La Ron S. Readus
patreon
What REALLY Went Wrong With Wish (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2024-04-24 21:00:04 +0000 UTCReaders, when the first trailer for Disney’s Wish dropped in September 2023, there was enough in it for me to pick up enough story beats to gain an idea of what the movie was gonna be about.
Now I want it on record that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
We also need to get out of the mindset that just because someone’s able to properly theorize or predict where someone’s story is going means that it means the story in question is either bad or too simple; that’s how the whole thing with FnaF creator Scott Cawthon happened, after all.
Just because MatPat properly predicted where the lore is going in your game centered around your Trixie Mattel-level phobia of Chuck E Cheese robots, doesn’t mean you now have to completely switch things around and make it as convoluted as possible in order to prove him wrong.
(Huffs) Okay. Glad I got that out of my system. Anyway, I was so sure of the story beats for what was gonna happen in Disney’s Wish that on the day that trailer was released, I tweeted this:
/“I’m preparing myself for the narrative of Disney’s ‘Wish’ to be about how the main threat of a white patriarchal socioeconomic-ethnic group that constantly relies on the working class it governs to stay ignorant to their exploitation is always and forever a black woman.”/
Now I didn’t get a chance to see Wish in theaters, so I had to wait until it was available on demand in order to see for myself if that was the case. I had to wait until around January 2024 for that to happen and see for myself.
And when I did, I quote retweeted that same tweet and said: /“Called it.”/
Because that’s exactly what Disney’s Wish gave with its message. It does a good job getting those points across in a way that works well with the setting.
/But despite the themes being integrated into the overall story in ways that didn’t distract children’s overall enjoyment of the narrative but were easy enough to compare to real life instances when someone who's experienced it in the past points them out, Wish wasn’t necessarily the bonafide hit that Disney expected. Especially considering it was the animated film that would be released for its 100 year anniversary./
And it's in regards to what went wrong with Disney’s Wish that I wanna go over in this video, Readers. Because in my opinion there WAS something that stood in the way of this movie being great.
And considering the track record of a lot of the studio’s past animated classics, I PROMISE you it wasn’t the messages regarding social justice. Let’s begin.
________________
Hey, Readers. La’Ron here. Offering you analysis and perspective on your favorite bits of geek and pop culture media
If it wasn’t obvious from the intro, this video will in fact contain spoilers for Disney’s Wish. It’s currently available to stream exclusively on Disney Plus, so give it a watch if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want me to spoil pivotal points of it for you in this video.
Other than that, if you end up liking what I’m putting down after this video is done, there’s multiple ways you can show some love
If you want to help financially support the channel, you can join my Patreon.
/There are multiple tiers starting at $1 that give you early access to my written articles and videos across every channel, copies of my video scripts, discount codes to my merchandise store, and a whole lot more./
Also make sure you subscribe to the channel, turn on notifications, and subscribe to my Substack newsletter!
Not only is it the home for all of my written editorials, opinion pieces and reviews for film and television after they debut on Patreon...
/But you’ll also get an ACTUAL heads up whenever I post a new video on both Readus 101 and Readus 201, five minutes after their release!/
That’s the syllabus. Now onto the lesson.
Here’s What Worked
Like I said earlier, the messages hidden within Wish -- regardless if they were subtle or blatant -- weren’t the problem regarding why this movie didn’t resonate. And in order to get that point across, we have to analyze what all were present.
Magnifico and the kingdom of Rosas are clear indicators here.
/With multiple people of different cultures and backgrounds coming over to live the lives they only dreamed of, the kingdom of Rosas represents the initial promise of America and The American Dream made to those who decided to immigrate to the country across the world. This is a very easy parallel to spot with the very explanation of Rosas made at the beginning of the movie, as well as the opening number for the movie as a whole./
Unfortunately because of this parallel, it’s also impossible to look at the citizens of Rosas as anything but the working class that America helped establish via immigration and the like, thanks to Magnifico and how he rules the kingdom.
