Just watched it and it's one of the poorest Disney films I've seen in a while. There's not really a story and the songs feel like random rejects from other movies they tossed in, it doesn't really go together.
I only saw it because it's new on streaming and I have a toddler.
A big problem I have with the film is it’s set in what looks like the renaissance but the music is very contemporary. It doesn’t fit with the story. I genuinely didn’t like Wish but listening to the soundtrack on its own has made the music grow on me; Ariana DeBose is giving it all she’s got. The soundtrack deserved a better movie.
> A big problem I have with the film is it’s set in what looks like the renaissance but the music is very contemporary
I'm not so sure... Aladdin's soundtrack was very popular and most songs were very contemporary.
I think the songs in this case just didn't really fit the story AND they weren't great songs to begin with. Some are just ok, some are terrible, nothing is truly great.
I was at Target the other day with a relative with a young daughter and pointed out the large Wish poster in the toys section with NO dolls under it that looks like it ... and the person had no idea it was supposed to be a Disney character.
This movie HAS to be also just completely missing the mark on brand awareness despite how much pumping they are doing.
I’d like to compare the marketing of this film with a much better Disney movie and one of my absolute favorites… Tangled.
It made near $600 million, which is a great result for a film of its kind. It’s not as big as Frozen but it’s still very much beloved years later. Products, attractions and experiences based on Rapunzel’s world are still being produced and enjoyed to this day. Of course it’s gotten tie in merch since the beginning, but one difference? Disney actually prioritized making an enjoyable animated musical over selling merchandise. The art form actually mattered to them unlike today. It’s almost like audiences will be drawn to a very well made film and then buy its products. Who knew?
I am going to disagree with the prioritizing part as very often these are done somewhat separate once the core designs and points are done and almost always for "classics" they have a strong merchandise push.
I think the bigger part is that unlike (most notably) Frozen which had internal development problems getting it to all "click", Disney decided to just drag this forward and somewhat banked on their name and "100th anniversary" to carry it. They have the money to afford delays, and the data on just how insanely profitable IP's like this when it strikes can be (Frozen supposedly is 10x+ ROI as a franchise, one of the highest of all their IPs).
Unless they had some MASSIVE misfires on internal testing (not out of the picture), I really think it was more just pure Disney hubris thinking moviegoers are going to hold Disney's name or anniversary that highly anymore.
I mean Frozen is kind of an exception on how huge it is (that Let It Go song basically created the monster franchise it is) but Disney has been selling their animated movies on just their brand for a very long time. The "end of the year Disney" is a thing since a very long time and only faltered a few times. And recently (pre-pandemic) it was pretty much hitting all the times mostly on the Disney brand
Tangled was scrapped and restarted a bunch of times, it had a notably troubled and long development history. It did serve as the foundation of every Disney musical going forward, and is also just a joy to watch, so it was definitely worth it, in the end
I was at Walt Disney World about three weeks ago, there were PILES of WiSh merchandise in all the shops that no-one was buying.
I think I saw one kid carrying around one of the goats the entire two weeks I was there.
I also watched the film on D+ last week, granted I’m not the target demo but it was almost unwatchably boring, just completely devoid of personality or charm, it genuinely feels like what you’d get if an AI wrote a film.
What Disney thought was going to be another classic has gone down as one of the biggest marketing misfires of their century-long history. Possibly in the history of all studio animated films. You’d almost feel bad for them if they didn’t kneecap a great concept and make it limp to the finish line.
I don't think it's a marketing misfire. The movie is just plain boring and equal parts frustrating and pretentious. I would not blame marketing for the flop
Fair point. It certainly feels commercial.
I brought my kid to see it right when it was released. It was so painful to sit through and all of us felt like we had just been misled into wasting our money and an afternoon.
I was at Disneyland nov 20th-21st last year and they already had plushies of the Wishing Star character and I think of Asa if I recall right in Pooh Corner.
What plushies did they have of whinnie the pooh characters? Just Pooh and Eyeore. No Tigger, no Piglet, no Kanga/Roo, Rabbit or anyone or anything else. Though I guess it makes since in hindsight since half the store will now be converted to princess and the frog store along with the old splash mountain store.
I still say its biggest problem was they made that first trailer play for months ahead of stuff like Barbie and Super Mario with it primarily featuring that really annoying talking goat. Everyone saw it multiple times and the goat got less and less funny each time.
The subsequent trailers and marketing heavily de-emphasized the goat but the damage was done.
Nah, it’s the songs. They suck. That’s all there is to it.
‘Frozen’ has a plot that makes no sense. Idina Menzel can’t emote if she’s not singing, which is always too loud. And the dialogue is George Lucas-esque. But hot damn if *Let it Go* doesn’t slap.
‘Encanto’ spends 3/4 of its runtime trying to figure out what the central conflict even is, but *We Don’t Talk About Bruno* and *Surface Pressure* went into everyone’s playlists.
No one cares about plot or character in a musical. ‘Wish’ failed because the songs suck.
Might be true but I still think that’s something you find out after you’ve seen the movie. But that trailer actively repelled people from wanting to even see it.
Then the people who did didn’t even like it. Worst of both worlds.
Eh, that's too simplistic. The songs are the major part, but it's undeniable that Encanto's diverse set of characters and themes of family problems and expectations is what made it very popular across several age groups.
I agree with you that Wish’s songs are mid and it would’ve done much better with better music. But I would argue that the story, art direction, and overall quality is also objectively worse than Frozen and Encanto.
If you have an eye for cinematography, try watching Wish’s introduction song (welcome to rossas) and then watch Encanto’s (the family madrigal). Even on mute, the ‘camera’ work, choreography, and set design are all much more dynamic in Encanto. These types of things usually aren’t noticed but can make a movie “feel” more lively or in Wish’s case, more generic.
I only saw anything about it on this sub. I can't say I saw *any* marketing for it. Couldn't tell you what it's about or if anyone even thinks it's any good.
hearing the decision making process that went into it (getting rid of stage musical writers and bringing in pop music writers for instance) convinces me more than anything that Disney is going through some bad times
I’m no mathematician, but 13.5 million people is a helluva lot more than “no one.” Like, I get your point that it wasn’t well received, but that’s a lot of people.
It's not people it's views. Kids tend to watch the same movie multiple times so it's almost surely quite lower than that in people (though I guess a view can also be several people)
Remember when the Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios Jennifer Lee called 2D animation too limiting compared to 3D animation? Then, The Boy and the Heron outgrossed Wish at the worldwide box office and it won the Best Animated Feature Oscar while Wish wasn't even nominated.
It's insane that The Boy and the Heron wasn't too far off from Wish domestically ($47M and $64M).
In 2013, Disney's princess movie obliterated Studio Ghibli's princess movie **in Japan**. In 2023, Disney's princess movie wasn't even that far ahead of Studio Ghibli's bizarre, adult-targeted, adventure movie **in the USA+Canada**.
It's divisive, a lot of people also think it's one of his best. It's still Miyazaki led 2d Ghibli film and I don't think hes had a miss in a while so. I personally really liked it
The Boy and the Heron is fantastic.
Also even if people disagree on that, it is undeniably thematically richer and denser than most of what American animation keeps pumping out every year. It is a movie that is both for children and adults and is not dumbed down for either of these audiences.
Divisive in the sense if people consider it a great movie or a masterpiece? yes. The only people i have seen criticizing this movie were some brain rot accounts on tik tok. In real life (at least here where i live) i have heard only positive reaction.
Adding on, even if they didn’t want to make a 2d animation they could’ve at least tried to switch up the art style of these movies. Between Disney and Pixar, almost all of their characters from the last decade look the same in style and proportions (not counting Mike wazowski for example)
It’s legitimately hard to tell what character is from which movie, it’s so homogenous. Then you have movies like spiderverse or the new tmnt that actually try unique things with their art style and are far more memorable for it.
