It all started in Kansas City with a young dreamer named Walt Disney. Alice’s Wonderland wasn’t his first creation, but it was significant. The silent comedy, released in the fall of 1923, blended hand-drawn animation and live-action into something that caught the audience’s attention and investor interest.
So Walt bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles and, with his older brother Roy, founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio that year. The Alice Comedies paved the way, and then came an animated cat named Julius, a rabbit named Oswald and a mouse named Mickey. Walt lent Mickey his own voice, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Few companies have had a more outsized impact on the world than the Disney Corporation. The movies are still a right of passage for children, mile markers for emotional development. But at what point does history become a burden? Today, Disney is more than just a fairy tale factory: It’s a massive conglomerate absorbing studios and stories whole. Few corners of the world do not bear the fingerprints of the empire, be they through artistic appropriation and celebration or political influence.
And into this world enters Wish — Walt Disney Animation Studios’ 62nd feature, the one to mark the studio’s centenary. And with a storybook opening and expository narration, Wish immediately pulls you into the Disney movies of yore with 17-year-old Asha (Ariana DeBose) guiding viewers through the setting, the Mediterranean town of Rosas, and the story of their benevolent sorcerer king, Magnifico (Chris Pine).
Asha is training to be Magnifico’s apprentice. Why? Because there’s a rumor that anyone who works for the king gets a family member’s wishes granted. And Asha really wants her grandfather, who is turning 100 — fancy that! — to have his wish come true. What’s Gramp’s wish? To sing a song that will inspire future generations. Hmm.
But Magnifico isn’t in the business of granting wishes; he prefers to hoard them. He’s a law-and-order man who knows that if he were to grant Wendy’s dream of flight or Jane and Michael’s wish for a nanny, they would — well, I don’t know why Magnifico doesn’t want to grant the people of Rosas their wishes. It’s not the only motivation in Wish that feels left on the cutting room floor.
But Magnifico isn’t the only force with magical powers in this world. There’s also a star in the night sky whose power rivals even the king’s. Might this be the wishing star, the very one every other Disney hero since time immemorial has looked to?
In another script: Yes. Sharp viewers will no doubt note that all the wishes Magnifico hoards are wishes from previous Disney films. And that many of Magnifico’s lines hew pretty close to Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent and Aladdin’s Jafar. And that Asha’s seven friends look and behave an awful lot like Snow White’s seven dwarves. And isn’t that Rapunzel’s boat they’re fleeing Rosas in?
That Wish could have been the uber-prequel for the mythical world of the Walt Disney Company is probably what filmmakers Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn, Jennifer Lee and Allison Moore had in mind, but I guess the executives got the better of that. It’s as if one of them didn’t get the joke and so made the animators put in a scene where a bear walks up to a deer and says, “Hiya, Bambi.”
Wish is a disappointment. It feels like a script ChatGPT spit out using Disney prompts. Ditto for the animation: beautiful backgrounds with blockish characters standing in front of them as if they are green screened. Well, I guess it’s all one big green screen, really. And it’s one big miss: something that could have continued a legacy but decided to eat it rather than celebrate it.
ON SCREEN: Wish is now playing in theaters.