/The price to become a citizen of Rosas is the memory of your one true wish -- your greatest desire -- collecting the wishes of the new citizens in a ceremony every month where he grants the wish of one random citizen as well./
However, as we learn thanks to our Afro-Hispanic protagonist Asha asking the right questions during her interview to be his apprentice...
/Magnifico only grants wishes he’s confident won’t threaten his position or be used in a way to inspire said threat and has no intentions of returning the wishes he won’t grant to their respective owners./ (I decide)
So first off, while Magnifico’s choice to hoard these wishes in this manner may seem trivial up until the middle of the movie where they play a bigger role, this form of systemic control is actually very reflective of how those who rely on real world economic and political systems keep us regular folk participating in it.
/While it’s true that Magnifico doesn’t find a way to actually weaponize the wishes he’s hoarding until almost an hour into the film, him being both the ruler of Rosas and the only one with the power to grant wishes thanks to him being a sorcerer keeps the people he governs in his pocket./
Similar to how the concept of the American Dream is still marketed to the working class as an obtainable goal in order for the defense of capitalism and the handful of millionaires and billionaires that benefit from it to be justified...
/The citizens of Rosas rely on Magnifico to both rule over them and keep their wishes under the HOPE that one day he’ll grant theirs./
Just like those who defend capitalism tend to do so because they think they can one day reach that level of comfort and wealth, so too do some citizens of Rosas defend Magnifico’s wish-granting system because they think that one day their wish will come true.
And as you can imagine, when halfway through the movie Magnifico starts using dark magic to actually weaponize the wishes, this is also a reflection of a toxic yet just as present situation regarding the same economic and political systems.
/With Magnifico crossing the point of no return by reading from the book to gain access to the dark magic within -- ie, late-stage capitalism -- he now can grow stronger in his magic from absorbing the wishes, the same way that the rich grow richer from the physical and mental labor of the working class while they get next to nothing; the same class, mind you, that is constantly told that hard work and due diligence ala The American Dream will one day put them where they are./
And while this is the most direct comparison those of us who were expecting this allegory to make were anticipating when watching Wish...
/The decision to add how those in power manipulate those who seek security in the system to act as nothing but pawns once they realize that they can be used as an asset as opposed to an actual threat was just icing on the cake./ (Long live the king!)
There are so many connections that were thought of regarding the allegories Disney’s Wish made with just Magnifico alone.
/Him being a white cis man with an outwardly charming personality was the perfect alignment of real-life associations to the allegory the film made./ (You’re right. I am a handsome king)
/His credibility immediately went out the window once Asha revealed how he operated despite the initial reasons he decided to found the kingdom of Rosas in the first place./ (Everything I do is to make sure THAT never happens again)
/And the fact that he became completely irredeemable once he started practicing from the book he kept locked away while showing that he was constantly tempted to read it at the most mild inconvenience beforehand./ (A king must be prepared to do ANYTHING to protect his kingdom)
Every allegory Disney’s Wish made regarding how a white patriarchal socioeconomic-ethnic group both controls and siphons off the working class that it governs in regards to King Magnifico was PERFECT.
Then There’s Queen Amaya
If King Magnifico represents the white patriarchal socioeconomic-ethnic group that forces its subordinates to love and cherish the system he greatly benefits from, then Queen Amaya is the white liberalism that spawns and benefits from it.
How do I know she represents white liberalism? Because she gets off too easily. Allow me to explain:
While we’re quickly introduced to Amaya in the storybook introduction that a lot of Disney animated classics started their stories off with, there’s one thing that’s used to describe her that’s true about her character up until the third act: she’s 100 percent faithful to Magnifico
/Yes, she has her own thoughts and opinions regarding the citizens of Rosas and those like Asha who want to see the kingdom thrive/ (I’m rooting for you)
/But it’s obvious through her actions during the first two acts that her loyalty is to her husband even when -- from her point of view -- he makes the questionable decision of turning down Asha the role of intern./
Since she is queen, this faith and devotion to Magnifico to a certain extent ideally comes from a place of comfort.