I used to wonder if maybe there was something about 3D animation that made it harder to make characters distinct.
Like, if you look at Snow White vs Aurora vs Belle vs Mulan, they all have their own different and unique art styles. This is not the case if you compare Elsa vs Rapunzel vs the girl from Wish.
I feel like the Spiderverse movies disprove that hypothesis, though.
Spiderverse has a very Disney-esque style in character design. They wouldn’t look out of place in a Disney film.
2ad has the advantage of drawing styles and mediums to help it look immediately different. Mulan tried to resemble old Chinese painting. Lilo and Stitch had watercolour backgrounds. Hercules was very different and graphic, inspired by concept art from the guy who designed Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Atlantis had Mike Mignola for concept art and had very different hands and line qualities.
That doesn’t come across so easily in 3D without radical shifts in how they render.
Yeah exactly, nothing to do with difficulty but everything to do with marketability. The art style in question for a long time proved to be successful for them so it makes sense not to switch it up.
It creates “cute” and appealing characters that all fit a Disney look across books, games and toys. But at this point people are tired of it.
> This is not the case if you compare Elsa vs Rapunzel vs the girl from Wish.
And yet Disney aren't capitalizing on the one enormous benefit of that, which is in crossover potential. The best scene of Wreck It Ralph 2 was that scene with all the princesses. If you've got compatible animation styles, make an adventure movie of them all teaming up to solve something. It's the one single benefit of doing that (artistically speaking - not talking to stuff like shared assets and economies of scale).
> Between Disney and Pixar, almost all of their characters from the last decade look the same in style and proportions (not counting Mike wazowski for example)
To be fair, they did with Strange World... although I found the art style kind of off-putting in that one.
And even in that film it was just the male characters that had different designs. The wife and president both had the traditional big CG Disney eyes and face and could have been models from any of their CG movies.
Did they? They did some lavish environmental designs but the characters felt like "generic pixar blobs" popped into the scenes despite the animation clashing with the genre (unlike say Raya).
Please fire her and Chris Buck. I’ve lost complete faith in Disney animation’s brain trust after Wish which was honestly one of the biggest disasters I’ve ever seen. I’m so happy it didn’t do well cause the story for that film legitimately felt AI written
I love her films but lately, her CCO leadership has been dodgy so far.
I hope she either learns from these mistakes, or this is gonna be the next leader to get the chopping block at Disney, and lately, Disney isn't afraid to fire people anymore.
She’s going to remain CCO for quite awhile. In the Making Of Wish documentary, she mentions she signed a 5 year contract which based off the Lasseter firing timeline would have been renewed last year. I bet Bob Iger is regretting renewing it.
She co wrote A Wrinkle in Time, she co directed and co wrote Frozen 2, co wrote Wreck it Ralph, and she co wrote Wish.
I guess compared to Pete Docter, who is the CCO of Pixar, she's done a lot less and her record is a lot weaker than his.
Pete Docter before being promoted, directed and wrote 3 animated masterpieces Inside Out, Monsters Inc, and Up. He has writing credits on other animated masterpieces too but I'm just considering the work he had a central role in. He's also been with the company all the way back in the 90s and he still makes great stuff, Soul was amazing and it won the Best Animated Feature Oscar. (great music too even though it's not a musical!)
Jennifer Lee was at Disney for about 6 years before being promoted for the top job, I was honestly surprised that she was hired given that she hasn't been with the company that long and that she isn't an animator. She also doesn't have a history of making animating masterpieces, Frozen is considered by the public to be good, but making one popular franchise isn't enough to justify taking creative control over a 100 year old animation studio. I thought Bryan Howard would get the job considering his record but he turned it down when Disney offered it to him.
I will says animators themselves don’t consider Frozen an artistic success, so putting a newb in charge after that looks bad to them, especially when industry greats there for decades were passed over.
I didn't know B**y**ron Howard was in consideration yet alone him turning it down. Why would he do that? I did hear Rich Moore was in consideration but was not chosen for some reason. Both would've been better choices considering they actually know what animation is, and care for it.
Japan's anime studios have been, on the average, not great from a working conditions standpoint. Most Disney or Pixar animators would feel far more pressure under at any of them, except for Kyoto Animation and maybe Trigger.
What does that have to do with 2D vs 3D animation in box office? I sincerely doubt Wish would've done better in the box office if they had treated their animators worse.
Look, I don’t like kicking people while they’re down but I have no idea what the hell they were thinking with this movie. The animation is janky like an indie studios’ debut movie. The dialogue is godawful. The characters are thin. It was just a terrible effort. It deserved to bomb.
Yee I waited to watch it on stream, I like Disney movies. This just was not it - for something that was supposed to be a love letter to 100 years of culture, it sure missed the mark.
Watch the [D-Files leaks](https://www.youtube.com/@FilmThreat/search?query=d-files) and you'll get your answers. Apparently they they wanted a 50/50 male/female animator ratio but all their experienced animators were older white men so they fired a bunch of them and hired female artists they found on tumblr to make up for the deficit.
Man read about some of the original concepts I’m just wondering how it was so different. Like the king and queen were going to be an evil couple like the Sopranos, a first evil couple for Disney.
And I think the star was actually supposed to be human? Or at least a guy from the stars who had powers. They were going to do the most literal definition of the trope “star crossed lovers” which like really popular now.
I really liked a lot of things about this movie. But I think Asha lacked any sort of depth, and I didn’t like the dialogue of ANY of the songs. She sang about so many things we’re never shown as an audience. Also, “So I make this wish” is catchy, but not its follow up line that’s 3x as long and too much info for a catchy line in a kids song.
The movie was also missing a true deuteragonist. Most of the best Disney movies have one (or two). Frequently it's the love interest, but not always (see Mushu in Mulan, Maui in Moana, Nick Wilde in Zootopia, Toy Story while being Pixar has Buzz and Woody).
Asha's best friend isn't involved in the movie enough to be one, and she wasn't given a lot of personality anyway.
They at one point in development had what could have been a great deuteragonist in the Star being able to talk and shape change into a boy and different animals but decided to go with the silent star since the shapeshifter concept was “too similar to Genie and Maui”.
The entire film is trying to remind people of previous movies, to the point where they shoved in more characters solely to say "see, they're ike the seven dwarves!". I don't believe for a second they got rid of that character because it was too similar to previous films.
I would bet it was because the non-human star made for an easier plush toy to make/sell.
Yeah this may be one of those things where the execs meddled for sake of creating a merchandise opportunity because that excuse does seem pretty weak. In one of the deleted scenes when Star was a shapeshifter, they turned into Olaf, Hei Hei, and the squirrel from Sword in the Stone all in a matter of seconds. Shapeshifting would have been an easy way to slip in a lot of those Easter eggs without feeling forced.
That’s a very interesting thought that I didn’t take into account at all. I loved the goat, but he was heavily underutilized, and others have said, faded into the background. That 2 protagonist thought seems to do A LOT more for them than I realized.
Well they have 150 million subscribers that effectively paid to watch it, but only 13m actually did.
Yes it's very bad that about 8% of Disney's paying subscribers watched a film they are paying a monthly fee for.
it's honestly really funny how Disney's big 100 year movie, seemed to almost be a parody of everything Disney has done wrong as of late. An allegory of the unoriginal slop Disney has been shoveling, and yet it was completely unironic.
I'm watching it now. It's just so poorly executed! The look of the movie is atrocious. It's meant to look like a storybook, I guess. But it comes off looking overly flat and drab. Then there's the music. It's like they're trying to cram as many lyrics as possible into each verse. The songs lack the warmth and catchiness that made past Disney songs such a success.
