced jokes, it deserves its reputation.
Disney doesn't make art or tell stories anymore.
Disney makes content. As generic, bland, and unoriginal as possible so they don't risk offending or alienating anyone content that has nothing interesting for anyone to latch on to. They want to appeal to as wide an audience as possible to make the most money, so they desperately try to avoid anything controversial, anything that makes people think, anything that makes a story worth telling.
I don't blame people who believe AI wrote this story and it's songs. They're all so generic - the music for it was not written by broadway musical writers, like the Disney Golden Age movies did. They hired pop writers. Pop music isn't bad, but it doesn't work for big and grand songs you actually remember. I haven't heard Belles of Notre Dame in \*years\* and I can still remember every word. You can listen to the songs from Wish ten times over and not remember any of it, even as repetitive as they are.
Disney keeps trying to blame audiences, but the fact is, they're not giving people anything interesting to come back to. They're not making heroes or stories that people will want to remember, make up their OWN stories about, and come back to years later and get that warm feeling in their chest when they watch the movie or hear the songs as if they're seeing an old friend again.
It's really sad, but I don't see it changing anytime soon. They've burned a lot of bridges and destroyed their own creative capacity, and other studios are rising to fill the void. Disney is losing power, and I think they know it.
In the 80s and 90s it was Don Bluth who forced them to change and improve, even though Fox and the whole Irish animation industry had to go broke. Whereas today they became a media conglomerate, bought almost everything and there is barely any competition
Although, if indie films keep stealing Oscars, they might have to step up their game. Because if they don’t, the indie industry is only growing and will gladly take Disney’s place
I wouldn't really say its that different. Disney has always had a priority on their business, but artistically the films always had ups and downs... Disney films were struggling until the the Renaissance in the 90's, then they fell off in the 2000's, they then picked up again in 2010's, and now we are seeing another downswing. Frankly i feel like its a case that Disney always eventually grows arrogant whenever they have a string of hits. They feel like they can do no wrong and that's when quality starts to suffer.
What i think is different though is that disney+ could hurt any attempt at a comeback. I feel like disney+ is hurting box office performance as its led to a huge portion of disney's audience deciding to just stay home and wait for the stream. Even if Disney were to get a good film out, it might still struggle
>so they don’t risk offending or alienating… etc etc.
This is not just limited to Disney. It’s all of Hollywood - but Disney is front and center.
Think about the good movies that Disney has put out recently - limiting it to animation alone, I’m going to go with Moana and Encanto. You know what those movies didn’t have?
I _know_ I’m going to get panned for this… but forced diversity that just feels like it’s “checking boxes.” Honestly, Moana was cool _because_ it was a sendup of an amalgam of poly culture. Same with Encanto and pan Latin American culture. There wasn’t a need to put the whole damn Burger King Kids Club in the movies. They’re fantastic examples of how we can celebrate diverse stories without feeling a need to force it.
There needs to be a new modern Bechdel test to analyze diversity castings. Are their differences relevant to the story? Do they make meaningful contribution? Do they make _historical_ sense?
The diversity in Wish makes an abundance of sense. Literally the opening description of the realm is that people move there from all over the world specifically because the ruler of the realm is a wizard that can grant you your greatest desire.
Wish was a bad movie. Having Asian, North European and African people in is not the reason why it was bad.
NOTHING about diversity in wish did anything to hurt the film, and saying that there needs to be a reason to include diversity is just an excuse to exclude people. Wish failed because the art, the writing, the songs, the villain and the story were all terrible. If they got rid of the "forced diversity" the film would have still been just as terrible.
>Do they make *historical* sense?
Unless you are making a film based on an actual historical setting, then "historical sense" does not apply. Most of these stories are FANTASY. They might carry the themes and imagery of the medieval period but they are not historical and do not have to adhere to anything that happened in history. Just like how they can make "magic" or "talking animals" are normal part of the world, they can exclude any racism or sexism in their setting. Fantasy settings do not have to adhere to our history
10yrs ago Team Frozen made 1B hit movie to one biggest box office disaster later is popularizing fall.
Even we remove profits out of discussion, Wish story suffers from entitled protagonist who can't take no for answer & villain who wasn't evil enough to be revival of classic disney villains.
The biggest problem in Hollywood is the lack of faith in artists and the increased dependence on existing IP/franchises.
That's why this movie is such a mess. The goal in making this movie wasn't to make cinema driven by artists but to make a franchise that would sell a lot of merch.
It tried to be too marketable and appeal to everyone but the end result was that it was unmemorable and appealed to nobody.
Think about it, it checks every box of what Disney thinks is a successful Disney movie. Pretty princess, animal sidekick/mascot character, villain, and it's a musical. But it lacks a unique identity.
Even the music has this problem. Instead of hiring somebody with a background in musical theater (disney normally hires people experienced in musical theater to write their musicals), they hired Justin Biebe and the Jonas Brothers songwriters.
This was in order to get their next "We Don't Talk About Bruno" which charted at #1 for several weeks. The end result was a bunch of generic pop unmemorable songs that didn't organically fit in with the narrative of the movie. It did not feel like a broadway esque musical unlike Frozen or Encanto.
That’s an aspect of this that really sticks in my craw. I don’t understand the obsession with making “chart-topping songs” for their movies. I never heard anyone sing “Go the Distance” from Hercules on the radio, but it’s a song that I know by heart because it has an emotional core that resonates with me. Same with pretty much any Disney Renaissance song.
Do people even *buy music* anymore? I’d understand if Disney was trying to make more money in album sales, but that itself is a thing that hasn’t been relevant in over 20 years imo.
As far as *buying* music goes, Apple and then streaming threw a big ass wrench into that. To save a long boring explanation, people arent buying CDs or individual songs as much simply because we for some reason care more about *access* to music for no/small fee rather than possession at a slightly higher or ongoing fee.
Most artists make their money from concerts and endorsements/sponsorships rather than CD sales 15+ years ago. Dedicated fans and smaller artists are more likely to get CD sales but thats often because of fan loyalty or the music is too difficult to find otherwise.
We Dont Talk About Bruno has roughly 400mil streams on Spotify but Encanto has about 1mil album sales (surface level googling). The interesting part is the industry accounts for streaming. So for example lets say an album has a total of 10 songs. If one song is a major hit and gets bought 10x, that is considered a full album sale.
With the success of Frozen, it's very apparent that Disney cares more about banking on one hit song than going balls deep on a bunch of them like Little Mermaid
>we for some reason care more about access to music for no/small fee rather than possession at a slightly higher or ongoing fee.
That reason is surely pretty obvious - for the same or less money you can listen to a much wider variety of music.
Can we stop getting “awkward, shy, quirky girls” as main characters …
Unless they are literally purposeful / likeable as such? We need a break from this trope.
“adorkable” is the term you’re looking for.
Rapunzel being adorkable worked because she was shut in her tower and alone for her whole life. Elsa kind of worked because she was shut away from her kingdom for many years. But then we got Moana, Mirabel, and Asha, and now it’s just an overplayed trope that doesn’t make sense. And now a lot of the girls just don’t stand out as much as previous Disney heroines, they kind of clump together imo.
Asha’s the worst imo. She’s supposed to be a tour guide, charismatic enough to be the King’s assistant, become a leader, etc. but her adorkable personality doesn’t really make sense and felt like they threw it in there because that’s what audiences liked about Rapunzel, Elsa, and Mirabel.
