By Gio Arteaga
By now I’m sure we’ve all heard of the official movie Wish which commemorates Disney’s 100-year celebration of animation. (TINY SPOILER) The story follows a young woman Asha who lives in the kingdom of Rosas under King Magnifico’s rule. However, the king has the power to grant wishes, but uses his gift for self-image and power hunger. n a moment of desperation, Asha wishes for a shooting star to which her wish is granted; however, the shooting star attracts the attention of King Magnifico and the story goes on..
In theory, it sounds interesting; we’re getting a Disney villain for the first time in a while with a new and authentic story. The question everyone seems to ask is, why aren’t we excited?
When the trailer came out for the movie, Walt Disney began to do ad campaigns and promotions for the movie like releasing previews However,people did not seem happy with the story. But why?
Many professional animators and regular people have viewed Walt Disney as the pinnacle of animation, the peak of original movies with diverse storylines, plots with villains, allegories, twists, hidden messages, and most importantly, unique and relatable character personalities. As we’ve seen with multiple newer Disney animated movies, (2010-Now) the characters personalities have been a constant recurring theme of being embarrassed, quirky, clumsy, silly, #relateablequeen, or millennial humor. This new personality concept was first introduced in Rapunzel as she’s more often than not portrayed as embarrassed and ashamed, stating the obvious like “That’s the funny thing about birthdays, they’re kind of an annual thing.” This movie wasn’t necessarily bad (personally I love Tangled) but it set the stage for more movies to come with the same issue. It’s used in movies like Moana with Moana, Encanto with Mirabel, Frozen with Anna, and now Asha in Wish. As viewers, we want to see new stories with a variety of different personalities with more diverse stories, as Walt Disney has been proven to do with their original movies like Cinderella, Snow White, Pocahontas, the Little Mermaid, Mulan, and Beauty and the Beast.
This personality type also ties in with the main protagonist, King Magnifico. He’s a king with a very high ego, who’s “very giving” and he sings songs about letting people live in the kingdom rent-free! From what we know about his character, once again, it seems we’re going to be given a quirky, millennial-inspired character. Don’t get me wrong, there’s not much known about King Magnifico, so he may prove to be the “stereotypical villain,” but we have to wait and see.
Something else everyone seems to have a large issue with is the animation style itself. As viewers, we wanted to see a movie that isn’t just 3D animation. This movie went back to the basics by reverting to a 2D animation style with a stereotypical villain and a courageous protagonist. Disney on the other hand, thought that by partially listening to viewers and giving them a combination of a 2D and 3D movie, it would satisfy watchers. Yeah no that’s a pass for me… Disney states how they want to have a hybrid animation style of 2D and 3D animation with using a watercolor style to branch out further than what they’ve ever done before. People were upset with how Disney decided to pull this off and gave them tons of backlash and criticism for the style of animation. How “there’s no color definition”, “the lighting is off”, and “it doesn’t work with the movie”; people said it looks like they lost quality.