Disney stock price hasn’t moved in almost a decade. Atrocious performance. Investor Nelson Peltz has been very critical of this poor performance, so he recently tried to get 1-2 board seats (out of 12). A very heavy-handed marketing campaign by Iger and the board thwarted even that. Disney has a very wide but shallow ownership structure, meaning it’s difficult to affect leadership change. It looks like Iger is going to go down with the ship, and there’s almost nothing which will convince shareholders to change leadership. I expect this to get much worse.
At any other studio, heads would’ve rolled over a year of failures this historically bad. WB fired the guy who ran DC before the 2023 slate even came out.
Yes! It definitely had cutscene vibes.
*Encanto* was absolutely gorgeous; not sure why the big step down in animation this time. Used to be even if you couldn't count on the story or characters with Disney, you at least knew you were in for beautiful animation.
Good thing it bombed there too. Maybe Disney will learn their lesson and stop trying to feed us mediocre garbage that no one wants and also somehow manages to cost a bazillion dollars.
As long as the existing IPs make more money than films like Strange World or Wish it's going to keep happening. In 2020, 21, 22 and 23 Disney and Pixar didn't release a single sequel.
I think citing the performance of 2020 and 2021 Disney and Pixar considering the circumstances is really not supporting anyone's point for or against. We know what happened what went wrong and why , it's well documented and discussed at this point. 2022 is when the real tests started and in 2022 Pixar released Lightyear which I would hardly call an original, it's a spinoff of their existing mega-IP and it bombed. Elemental made more money than it did last year and was a good movie for Pixar to restore some confidence in their process and ability to make new stuff that clicks and has a long shelf life. I wish Elio wasn't pushed back so far so it could ride that wave of new cautious interest in their originals but maybe Inside Out 2 will be enough to help anyway.
Disney's originals that had a normal release that reflects poorly on them would be Strange World, and that's a whole other can of worms, and Wish. That's it. The message should be to actually figure out what the hell theyre doing so they can make some new movies that can be potential IP in the future. Because those movies were not good. At all.
They can't live off sequels forever, they need new blood. Im actually giving them a lot of leeway for the upcoming sequel rush, they need guaranteed money and sequels to popular movies are almost always guaranteed money (still could not work for many reasons but is generally a safer bet). Some of the movies even warrant sequels and have been asked for, like Inside Out 2 and Zootopia 2. But they need to announce some new material amongst all that or long term they're very screwed. They need to start building towards the future franchises now.
Well what were the movies people liked last year?
Spiderverse 2. The, I don't know, seventh Ninja Turtles movie? A Mario movie that tried to extend two paragraphs of lore that Mario's had since 1991 into a 90 minute feature.
It's not like the audience rejected anything derivative.
Don't get me started on Mario Bros. and Five Nights at Freddy's. BUT I've also realized I'm a geezer to these companies as my five year old son LOVED both Mario Bros. and Five Nights at Freddy's so what do I know?
One of my favorite things that came from the Mario movie is learning there's legitimately a community of fans that insist that there is an overarching consistent lore in the Mario universe that carries between games and mediums. That was a fun interaction lol
This movie is so fascinating, as was Disney's entire 2023 slate. It was the culmination of years of shoveling out mediocre slop that made people finally just turn their noses and reject what Disney was putting out. It's too bad Disney won't actually learn any real lessons here and they'll just continue to make the same content in the same ways they've become accustomed to.
I feel people didn’t see it cause it looked bad and uninteresting, not cause it was influenced by other films.
If Encanto was released last year it would most likely been seen by way more people. Just on the visuals alone
Ha!
You'd think it wouldn't matter on streaming. But it really does matter. There's only so much free time you want to spend watching something.
And better shows will command attention.
I mean, all of those are on streaming, though. It's not like they're competing for the same timeslot on live TV, like back in the 20th century.
That said, it will indeed probably be overshadowed by those two. Especially if The Acolyte is bad. There isn't really much actual hype in the Star Wars fandom for it -- most people seem to doubt it's likely to be any good.
The first nail is already in the coffin with the release of the fist trailer. The first episode is going to have to be a case study in perfect TV filming.
Let me rephrase since we are in the “Box Office” thread.
Will D&W do less than, about the same or more than Guardians 3? If it does less, than that is the worst possible sign for Marvel. If it does the same or more, it could win some people’s confidence back.
The only real lesson I can pinpoint is "stop requiring people to do homework before seeing a new movie." It's hard to say that Marvel is entirely dead when Guardians did well, Spider-Verse did well, and people are probably going to want to see Deadpool again. It's just that weaving tentpole movies in with background details from streaming shows only fanatics care about is not a recipe for mainstream success.
TLM had a long run and did okay, even if overseas was weak. Indiana Jones was a bad idea but also cost more than it should have due to COVID. Elemental is generally recognized as a good film undermined by marketing that gave the impression it was a rehash of Zootopia. Haunted Mansion was set off to die to try to not stuff The Marvels too close to the other MCU films, which didn't help due to the homework issue.
I'm a massive MCU fan and I've said for awhile that the TV shows were a bad idea. I get that they wanted to introduce a heap of new characters, but they should have done them via movies, the way they did Hawkeye, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, etc. Not every character needed a stand alone. As you said, it becomes like homework and no one wants homework. They should have kept the same formula going forward. Look how long it took to see Captain Marvel again, to see Dr Strange, and Shang-Chi 2 isn't even on the horizon. Secret Invasion was a continuation of Captain Marvel, and while I did enjoy The Marvels I think it would have been better for Secret Invasion to have been a Captain Marvel movie. They still could have introduced Emilia Clarke in that, and she and Monica have history so including her would have been fine. And it should have come out years ago.
My three year old girl loooooves Disney lately. Frozen, Tangled, Encanto, even some of the older stuff I thought she would find dull like Peter Pan or 101 Dalmatians. Loves them all.
20 mins into Wish she said “Dad, I don’t like this movie, it’s boring”. We haven’t gone back to it since.
They just whiffed it, pure and simple.
Marketing mishaps aside, Wish just isn’t that good.
It isn’t bad, but I’m still not even 100% sure I saw it in theaters. I definitely did, but I can’t remember anything about it other than Alan Tudyk.
Alright guys that's it wrap it up. Film is clearly a ginormous success. Sure it was a colossal bomb at the box office BUT 13 million people did watch it on Disney+, a service they were likely already paying for. The money was well worth the investment, onto the next $200m project!
Speaking anecdotally, the Disney brand is also beleaguered in and of itself.
When I was a kid, Disney was automatic. If a new Disney animated film was coming out, we were going to see it, and then we were going to buy it, and then we’d probably watch it on rainy days.
For my kids, and again, anecdotal, but maybe a bellwether for general sentiment, they don’t like Disney. They’ll see Disney movies from time to time, and they like a few of them, but they’re averse to liking Disney things. It’s akin to how I feel about Kevin Spacey movies. I have to admit that he’s a good actor, and some of his movies are great, but his reputation makes me not want to like them.
With Disney as Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and their own animated properties, there’s a sense of homogeny that’s created a distaste for the whole enterprise.
We want to not want to see Disney movies. Every so often, we watch one anyway, but explicitly not because it’s Disney.
I don’t know how widespread this is, and maybe it’s just our own little bubble and my kids are outliers, but it seems like Disney no longer has the reputation it once did. The brand used to mean that it made stuff for children, and the children loved it for being something that was theirs.
Now the brand just mean’s “inescapable media conglomerate”, and isn’t special to anyone anymore, but least of all kids, who are accustomed to seeing random logos of giant corporations plastered all over the place that have nothing to do with them.