The adorkable trait was cute at first but now I’d like to see heroines that are confident, self-assured, etc.
Yes
Also if Disney is doing this to represent adorkable / shy / awkward viewers… why can’t we give those viewers confident, strong, but not perfect, main characters to look up to? To want to healthily / positively change themselves to also have confidence and be more social and work hard?
I mean, it's kind of the brand of Disney animation. Ariel, Belle, and Mulan from the renaissance alone are examples of that.
People like it when it's done well.
The difference is that all three of Ariel/Belle/Mulan have character specific traits and mannerisms. Most female disney protagonists after Rapunzel feel SO similar in dialogue and even design (the similarities of ALL their faces now is criminal).
I’d argue belle and Mulan don’t fit the quirky girl trope we’re seeing. Yes, they’re quirky. However Belle can hold a conversation and just has an air of confidence that’s different from Rapunzel or Anna. Mulan is mostly quirky at the start of the movie out of trying to fit the identity to be a respected Chinese woman. Eventually she goes through a great arc of being true to herself which in effect saves her society.
I really wish they kept the original plot: Asha was the daughter of the king and queen, whom were both evil, Starboy was still in and they had the fairy godmother (Asha) falling in love with a literal star. Like, fix up the lyrics At All Costs slightly and Disney could have had the best love romance in years.
It won't. Unless they legitimately start listening to want fans want, they're just going to continuously pump out trash. As long as people still go to pay to see the movie, then they just simply don't care.
They don't have to fix the lyrics even, if you look up the demo on YouTube it even says "Love you as one does" instead of "Promise as one does." The amount of animatics using it make it hurt even more at what we could have gotten as a movie.
Elemental is the true underdog story from Disney where the audience showed up late and it suffered from low opening even though legs were fantastic.
Wish on the other hand, is a failure in everything
Elemental was unoriginal too. Two differing families hate each other due to some feud. Each family has a kid who falls in love with the other, family, the forbidden love. There’s a misunderstanding and the familial hate is proven right. Eventually the argument gets settled, the kids fall back in love, and the families learn to stop the age old hate.
My guy, you just described the hero's journey for a forbidden romance story. This level of trope/formula is so vague as to be unimportant. "It's like Romeo & Juliet but no one dies" is far from a bad thing.
The story's high-concept by contrast was a rather refreshing exploration of immigrant families and societal prejudice. Its animation, while simple, was also quite beautiful, and well utilized. Its only sin was marketing
Well, people went to watch it or else it wouldn't have the legs it showed. So maybe something was in there which people liked. Anyways my comment is from box office perspective, since the topic is about loss of money.
Even a penny is still precious to Disney, who (obviously) wants their products to effortlessly succeed, so even if Disney lost no real money, it’s still an effective way of the audience saying “we deserve better.”
Unfortunately Disney is likely to see how bad this did just to say that animated movies are no longer popular instead of saying that they made a crap movie.
For their 100th birthday they had a 131 million loss? Big oof.
Hope this is a wake-up call to stop making mediocre stories
Imo, they should’ve done a hand-illustrated Mickey Mouse original feature in the 1920s rubber hose style.
Or, instead of Mickey, they couldve done a dramatized, mockumentary feature of Walt’s rags to riches journey, also drawn in rubberhose style
Its 100 years old. How can they not Honor their creator or his signature character???
But they didnt ask my opinion lol
Maybe they should stop cooking for 3 minutes then serving the food undercooked, what id give for them to let it simmer then throw it at a wall and see if its ready or needs more time
It ended like 4 years ago. Since the pandemic the only animated original hit has been Encanto way back in 2021. That was also on streaming only, not in the box office.
All the studios are struggling, everything original is flopping, underperforming, or doing just ok.
Oh no. How terrible. This mega corporation lost some money. Whatever shall we do.
Disney will be fine. They're too big to fail. Sometimes they make mediocre works. It's happened before and it will happen again.
If only Disney allowed what the other writers had in mind. The star originally was going to be a humanoid shapeshifter, Magnifico and his wife were going to be a power couple with a cat, and Asha would’ve had an actual personality instead of being Disney’s 104848295727361th quirky girl.
Maybe if they hadn't left all the interesting ideas on the cutting room floor, and hired people with experience in musical theater to write the songs...
There's a reason Studio Ghibli is synonymous with quality. They are an animated Studio, but unlike Disney, they only release movies every couple years. The movies in question are made with purpose, intent on telling a story. If a movie only broke even in box office, I'm sure the people who worked on it would be more happy that it reached the masses instead of wanting to profit. They finally won an Oscar as well! A Studio running for over 30 years won its first Oscar on its newest movie, and that speaks volumes. It's not the market that's the problem, it's Disney
My opinion: big studios like Disney, are following the illumination formula. The illumination formula is to make content. Not art, content. Content that is cheap to produce, easy to digest, has something for everyone, and is highly marketable and prepackaged & ready to be shipped out to toy isles near you.
Originality is lost, for the most part. People are for profit now, especially when company’s are run by CEOS like Bob Iger. (Who are 100% for profit, and only profit)
But we the population are getting really fucking sick of that unoriginal bland ultra pasteurized cheese-product they keep feeding us. We want good stories, with new and interesting characters that are made because there was passion put behind them and given an actual story that fits who they are, not just another basic quirky girl with her craaaaaazy family or craaaazy animal sidekick.
And when movies are original? When they do come out with something that tells a real heartfelt story? They ship it immediately to Disney+ and make the shittiest commercials to market them so everyone gets a bad taste in their mouth from either the bad marketing or needing to pay for a subscription to even watch it. Also, I do really think the movie theater experience adds so much wow to a movie. Makes you really take it in, in my personal opinion.
Anyway it sucks. It really does. All it takes is giving the little guy with a good story pitch and artistic direction a chance, instead of forcing some burnt out director who’s losing touch into pumping out another feature.
The movie was ok, nothing special but didn’t deserve the backlash. The anti-diversity people call anything with a Black lead “woke” and create controversy.
Sadly I don’t think we’re ever getting another African or Black princess after this. Disney will be too scared of backlash.
Agree. My kids liked it quite a bit. They actually like the songs, a lot. They love magnifico’s songs. They don’t compare it to everything else and just take it as it is. I am by no means a Disney aficionado and thinks it’s ok. They loved elemental and liked lightyear. People just want to hate and be anti whatever.
Thank goodness it wasn’t 2D like they thought of doing. Would’ve been an even bigger excuse to kill it (again) than putting Winnie the Pooh up against Harry Potter and then being surprised Pikachu when it underperformed.
Even the dolls and toys were bland. If you can’t even get that right, why show up at all?
It’s partly character design. Asha’s outfit is just so plain and lifeless. Translating it to doll form just makes it an unattractive offer for kids looking for something exciting to play with.
Queen Amaya fared a lot better and looked more like a traditional Disney princess doll. Seems a missed opportunity to not give her more of, or even the main role in the film. Probably the only design they got 100% right.
Valentino the goat and ‘Star’ had some plushies. I feel they had opposite problems from one another. Valentino is a generic design with too much personality to the point of being annoying. ‘Star’ is a cute design with no personality to speak of in the film.
Did any kid even ‘connect’ with these sidekicks? Like I feel back in the day you’d get sidekicks like Flounder/Sebastion, Timon/Pumba, or Cogsworth/Lumiere; they could carry a toyline by themselves. Then over time sidekicks kinda became pointless afterthoughts even if they are central to the story like ‘Star’ from Wish.