She’s royalty, she has a husband who loves her and she is incredibly popular with the citizens of the kingdom thanks to her pleasant personality that’s accented by her whiteness ala Kate Middleton.
/Her not wanting drastic change to her current livelihood is the reason why she doesn’t make a lot of otherwise rational decisions until near the end of the movie when the writing is completely legible on the wall in regards to Magnifico’s decision-making processes and the state of affairs regarding Asha and the wishing star, despite the fact that she’s watched the letters being formed in real time the moment she witnessed Magnifico deny Asha the position of being his apprentice despite being the most qualified./
Because of this, Amaya is willing to overlook so much activity from that moment on until doing so would only result in her active complacency.
The moment she saw how easy Magnifico was willing to fall under the temptation of using the dark magic within that book, Amaya should’ve been on high alert regarding his actions and motives.
As a queen of a nation who -- thanks to being married to a sorcerer king and empathetic to his tragic backstory that’s constantly hinted at -- knows how absolute power corrupts absolutely, how willing he was to open the book combined with her previous unease in finding out that Asha was turned down the position should’ve had her realize that something was up with him.
/But it’s the fact that this action alone wasn’t a red flag to her, and that she chose to not only talk him down from using it but swayed him to instead seek the help of his people -- to stick to the status quo and not cause such a disruption that it could dangerously and violently affect her -- told me everything I needed to know about queen Amaya./ (They love you. They would do anything for you)
/Then Magnifico inevitably crossed the line, threatened her life, and she realized that the only possible way of her surviving this drastic change to her life was to just go with the flow until an opportunity presented itself to take him down./ (You know I would never side with a traitor of Rosas)
This is a form of white liberalism. Like Amaya, they are in positions of comfort and privilege that -- thanks to either the combined or singular constructs of status and skin tone -- allow them to turn a blind eye to things that are either plaguing society or things that others that aren’t part of their group are screaming from the rooftops are trying to draw attention to, simply because it doesn’t affect them.
And what makes them different from conservatives and the like are that they -- on paper -- make us believe that they are on our side in regards to the injustices we’re trying to point out or our want to make society better, but do very little to either hear us out or support us, because doing so would disrupt their station.
And only when THEIR lives are affected by the thing that has been plaguing us and others less fortunate than them for YEARS do they have to find ways to seek safety, refuge and assistance from those that have been fighting the injustice longer than they’re willing to acknowledge that they’ve had a hand in crafting it.
/This literally happened when Asha invited queen Amaya to join her and her friends in fighting back against Magnifico’s selfishness and fragility. Despite this Afro-Hispanic woman being the one to topple Magnifico’s hold on the people of Rosas, it was Amaya who benefitted from the actual liberation brought about by Asha and her friends. She remained queen with everything from her lifestyle and even her popularity with the citizens of the kingdom in check, while never answering for her complacency in regards to why nothing was done on her end to stop Magnifico beforehand despite -- thanks to this being a Disney animated film aimed at children -- there being clear indicators when they were. And unfortunately, this is a real-life reflection of how white liberalism works illustrated damn near perfectly./
So with that being said, considering how accurate Wish got the allegory of a white patriarchal ethnic group holding systemic control of the working class in the form of Magnifico...
How its usually the work of black, brown and other people of color to both bring attention to the oppression and destroy it ala Asha and her friends...
And how white liberalism does nothing to nip it in the bud because it benefits from the control until they’re the ones affected only to swoop up and take all the credit in the presentation when they did very little in the group assignment in the form of queen Amaya, the question remains:
Why Was Wish Mid?
The answer to this is actually a rather easy one. But I will tell you now; it’s NOT because of the allegories and messages that I analyzed earlier in this video.