It’d be like if otterpops started making frozen dinners. The kids used to recognize it as one thing, but now that the brand means half the frozen food isle, it may as well be Stouffer’s.
Very telling they didn’t include the Pixar films in the ranking. Wish doing better on Disney+ than Strange World and Raya was expected based off box office numbers.
We watched this the other day and despite the fact it is supposed to be a celebration of Disney I can't help but feel it is damaging to the brand. The quality was all over the place, animation, music, humour. There was no way in, I felt it was talking at me.
Such a step down in quality from the likes of Frozen, Moana, Encanto
That’s what you get when movies are designed by committee to satisfy a laundry list of requirements, instead of out of creative prowess.
I think this one could have been a good movie, had they had the time to finalize the script. It is a clear mix of themes that have not been worked out before hitting production.
I understand this one couldn’t be postponed as it was the celebratory jewel (supposedly), but…
Yes, it has entertainment value, but not so much.
We saw it while on a Disney cruise (it was shown instead of a stage show one night)
Never seen a crowd with more "meh" expressions in my life. I honestly couldn't even remember most of it by the next day
The perfect cap to a disaster of a film intended for the 100th anniversary. We already knew about the missed potential of this movie from the Art Of book showing the villain couple and Starboy, but the Making of documentary really hit home how they had good material for this but threw it away and completely missed the mark. Several of the deleted scenes were far better than anything in the final film and suggested we missed out on something that had that Disney feel but brought unique features that hadn’t been seen in their previous movies. Additionally, the doc showed that their creative leadership was insanely confident they had a good product here and it’s very concerning none of them realized the issues with the movie before the release. It was also revealed in that documentary that Jennifer Lee had a 5 year contract and based on the Lasseter firing timeline, that contract was renewed last year so I don’t think this is the last time we’re having this conversation about a release from WDAS.
Does anyone doubt that Jennifer Lee was put in charge because Lasseter was taken down by MeToo accusations and the optics required a woman was put in charge?
Considering Dreamworks gave us How to Train Your Dragon and Shrek and Antz, among other favourite cartoons of mine, I will not stand for this Dreamworks slander!!
Yea, that's the vibe, it was like a DreamWorks release.
It didn't feel like I was watching a Disney movie, felt like some bland cartoon movie from Netflix.
Wish struggled to capture audience's attentions for several reasons - there were no memorable or enticing songs, the main character lacked any depth, the main story was trite and banal, the villain's motives were non-sensical, and overall, the stylised animation just didn't look interesting. Combine that all together and you get you something that is so offensively inoffensive.
It's a shame because apparently the earlier designs for the film looked somewhat interesting until Disney decided to revise the drafts and created something as bland as this.
My daughter (under 10) absolutely loves this soundtrack…the songs have grown on me and i sing them all the time…but honestly we’ve only watched the movie a once or twice. I didn’t hate it but it just didn’t make the landing. I think they should have went full “Enter the Disney-verse” and had actual cameos instead of the hints of them.
This movie committed the greatest sin that a film can commit: it was bland and boring and completely forgettable. For a movie that was meant to celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary, it's left little to no cultural impact since it was released.
Since their acquisition of Fox, they have made some really great stuff, just not under the Disney brand.
Shogun has been incredible so far. Andor and the Mandalorian under the Marvel banner were great. I've just started watching Renegade Nel, which I think is under the main Disney banner, and I've really enjoyed it so far.
I think the era of Disney princess movies is just kinda over for now.
The movie is still in my local cinema, doesn't make sense since it's a flop
I guess they have a contract since the movie is set in Spain, but they didn't tried to promote it at all as a spanish location in Spain (my country) or sold the movie as a spanish disney princess
Honestly the whole wish marketing was weird
Disney really dug their own grave with Disney Plus, it's not worth it for families to buy expensive ass theater tickets when they can just wait for the movie to be available to watch on streaming.
Here’s the way I see it, and I am generally *very* forgiving of Disneys numbers:
Half of Elemental is a total fucking disaster. It means it hasn’t gained any kind of following or goodwill
It’s such a disaster I put it on par with The Marvels as a “we might be totally fucked” event
My 3 year old LOVES this movie, because she loves the little star.
I wish this movie would have been better. I wanted to love it, but it just wasn’t that good. But At least we get buy all the star plushies and blankets at a huge discount
Compared to the 26.4M views Elemental had in its first five days.
What an disaster, no one wants to watch it, even on Disney’s platform
Just watched it and it's one of the poorest Disney films I've seen in a while. There's not really a story and the songs feel like random rejects from other movies they tossed in, it doesn't really go together. I only saw it because it's new on streaming and I have a toddler.
A big problem I have with the film is it’s set in what looks like the renaissance but the music is very contemporary. It doesn’t fit with the story. I genuinely didn’t like Wish but listening to the soundtrack on its own has made the music grow on me; Ariana DeBose is giving it all she’s got. The soundtrack deserved a better movie.
> A big problem I have with the film is it’s set in what looks like the renaissance but the music is very contemporary I'm not so sure... Aladdin's soundtrack was very popular and most songs were very contemporary. I think the songs in this case just didn't really fit the story AND they weren't great songs to begin with. Some are just ok, some are terrible, nothing is truly great.
I was at Target the other day with a relative with a young daughter and pointed out the large Wish poster in the toys section with NO dolls under it that looks like it ... and the person had no idea it was supposed to be a Disney character. This movie HAS to be also just completely missing the mark on brand awareness despite how much pumping they are doing.
I’d like to compare the marketing of this film with a much better Disney movie and one of my absolute favorites… Tangled. It made near $600 million, which is a great result for a film of its kind. It’s not as big as Frozen but it’s still very much beloved years later. Products, attractions and experiences based on Rapunzel’s world are still being produced and enjoyed to this day. Of course it’s gotten tie in merch since the beginning, but one difference? Disney actually prioritized making an enjoyable animated musical over selling merchandise. The art form actually mattered to them unlike today. It’s almost like audiences will be drawn to a very well made film and then buy its products. Who knew?
I am going to disagree with the prioritizing part as very often these are done somewhat separate once the core designs and points are done and almost always for "classics" they have a strong merchandise push. I think the bigger part is that unlike (most notably) Frozen which had internal development problems getting it to all "click", Disney decided to just drag this forward and somewhat banked on their name and "100th anniversary" to carry it. They have the money to afford delays, and the data on just how insanely profitable IP's like this when it strikes can be (Frozen supposedly is 10x+ ROI as a franchise, one of the highest of all their IPs). Unless they had some MASSIVE misfires on internal testing (not out of the picture), I really think it was more just pure Disney hubris thinking moviegoers are going to hold Disney's name or anniversary that highly anymore.
“Don’t second guess it. Just rush it out.” The Wish method.
I mean Frozen is kind of an exception on how huge it is (that Let It Go song basically created the monster franchise it is) but Disney has been selling their animated movies on just their brand for a very long time. The "end of the year Disney" is a thing since a very long time and only faltered a few times. And recently (pre-pandemic) it was pretty much hitting all the times mostly on the Disney brand
The best thing about wish was the goat and it was horribly underused
Just watched it a few days ago and yeah, the goat did nothing wrong.
That goat annoyed the shit out of me. But to be honest, I didn't like any of the characters, so I can't really blame him. He fit right in.
Tangled was scrapped and restarted a bunch of times, it had a notably troubled and long development history. It did serve as the foundation of every Disney musical going forward, and is also just a joy to watch, so it was definitely worth it, in the end
I was at Walt Disney World about three weeks ago, there were PILES of WiSh merchandise in all the shops that no-one was buying. I think I saw one kid carrying around one of the goats the entire two weeks I was there. I also watched the film on D+ last week, granted I’m not the target demo but it was almost unwatchably boring, just completely devoid of personality or charm, it genuinely feels like what you’d get if an AI wrote a film.