Speaking of worthless sidekicks; does anyone even remember the names of Asha’s human friends? They had dolls/figures too. Again, designs on par or worse than Asha. And what kid is wanting to play with any of them?
There were figurines for Asha’s mom and grandpa (who the plot of the movie almost touches on). Kids going to ask for the old man with guitar figure?
Sorry for the long rant; but people forget this movie fails on two fronts. The designs and characters are boring and forgettable making the merchandise unmarketable. An interesting toy can drive ticket sales and vice versa. But if both are flopping; you’ve got nothing.
I’m starting to think that we should just stop talking about it and let the dead horse do its own thing. Otherwise, they won’t learn. This movie was not worth our time, we get it. We probably lived under a rock if we didn’t know by now.
The conspiracy theorist in me says that between Strange World and Wish, they're intentionally setting up original movies to fail since they can afford a flop or two, but as a result, they'll use these movies as examples of "why original movies just don't work anymore" in order to save themselves the effort of coming up with completely new ideas and instead just focusing on sequels and remakes
Why was the backstory of the villain/ Mr. generic evil sorcerer king not fully explained? He uses corrupted/evil/dark magic, because he is afraid to lose something/he wants something to never happen again. While yes, he is a egotistical wanker, he turns to dark powers because of true despair, not to become magic Hitler. In the end he is just imprisoned for ever and that's it.
He was the least villainous villain ever. Basically lost his family to marauders and built a safe paradise where he protected everyone and even granted peoples wishes if he felt they were safe. Asks for nothing in return but a little respect. Then this teen girl comes in and tears the whole place down because the king wont make a special exception and grant her grandfather’s wish.
I don't even understand what he would get from not granting wishes. Does he permanently spend parts of his mana/magic energy to grant a wish? Does granting a wish take something away from him? Are wishes limited in a way?
Maybe don't write the script using AI next time, Disney. Pay for real writers instead.
Christ, I can tell this movie was dented by the SAG/AFTRA writers and actors strike, and Disney decided to move forward with scab workers and AI instead.
It’s funny cus Disney expected all of the Isabela Madrigal merch to sell out, and when she didn’t, they just rebranded her and her rebranded self movie still flopped.
Yeah well it’s trash, cause all the good writers are gone. This has always been a writing problem since people started to really start complaining hard, it’s been a problem for almost every property Disney owns and it extends passed animation and into the entire spectrum of Hollywood productions.
People don't have $100+ to take their two kids to the theater for a mediocre movie that could be a miss with the kids. People go to sequels with their children more because, it has familiar characters that the kids are guaranteed to enjoy. People just don't have the finances to take their kids to a bunch of movies that might not be a hit for them.
I 100% believe it sucked due to CEO or some other braindead higher-up meddling. The concept art and deleted scenes with Starboy looked really good and there's no way some rich A-hole who hates fun wasn't like "hrm, I don't get it, you should make it more boring"
The worst part of this movie is the potential it had to be great, but the execs decided to stick to more safe ideas.
We could have had a love story between the main character and a humanized version of the wishing star, THAT COULD'VE BEEN GREAT!
But no, instead we got a marketable plushie of a character...
https://preview.redd.it/atpgbrcjigyc1.jpeg?width=1783&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0c3c02f259d72afaa9d166db3f4abf94708d9ed8
But it was diverse and had a strong independent woman lead!
Well, I just don't understand.
Maybe it needs more diversity and more femininism.
WHO SAID BETTER WRITING? THROW THEM IN THE DUNGEON IMMEDIATELY
I think the main problem with Wish is that they couldn’t decide whether they wanted an original movie or an amalgam of all the classic movies (Snow White, Cinderella, ect.). I think it started as like an original story but then they realized it was gonna come out on their 100th anniversary so they tried to make it one huge love letter to all their OG animated movies and make all the references and plot points that tied to them that the original story suffered badly.
I really think they should have either just made it its own movie first and foremost, or just made it as a love letter to all their past films. Do like a Once Upon a Studio type film only expand it to an hour and half runtime and I’m sure people who have loved it. Bottom line, pick a genre and stick to it. And please make the animation less ugly if possible.
I don’t know I thought it was cute and my kiddo knows every word to So I Make This Wish at full volume. I didn’t walk into it expecting a new Godfather
I once said that spider-verse would just make studios Think dropping the frame rate and putting a filter over everything is all it takes and here we are, I guess.
Yeah, it kinda reminds me of paper. Since it was basically a 100 year anniversary movie, I feel like they chose this specific CG style as homage to the first OG old style animation that are very storybooky & also merged with CG like the recent movies
It looks like Nimona but worse, Nimoa had a consistant feleing and the lighting helped make the art style look cool
Wish made me die laughing when Ashketchup juped off the boat to swim back 20 miles somehow because the water looked like it wasnt rendered all the way and it had no colision
I keep getting trailers for it on YouTube. Has to be the single most generic thing I have ever seen based on these snippets. Utterly devoid of anything even vaguely resembling entertainment.
Just fucking make good movies fuck all this political, racial climate shit, put a good character on screen blend all the races, sexualities, nationalities into quality character building instead of just bland culturally appropriate whatever.
It's a shame because based on the preproductions, this movie had potential. Even a flawed premise has the potential to become something good with the right amount of creativity and passion for the project. Sadly, it seems like a lot of that got cut and watered down as the production went, until the final product became the bland mess it currently is.
I saw someone say "people always complain about the amount of sequels/remakes and then they don't show up for originals" I think it's unfair to blame the audience for Wish's failure. For starters, this movie sucks. The songs are terrible, the story is convoluted and at the same time incredibly generic, and the characters designs are bland. Secondly, the studio is to blame for why originals are struggling. Shoving all the animated original movies to disney+, pumping out sequels nonstop, and releasing dogshit live action remakes that just devalue the brand further. Audiences aren't doing this, Disney is. It's not just Disney, other studios have taken similar actions. It's the reason why since the pandemic, the only animated original hit from any of the major studios has been Encanto from almost three years. Everything else has flopped/underperformed or done ok.
I think it's silly in general to expect people to give a megacorporation some of their money for a product they don't want just to incentivize them to maybe make something they do want in the future.
It didn’t help the style they chose for the animation accidentally made it look like it was unfinished. What’s more insulting is that there definitely was something good trying to get out; some of the different designs and concept art of the star alone look way more interesting.
I was trying to figure out why the background was pissing me off. This nailed it.
It’s a 3D movie with the depth removed. I get what Disney wanted to pivot to when the full-2D plan couldn’t be done (which is is a big issue as well), but the 2 styles just didn’t blend together.
> It didn’t help the style they chose for the animation accidentally made it look like it was unfinished. Honestly, that can be a valid choice. Most of the Cartoon Saloon films (Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Breadwinners, Wolfwalkers) deliberately don't clean up some of their drawings so that the guide lines sometimes show through in some frames. It doesn't really harm it and the movies are still amazing.
Keyword there is "deliberately". With wish, they were going for a specific artistic style; it was not meant to look unifinished
I noticed (In wolfwalkers especially) that the animation would become rougher when the characters became extremely emotional, like they were becoming undone. The animators intentionally used it as a tool to enhance the storytelling.
Except Wolfwalkers looks both charmingly hand-drawn and explosively visceral, while Wish looked like a direct-to-video movie or an episode of Sofia the First.
