Disney's Wish

[Farerb]

So no one here went to see the movie??

[Ben]

I was tempted but have had too much on this week, plus prepping for Christmas decorating at the end of the week. Plus I know I’ll get this on disc eventually and would rather watch at our place anyway, so I’ll be waiting.

[EricJ]

Soul, Turning Red, Lightyear, the last six MCU, Strange World, Encanto, Artemis Fowl...
Despite my loyalty for getting folks back in to the theaters, I just haven't been having much luck with the Disney movies I passed on and waited for D+ instead. They tend to confirm my better judgment.
(Well, okay, Luca was good-not-great, but I remember saving Moana for viewing on a cruise was a bit of an anticlimax.)

And there are many, many reasons why Wish looked like a streamer just from the still shots.

[James]

Saw it. Too busy to write a review this week, but hopefully this weekend. Here's a preview:

critic.png (258.17 KiB) Viewed 35869 times

[Ben]

Oh dear…

[EricJ]

Of course, nowadays, the young kids like to use:

but we take your meaning.

[Ben]

That one should really be

"yep, it stinks!"

But

The Critic

got it right first.

[Bill1978]

Here in Oz, we have to wait until Boxing Day to check it out. The US Box Office isn't doing much to change my opinion of how it will end up. The more clips I see, the more convinced I am that this movie should at least have been hand drawn, but maybe seeing the whole movie will change my view.

The one thing that I find complexing - possible the general public may be feeling it as well - is the use of celebrating 100 years of Disney. I know it is technically 100 years since Walt Disney started his company, but it seems odd to be pushing that narrative for this movie because the way it's promoted it sounds like it's 100 years since Snow White (when I assume most of the public thinks Disney started) which is not true. And it also feels like it's being advertised Disney's 100th animated feature, which of course it isn't. So, it feels like false advertising (whch may turn off some consumers) and then if it's such an important milestone, they use a release that just doesn't look worthy of holding the distinction of the 100th celebration film.

I also don't hold up hope that the movie will make me appreciate the songs. I get the feeling the songs will be staged like music videos as Encanto did. Which is never good for a musical.

[Ben]

Bill…check out my post above in reaction to Rand jumping on the 100 year thing. I pretty much make the same points. Oh, here it is:

I know it’s being pushed as this big 100 thing, but that doesn’t really make sense. Strange World and Elemental are two other animated films that have been released in this anniversary year, so it’s not even a big milestone for Disney Animation. The big one was when Tangled was their 50th animated feature. The bigger one will be when Snow White hits 100 in 2037, or when they hit 100 animated features.

It’s great that you’ve bought into the hype that Wish is special because it’s based on the star that Geppetto wished upon — which would make that anniversary make more sense if it was 2040 — and because it’s apparently packed with Disney references, but which ones nowadays aren’t?

Once Upon A Studio is much more the significant milestone tribute, since it actually features Mickey front and centre and, more sensibly, Oswald, although even he doesn’t date the studio back 100 years. They’d have been better off, as a true tribute, going for something like that Search For Mickey Mouse film they proposed a while back and essentially making a feature Once Upon A Studio of a kind, or do something with all the princesses teaming up, or something.

They played one of the Big Songs from Wish on the annual Children In Need charity show here on TV last night, and I can’t say I was particularly wowed. Usually I can come away humming the new song tunes right afterwards, but this one had trouble sticking. Perhaps the performance wasn’t great, for whatever reason, but the visuals they played on screens in the background still don’t look fully rendered either. Unfortunately, Wish just doesn’t look that special, and questionably "historically significant"…

And I just wrote James an email reply to his take on the movie:

Sorry to hear Wish is terrible, but then I wasn’t really expecting otherwise. I just don't think Jennifer Lee is the person to be running Disney… Could have done so much more for a proper 100th anniversary movie. From the start, Wish just sounded so insipid!

So, yeah. Maybe better for the actual 100th feature in twenty to thirty years!

Personally, I want them to start another Fantasia *now* so that they can quietly and in a low cost way work along on sequences until 2040 — only just over 15 years away folks! — and put out a really great "Fantasia 100" for that milestone. Yes, Snow White will be a big deal, but not much they could really do, other than a celebration and burning of all copies of the remake, but really, for me, Fantasia and Walt's plan that it would be a continuous, evolving thing would the next big milestone that they need to hit in a meaningful way.

It speaks volumes and is sad when my own home theatre tributes to Walt's underrated live-action films over the past year have been more of an authentic tribute to the legacy, but on Disney's side, its 100th has been remarkably bungled in almost every way.

[EricJ]

Sorry to hear Wish is terrible, but then I wasn’t really expecting otherwise. I just don't think Jennifer Lee is the person to be running Disney… Could have done so much more for a proper 100th anniversary movie. From the start, Wish just sounded so insipid!

I know I Cassandra'ed this earlier on, but bears repeating:

Of the many, many, many problems plaguing Toy Story 4 (and let's not even get into Ralph 2 or Incredibles 2), the scene where Woody realizes Bonnie's tossed him over and lost interest, to play with "Sheriff Jessie"...
(And the movie's handing-over of the star and IRL toy-marketing thereof.)

...That ONE SHOT is the singlehanded gravestone metaphor for Disney/Pixar's main story problem for the last four or five years, and why most of it was caused by Jennifer Lee.

[Farerb]

Not a fan of Jennifer Lee, but what exactly does she have to do with Pixar? She has never worked there.

[Ben]

Exactly. Whatever else, Lee has absolutely no purview over Pixar. Unlike when Lasseter oversaw both, Disney is Lee's and Pixar is strictly Docter's realm.

[Bill1978]

The official video for Julia Michael's A Wish Worth Making

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_7I6Rne_ls

As much as I enjoyed the video for its nostalgia, it really does highlight that it seems Wish only exists to promote 'Disney is 100' and isn't allowed to stand on its own two feet as its own thing.

[Ben]

Well that was a bit "nothing", no? The song has one nice-ish hook, but it’s not a grandstanding standout, and all that video does is actually to keep reminding us that all that previous animation is better than what we’re seeing in Wish. Honestly, what is it with the Disney rendering/shading in the past few films that makes their human characters look fairly "basic", like they’re missing skin tones or something.

Also, I think Wish "suffers" from not being based on a classic fairytale. Again, a 100th celebrating feature could (not should, but could; it’s a choice and that’s what they’ve gone with) have mixed up previous stories and characters and been celebratory in being a new story based in tradition with one foot in the past, as opposed to a totally new concept that pays homage but still feels tonally disconnected because, well, it is a totally new thing, without those authentic elements.

Just making references to past films and filling it with Easter eggs does not a fairytale make, especially giving it a different (as in non-European?) setting that breaks with the tradition of these stories (and, it has to be said, probably *just* for reasons of diversity, being "now" and blah, blah, blah).

And for all that "wishing on a star" malarkey that they keep harping on about? Only one Disney character *ever* wished upon a star. Geppetto, in Pinocchio. And he only just barely made it into this video!

[Farerb]