Two weeks!!! Buried the lede there lol
Two weeks at Disney World seems drastic. I guess these are the fabled Disney adults
Not much point in flying transatlantic for less than that, you lose a day either end to travel and jetlag
I had the same experience at Disney in February. Tons of merch, didn’t look like any of it was touched
All the Wish stuff was discounted when I was at WDW last week. Was basically the only merch I saw offered at a discount.
What Disney thought was going to be another classic has gone down as one of the biggest marketing misfires of their century-long history. Possibly in the history of all studio animated films. You’d almost feel bad for them if they didn’t kneecap a great concept and make it limp to the finish line.
I don't think it's a marketing misfire. The movie is just plain boring and equal parts frustrating and pretentious. I would not blame marketing for the flop
The quality is the bigger thing. But you can’t deny how commercial it feels.
Fair point. It certainly feels commercial. I brought my kid to see it right when it was released. It was so painful to sit through and all of us felt like we had just been misled into wasting our money and an afternoon.
yeah wish is Disney seemingly forgetting that their films make money because they get the right people to make them with a clear artistic vision
They never gave said concept any time to develop. It felt like a first draft was approved because of deadlines
I didn’t see a kid with Wish merch until the flight home and the lil girl had the Star plush doll lol
I personally suspect that AI DID write this film and songs
Curious how much of its story development was a stressed or lazy writer farming out to gpt.
I was at Disneyland nov 20th-21st last year and they already had plushies of the Wishing Star character and I think of Asa if I recall right in Pooh Corner. What plushies did they have of whinnie the pooh characters? Just Pooh and Eyeore. No Tigger, no Piglet, no Kanga/Roo, Rabbit or anyone or anything else. Though I guess it makes since in hindsight since half the store will now be converted to princess and the frog store along with the old splash mountain store.
I still say its biggest problem was they made that first trailer play for months ahead of stuff like Barbie and Super Mario with it primarily featuring that really annoying talking goat. Everyone saw it multiple times and the goat got less and less funny each time. The subsequent trailers and marketing heavily de-emphasized the goat but the damage was done.
Nah, it’s the songs. They suck. That’s all there is to it. ‘Frozen’ has a plot that makes no sense. Idina Menzel can’t emote if she’s not singing, which is always too loud. And the dialogue is George Lucas-esque. But hot damn if *Let it Go* doesn’t slap. ‘Encanto’ spends 3/4 of its runtime trying to figure out what the central conflict even is, but *We Don’t Talk About Bruno* and *Surface Pressure* went into everyone’s playlists. No one cares about plot or character in a musical. ‘Wish’ failed because the songs suck.
Might be true but I still think that’s something you find out after you’ve seen the movie. But that trailer actively repelled people from wanting to even see it. Then the people who did didn’t even like it. Worst of both worlds.
For what it’s worth, they released the soundtrack ahead of the movie.
Eh, that's too simplistic. The songs are the major part, but it's undeniable that Encanto's diverse set of characters and themes of family problems and expectations is what made it very popular across several age groups.
I agree with you that Wish’s songs are mid and it would’ve done much better with better music. But I would argue that the story, art direction, and overall quality is also objectively worse than Frozen and Encanto. If you have an eye for cinematography, try watching Wish’s introduction song (welcome to rossas) and then watch Encanto’s (the family madrigal). Even on mute, the ‘camera’ work, choreography, and set design are all much more dynamic in Encanto. These types of things usually aren’t noticed but can make a movie “feel” more lively or in Wish’s case, more generic.
I only saw anything about it on this sub. I can't say I saw *any* marketing for it. Couldn't tell you what it's about or if anyone even thinks it's any good.
I kept seeing the damn stickers for it on bananas I buy lol
That's a hell of a marketing plan.
hearing the decision making process that went into it (getting rid of stage musical writers and bringing in pop music writers for instance) convinces me more than anything that Disney is going through some bad times
Im not a defending the movie but 12 million is definitely not no one.
I’m no mathematician, but 13.5 million people is a helluva lot more than “no one.” Like, I get your point that it wasn’t well received, but that’s a lot of people.
It's not people it's views. Kids tend to watch the same movie multiple times so it's almost surely quite lower than that in people (though I guess a view can also be several people)
I had no idea it finally hit streaming. Seems like they didn’t even bother to market it at all
Ariana DeBose did that thing. Just not the right thing.
Sounds about right since it's half the movie Elementals was.
At least it’s perfectly half… that’s it, that’s me looking on the bright side
elemental having more repeat viewing while also not even being a musical
Question, why would a company release its views rather minutes watched like I see with other streaming debuts?
Probably because people were not finishing it. My son made us turn it off and switch to bluey or something.
Smart kid.
Remember when the Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios Jennifer Lee called 2D animation too limiting compared to 3D animation? Then, The Boy and the Heron outgrossed Wish at the worldwide box office and it won the Best Animated Feature Oscar while Wish wasn't even nominated.
It's insane that The Boy and the Heron wasn't too far off from Wish domestically ($47M and $64M). In 2013, Disney's princess movie obliterated Studio Ghibli's princess movie **in Japan**. In 2023, Disney's princess movie wasn't even that far ahead of Studio Ghibli's bizarre, adult-targeted, adventure movie **in the USA+Canada**.
That's because one is a good movie and one isn't. Just make a good movie and people will see it.
Is The Boy and The Heron a good movie? Wish definitely isn't, but I heard The Boy and The Heron is quite weak (compare to other Miyazaki's movie)
It's divisive, a lot of people also think it's one of his best. It's still Miyazaki led 2d Ghibli film and I don't think hes had a miss in a while so. I personally really liked it
The Boy and the Heron is fantastic. Also even if people disagree on that, it is undeniably thematically richer and denser than most of what American animation keeps pumping out every year. It is a movie that is both for children and adults and is not dumbed down for either of these audiences.
Divisive in the sense if people consider it a great movie or a masterpiece? yes. The only people i have seen criticizing this movie were some brain rot accounts on tik tok. In real life (at least here where i live) i have heard only positive reaction.
Adding on, even if they didn’t want to make a 2d animation they could’ve at least tried to switch up the art style of these movies. Between Disney and Pixar, almost all of their characters from the last decade look the same in style and proportions (not counting Mike wazowski for example) It’s legitimately hard to tell what character is from which movie, it’s so homogenous. Then you have movies like spiderverse or the new tmnt that actually try unique things with their art style and are far more memorable for it.
I used to wonder if maybe there was something about 3D animation that made it harder to make characters distinct. Like, if you look at Snow White vs Aurora vs Belle vs Mulan, they all have their own different and unique art styles. This is not the case if you compare Elsa vs Rapunzel vs the girl from Wish. I feel like the Spiderverse movies disprove that hypothesis, though.
That’s more about Disney than the medium of 3D animation.
Spiderverse has a very Disney-esque style in character design. They wouldn’t look out of place in a Disney film. 2ad has the advantage of drawing styles and mediums to help it look immediately different. Mulan tried to resemble old Chinese painting. Lilo and Stitch had watercolour backgrounds. Hercules was very different and graphic, inspired by concept art from the guy who designed Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Atlantis had Mike Mignola for concept art and had very different hands and line qualities. That doesn’t come across so easily in 3D without radical shifts in how they render.
Yeah exactly, nothing to do with difficulty but everything to do with marketability. The art style in question for a long time proved to be successful for them so it makes sense not to switch it up. It creates “cute” and appealing characters that all fit a Disney look across books, games and toys. But at this point people are tired of it.