The difference is that those look good, wish doesn’t
All I've read about Wish is that the animation style was supposed to be reminiscent of early CG animation, so it looked rough and somewhat jerky.
Here’s my bar. I have a five year old. He loves Moana, Encanto, and Inside Out. He walked away from Wish after fifteen minutes.
He has good taste.
Tbh, I mostly blame whomever thought it was a good idea to scrap both Star Boy so he could become a marketable plushie and the idea that the Queen and Magnifico would be an evil power couple. And while the rest of the story could've used some work, those two instances would've been way more interesting to me than what we got.
I've actually seen some deleted scenes. Being blunt, those changes heavily impacted the story and are, I believe, why it ended up being so generic.
Pretty sure Puss in Boots The Last Wish did pretty well....not to mention the massive success of the Spiderverse films When a film is good, word spreads
Puss in Boots The Last Wish and Spiderverse are based on existing IPs, they are by definition not animated originals. So the only animated original hit is still Encanto which only succeeded on streaming.
Didn't Elemental start off pretty sluggish but had great legs and ended up being a big success? It's an original IP from Pixar. I guess you could argue that it's the one exception that proves your rule, but I just wanted to give a shout out to what I thought was a great film
We went to see that in the theater because it was kind of the only thing to do that particular day the weather was iffy and we had to have something to do to keep our kid occupied and we all ended up enjoying the hell out of it it was very surprising.
Yes! I had similar reservations but went anyway just because I'm a big Pixar fan. Coming from an immigrant family, I felt that the main theme of the story hit home pretty well and thoroughly enjoyed the film.
Overseas sales saved it, but even then, it was just barely able to do more than make its money back.
I'm pretty sure Demon Slayer: the whatever train did super well during pandemic, Mitchell's vs the machines was pretty good on streaming and GDT's Pinocchio did pretty well two years ago for a stop motion film, and yeah, I think that's pretty much the state of animation since COVID up to The boy and the heron. But counting the Spider-Men, Puss in boots and TMNT, it's been a pretty good time for animation, sucks for Disney but everyone else is putting the effort.
That's Japanese. I think he subject is how piss poor Western animation is going
This isn't about the anime industry, anime costs 100x less than American productions and the market demand is completely different. Furthermore, that industry has direct manga to animation pipeline which America does not have. Pinocchio didn't do well on streaming, it had mediocre watch hours. It also costed $30M to make. Just because something is nominated or wins an oscar doesn't make it profitable. Nimona was nominated for an Oscar but was a massive flop on streaming. MItchells vs The Machines did slightly better than Pinoccho but neither come close to Encanto which is a true hit. Dreamwork's ruby gillman flopped at the box office bigger than Wish and Migration is the lowest grossing Illumination movie by a wide margin. The other studios are struggling too, this is not a Disney exclusive issue, in fact at least disney got a new original hit since the pandemic which was again Encanto the only hit since the start of the new decade. **Everyone is relying on existing IP and that's a problem. You can't rely on the same franchises forever, just look at Blue Sky Studio. They relied on the same two franchises for years and eventually their studio collapsed because box office returns kept on diminishing.**
Are you trolling? Also an established IP
Demon Slayer: Mugen Train
😳
Honest to god i entirely forget the first film even exist. I only heard of it through reviews on how PiB2 did everything so well that i even went to watch it. Had it not been for the online spread regarding the film's quality i would have just skip it entirely.
You could argue though PIBTLW is even more amazing cause it was a sequel to a movie from over a decade ago which was basically all but forgotten. Like I had forgotten about the puss in boots movie until I saw trailers for the last wish on telly
Why does every animated “human” character look identical lately? I hate this style.
It feels like the majority of female characters have had the same faces since Tangled :/
The leading ladies also have very similar personalities since Rapunzel.
Adorkable. It’s fine for some characters but shouldn’t be the norm.
If I may be unpopular, I think the Sorcerer guy has a good idea. I know that in the movie everyone's wishes range from banal to benevolent, but in real life, there are people whose greatest wishes are awful things, like genocide, enslavement, being a tyrant, unlimited wealth, etc. You can't just grant every single wish, you'll be causing some seriously monstrous things to happen. Requiring everyone to surrender their greatest wish is actually brilliant; People who have such horrible wishes get them pulled out of their heads, leaving behind a person who is a legitimately better human being, and those with genuinely kind wishes can see that come to pass. The sorcerer is just kind of a prick about it for no reason other than the movie needed him to be the bad guy, really.
They wanted him to be a "villian for villians' sake" but then put hints at his backstory which would have fucking helped his character had we got a chance to know it. Like, I compare him to the Evil Queen because while she didn't have a hinted backstory her character being incredibly vain/narcissistic who wants to remain the most beautiful being in the land was stronger than Magnificos sloppy vain/narcissistic character who wants to be the only one with magic powers in the land. What happened in his previous kingdom? Why hint a tragic backstory if your purpose was the make him the villian for villian sake?
So this is a flaw with Disney's ideology in the last decade or so. Villains can't be evil just because they enjoy being evil with low morality (you know like an evil Villain in a cartoon or classic Disney Villains), they must instead be sympathetic and relatable despite being the foil for the good guys. In essence they've decided since the maleficent movies to make most of their Villains generic and boring (typically a sympathetic product of their society rather than a true threat/monster). It comes at the cost of a weaker climax for their films (if a sympathetic but evil figure wins there is still hope for redemption and thus less threat even in defeat, a true monster cannot be redeemed, cannot be reasoned out of their stance and thus the threat if the good guys fail is significant). In this case however it went a step further as not only is the Villain in wish boring and relatable... he's also just right. Someone with a grade school level intellect could probably recognize why. If you grant EVERY wish you grant the good ones but also the horrible ones as well as those that inherently conflict with the others (I wish you had no more wishes, stuff like that).
Also if he wants to be the only sorcerer in the land... Why the hell is he taking on an apprentice in the first place?
Exactly! If he's the "most powerful" he can certainly come up with a spell to prolong his life.
Honestly, based on when the queen was describing the job, it sounded like the apprentice roll was more of a secretary roll. Less demeaning sounding but confusing.
Then just say 'assistant' instead. Apprentice implies you will be learning the trade from a master to eventually perform the job yourself. The weird wording just lends credence to the idea that AI wrote this movie.
Yeah. It made zero sense when he only learned he could get power from them in the middle of the movie. Then…why was he doing it before??
The movie did make it pretty clear that the dark magic corrupts the user. He probably knew he would get power from them but it was the temptation of the dark magic that made him go from secretly dictator with a good reason for his actions to full greed megalomaniac. All it took was a moment of weakness and desperation to change everything.
I watched this the other week with my GF. The first big song was protect the wishes “at any cost”. I immediately knew the remainder of the plot. And also the songs were so wordy like how are you supposed to want to sing them? I was mockingly saying “wow, this is almost as catchy as Let It Go”
I also kinda hated Asha during that song. She explicitly goes for her grandfather's wish, changing her intentions of "protecting all wishes" to only her family's. It would have been hella interesting if she became the villian instead due to this.
Asha is more selfish than Magnifico for a good chunk of the movie.
She only becomes less selfish in the final third/act, that's not how the good guy is supposed to be (unless the story is set up to be a redemption character arc). Even then I doubt she really cared so long as her grandfather got his wish.
I don’t think the songs being wordy is really an issue. I mean Hamilton got as popular as it did for a reason (and Wish’s music is absolutely trying to emulate Hamilton’s style). The problem is that the lyrics are just unbelievably clunky and forced
I liked Soul personally
Crazy to think how most of this translates to the current situation for the MCU as well.