People didn’t think Wish was “meh” because it was too “woke” or whatever politically correct word they appropriated from black folk to disguise themselves from being racist and bigoted nowadays.
What made Wish ACTUALLY feel “meh” -- at least in my opinion -- was its lack of individuality despite everything the film established in its allegory that could’ve made it truly stand out.
It had a lot of pressure out the gate, in all honesty.
/Not only was Wish following up a lot of really popular modern animated musicals Disney released like Frozen, Moana and Encanto, but it was also the animated feature that was gonna be released the year of Disney’s 100 year anniversary. And considering how many references to multiple Disney classics there are in the movie -- from “blink and you miss it” references to Snow White to obviously blatant ones like Peter Pan -- it was obvious that this was a studio mandate for that purpose alone./
The thing is that, thanks to the past successes and popularity of pretty much all of Disney’s modern-day 3D animated musicals from Tangled onward, you start to feel that there was a similar mandate put in place for Disney’s Wish in regards to trying to achieve the individual levels of success that they separately accomplished as you watch the film.
While the Musical 101 tropes that Howard Ashman introduced to Disney when he was brought on for Little Mermaid, Beauty & The Beast and Aladdin were definitely present, there were other things both visually and musically that made me believe they took aspects from different animated musicals of Disney from 2010 onward that worked for those separate movies and placed them there.
/For example, Wish’s first number “Welcome to Rosas” has both a sound and an intention that’s very similar to Encanto’s “The Family Madrigal.” And while I understand that familiarity WILL be felt due to the point of both of these numbers being to help explain the setting of their respective worlds to the audience, watching and hearing the performance of the former was done in a way that literally reminded me of when it was done in the latter./
Because of this, Disney’s Wish in most places feels like a collection of elements that were taken from the successful 3D musicals the company produced before it and adjusted to fit its tone and story.
And while I’m not claiming that the writers Jennifer Lee and Allision Moore or their fellow story collaborators for the film Fawn Veerasunthorn and Chris Buck did so -- if anything, this felt more like pressure and interference from studio execs and investors...
It almost felt like certain elements from Tangled, Frozen, Moana and Encanto that were successful in the movies two out of four of these creators had a hand in crafting were cherry-picked from an algorithm, placed in order according to Wish’s timeline, and then adjusted slightly in order to fit the plot for it.
But because these bits felt purposefully cherry-picked to “optimize” the film’s success, things about the film at best felt disingenuous and, at worst, boring. Even with the type of social commentary the film had within its structure.
/Moments like Magnifico’s villain song, for example./
If you ask anyone who’s seen the film in comparison to the tens of animated musicals that Disney has produced in the past, they have no problem telling you that despite Magnifico’s setup to be a great return to traditional Disney Villains TM...
/“This Is The Thanks I Get” is the weakest villain song they have EVER made for one, especially in the modern era./
Because when you compare it to the ones that have been made in it, the song doesn’t even come close.
/Yes Encanto’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is the top contender, but Gothel’s “Mother Knows Best” in Tangled -- both the original and the reprise -- is such a great example of the hybridization of traditional broadway-style musicals and the Disney trademark, and blows Magnifico’s song out the water. Hell, even Tamatoa’s “Shiny” in Moana is a better villain song than Magnifico’s./
“This Is The Thanks I Get” not only sounded like it went through the same process to try and emulate the same success as the likes of Bruno and Shiny, but it also sounded like it was workshopped...
/That it did a screen test with the parents of the film’s target audience to make sure it didn’t once again introduce a generation of people to the Third Reich march some shit/
And that -- not the social justice allegories -- only played into how middle-of-the-road Wish felt overall.
/Because while it had a strong message behind it, it lacked both risks and uniqueness in order to deliver on the subject matters in a way that would’ve really made them pop. And that’s something you definitely want in an animated film that’s supposed to mark the 100th anniversary of a company that made a name for itself on western animation./
And it’s not like the company hasn’t put out bangers like that before, even during the Disney Renaissance.