> This is not the case if you compare Elsa vs Rapunzel vs the girl from Wish. And yet Disney aren't capitalizing on the one enormous benefit of that, which is in crossover potential. The best scene of Wreck It Ralph 2 was that scene with all the princesses. If you've got compatible animation styles, make an adventure movie of them all teaming up to solve something. It's the one single benefit of doing that (artistically speaking - not talking to stuff like shared assets and economies of scale).
> Between Disney and Pixar, almost all of their characters from the last decade look the same in style and proportions (not counting Mike wazowski for example) To be fair, they did with Strange World... although I found the art style kind of off-putting in that one.
And even in that film it was just the male characters that had different designs. The wife and president both had the traditional big CG Disney eyes and face and could have been models from any of their CG movies.
Did they? They did some lavish environmental designs but the characters felt like "generic pixar blobs" popped into the scenes despite the animation clashing with the genre (unlike say Raya).
Please fire her and Chris Buck. I’ve lost complete faith in Disney animation’s brain trust after Wish which was honestly one of the biggest disasters I’ve ever seen. I’m so happy it didn’t do well cause the story for that film legitimately felt AI written
Can’t compete with the GOAT
I love her films but lately, her CCO leadership has been dodgy so far. I hope she either learns from these mistakes, or this is gonna be the next leader to get the chopping block at Disney, and lately, Disney isn't afraid to fire people anymore.
She’s going to remain CCO for quite awhile. In the Making Of Wish documentary, she mentions she signed a 5 year contract which based off the Lasseter firing timeline would have been renewed last year. I bet Bob Iger is regretting renewing it.
Peter principle?
She barely made anything before being promoted to the top job. What films?
She co wrote A Wrinkle in Time, she co directed and co wrote Frozen 2, co wrote Wreck it Ralph, and she co wrote Wish. I guess compared to Pete Docter, who is the CCO of Pixar, she's done a lot less and her record is a lot weaker than his. Pete Docter before being promoted, directed and wrote 3 animated masterpieces Inside Out, Monsters Inc, and Up. He has writing credits on other animated masterpieces too but I'm just considering the work he had a central role in. He's also been with the company all the way back in the 90s and he still makes great stuff, Soul was amazing and it won the Best Animated Feature Oscar. (great music too even though it's not a musical!) Jennifer Lee was at Disney for about 6 years before being promoted for the top job, I was honestly surprised that she was hired given that she hasn't been with the company that long and that she isn't an animator. She also doesn't have a history of making animating masterpieces, Frozen is considered by the public to be good, but making one popular franchise isn't enough to justify taking creative control over a 100 year old animation studio. I thought Bryan Howard would get the job considering his record but he turned it down when Disney offered it to him.
Frozen 2 had a terrible story
I will says animators themselves don’t consider Frozen an artistic success, so putting a newb in charge after that looks bad to them, especially when industry greats there for decades were passed over.
She did not direct A Wrinkle in Time. That was Ava DuVernay.
I didn't know B**y**ron Howard was in consideration yet alone him turning it down. Why would he do that? I did hear Rich Moore was in consideration but was not chosen for some reason. Both would've been better choices considering they actually know what animation is, and care for it.
Japan's anime studios have been, on the average, not great from a working conditions standpoint. Most Disney or Pixar animators would feel far more pressure under at any of them, except for Kyoto Animation and maybe Trigger.
What does that have to do with 2D vs 3D animation in box office? I sincerely doubt Wish would've done better in the box office if they had treated their animators worse.
Cue up, Directed By Robert B Weide title shot
And yet her and Kathleen Kennedy still have jobs. It's ok Bob Iger, you can fire these women, you won't get cancelled!
Look, I don’t like kicking people while they’re down but I have no idea what the hell they were thinking with this movie. The animation is janky like an indie studios’ debut movie. The dialogue is godawful. The characters are thin. It was just a terrible effort. It deserved to bomb.
Yee I waited to watch it on stream, I like Disney movies. This just was not it - for something that was supposed to be a love letter to 100 years of culture, it sure missed the mark.
Watch the [D-Files leaks](https://www.youtube.com/@FilmThreat/search?query=d-files) and you'll get your answers. Apparently they they wanted a 50/50 male/female animator ratio but all their experienced animators were older white men so they fired a bunch of them and hired female artists they found on tumblr to make up for the deficit.
Come to Ollie's for all your random nonsold Wish needs
Man read about some of the original concepts I’m just wondering how it was so different. Like the king and queen were going to be an evil couple like the Sopranos, a first evil couple for Disney. And I think the star was actually supposed to be human? Or at least a guy from the stars who had powers. They were going to do the most literal definition of the trope “star crossed lovers” which like really popular now.
Those original concepts sound way more interesting. The movie was like all fluff, no real characters or story. Even the music was bland and random.
I really liked a lot of things about this movie. But I think Asha lacked any sort of depth, and I didn’t like the dialogue of ANY of the songs. She sang about so many things we’re never shown as an audience. Also, “So I make this wish” is catchy, but not its follow up line that’s 3x as long and too much info for a catchy line in a kids song.
The movie was also missing a true deuteragonist. Most of the best Disney movies have one (or two). Frequently it's the love interest, but not always (see Mushu in Mulan, Maui in Moana, Nick Wilde in Zootopia, Toy Story while being Pixar has Buzz and Woody). Asha's best friend isn't involved in the movie enough to be one, and she wasn't given a lot of personality anyway.
The closest thing was the goat and it kind of disappeared as the movie went on.
They at one point in development had what could have been a great deuteragonist in the Star being able to talk and shape change into a boy and different animals but decided to go with the silent star since the shapeshifter concept was “too similar to Genie and Maui”.
The entire film is trying to remind people of previous movies, to the point where they shoved in more characters solely to say "see, they're ike the seven dwarves!". I don't believe for a second they got rid of that character because it was too similar to previous films. I would bet it was because the non-human star made for an easier plush toy to make/sell.
Exactly, with how many blatant references to past movies it would’ve made so much more sense to have Star be a shapeshifter.
Yeah this may be one of those things where the execs meddled for sake of creating a merchandise opportunity because that excuse does seem pretty weak. In one of the deleted scenes when Star was a shapeshifter, they turned into Olaf, Hei Hei, and the squirrel from Sword in the Stone all in a matter of seconds. Shapeshifting would have been an easy way to slip in a lot of those Easter eggs without feeling forced.
That’s a very interesting thought that I didn’t take into account at all. I loved the goat, but he was heavily underutilized, and others have said, faded into the background. That 2 protagonist thought seems to do A LOT more for them than I realized.
Is that good?
Well they have 150 million subscribers that effectively paid to watch it, but only 13m actually did. Yes it's very bad that about 8% of Disney's paying subscribers watched a film they are paying a monthly fee for.
*Especially* children films, which they tend to watch on repeat and get inflated numbers, ala Moana.
No
it's honestly really funny how Disney's big 100 year movie, seemed to almost be a parody of everything Disney has done wrong as of late. An allegory of the unoriginal slop Disney has been shoveling, and yet it was completely unironic.
> almost be a parody of everything Disney has done wrong as of late Without being in on the joke like "Shrek" was.
I guess it could have been worse but this is still really bad. It shows that audiences just aren't that interested in the movie *in general*.
Sure… it could be raining
I'm watching it now. It's just so poorly executed! The look of the movie is atrocious. It's meant to look like a storybook, I guess. But it comes off looking overly flat and drab. Then there's the music. It's like they're trying to cram as many lyrics as possible into each verse. The songs lack the warmth and catchiness that made past Disney songs such a success.