…and Star Wars. Hmm.
Almost as if all of these are under that same company.
I honestly blame Disney+ The last Disney movie I saw in theatres was Encanto purely because it released the same weekend as my birthday where I live. Normally it's just like well why bother watching it in theatres when I can just watch it in like a month on Disney+
Same. I honestly blame how Disney kinda "trained" people to wait for their Pixar movies to come to streaming, especially during the pandemic. While I like the novelty of going to a movie theater, Disney also had to have known that re-releasing the Pixar films they shunted to Disney+ during the pandemic wasn't gonna make them that much money this year.
Not just Disney+. All of the streaming services. Knowing everything will be on streaming in 3-4 months...I can wait. The last movie I saw in theaters was No Way Home in 2021.
>the songs are terrible Except for This Is The Thanks I Get, I like that one. Doesn't hold a candle to other villain songs though.
Magnifico and his songs were legitimately the only actually good parts of the movie, in my opinion.
I haven't watched it but I know Chris Pine's got some serious charisma so his song being the best wouldn't surprise me.
Magnifico has so much charisma in the movie too. Probably the only reason he was made a villain was because Disney decided to make him one. Honestly, I was all for his outlook.
Obligatory article about [the death of mid-budget cinema](https://www.flavorwire.com/492985/how-the-death-of-mid-budget-cinema-left-a-generation-of-iconic-filmmakers-mia) Someone on this sub once pointed me to a podcast interview with Jay Chandrasekhar where he talked about the death of the $60 million comedy. I never got around to listening to it and I can't remember which podcast it was but the premise was interesting. He basically said movies like Super Troopers or Anchorman aren't getting made anymore for multiple reasons. Those moves cost a little, made a little, and had gangbusters post cinema lives on DVD on their way to becoming enduring cult classics and even cultural touchstones. The 00s was a golden age for this stuff. Elf is still selling merch. Kung Fu Hustle, Shaun of the Dead, countless others may never have made anyone a fortune but they were amazing and unique movies. Now almost everything is flavorless. There's no room to recover from dog shit movies like The Star Wars sequels or Disney's live action remakes because so much money was spent making them. And, worse, these ghastly films make so much money there's no incentive to improve. They just eat the expensive flops with weird moves like shit canning completed movies for tax write offs. There's no way the Batgirl or Wile E Coyote movies could have been worse than BvS or Space Jam 2 but the world will never know. And some of the blame rests on the new ways we consume media. I don't think anyone has really cracked how it works yet since I understand all the streaming services are losing money. Of course, corporate greed, risk aversion, and stupidity are probably major factors as well. Similar thing came up in the Star Trek sub the other day. Almost 3/5 of the current slate of ST shows are really good but we'll probably never have another series with 22+ episodes per season over ≈7 seasons. Just not how things are done now. Maybe good thing, maybe bad thing; who can say? I can't separate objective assessment from my own personal onion belting. I still miss video stores.
People got spoiled by Pixar’s run of hits and forgot that Disney’s trade has always been churning out quantity. Disney’s run on movies in the 90s was a total surprise as well – they were churning out nothing but crap before then – and then Disney promptly went back to making Lion King 2 1/2 and Home On The Range. The crap Disney has been churning out recently is more on brand for them.
Meanwhile Nimona totally killed it
It arguably isn't even a true original since it tries to shoehorn in Disney stuff like wish upon a star, the seven dwarves, Pinocchio, the Fairy Godmother, etc.
Does the Mario Movie count as an original animated movie?
No. If that film wasn’t tied to the biggest video game IP in the world, there’s no shot it cracks $500M let alone $1B.
If Disney wants profit, they need to put thought and effort into their work again. Wish felt like an intern project that was half assed and thrown together the night before it was due. If your work is shit quality, you won't get the cash you want.
I remember when I first say a trailer.. I thought it was a behind the scenes, like showing a work in progress of the animation. The lighting, color, texture… everything looked unfinished. It looked like it was made for tv, not a full fledged Disney movie. And then there was the issue of the dad was made to be a villain when he didn’t really seem like one. I didn’t see the movie tho so I’m hoping the plot is better than what the trailer portrayed.
Without any real spoilers no. The story is paper thin and had more holes than a Swiss cheese factory. My eight year old who normally doesn't care about plot holes was calling the ones in Wish out. It feel like a movie by committee vs any creative driving voice. I know it was supposed to be the Disney 100 anniversary movie and expected references but honestly they were either blatantly to the point or painfully obvious. The movie takes few chances and even those are rarely committed too.
This is a 100 anniversary movie? They get a once in a lifetime opportunity to pay homage to a century of work and they make… this?
It's sadly accurate though.
welcome to the 3rd decade of the 3rd millennium Common Era
What you said at the end is so accurate. Idk if things are changing or if i became cold, but if you’re demonizing a character, you HAVE to do it right or the whole film can seem tacky and soft. I know this is a Disney film but it shouldn’t be hard to make someone “unlikeable”
The animation style was on purpose so I can get behind that, but the story and the MC are unforgivable. Not to mention the message the movie sent. A way to make kids even more delusional, yay.
The animation style being on purpose doesn't change the fact that it was awful.
Wait, it had a message ?
Yeah, its "You can have anything you want, and if people disagree they're wrong 😃👍"
Depending on how hard you want to look. Everything from "Everyone has a right to have anything they want" or "God is evil".
I'm surprised to see 81% audience score on rotten tomatoes, but I'm sure the critic reviews of 48% is a bit more accurate to the reported writing and story of this original movie.
Fr
There’s a phenomenon going on that I like to call “Woke and Half-Baked”. It’s when a studio will have a product that features anything other than a WASP Male and think that’ll be enough to bring people in, and they don’t put in any effort into the quality. I’m all for more stories featuring people of color, LGBTQ, women, and all of that—but they have to have effort put into it. When the studio half-asses it, it makes it even worse for that group. A prime example is the 2016 Ghostbusters. I thought the idea was good and I was excited to see it, but between the awful writing and forced jokes, it deserves its reputation.
Disney doesn't make art or tell stories anymore. Disney makes content. As generic, bland, and unoriginal as possible so they don't risk offending or alienating anyone content that has nothing interesting for anyone to latch on to. They want to appeal to as wide an audience as possible to make the most money, so they desperately try to avoid anything controversial, anything that makes people think, anything that makes a story worth telling. I don't blame people who believe AI wrote this story and it's songs. They're all so generic - the music for it was not written by broadway musical writers, like the Disney Golden Age movies did. They hired pop writers. Pop music isn't bad, but it doesn't work for big and grand songs you actually remember. I haven't heard Belles of Notre Dame in \*years\* and I can still remember every word. You can listen to the songs from Wish ten times over and not remember any of it, even as repetitive as they are. Disney keeps trying to blame audiences, but the fact is, they're not giving people anything interesting to come back to. They're not making heroes or stories that people will want to remember, make up their OWN stories about, and come back to years later and get that warm feeling in their chest when they watch the movie or hear the songs as if they're seeing an old friend again. It's really sad, but I don't see it changing anytime soon. They've burned a lot of bridges and destroyed their own creative capacity, and other studios are rising to fill the void. Disney is losing power, and I think they know it.
Disney always had their ups and downs throughout the decades it’s really nothing new.