/1996’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame was allowed to tackle so much in its social commentary -- racism, xenophobia, and both religious dogma and fascism specifically -- because it was allowed to be its own thing and not try to capture the success of previous works./
/Was it given a more happy and optimistic ending than the original source material? Yes./
Did it also inject some stuff to make it a bit more tolerable for children?
/Abso-fucking-lutely!/ (I’m losing to a bird!)
But thanks to the core of the film being true to its creators initial intent regarding how it told its story, how it also stayed true to its commentary thanks to forming the story with it and not around it, and how it was allowed to form with minimal interference...
/Hunchback -- with the combination of ticket sales, merchandise and home video releases -- became one of the most important and cherished works of art to ever come from Walt Disney, let alone financially successful./
Nowadays however, thanks to shareholders, investors and company chairs caring more about profits and return of their investments more than the art that’s being produced, the possibility of getting another Hunchback from big motion picture companies is rapidly diminishing.
They interfere with projects that have a lot of promise because they either want it to resemble a competitor’s film or want it to hit certain points from a previous one they did that did numbers in the box office to try and get that same success.
Then when it fails or isn’t as popular as the previous project...
/They either blame the creator or say that planting their personal agenda into the project was the ACTUAL problem when they just should’ve made it entertaining, in order to divert from their interference being the problem./
And all this victim-blaming rhetoric does is continue to embolden those who don’t want to see representation in media that doesn’t reflect people who aren’t white, cis, straight, pro-patriarchy, and/or pro-capitalism.
/And, unfortunately, that was what happened to Disney’s Wish./
Conclusion
Readers, Disney’s Wish had the building blocks to be something truly special. And thanks to the allegory that was present in the film and the ways it went about delivering them in the world the movie took place in, it could’ve been done in a way that made both the message and delivery on par with honestly my all-time favorite Disney musical.
Unfortunately -- not even counting studio interference or the pressure of being the animated film scheduled to be released during the company’s 100th anniversary -- all of those opportunities that they could’ve expanded upon in its subtext were put to the side in favor of trying to make it accommodating to everyone by applying all the things that worked for previous films like it instead of trying to make it unique.
Honestly, I’ve debated if there was anything different I would’ve done to accomplish this feat with Wish -- other than give Magnifico a better villain song, of course; that’s an immediate given -- and yeah, I think I would’ve
The original plan was that this was gonna be a two-way collaboration between this channel and Readus 201 where over there I’d do a rewrite of Disney’s Wish to make its social themes pop more and incorporate them in a narrative that felt organic and not feel like the studio was trying to check algorithmic boxes.
Obviously that didn’t happen and the combo of lethargy and depression is the reason why; it took me almost a month just to finish writing the script for THIS video.
But if there’s demand for it, make sure you’re either subscribed to Readus 201, or following either my Patreon or Substack newsletter to get notified when it's out.
And trust me, Readers. I completely understand that my opinion about Wish can be seen as a minority
It’s obvious that while it had a mediocre run in theaters, it -- like Encanto and Strange World before it -- found both life the moment it became available in home video, VOD and streaming on Disney Plus; /over 13 million views total over the course of its first five days available on the latter platform, and that’s nothing to scoff at./
All I’m saying is that after knowing the company’s potential when it allows their storytellers to actually tell stories and what the possibilities could’ve been for the narrative if said permission was actually granted...
/It personally makes me wish that Disney’s Wish was better./
But I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below what you thought of Disney’s Wish if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, write in the comment section below a film or a television show you’ve seen whose plot supplied a wonderful allegory for real-life social issues, but the likes of either studio interference or story mandates got in the way of helping make said allegories shine in the world of the story.
Whichever question you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.
/A HUGE shoutout to my Patrons both big and small for helping make this channel possible.
Make sure you check out the card at the end of the video to join, or click the link to it or any of my affiliates in the description box below.
But until then, this is Readus 101. Class dismissed./