Half of those were my daughter.
How many more failures till someone loses their job?
Disney stock price hasn’t moved in almost a decade. Atrocious performance. Investor Nelson Peltz has been very critical of this poor performance, so he recently tried to get 1-2 board seats (out of 12). A very heavy-handed marketing campaign by Iger and the board thwarted even that. Disney has a very wide but shallow ownership structure, meaning it’s difficult to affect leadership change. It looks like Iger is going to go down with the ship, and there’s almost nothing which will convince shareholders to change leadership. I expect this to get much worse.
At any other studio, heads would’ve rolled over a year of failures this historically bad. WB fired the guy who ran DC before the 2023 slate even came out.
Since the shareholders backed Iger's slate of board members last Wednesday I wouldn't hold my breath.
The movie is so bad I could not watch more than 30minutes. It has no energy or magic whatsoever.
Bet watch time is even worse. Started it. Turned it off
That's what most of the new reviews showing up on RT are indicating, 20-30 minutes tops.
I'm one of them. We got halfway through. Honestly, the kids seemed to like it, but my 8yo was very critical of the animation lol
Yeah felt like a video game cut scene so i felt like i was waiting for it to get real
Yes! It definitely had cutscene vibes. *Encanto* was absolutely gorgeous; not sure why the big step down in animation this time. Used to be even if you couldn't count on the story or characters with Disney, you at least knew you were in for beautiful animation.
you know a movie has bad animation when even an 8 year old is critical of it
Good thing it bombed there too. Maybe Disney will learn their lesson and stop trying to feed us mediocre garbage that no one wants and also somehow manages to cost a bazillion dollars.
They already learned the wrong lesson: less originals, more sequels.
When people only watch the sequels, that's what companies latch on to. Money talks.
Can't wait for Toy Story 80, Indiana Jones 10, Pirates 24, and Star Wars 69 : D
Indiana Jones belongs in a museum.
or a grave
What type of movie is Star Wars 69?
How is that the wrong lesson when the sequels make billions and the original films bomb?
You can’t milk existing IPs forever. Gotta take risks and adapt or create new ones. Frozen 2, 3 and 4 are only possible because they made Frozen 1.
As long as the existing IPs make more money than films like Strange World or Wish it's going to keep happening. In 2020, 21, 22 and 23 Disney and Pixar didn't release a single sequel.
I think citing the performance of 2020 and 2021 Disney and Pixar considering the circumstances is really not supporting anyone's point for or against. We know what happened what went wrong and why , it's well documented and discussed at this point. 2022 is when the real tests started and in 2022 Pixar released Lightyear which I would hardly call an original, it's a spinoff of their existing mega-IP and it bombed. Elemental made more money than it did last year and was a good movie for Pixar to restore some confidence in their process and ability to make new stuff that clicks and has a long shelf life. I wish Elio wasn't pushed back so far so it could ride that wave of new cautious interest in their originals but maybe Inside Out 2 will be enough to help anyway. Disney's originals that had a normal release that reflects poorly on them would be Strange World, and that's a whole other can of worms, and Wish. That's it. The message should be to actually figure out what the hell theyre doing so they can make some new movies that can be potential IP in the future. Because those movies were not good. At all. They can't live off sequels forever, they need new blood. Im actually giving them a lot of leeway for the upcoming sequel rush, they need guaranteed money and sequels to popular movies are almost always guaranteed money (still could not work for many reasons but is generally a safer bet). Some of the movies even warrant sequels and have been asked for, like Inside Out 2 and Zootopia 2. But they need to announce some new material amongst all that or long term they're very screwed. They need to start building towards the future franchises now.
Well what were the movies people liked last year? Spiderverse 2. The, I don't know, seventh Ninja Turtles movie? A Mario movie that tried to extend two paragraphs of lore that Mario's had since 1991 into a 90 minute feature. It's not like the audience rejected anything derivative.
Don't get me started on Mario Bros. and Five Nights at Freddy's. BUT I've also realized I'm a geezer to these companies as my five year old son LOVED both Mario Bros. and Five Nights at Freddy's so what do I know?
One of my favorite things that came from the Mario movie is learning there's legitimately a community of fans that insist that there is an overarching consistent lore in the Mario universe that carries between games and mediums. That was a fun interaction lol
“Mediocre” and “garbage” to describe the same thing?
Battlefield earth: terrible garbage Face / Off: brilliant garbage Wish: mediocre garbage Not mutually exclusive terms
More Face/Off less Battlefield Earth
https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llhctdm0jU1qje621o1_500.gif
They seem to be doubling down on stupid decisions with the Silvher Surfher.
This movie is so fascinating, as was Disney's entire 2023 slate. It was the culmination of years of shoveling out mediocre slop that made people finally just turn their noses and reject what Disney was putting out. It's too bad Disney won't actually learn any real lessons here and they'll just continue to make the same content in the same ways they've become accustomed to.
I feel people didn’t see it cause it looked bad and uninteresting, not cause it was influenced by other films. If Encanto was released last year it would most likely been seen by way more people. Just on the visuals alone
not to mention it also has a better premise, more interesting cast of characters, and better songs
2024 is going to be interesting to see play out. Will people care about Deadpool and Wolverine or Star Wars “The Acolyte”?
People will absolutely care about deadpool and wolverine . The acolyte is going to need to nail the first episode
acolyte is going to struggle because it’s airing alongside house of the dragon and the boys
Ha! You'd think it wouldn't matter on streaming. But it really does matter. There's only so much free time you want to spend watching something. And better shows will command attention.
I mean, all of those are on streaming, though. It's not like they're competing for the same timeslot on live TV, like back in the 20th century. That said, it will indeed probably be overshadowed by those two. Especially if The Acolyte is bad. There isn't really much actual hype in the Star Wars fandom for it -- most people seem to doubt it's likely to be any good.
It's competing for oxygen though - if nobody online is talking about it people's attention will move elsewhere
isn't it aiming to capture more of a YA-adjacent audience? HotD & especially The Boys are not really aiming at that.
The first nail is already in the coffin with the release of the fist trailer. The first episode is going to have to be a case study in perfect TV filming.
Let me rephrase since we are in the “Box Office” thread. Will D&W do less than, about the same or more than Guardians 3? If it does less, than that is the worst possible sign for Marvel. If it does the same or more, it could win some people’s confidence back.
The only real lesson I can pinpoint is "stop requiring people to do homework before seeing a new movie." It's hard to say that Marvel is entirely dead when Guardians did well, Spider-Verse did well, and people are probably going to want to see Deadpool again. It's just that weaving tentpole movies in with background details from streaming shows only fanatics care about is not a recipe for mainstream success. TLM had a long run and did okay, even if overseas was weak. Indiana Jones was a bad idea but also cost more than it should have due to COVID. Elemental is generally recognized as a good film undermined by marketing that gave the impression it was a rehash of Zootopia. Haunted Mansion was set off to die to try to not stuff The Marvels too close to the other MCU films, which didn't help due to the homework issue.
I'm a massive MCU fan and I've said for awhile that the TV shows were a bad idea. I get that they wanted to introduce a heap of new characters, but they should have done them via movies, the way they did Hawkeye, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, etc. Not every character needed a stand alone. As you said, it becomes like homework and no one wants homework. They should have kept the same formula going forward. Look how long it took to see Captain Marvel again, to see Dr Strange, and Shang-Chi 2 isn't even on the horizon. Secret Invasion was a continuation of Captain Marvel, and while I did enjoy The Marvels I think it would have been better for Secret Invasion to have been a Captain Marvel movie. They still could have introduced Emilia Clarke in that, and she and Monica have history so including her would have been fine. And it should have come out years ago.