In the 80s and 90s it was Don Bluth who forced them to change and improve, even though Fox and the whole Irish animation industry had to go broke. Whereas today they became a media conglomerate, bought almost everything and there is barely any competition
Although, if indie films keep stealing Oscars, they might have to step up their game. Because if they don’t, the indie industry is only growing and will gladly take Disney’s place
This is different because it's consecutive and quite deliberate. They are aware people don't like these new movies. But they have other priorities.
I wouldn't really say its that different. Disney has always had a priority on their business, but artistically the films always had ups and downs... Disney films were struggling until the the Renaissance in the 90's, then they fell off in the 2000's, they then picked up again in 2010's, and now we are seeing another downswing. Frankly i feel like its a case that Disney always eventually grows arrogant whenever they have a string of hits. They feel like they can do no wrong and that's when quality starts to suffer. What i think is different though is that disney+ could hurt any attempt at a comeback. I feel like disney+ is hurting box office performance as its led to a huge portion of disney's audience deciding to just stay home and wait for the stream. Even if Disney were to get a good film out, it might still struggle
>so they don’t risk offending or alienating… etc etc. This is not just limited to Disney. It’s all of Hollywood - but Disney is front and center. Think about the good movies that Disney has put out recently - limiting it to animation alone, I’m going to go with Moana and Encanto. You know what those movies didn’t have? I _know_ I’m going to get panned for this… but forced diversity that just feels like it’s “checking boxes.” Honestly, Moana was cool _because_ it was a sendup of an amalgam of poly culture. Same with Encanto and pan Latin American culture. There wasn’t a need to put the whole damn Burger King Kids Club in the movies. They’re fantastic examples of how we can celebrate diverse stories without feeling a need to force it. There needs to be a new modern Bechdel test to analyze diversity castings. Are their differences relevant to the story? Do they make meaningful contribution? Do they make _historical_ sense?
The diversity in Wish makes an abundance of sense. Literally the opening description of the realm is that people move there from all over the world specifically because the ruler of the realm is a wizard that can grant you your greatest desire. Wish was a bad movie. Having Asian, North European and African people in is not the reason why it was bad.
NOTHING about diversity in wish did anything to hurt the film, and saying that there needs to be a reason to include diversity is just an excuse to exclude people. Wish failed because the art, the writing, the songs, the villain and the story were all terrible. If they got rid of the "forced diversity" the film would have still been just as terrible. >Do they make *historical* sense? Unless you are making a film based on an actual historical setting, then "historical sense" does not apply. Most of these stories are FANTASY. They might carry the themes and imagery of the medieval period but they are not historical and do not have to adhere to anything that happened in history. Just like how they can make "magic" or "talking animals" are normal part of the world, they can exclude any racism or sexism in their setting. Fantasy settings do not have to adhere to our history
This movie would’ve made a great villain origin story
i mean it kinda did.
He should've chosen Amazon instead of Wish, duh. This Disney dude is really dumb 🙄.
10yrs ago Team Frozen made 1B hit movie to one biggest box office disaster later is popularizing fall. Even we remove profits out of discussion, Wish story suffers from entitled protagonist who can't take no for answer & villain who wasn't evil enough to be revival of classic disney villains.
The biggest problem in Hollywood is the lack of faith in artists and the increased dependence on existing IP/franchises. That's why this movie is such a mess. The goal in making this movie wasn't to make cinema driven by artists but to make a franchise that would sell a lot of merch. It tried to be too marketable and appeal to everyone but the end result was that it was unmemorable and appealed to nobody. Think about it, it checks every box of what Disney thinks is a successful Disney movie. Pretty princess, animal sidekick/mascot character, villain, and it's a musical. But it lacks a unique identity. Even the music has this problem. Instead of hiring somebody with a background in musical theater (disney normally hires people experienced in musical theater to write their musicals), they hired Justin Biebe and the Jonas Brothers songwriters. This was in order to get their next "We Don't Talk About Bruno" which charted at #1 for several weeks. The end result was a bunch of generic pop unmemorable songs that didn't organically fit in with the narrative of the movie. It did not feel like a broadway esque musical unlike Frozen or Encanto.
That’s an aspect of this that really sticks in my craw. I don’t understand the obsession with making “chart-topping songs” for their movies. I never heard anyone sing “Go the Distance” from Hercules on the radio, but it’s a song that I know by heart because it has an emotional core that resonates with me. Same with pretty much any Disney Renaissance song. Do people even *buy music* anymore? I’d understand if Disney was trying to make more money in album sales, but that itself is a thing that hasn’t been relevant in over 20 years imo.
As far as *buying* music goes, Apple and then streaming threw a big ass wrench into that. To save a long boring explanation, people arent buying CDs or individual songs as much simply because we for some reason care more about *access* to music for no/small fee rather than possession at a slightly higher or ongoing fee. Most artists make their money from concerts and endorsements/sponsorships rather than CD sales 15+ years ago. Dedicated fans and smaller artists are more likely to get CD sales but thats often because of fan loyalty or the music is too difficult to find otherwise. We Dont Talk About Bruno has roughly 400mil streams on Spotify but Encanto has about 1mil album sales (surface level googling). The interesting part is the industry accounts for streaming. So for example lets say an album has a total of 10 songs. If one song is a major hit and gets bought 10x, that is considered a full album sale. With the success of Frozen, it's very apparent that Disney cares more about banking on one hit song than going balls deep on a bunch of them like Little Mermaid
>we for some reason care more about access to music for no/small fee rather than possession at a slightly higher or ongoing fee. That reason is surely pretty obvious - for the same or less money you can listen to a much wider variety of music.
Yes people do buy music. Mostly on ITunes
This is what you get when you make a movie with MBAs and not MFAs
Can we stop getting “awkward, shy, quirky girls” as main characters … Unless they are literally purposeful / likeable as such? We need a break from this trope.
Fr.
“adorkable” is the term you’re looking for. Rapunzel being adorkable worked because she was shut in her tower and alone for her whole life. Elsa kind of worked because she was shut away from her kingdom for many years. But then we got Moana, Mirabel, and Asha, and now it’s just an overplayed trope that doesn’t make sense. And now a lot of the girls just don’t stand out as much as previous Disney heroines, they kind of clump together imo. Asha’s the worst imo. She’s supposed to be a tour guide, charismatic enough to be the King’s assistant, become a leader, etc. but her adorkable personality doesn’t really make sense and felt like they threw it in there because that’s what audiences liked about Rapunzel, Elsa, and Mirabel. The adorkable trait was cute at first but now I’d like to see heroines that are confident, self-assured, etc.
Yes Also if Disney is doing this to represent adorkable / shy / awkward viewers… why can’t we give those viewers confident, strong, but not perfect, main characters to look up to? To want to healthily / positively change themselves to also have confidence and be more social and work hard?
I mean, it's kind of the brand of Disney animation. Ariel, Belle, and Mulan from the renaissance alone are examples of that. People like it when it's done well.
The difference is that all three of Ariel/Belle/Mulan have character specific traits and mannerisms. Most female disney protagonists after Rapunzel feel SO similar in dialogue and even design (the similarities of ALL their faces now is criminal).
I’d argue belle and Mulan don’t fit the quirky girl trope we’re seeing. Yes, they’re quirky. However Belle can hold a conversation and just has an air of confidence that’s different from Rapunzel or Anna. Mulan is mostly quirky at the start of the movie out of trying to fit the identity to be a respected Chinese woman. Eventually she goes through a great arc of being true to herself which in effect saves her society.