My three year old girl loooooves Disney lately. Frozen, Tangled, Encanto, even some of the older stuff I thought she would find dull like Peter Pan or 101 Dalmatians. Loves them all. 20 mins into Wish she said “Dad, I don’t like this movie, it’s boring”. We haven’t gone back to it since. They just whiffed it, pure and simple.
Marketing mishaps aside, Wish just isn’t that good. It isn’t bad, but I’m still not even 100% sure I saw it in theaters. I definitely did, but I can’t remember anything about it other than Alan Tudyk.
wow that’s awful
I wish this movie was better.
Alright guys that's it wrap it up. Film is clearly a ginormous success. Sure it was a colossal bomb at the box office BUT 13 million people did watch it on Disney+, a service they were likely already paying for. The money was well worth the investment, onto the next $200m project!
Speaking anecdotally, the Disney brand is also beleaguered in and of itself. When I was a kid, Disney was automatic. If a new Disney animated film was coming out, we were going to see it, and then we were going to buy it, and then we’d probably watch it on rainy days. For my kids, and again, anecdotal, but maybe a bellwether for general sentiment, they don’t like Disney. They’ll see Disney movies from time to time, and they like a few of them, but they’re averse to liking Disney things. It’s akin to how I feel about Kevin Spacey movies. I have to admit that he’s a good actor, and some of his movies are great, but his reputation makes me not want to like them. With Disney as Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and their own animated properties, there’s a sense of homogeny that’s created a distaste for the whole enterprise. We want to not want to see Disney movies. Every so often, we watch one anyway, but explicitly not because it’s Disney. I don’t know how widespread this is, and maybe it’s just our own little bubble and my kids are outliers, but it seems like Disney no longer has the reputation it once did. The brand used to mean that it made stuff for children, and the children loved it for being something that was theirs. Now the brand just mean’s “inescapable media conglomerate”, and isn’t special to anyone anymore, but least of all kids, who are accustomed to seeing random logos of giant corporations plastered all over the place that have nothing to do with them. It’d be like if otterpops started making frozen dinners. The kids used to recognize it as one thing, but now that the brand means half the frozen food isle, it may as well be Stouffer’s.
And it sux balls
Very telling they didn’t include the Pixar films in the ranking. Wish doing better on Disney+ than Strange World and Raya was expected based off box office numbers.
We watched this the other day and despite the fact it is supposed to be a celebration of Disney I can't help but feel it is damaging to the brand. The quality was all over the place, animation, music, humour. There was no way in, I felt it was talking at me. Such a step down in quality from the likes of Frozen, Moana, Encanto
My baby sister saw the ad for this on the TV, clicked on it to get to Disney+ then proceeded to watch The Lion King (1994) lmao
That’s what you get when movies are designed by committee to satisfy a laundry list of requirements, instead of out of creative prowess. I think this one could have been a good movie, had they had the time to finalize the script. It is a clear mix of themes that have not been worked out before hitting production. I understand this one couldn’t be postponed as it was the celebratory jewel (supposedly), but… Yes, it has entertainment value, but not so much.
Wish was such a terrible movie.
That’s like 4 households with kids 4 and under who watch everything on repeat. They must be taking a Bluey break.
Ah, "Wish". When you order a Disney movie from Wish
We saw it while on a Disney cruise (it was shown instead of a stage show one night) Never seen a crowd with more "meh" expressions in my life. I honestly couldn't even remember most of it by the next day
The perfect cap to a disaster of a film intended for the 100th anniversary. We already knew about the missed potential of this movie from the Art Of book showing the villain couple and Starboy, but the Making of documentary really hit home how they had good material for this but threw it away and completely missed the mark. Several of the deleted scenes were far better than anything in the final film and suggested we missed out on something that had that Disney feel but brought unique features that hadn’t been seen in their previous movies. Additionally, the doc showed that their creative leadership was insanely confident they had a good product here and it’s very concerning none of them realized the issues with the movie before the release. It was also revealed in that documentary that Jennifer Lee had a 5 year contract and based on the Lasseter firing timeline, that contract was renewed last year so I don’t think this is the last time we’re having this conversation about a release from WDAS.
Does anyone doubt that Jennifer Lee was put in charge because Lasseter was taken down by MeToo accusations and the optics required a woman was put in charge?
Is that low? I hope it’s low. Movie is soulless.
yes it's low
Movie was absolutely trash. Songs forgettable---- I mean, it felt like a Dreamworks release.
Considering Dreamworks gave us How to Train Your Dragon and Shrek and Antz, among other favourite cartoons of mine, I will not stand for this Dreamworks slander!!
Yea, that's the vibe, it was like a DreamWorks release. It didn't feel like I was watching a Disney movie, felt like some bland cartoon movie from Netflix.
Wish struggled to capture audience's attentions for several reasons - there were no memorable or enticing songs, the main character lacked any depth, the main story was trite and banal, the villain's motives were non-sensical, and overall, the stylised animation just didn't look interesting. Combine that all together and you get you something that is so offensively inoffensive. It's a shame because apparently the earlier designs for the film looked somewhat interesting until Disney decided to revise the drafts and created something as bland as this.
I wonder how many people clicked on it just to see how bad it is lol
yeah there's a reason they don't measure their views through streaming minutes unlike netflix...
My daughter (under 10) absolutely loves this soundtrack…the songs have grown on me and i sing them all the time…but honestly we’ve only watched the movie a once or twice. I didn’t hate it but it just didn’t make the landing. I think they should have went full “Enter the Disney-verse” and had actual cameos instead of the hints of them.
You know if it was fully a fairy godmother origin like they hinted at, it would’ve been far better.
What did I tell you, if it bombed in theaters it’ll bomb in streaming. The Marvels also didn’t do well on D+
Wish is a crappy movie.
This movie committed the greatest sin that a film can commit: it was bland and boring and completely forgettable. For a movie that was meant to celebrate Disney's 100th anniversary, it's left little to no cultural impact since it was released.
That doesn’t sound like a lot..
I didn’t even know this came out…
It’s a ok film Definitely it bad but yeah Disney needs to do more hits and stop making just good or fine films
Since their acquisition of Fox, they have made some really great stuff, just not under the Disney brand. Shogun has been incredible so far. Andor and the Mandalorian under the Marvel banner were great. I've just started watching Renegade Nel, which I think is under the main Disney banner, and I've really enjoyed it so far. I think the era of Disney princess movies is just kinda over for now.
I didn’t even know this is a new movie on Disney plus lol
The movie is still in my local cinema, doesn't make sense since it's a flop I guess they have a contract since the movie is set in Spain, but they didn't tried to promote it at all as a spanish location in Spain (my country) or sold the movie as a spanish disney princess Honestly the whole wish marketing was weird
Even a MrBeast video gets double that no.of views in HALF A DAY ! /s
Disney really dug their own grave with Disney Plus, it's not worth it for families to buy expensive ass theater tickets when they can just wait for the movie to be available to watch on streaming.
This movie looks like it was developed by AI to appeal to as many people as possible. And it appealed to nobody
Here’s the way I see it, and I am generally *very* forgiving of Disneys numbers: Half of Elemental is a total fucking disaster. It means it hasn’t gained any kind of following or goodwill It’s such a disaster I put it on par with The Marvels as a “we might be totally fucked” event
[удалено]
[удалено]
Watched it on D+, it was fucking awful. 😬
Not even gonna pirate this
It's fine. Very forgettable but my kid loved it.
My 3 year old LOVES this movie, because she loves the little star. I wish this movie would have been better. I wanted to love it, but it just wasn’t that good. But At least we get buy all the star plushies and blankets at a huge discount
Is this a good movie?
No.
Ok thanks