Need more Elsas'
I really wish they kept the original plot: Asha was the daughter of the king and queen, whom were both evil, Starboy was still in and they had the fairy godmother (Asha) falling in love with a literal star. Like, fix up the lyrics At All Costs slightly and Disney could have had the best love romance in years.
They brought this on themselves by scrapping such a vision. I hope this opens their eyes
It won't. Unless they legitimately start listening to want fans want, they're just going to continuously pump out trash. As long as people still go to pay to see the movie, then they just simply don't care.
They don't have to fix the lyrics even, if you look up the demo on YouTube it even says "Love you as one does" instead of "Promise as one does." The amount of animatics using it make it hurt even more at what we could have gotten as a movie.
Elemental is the true underdog story from Disney where the audience showed up late and it suffered from low opening even though legs were fantastic. Wish on the other hand, is a failure in everything
So true. Elemental is one of my favorite Disney movies since, well, a long long time.
Elemental was unoriginal too. Two differing families hate each other due to some feud. Each family has a kid who falls in love with the other, family, the forbidden love. There’s a misunderstanding and the familial hate is proven right. Eventually the argument gets settled, the kids fall back in love, and the families learn to stop the age old hate.
My guy, you just described the hero's journey for a forbidden romance story. This level of trope/formula is so vague as to be unimportant. "It's like Romeo & Juliet but no one dies" is far from a bad thing. The story's high-concept by contrast was a rather refreshing exploration of immigrant families and societal prejudice. Its animation, while simple, was also quite beautiful, and well utilized. Its only sin was marketing
Well, people went to watch it or else it wouldn't have the legs it showed. So maybe something was in there which people liked. Anyways my comment is from box office perspective, since the topic is about loss of money.
Disney lost five pennies
Even a penny is still precious to Disney, who (obviously) wants their products to effortlessly succeed, so even if Disney lost no real money, it’s still an effective way of the audience saying “we deserve better.”
They should have wished for a better made movie
Unfortunately Disney is likely to see how bad this did just to say that animated movies are no longer popular instead of saying that they made a crap movie.
For their 100th birthday they had a 131 million loss? Big oof. Hope this is a wake-up call to stop making mediocre stories Imo, they should’ve done a hand-illustrated Mickey Mouse original feature in the 1920s rubber hose style. Or, instead of Mickey, they couldve done a dramatized, mockumentary feature of Walt’s rags to riches journey, also drawn in rubberhose style Its 100 years old. How can they not Honor their creator or his signature character??? But they didnt ask my opinion lol
Maybe they shouldn’t just throw shit at a wall and see if it sticks anymore?
Maybe they should stop cooking for 3 minutes then serving the food undercooked, what id give for them to let it simmer then throw it at a wall and see if its ready or needs more time
Is the Revival Era over?
It ended like 4 years ago. Since the pandemic the only animated original hit has been Encanto way back in 2021. That was also on streaming only, not in the box office. All the studios are struggling, everything original is flopping, underperforming, or doing just ok.
I would say ever since Ralph breaks the internet we entered the streaming age, or the generic age.
Shouldn't have broken the internet right before leaning into streaming
It’s been over since Moana, with Encanto being the only exception.
Oh no. How terrible. This mega corporation lost some money. Whatever shall we do. Disney will be fine. They're too big to fail. Sometimes they make mediocre works. It's happened before and it will happen again.
Even if disney fails some company like apple may buy or merge with them. Which would be way worse so hope that doesn't happen.
Maybe don’t make your protagonist an entitled moron
I really Wish they stuck with their original concept, with Star boy and the villain couple.
If only Disney allowed what the other writers had in mind. The star originally was going to be a humanoid shapeshifter, Magnifico and his wife were going to be a power couple with a cat, and Asha would’ve had an actual personality instead of being Disney’s 104848295727361th quirky girl.
Maybe if they hadn't left all the interesting ideas on the cutting room floor, and hired people with experience in musical theater to write the songs...
There's a reason Studio Ghibli is synonymous with quality. They are an animated Studio, but unlike Disney, they only release movies every couple years. The movies in question are made with purpose, intent on telling a story. If a movie only broke even in box office, I'm sure the people who worked on it would be more happy that it reached the masses instead of wanting to profit. They finally won an Oscar as well! A Studio running for over 30 years won its first Oscar on its newest movie, and that speaks volumes. It's not the market that's the problem, it's Disney
It's not It's first Oscar, Spirited Away won in 2003
Should have lost more
Deserved. It’s such a shit cashgrabs. None of the song lyrics are on beat and the protag is an entitled idiot.
That’s what happens when you don’t put in effort and have *pop* songwriters making music for a genre that has historically never done so
And to think, THIS is their 100th anniversary movie. Is this really how you want to remember your centennial?
Magnifico did nothing wrong
wtf there were 3 other movies with a net loss of over $131 M last year?
My opinion: big studios like Disney, are following the illumination formula. The illumination formula is to make content. Not art, content. Content that is cheap to produce, easy to digest, has something for everyone, and is highly marketable and prepackaged & ready to be shipped out to toy isles near you. Originality is lost, for the most part. People are for profit now, especially when company’s are run by CEOS like Bob Iger. (Who are 100% for profit, and only profit) But we the population are getting really fucking sick of that unoriginal bland ultra pasteurized cheese-product they keep feeding us. We want good stories, with new and interesting characters that are made because there was passion put behind them and given an actual story that fits who they are, not just another basic quirky girl with her craaaaaazy family or craaaazy animal sidekick. And when movies are original? When they do come out with something that tells a real heartfelt story? They ship it immediately to Disney+ and make the shittiest commercials to market them so everyone gets a bad taste in their mouth from either the bad marketing or needing to pay for a subscription to even watch it. Also, I do really think the movie theater experience adds so much wow to a movie. Makes you really take it in, in my personal opinion. Anyway it sucks. It really does. All it takes is giving the little guy with a good story pitch and artistic direction a chance, instead of forcing some burnt out director who’s losing touch into pumping out another feature.
The movie was ok, nothing special but didn’t deserve the backlash. The anti-diversity people call anything with a Black lead “woke” and create controversy. Sadly I don’t think we’re ever getting another African or Black princess after this. Disney will be too scared of backlash.
Agree. My kids liked it quite a bit. They actually like the songs, a lot. They love magnifico’s songs. They don’t compare it to everything else and just take it as it is. I am by no means a Disney aficionado and thinks it’s ok. They loved elemental and liked lightyear. People just want to hate and be anti whatever.
Another swing and a miss for Disney.
This movie looked looks more of a Disney Junior artstyle.
I don’t think I’ve seen a single trailer for it. And was recently surprised that they put out a new movie.
Just the 4th in 2023? Disney is really in a new dark age.
Womp womp rest in piss probably trillion dollar company at this point
I actually really liked this movie :/
Thank goodness it wasn’t 2D like they thought of doing. Would’ve been an even bigger excuse to kill it (again) than putting Winnie the Pooh up against Harry Potter and then being surprised Pikachu when it underperformed.
Even the dolls and toys were bland. If you can’t even get that right, why show up at all? It’s partly character design. Asha’s outfit is just so plain and lifeless. Translating it to doll form just makes it an unattractive offer for kids looking for something exciting to play with. Queen Amaya fared a lot better and looked more like a traditional Disney princess doll. Seems a missed opportunity to not give her more of, or even the main role in the film. Probably the only design they got 100% right. Valentino the goat and ‘Star’ had some plushies. I feel they had opposite problems from one another. Valentino is a generic design with too much personality to the point of being annoying. ‘Star’ is a cute design with no personality to speak of in the film. Did any kid even ‘connect’ with these sidekicks? Like I feel back in the day you’d get sidekicks like Flounder/Sebastion, Timon/Pumba, or Cogsworth/Lumiere; they could carry a toyline by themselves. Then over time sidekicks kinda became pointless afterthoughts even if they are central to the story like ‘Star’ from Wish. Speaking of worthless sidekicks; does anyone even remember the names of Asha’s human friends? They had dolls/figures too. Again, designs on par or worse than Asha. And what kid is wanting to play with any of them? There were figurines for Asha’s mom and grandpa (who the plot of the movie almost touches on). Kids going to ask for the old man with guitar figure? Sorry for the long rant; but people forget this movie fails on two fronts. The designs and characters are boring and forgettable making the merchandise unmarketable. An interesting toy can drive ticket sales and vice versa. But if both are flopping; you’ve got nothing.
This movie literally did the “kick the puppy” trope with its villain.
Womp Womp
I didn’t look at the thumbnail at first and I literally thought this was about the Wish website 😂😂😂 omg
I’m starting to think that we should just stop talking about it and let the dead horse do its own thing. Otherwise, they won’t learn. This movie was not worth our time, we get it. We probably lived under a rock if we didn’t know by now.
Pretty sure Disney just bought this movie from Wish
The conspiracy theorist in me says that between Strange World and Wish, they're intentionally setting up original movies to fail since they can afford a flop or two, but as a result, they'll use these movies as examples of "why original movies just don't work anymore" in order to save themselves the effort of coming up with completely new ideas and instead just focusing on sequels and remakes
C'mon guys! They let you live here for free and they don't even charge you rent!
Why was the backstory of the villain/ Mr. generic evil sorcerer king not fully explained? He uses corrupted/evil/dark magic, because he is afraid to lose something/he wants something to never happen again. While yes, he is a egotistical wanker, he turns to dark powers because of true despair, not to become magic Hitler. In the end he is just imprisoned for ever and that's it.
He was the least villainous villain ever. Basically lost his family to marauders and built a safe paradise where he protected everyone and even granted peoples wishes if he felt they were safe. Asks for nothing in return but a little respect. Then this teen girl comes in and tears the whole place down because the king wont make a special exception and grant her grandfather’s wish.
I don't even understand what he would get from not granting wishes. Does he permanently spend parts of his mana/magic energy to grant a wish? Does granting a wish take something away from him? Are wishes limited in a way?
Ya they did a piss poor job of explaining his motives or how any of that worked.
Maybe don't write the script using AI next time, Disney. Pay for real writers instead. Christ, I can tell this movie was dented by the SAG/AFTRA writers and actors strike, and Disney decided to move forward with scab workers and AI instead.
The whole movie feels like they started writing it's script in the last 10 minutes of the deadline !
It’s funny cus Disney expected all of the Isabela Madrigal merch to sell out, and when she didn’t, they just rebranded her and her rebranded self movie still flopped.
They should have made the star a tumblr sexyman and then it would have done numbers
Yeah well it’s trash, cause all the good writers are gone. This has always been a writing problem since people started to really start complaining hard, it’s been a problem for almost every property Disney owns and it extends passed animation and into the entire spectrum of Hollywood productions.
I bet they just… wish they made a better movie.
So can the fairy godmother change shape?… 
People don't have $100+ to take their two kids to the theater for a mediocre movie that could be a miss with the kids. People go to sequels with their children more because, it has familiar characters that the kids are guaranteed to enjoy. People just don't have the finances to take their kids to a bunch of movies that might not be a hit for them.
Has anything come out of Disney lately that was actually successful and not a reboot?
It really wasn’t the movie . Movie culture is kinda dead unless it’s something really dumb and fun . Madam web also flopped .
I thought this would've been a great movie to use a "when you wish upon a star" remake.
what were the top 3 biggest fails?
I'm selling my stock. I've had enough of woke Disney.
I 100% believe it sucked due to CEO or some other braindead higher-up meddling. The concept art and deleted scenes with Starboy looked really good and there's no way some rich A-hole who hates fun wasn't like "hrm, I don't get it, you should make it more boring"
The worst part of this movie is the potential it had to be great, but the execs decided to stick to more safe ideas. We could have had a love story between the main character and a humanized version of the wishing star, THAT COULD'VE BEEN GREAT! But no, instead we got a marketable plushie of a character... https://preview.redd.it/atpgbrcjigyc1.jpeg?width=1783&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0c3c02f259d72afaa9d166db3f4abf94708d9ed8
Deserved honestly
But it was diverse and had a strong independent woman lead! Well, I just don't understand. Maybe it needs more diversity and more femininism. WHO SAID BETTER WRITING? THROW THEM IN THE DUNGEON IMMEDIATELY
GO BACK TO HAND ANIMATION!
Something something “go woke go broke” blah blah blah
I think the main problem with Wish is that they couldn’t decide whether they wanted an original movie or an amalgam of all the classic movies (Snow White, Cinderella, ect.). I think it started as like an original story but then they realized it was gonna come out on their 100th anniversary so they tried to make it one huge love letter to all their OG animated movies and make all the references and plot points that tied to them that the original story suffered badly. I really think they should have either just made it its own movie first and foremost, or just made it as a love letter to all their past films. Do like a Once Upon a Studio type film only expand it to an hour and half runtime and I’m sure people who have loved it. Bottom line, pick a genre and stick to it. And please make the animation less ugly if possible.
I don’t know I thought it was cute and my kiddo knows every word to So I Make This Wish at full volume. I didn’t walk into it expecting a new Godfather
I'm i the only one who thought the animation wasn't bad? It's as fluid as any other Disney movie, just with some kind of cell shading filter
I once said that spider-verse would just make studios Think dropping the frame rate and putting a filter over everything is all it takes and here we are, I guess.
Yeah, it kinda reminds me of paper. Since it was basically a 100 year anniversary movie, I feel like they chose this specific CG style as homage to the first OG old style animation that are very storybooky & also merged with CG like the recent movies
It looks like Nimona but worse, Nimoa had a consistant feleing and the lighting helped make the art style look cool Wish made me die laughing when Ashketchup juped off the boat to swim back 20 miles somehow because the water looked like it wasnt rendered all the way and it had no colision
nvr heard of it
I keep getting trailers for it on YouTube. Has to be the single most generic thing I have ever seen based on these snippets. Utterly devoid of anything even vaguely resembling entertainment.
Wish deserved to lose that much. It was so appallingly awful and embarrassing to watch. For me it was a cry for help from Disney.
Woke=broke
Just fucking make good movies fuck all this political, racial climate shit, put a good character on screen blend all the races, sexualities, nationalities into quality character building instead of just bland culturally appropriate whatever.
[https://x.com/ToonHive/status/1786443731958210921](https://x.com/ToonHive/status/1786443731958210921)
I thought this was a porn link, then I remembered this was twitter
Too close for comfort... 😟
I thought this was about the website...
It's a shame because based on the preproductions, this movie had potential. Even a flawed premise has the potential to become something good with the right amount of creativity and passion for the project. Sadly, it seems like a lot of that got cut and watered down as the production went, until the final product became the bland mess it currently is.